Is my GF bipolar, has BPD, or just stressed?

[Martian536]

Hi all... I'm beginning to really question my relationship of 1.5 years.. I can say that its been one hell of a rollercoaster. I met this girl at a nightclub, whats funny is that we hit it off like love at first sight.. that is something I felt was oddly strange. On our second date, we already became intimate.. She would say strange things like "do you believe in fate?", etc.. This girl is obviously gorgeous and I'm sure in the begining it was all lust and intense sexual chemistry.. I thought I found a catch as its hard to find girls who are highly sexual (something I prefer as it matches my level of sexuality).

 

Anyway, fast forward 4 months later, this girl is confused and begins dating a lesbian on the side and tells me she's no longer into me.. Then I sorta move on with my life confused as to what the hell just happened between us. Then she realizes she's not bisexual as she thought she was so she rekindles everything we had.

 

More info about her, I'm 30 and this girl just turned 24 and is in her last year of college. She comes from a household living only with her elderly mother (she takes care of her). She's the middle child and has abandonment issues becuase her father is emotionally unavailable and he does not live at home. Her parents have a strange relationship where the father would come visit when he feels like it. she also has a younger sister who is a lesbian and an older brother who's tryign to get his life sorted out. She's the only one who has her head on straight or so it seems.

 

Anyways, the reason why I think she has BPD or BIPOLAR disorder is because of the way she's been treating our relationship. AFter rekindling the relationship with me, fast forward another 4 months and she calls it quits again saying we don't have the same core values. I decide to move on again and not want to deal with this girl anymore. Yet she comes back after a week or so and from there on, we've been officially exclusive. Another reason was because I came out of a long term 8 year relationship and supposedly she was afraid she was just a rebound. I never ever showed signs that she was a rebound and we are exclusive for over a year now.

 

Throughout our relationship its been somewhat one sided. She never really makes an effort to come drive out to visit me (I only live half hour away) and she blames it on her old unreliable car yet she can drive out to visit her sister when she wants to. I'm not sure if I'm putting this girl on a pedestal but lately since she's started school, she can easily show signs of bipolar or bpd. She rarely has many friends (at first I thought that was a good thing so she's not so busy) except one girlfriend who's her bestfriend but she's hardly around now becuase she has her own boyfriend to tend to. But since she's started school, she can easily get stressed and shut me out.

 

Another reason why I feel she has BPD is how emotionally closed she is. Only once have I seen her shed a tear when it comes to sensitive issues (ONCE and it was just for a few seconds).. yet she's seen me tear and thinks I'm weak for showing my emotions like that. I think her father really treated her bad growing up so she has a defensive mechanism of shutting people out when she's bothered.

 

Whenever we get into arguments, she can become manipulative and becomes very raging even when she's wrong and sometiems would hang up and turn her phone off and then call back later in the day acting like nothing ever happened.

 

She also gets into periods of hyper sexuality. Sometimes she's so into it but sometimes she just rather skip the actual intimacy and get right into it which I always found weird. Sometiems I feel emotinoal disconnect with her and then there's times she can act like the sweetest girl. Anyway, I foudn this questionnaire on a BPD website and I was shocked to answer YES to several of the questions that clearly are red flags..

 

 

• Soon after meeting your girlfriend did she begin talking badly about her ex-boyfriend or ex-husband? SORTA (she said her EX cheated on her..)
  
• Soon after meeting your girlfriend did she confide in you stories of abuse? YES - she says her father was absent and wasn't that great of a father
  
• Did she say she was raped? NO but she says she became a stripper for a month just to try it out..
  
• Does your girlfriend not get along with her parents? JUST HER MOM
  
• Does your girlfriend say her parents abused her? HER DAD
  
• Does your girlfriend have a difficult time maintaining friendships? YES, she always assumes the worse out of people
  
• Does it feel like you were the only solid relationship in her life right now? IT DOES SEEM LIKE IT other than her sister and her one best friend
  
• Did she sleep with you soon after meeting her? YES!
  
• She willing to try just about anything sexually? YES!
  
• Does she seem to have secrets? NO
  
• Do old friends pop out of the woodwork that you didn't even know existed? YES - she seems to randomly reconnect with old friends and we had a fight where she wanted to try to keep her old guy friends separate. I was wondering why I couldn't meet them at first when she's met all my girlfriends.. now she agrees but still haven't met them but she doesn't keep in touch with them much either but keeps their #s on her phone.
  
• Is she in financial trouble? Are you sure? SOMETIMES
  
• Has she ever been in financial trouble?
  
• Does she have a difficult time keeping jobs? YES, she has a long history of jumping jobs.. and never been in a job for more than several months..
  
• Did she give you lavish gifts soon after meeting her? NO
  
• She's pressuring you to move the relationship forward into engagement or marriage? YES, she would ask to get eloped and I was shocked because this girl doesn't even understand commitment yet. She has a history of being a serial monogamists. Already had 7 sexual partners before me for being only 24 years old and about 4-5 relationships before me.
  
• Does her life seemed to be an unbelievable story where the deck has been stacked against her and she has been the victim of the wrongdoings of others? YES, well. I do believe her family is dysfunctional and she has to care for her mom and has a deadbeat dad and her brother moved back home and is trying to move out. So she is stressed at home indeed.
  
