jekyll and hyde

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You wouldn't treat her bad. You just wouldn't depend on her, and you'd have a much better chance of keeping her. I'm speaking from direct experience...you'll scare a girl off, even if she likes you, in your current state. Women want to be loved, but they also want space.

How are you sure I wouldn't treat one like dirt? If I was dependent on nobody but myself, I'd become a monster...

Let's put it this way, since I've felt happier, I haven't been narcissistic. My relationship with my family has become healthier and we're friends instead of me telling them all the time how much I hate them for having me. I like women, and you can see from my posts that I don't disrespect them, but at the same time, I don't need one. I'd really like a girlfriend that I can click with, but I don't NEED it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to treat women like sh*t either or if I have a girlfriend, cheat on her or disrespect her. It just means that I have a healthy attraction to her. Right now, since you're unhappy, you're putting your happiness on the shoulders of a woman, any woman. If you were happy, you'd be happy with or without a girl.

I don't think anyone will disagree with that, but when you only manage to attract that type of women and you happen to fall in love with them as well, it isn't easy to just say "honey, you're doing me more wrong than good". It's not like you can always tell in advance (well, I as an Aspie can't). My last girlfriend (who has BPD) is both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me....

If you really love someone, you can't just shove them aside. If you really love someone, you must first make sure how strong your love for each other really is and how much both parties are willing to contribute.... At least, that's my opinion.



Is this a process you went through yourself? What meds do you take?



It's a character from the series "Star Trek" in a shot that became instant cult because the guy shouts the name "Khan" in a particularly ackward and loud way for that scene. I guess ToadOfSteel is a Trekkie

Well I never had a weight problem...in fact had the opposite problem...tall and boney, and put on some healthy weight the past couple years. Instead of 6 1 135 i'm 6 1 160...still thin, but better. And before I was on any meds, I sounded EXACTLY like Toad. I didn't like my looks and obsessed over them and thought that all women thought I was unattractive. (The reality is, and I realize it now, I'm not ugly but look socially awkward or weird to some, to other women I'm cute or handsome or at the very worst, average)...I'm on 60 mg of prozac...the only side effect is that I sleep too much sometimes...but in return for happiness and clearity of mind, I'll take that any day of the week. The new me (I'd say it began in early 2007) doesn't hate life, I don't hate myself, I think of myself as "regular looking", I don't whine, and the rare instance I do feel bad, it's "I feel bad but I don't know why, I wish I could feel better" and usually it goes away.

I wasted at least 4 years on message boards complaining to people the way Toad does, and it gets you nowhere...in fact, I got so lonely Christmas time 2006 when I was working at a mall and saw all the pretty women there and was too afraid to talk to them that for that among a myriad of other reasons, I tried to end my life. Toad might feel comfortable right now being "comfortably numb" to quote Pink Floyd, but sooner or later it will blow up. He's essentially bottling up his emotions...serenity now, insanity later.

Toad, you'd be much better off in the hands of a competent therapist or specialist and they can tell you what exactly you need to do, mediciation and life-wise. None of us are qualified on here.

Because you seem far too nice and considerate here (and I mean that sincerely). There are moral lines you will not cross, and if anything, a lot of your concerns are too much about how that person feels or what they stand to benefit -- you are being selfless sometimes.

I actually have come full circle with how I view your posts -- if anything, I think things are looking up for you. Is the GF/Ex-GF thing a new thing? Last I had heard, you had only had crushes or near misses, but if you've had a GF in the interrim time since I was gone for a while, it would seem things are looking up.

A monster? No. I really doubt that. There are monster-men out there, but you aren't "reading" like one, based on your posts. And I think a monster-man is that whether he is in a relationship or not. Although I get the feeling you are slated for a co-dependent relationship at some point in the future, I don't think you would have some sort of awful metamorphosis if you were in a non- co-dependent relationship. I don't actually know you, of course, but there is a certain consistency in your posts, as there is in everybody's, that gives a feel. And that feel is "wants to be in a co-dependent relationship", not "one step away from being a stone cold b#stard".

All things considered, it's almost certainly not love. At 17 she's not even likely to love you that deeply if she's healthy, anyway, because she's at an age where her needs, desires and actions are very vital and central to her adult life. Actual love (I'm not talking about the romantic limerent kind) takes maturity and stability, and while everyone progresses at variable speeds and in different ways, what you've said here is consistent with a confused, very young, and possibly bipolar/BPD woman. I have a feeling she values your friendship, but how deep that goes seems what matters to you. Yet, she doesn't know. Love is not confusing for those who feel it, and that's the bottom line.

But that said...



I'm going to be very blunt here.

Is it fair to ask love of this person if you don't really love her? Because this statement sounds blatantly needy and loveless. It's one thing to be honest about looking for love supply, but you cannot hide it under a mask of 'love' no matter how needy or affectionate you feel for someone. Affection is still not love, a built bond is not love, either. Love is your own desire to give without supply in the other direction. Love (outside how it's usually defined--romantic attraction) is by definition altruistic and unconditional (within bounds). It doesn't mean you're with the person, or intimate with the person, but that you feel for them and will give what you can within reason.

