Big Time Trust Issues

[niceguy31]

Im sorr to post consecutive posts,but downtown if you can talk with me some more i would appreciate it because i do have some questions.

[Downtown]

Niceguy, there's nothing wrong with posting two messages in a row. If you have more questions, fire away. First, however, I would appreciate your answering the question I posed earlier. Why have you not asked her for her address? I cannot imagine why it never occurred to you -- with a penpal GF you've been in love with for nearly a year -- to ask for her address in case you need to send a rescue crew to her home. Given that she was threatening suicide several times to keep you in line, why did you not ask her -- or her sister -- for her home address?

[bubbaganoosh]

No I haven't met her yet,and that is the thing that bothers me is if she does this to me online,is this what I can expect from her in the future on a more face to face basis? and if so that's why i'm here to find a way to put a stop to her mistrust in me.

 

Awwww the bats are out tonight! Hey genius, how in the hell can you be in a relationship with a girl that you never met?

 

It's like eating a steak dinner with a empty plate. My god, go out some night and meet a real live woman and have a relationship. Even if you get shut down, at least it was with someone that you have seen with your own eyes. This is crazy. First she sounds nuts and probably is if she thinks your cheating on her and you never once set eyes on each other.

 

Please get out of this mess and find a girl that you can go out with and enjoy her company in real time. This is a waste of your time with an unknown girl.

[niceguy31]

Niceguy, there's nothing wrong with posting two messages in a row. If you have more questions, fire away. First, however, I would appreciate your answering the question I posed earlier. Why have you not asked her for her address? I cannot imagine why it never occurred to you -- with a penpal GF you've been in love with for nearly a year -- to ask for her address in case you need to send a rescue crew to her home. Given that she was threatening suicide several times to keep you in line, why did you not ask her -- or her sister -- for her home address?

 

I'm not really sure why I didn't I guess I just didnt think of it to be honest with you,but I did fairly call her threats with threats to call the police and all and when I did that,all of a sudden she flipped again and tried to win me back like you said she was going to.

 

Now to my questions. First of all I want to know,did I hurt her at all by leaving her,cause she did start claiming again towards the end that I was hurting her by doing this to her and that I never really loved her,so did I hurt her?

 

Another question I have is basically does this mean that now she will just keep preying on guys like this if she does not get help?

[niceguy31]

Awwww the bats are out tonight! Hey genius, how in the hell can you be in a relationship with a girl that you never met?

 

It's like eating a steak dinner with a empty plate. My god, go out some night and meet a real live woman and have a relationship. Even if you get shut down, at least it was with someone that you have seen with your own eyes. This is crazy. First she sounds nuts and probably is if she thinks your cheating on her and you never once set eyes on each other.

 

Please get out of this mess and find a girl that you can go out with and enjoy her company in real time. This is a waste of your time with an unknown girl.

 

First of all if you had read the entire thread,you would see I just ended it today.

 

Secondly your tone is not a very supportive one and I don't need that right now.

[Downtown]

Did I hurt her at all by leaving her,cause she did start claiming again towards the end that I was hurting her by doing this to her and that I never really loved her,so did I hurt her?

Niceguy, does it harm a four year old to allow her suffer the logical consequences of her own bad behavior? Any good parent will tell you that what is harmful is to do otherwise -- i.e., to spoil the child by allowing her to throw hissy fits and tantrums and get away with it. In my view, then, you were harming your exGF by staying in the toxic R/S. And you were helping her, giving her an incentive to confront her issues, by leaving her when she turned vindictive and mean.

Another question I have is basically does this mean that now she will just keep preying on guys like this if she does not get help?

Keep preying? My view is that, if she really has strong BPD traits, she never started "preying on guys," as you say. BPDers generally do not mirror the personalities of their lovers to be manipulating but, rather, to survive, to be accepted, and to be loved. Moreover, they don't know how to do otherwise because, as I noted earlier, they have little idea of who they really are.

 

Their egos are so fragile and unstable that, to survive, they find that they must emulate the best aspects of the strong people in their lives. Most of them have been doing this mirroring of other people since early childhood and, generally, they are unaware that other people don't do this type of thinking too. They typically believe it is a normal way of thinking.

 

Importantly, I am not saying that you won't find BPDers who are manipulating. On the contrary, you will find a substantial share who are. You also will find BPDers who speak fluent French and have blond hair. But NONE of those characteristics, including the manipulation, is a BPDer trait. Instead, manipulation is one of the classic traits of narcissism and of sociopathy. It shows up in BPDers only because 39% of BPDers also have co-occurring full-blown NPD -- and 14% have co-occurring full-blown sociopathy (i.e., Antisocial PD).