• When you have fights to she yell and scream very easily. YES!! She can become a raging lunatic.
  
• When you try to leave during the fight does she hold you back and keep you from leaving. NOT EXACTLY.. I tried leaving and came back but she said she would've ended up finding me.
  
• Does she seem to get more upset if you won't yell back at her? I have a tendency to raise my voice and answer back so NO.
  
• Does she threaten to commit suicide? NO
  
• When she meets your friends for the first time does she come off as “the perfect girlfriend” YES
  
• Is she great in public but as soon as the parties over all hell breaks loose?
  
• Does she abuse alcohol? NO
  
• Does she abuse drugs? NO
  
• The she currently live with you or is trying to move in with you? SOMETIMES she feels like it but now that's she's busy with school, she tries to act independent..
  

Well, there you go.. I've answered YES to alot of the questions above so I'm already feeling that this girl is going to be an emotional rollercoaster for me. I get insecure feeling that this girl may hurt me in the long run because of how emotionally unstable she is (cheat or do something out of her control). I would question her about her past and she said she has a history of jealous insecure boyfriends and I can now see why. She definately can go from making you feel wanted to having you question whether she's really into the relationship or not. We use to get into arguments about me not ever meeting her guy friends (some guy calls her once in a blue moon and she swears she doesn't have any past connection with him but I suggest I meet him someday and ast first she says she wanted to keep our friends separate but thats not a commited relationship to begin with. I don't expect to be friends with them but she shouldn't be afraid to have mutual friends.. I know most of her girl friends).

 

Second, she has a tendency to be deceptive sometimes. One ngiht while in bed, she had a text from an unknown number asking her if that was still her number. It turned out to be an old male coworker of hers (who seemed to be tryign to hit on her out of nowhere). What bothered me is that she tried to turn her phone as to hide the message. I caught her in that act and I was upset that she would hide such a thing. She even lied saying it was her sister who texted until I asked to see the phone. Then she tried to prove a point by texting the guy "this is her bf, don't u think its too late to be texting".. Whats funny i sthat she always says sorry or proves her point after she's already done something suspicious..

 

She always uses her excuse as "I didn't want to make you jealous or freak out" and she blames her past boyfriends for being like this. I tell her striaght up that the reason why I freak out anyway is because of her actions..

 

So bottom line is being in this relationship, I feel like I go up and down her priority list on a daily basis and it freaks me out. Sometiems she'll call me 24/7 when she's free and act like she's so exscited to talk. Howver, when its my turn to call and she's caught up with homework or whatever, she'll throw a fit and hang up or act so distant or act like im annoying her. Her emotions go up and down throughout the day.. is this BPD, BIPOLAR, or just major mood swings caused by stress? Her extreme swings have escalated ever since she started school so I'm thinking probably just stress on top of her having to take care of her elderly mother..

 

I too am confused if Im truly in love with this girl adn willing to help her or if I'm just addicted to the our sexual chemistroy (when she becomes hyper sexual).. but I don't want to "Rescue" this girl and have her come out of her shell. I hate what her father might've done to her growing up and her seeing how her father treats her mom. She really seems emotionally shut. This is something that really scares me and I don't want to end up getting hurt down the line because I've also read that people who are bipolar or have BPD have a higher chance of cheating saying that they don't hve any control over their sponteanous emotions...

 

I Definately feel the girl walking on eggshells in this relationship now sometimes.. Another thing I forgot to mention is that halfway throughout our relationship she's been starting to gain a considerable amount of weight and sometimes shows signs of binge eating, low self esteem, etc.. she's also on birth control so I don't know if all this drama is a combination of everything.. and especially since its her senior year of school, things have really started to come down on her..

Edited October 28, 2010 by Martian536

[Leigh 87]

Wow that was such a long post it even put me to shame haha. I did not read all of it but I wanted to let you know that many people exhibit some fo the things on the " list" for Bbipolar or Borederline Personality Disorder....

 

I am almost 24, and I have not been able to keep jobs, had a promiscuous sexual past ( PAST lol), and have a few more things that are on the " checklist" for bi polar and borederline, however, i do not have the fully blown disorders. I simply show some traits.

 

Has your girlfriend ever been to a therapist, or considered it? She may have the capacity to be more stable, and be able to keep and maintain jobs and friendships to a more acceptable level, if she talked to a psychologist, who can assist ehr identify and deal with her issues.

 

Great sexual chemistry is really important for a relationship, in my opinion. But so too are other things, such as being stable enough as a person to BE in a relationship.

 

You obviously have great chemistry and are a suited physical match! If you are crazy over her in some ways, perhaps it would be worth suggesting to her that it would be a shame to throw it all away, seeing as you have great chemistry and other elements of the realtionship are great.

 

I would tell her that if things continue the way they are, that you are not certain you can be in a relstionship with a person who behaves like that; that you have a strong attarction to her and want to work through the issues that bother you, rather than give up on the relatinship.

 

You should basically make is clear, that you do not like where things are going, and want to try to resolve things. The alternative is to do nothing, let her continue on the path she is on, and in all likely hood not be able to maintain a healthy relationship with her,.

 

You are doing the right thing by wanting to fix things; you are obviously not satisfied with the state she is in, and would rather try to fix things than leave right away.

 

It sucks when the gorgeous women who can act charming, turn out to be a little emotionally inept or .... just psycho at times.