This is in accordance with an old psychological rule of thumb: those who desire love are the least able to give it. In any healthy adult interaction, you need to be able to give to receive. As the Beetle's song so eloquently states, "The love you take is equal to the love you make"; basically, you're going to end up attracting 'screwed up' people when you're so destitute yourself. Therange is making good points along the same line, in different words. We do all desire to be loved, but it presents at different levels of intensity, from mild loneliness to excruciating need. It starts in infancy and, with a little luck, people grow out of their self-centered need for their mother's love. But if they don't, the result is a constant, insatiable craving to be loved, but a distinct inability to truly give that in return with no apparent immediate positive feedback due to total self focus on a perceived need. In reality, you cannot totally depend on any one person--no one can. That's why it's vital to depend on yourself first (self acceptance, love and autonomy), and be able to start from there to form a family.

A word about narcissists: narcissists are hollow and needy; there's even been a term fashioned for what narcissists seek, which is 'narcissistic supply'. They are not truly self loving, or loving in any way. They are the result of individuals who've been desiring of love to the point where it has exceeded anything realistic, and as a result have concocted a grandiose false self image -- like Narcissus and his reflection -- to gain the approval they view as 'love' in some way. This is true of shy narcissists, too They are dependent on their false image, not their actual, true selves.

So you're suggesting a young BPD woman may not be capable of feeling love, because she's still too confused about her feelings?

I'm not so sure about that. My ex (she was 22, though) seeemed to have genuinely loved me, but when my behavior when I'd drunk a bit too much alcohol on her birthday reminded her of her alcoholic father, she closed off from me entirely and she hasn't been able to open up to me ever since. This happened about two months ago now and it's almost 3 weeks ago she broke up with me. The shock and fear that overcame her by the flashback she got of her past disables her in connecting with the love she once felt for me, which is the reason we started drifting further and further apart.

Oh, and I loved this woman deeply. In a way I still love her to this very moment, but the sight of her fading away deeper and deeper into my memory because of the wall she's put between us makes me gradually more accepting of the fact that she broke up with me. I've planned to meet her in a bit more than a week, but I expect this will end rather in a late goodbye than in a new beginning of any sort.

This is going to be long, but I'm not trying to hijack this thread; hopefully something can be gleaned from it.

I'm strongly suggesting, yes.

I personally use a different vocabulary with emotional interactions, and 'affection,' though part of 'love,' is not necessarily love itself. Love can be comprised of affection, but it's an action with a specific motive to give, nurture and grow, for the benefit of two or more instead of one. In the words of one BPD sufferer...



...from this site, one of my personal top picks for BPD.

As I mentioned, my boyfriend possesses, if not BPD itself, prominent borderline traits. He's also mildly bipolar, and having similarly afflicted family members suggests an obvious underlying predetermining genetic factor for all of these features.

I myself have ADHD (more like a very mild, consistent and steady form of bipolar disorder -- hyperactive, hypomanic and impulsive, along with fleeting bouts of inattention). generalized anxiety and C-PTSD. BPD and C-PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) are now being merged into a single diagnosis, and one I personally disagree with.

The people I know who I would say qualify for C-PTSD have been through very obvious, long-standing social traumas, and act accordingly with anxiety, reverting, acting out, meltdowns and sexual dysfunction, all based on whatever their specific traumas were. The BPDers' traumas aren't always clear, and probably started at, or shortly after, birth. The way I personally differentiate between the two diagnoses is an obvious capacity for love in C-PTSD where it seems nearly absent (at first, without treatment) in BPD. I know that sounds like a brash statement, but hear me out. For someone who's had isolated, or later, traumas, and someone in their life that they could trust early on, self acceptance and love were partially or wholly learned, even if it's shattered later by abuse. For someone who's already genetically prone to neurological oversensitivity and then knows only various forms of neglect from day one, borderline, avoidant and schizoid traits are very likely to pervade their lives from childhood onward.

I was born neurologically hypersensitive (as assessed by multiple clinicians by the time I was five), and although every little trauma felt big to me, I had the support, love and guidance of my parents to teach me self awareness, acceptance and love. It wasn't until after 13, after significant loss and trauma, and again when my parents died after I turned 18, that other factors set in that led to my eventual C-PTSD. Anything that suggests I may lose someone important to me now can lead to all sorts of emotional havoc, from attempted breakups to total meltdowns complete with suicidal thoughts and actions. But I don't have that hollow feeling BPD sufferers are said to have, and my suicidal desires come from panic attacks and acute PTSD misery. I have flashbacks and frequent nightmares.