[niceguy31]

Niceguy, does it harm a four year old to allow her suffer the logical consequences of her own bad behavior? Any good parent will tell you that what is harmful is to do otherwise -- i.e., to spoil the child by allowing her to throw hissy fits and tantrums and get away with it. In my view, then, you were harming your exGF by staying in the toxic R/S. And you were helping her, giving her an incentive to confront her issues, by leaving her when she turned vindictive and mean.Keep preying? My view is that, if she really has strong BPD traits, she never started "preying on guys," as you say. BPDers generally do not mirror the personalities of their lovers to be manipulating but, rather, to survive, to be accepted, and to be loved. Moreover, they don't know how to do otherwise because, as I noted earlier, they have little idea of who they really are.

 

Their egos are so fragile and unstable that, to survive, they find that they must emulate the best aspects of the strong people in their lives. Most of them have been doing this mirroring of other people since early childhood and, generally, they are unaware that other people don't do this type of thinking too. They typically believe it is a normal way of thinking.

 

Importantly, I am not saying that you won't find BPDers who are manipulating. On the contrary, you will find a substantial share who are. You also will find BPDers who speak fluent French and have blond hair. But NONE of those characteristics, including the manipulation, is a BPDer trait. Instead, manipulation is one of the classic traits of narcissism and of sociopathy. It shows up in BPDers only because 39% of BPDers also have co-occurring full-blown NPD -- and 14% have co-occurring full-blown sociopathy (i.e., Antisocial PD).

 

Do you think then that my now ex GF suffers from sociopathy and has Narcissism?

 

Also do you think that there are things that she may have fabricated? Including possibly her own sister? Reason I ask this is because I couldnt help but notice how her behavior and tendancies when texting seem similar to that of her sister. Her sister would often respond to things I say exactly the same way my ex GF would.

[Downtown]

Do you think then that my now ex GF suffers from sociopathy and has Narcissism?

How could we possibly know? You did not have an actual GF. You had a penpal who, at best, could be considered a "virtual GF." She actually may have been a 12 year old boy pretending to be a woman and also pretending to be her sister. Indeed, I may be a 12 year old too.

[niceguy31]

How could we possibly know? You did not have an actual GF. You had a penpal who, at best, could be considered a "virtual GF." She actually may have been a 12 year old boy pretending to be a woman and also pretending to be her sister. Indeed, I may be a 12 year old too.

 

Very true.

 

I guess the best question that needs to be asked now is. How do I keep from getting into a relaationship with another BPD person?

[Downtown]

Learn how to spot the nine red flags for BPD by reading about them. And put an end to those virtual LDRs with pen pals.

[soccerrprp]

I don't know what's more disturbing, a 4-page thread about a relationship that wasn't and a person needing advice about it or the recent post of the OP wanting to avoid a relationship (that wasn't) with a person that he certainly couldn't know whether she did or not have BPD.

 

So bizarre....

 

niceguy 31, come back to reality, please...

 

Someone tell me I'm all wrong about this thread.

Edited November 11, 2013 by soccerrprp

[niceguy31]

Learn how to spot the nine red flags for BPD by reading about them. And put an end to those virtual LDRs with pen pals.

 

Is there a good source where I can read about these nine red flags?

[Downtown]

An easy place to start is my list of 18 behaviors (an expansion on the basic 9) at http://www.loveshack.org/forums/breaking-up-reconciliation-coping/breaks-breaking-up/419416-ran-into-my-ex-bar-8-months-later-interesting-story#post5164075. There are 15 good articles written by professionals at T1 How a Borderline Personality Disorder Love Relationship Evolves. A good book is Stop Walking on Eggshells.

[niceguy31]

An easy place to start is my list of 18 behaviors (an expansion on the basic 9) at http://www.loveshack.org/forums/breaking-up-reconciliation-coping/breaks-breaking-up/419416-ran-into-my-ex-bar-8-months-later-interesting-story#post5164075. There are 15 good articles written by professionals at T1 How a Borderline Personality Disorder Love Relationship Evolves. A good book is Stop Walking on Eggshells.

 

Great thanks I will look into those items you have given me.

 

I do feel better now that i'm free of this relationship. the only feelings I have are a little disbelief that it's over.

 

I would not be surprised though in the least if she did fabricate some things,maybe doing so to try to keep "control" of me.

[niceguy31]

I don't know what's more disturbing, a 4-page thread about a relationship that wasn't and a person needing advice about it or the recent post of the OP wanting to avoid a relationship (that wasn't) with a person that he certainly couldn't know whether she did or not have BPD.

 

So bizarre....

 

niceguy 31, come back to reality, please...