My boyfriend was born neurologically hypersensitive, but from day one, literally, he was neglected, emotionally and occasionally physically. He was born late via traumatic caesarean and placed in a box for over a week. His father reportedly wanted nothing to do with his birth and avoided his mom, and the hospital, altogether. After that, his mother neglected to notice that he was starving for a month as she was unable to produce enough breastmilk. There's hardly anything at all known or recorded about his growth as a child. His parents' depression, overly negative and critical behaviour, and the fact he was an 'accident' were all factors that contributed to his deep loneliness. I don't know, but do suspect, that there may have been some degree of incest, whether emotional, physical or outright molestation isn't clear and I'm afraid to pry. He has never known consistent support and love, and that has led to his pervasive feelings of hollowness, isolation, and fear. He has severe mood swings, has planned and nearly carried out a very serious suicide plan, and has very serious issues with commitment in any regard. One day he'll be smitten and want to marry me, proclaim undying attraction, and the next day never want to hear from me again. There is little rhyme or reason, often nothing to provoke him, and no apparent method to his madness. The only thing that directly hints at his childhood is his total fear of being controlled in some way, alternating with a desire to be masochistic.

Obviously there are similarities between these two mental disorders because of a similar cause, but personal identity sets them apart. There is a difference between acting out love to receive love, and loving due to learned love in development. While I don't struggle with identity, my boyfriend does. While I can love myself on days when I've worked through trauma, his traumas are so deep set and ingrained he has extreme difficulty with them. While I can stably hold him. friends and family through bad times, he recoils and has real difficulty giving to people, especially when the chips are down. So, Salon, your ex may have been able to love due a stable sense of self, but her PTSD got in the way and caused her to recoil so she could escape actual harm. Or maybe she was really BPD and you weren't quite seeing the lack of self identity due to an incomplete childhood development, and she was capable of putting on an act, even to herself. I know nothing of the story, so I wouldn't want to venture a guess.

All of this may apply to Toad's woman friend, as well. Women have a tendency to react with BPD, HPD, AvPD, social anxiety/phobia, and DPD when they're neglected as kids, where men tend more to show signs of apathy, like SPD, or compensatory egos, like NPD and AsPD. Neglect seems to be increasingly more common these days and PDs also appear to be on the rise. Keep in mind all of these compensatory mental disorders often go undiagnosed, too.

I looked at that site Orbyss linked, and while some things (like the rapid and unpredictable switching between love and hate) do apply, but I'm not getting the feeling that BPD really applies to my ex-gf to its fullest extent (I'm not ruling out traits, nor the possibility of traits and/or undiagnosed bipolar disorder). Even looking back retrospectively, I don't feel like I was being "pulled in" by her... and I don't think she was being overly clingy with me either (if anything, I was the one being clingy in our relationship).

Also, looking at some of those articles, I almost feel as though BPD would apply to myself far more easily than it would my ex. The list of "feelings" expressed by BPD sufferers in article 2:

applies more to me than it ever would my ex. In fact, all of those items apply to me in some way (although I have been able to overcome some, and a few others aren't 100% of the time). That said, I had been to a lot of therapists and psychologists in my life owing to my AS, and AS is the only label that has been applied to me (although my mother kept getting a lot of opinions, and I think she's a bit biased in getting AS applied to me, since when I argued with my mother that I might have AvPD, which i strongly believe I do have, she said "no, you only have AS".)

But in any case, I'm pretty sure BPD doesn't apply to my ex here to the extent that you think it does.

Toad, and I'm not saying this to be mean, but I think you need to give yourself a break. The daily internal beating you give yourself is worse than anything anyone else could ever give you. It's New Years, enjoy it. I know your depression is your friend, but your depression ironically is what's holding you back, and you refuse to get treatment whether it be medicinal or talk therapy. We can only do so much for you on here.

Toad, please consider finding the nearest teaching hospital, and making an appointment with a psychiatrist (preferably the Chairman of the Dept) for a comprehensive evaluation. You'll get better treatment at a teaching hospital: they're the ones doing the research, they're the ones who are most current in their field....they're your best hope for comprehensive and competent treatment.

You're 21 years old now, and you need to take responsibility for your own diagnosis and treatment. It doesn't really matter if your mother is comfortable with the diagnosis or not. Whether you have BPD or not, you're clearly severely depressed - that is a medical condition that requires treatment. If you were diabetic, would you bother debating whether you needed treatment? I doubt it. But because of the nature of your illness - as debilitating and crippling as it is - you refuse to treat it. Does that make sense to you?

As far as your ex goes, it could actually be that she's just a 17-year-old, Toad, and all the feelings she expresses for you - positive and negative - are legitimate. She's a girl, and she has had neither the time nor the distance to process her feelings about you - probably because you haven't given her the time and/or space to do that. That's actually not very fair to her. (I doubt that dragging her through these feelings makes her happy, or benefits her.) Really, you need to leave her alone. Let her process her feelings - check back with her in six months. And in those six months - get to work on treating your own illness and resolving your own issues - you're the only one who can.