 

Someone tell me I'm all wrong about this thread.

 

I think I need to take time to explain that,when I cam ehere and started this thread,I did so with the intent of trying to solve what I THOUGHT was a trust issues problem,and little did I know that it was potentially BPD

 

Now having gone through this disscussion with Downtown,I feel more educated and aware. Something I would not have felt if I did not take the time to have this discussion and ask questions.

 

When I look at Downtown's list of 18 Red flags,and I go back and play a lot of things back in my head I am more convinced now that she may very well suffer from BPD.

 

#'s 1-5 were definatley there in there own way.

 

#6 was a possibility though in our fights I always recalled what our fights would be about,not sure about her though.

 

#'s 7-13 Were definatley there in her behavior

 

#14 I'm not really sure was there too much,I could be mistaken though.

 

#15 was there #16 I can't say much about cause I know next to nothing about her friends.same with #17 because I never saw her around anyone else and could not say what she does when interacting with anyone else.

 

#18 was definatley there. So she seems to have most of the red flags for BPD.

[niceguy31]

Just wanted to give everyone a update,after a couple of days of NC I still haven't heard from her again,and for me I think that is a good thing.

 

I'm getting over her,mostly because I didn't really appreciate or enjoy the way she made me feel at times.

[Downtown]

Niceguy, I'm glad to hear you've gone NC and are no longer hearning from her. I'm also glad to hear you found the BPD information about warning signs to be helpful. Take care, Niceguy.

[niceguy31]

Niceguy, I'm glad to hear you've gone NC and are no longer hearning from her. I'm also glad to hear you found the BPD information about warning signs to be helpful. Take care, Niceguy.

 

I just want to express my gratitude to you Downtown for your help. Without you I would not have known anything about what BPD is,or that she had it. So thanks!

[Downtown]

You're welcome, Niceguy. Please keep in mind, however, that we still don't know that she "has it," i.e., has the full-blown disorder itself. Although it is easy to spot strong occurrences of the warning signs when you know someone well, making a diagnosis to determine whether she "has BPD" is difficult. It requires a determination of whether she meets 100% of the diagnostic criteria, i.e., has most of the traits at a strong and persistent level. Only professionals can do that.

[niceguy31]

You're welcome, Niceguy. Please keep in mind, however, that we still don't know that she "has it," i.e., has the full-blown disorder itself. Although it is easy to spot strong occurrences of the warning signs when you know someone well, making a diagnosis to determine whether she "has BPD" is difficult. It requires a determination of whether she meets 100% of the diagnostic criteria, i.e., has most of the traits at a strong and persistent level. Only professionals can do that.

 

Ok. Well you have still been a big help,and I appreciate it. I'm glad that I am now free of the toxic relationship and can now do what I want/Need to do without her getting pissed at me for it.

[Downtown]

Niceguy, just to clarify my last post above, it really does not matter -- when you are considering a woman for as a potential mate -- whether she "has BPD" or not. The threshold for "having BPD" (i.e., having the full-blown disorder) is set extremely high, mainly to satisfy the needs of the courts (who do not want to commit people unnecessarily) and those of the insurance companies (who don't want to pay for treatment). The diagnostic threshold for having a PD therefore is NOT designed to help those of us looking for potential mates.

 

The result is that, a person meeting only 70% or 80% of that diagnostic threshold -- who thus "does not have BPD" -- likely will be nearly as impossible to live with as one meeting 100%. Hence, when I say you do not know whether she has the full blown disorder, I'm not saying you haven't learned anything.

 

On the contrary, by learning to spot the warning signs for BPD, you've learned how to save yourself many years of grief because you can now spot women having strong BPD traits. Whether those traits are so severe as to meet 100% of the diagnostic criteria simply does not matter for your purposes. You are neither a court nor an insurance company.

[niceguy31]

Niceguy, just to clarify my last post above, it really does not matter -- when you are considering a woman for as a potential mate -- whether she "has BPD" or not. The threshold for "having BPD" (i.e., having the full-blown disorder) is set extremely high, mainly to satisfy the needs of the courts (who do not want to commit people unnecessarily) and those of the insurance companies (who don't want to pay for treatment). The diagnostic threshold for having a PD therefore is NOT designed to help those of us looking for potential mates.

 

The result is that, a person meeting only 70% or 80% of that diagnostic threshold -- who thus "does not have BPD" -- likely will be nearly as impossible to live with as one meeting 100%. Hence, when I say you do not know whether she has the full blown disorder, I'm not saying you haven't learned anything.

 

On the contrary, by learning to spot the warning signs for BPD, you've learned how to save yourself many years of grief because you can now spot women having strong BPD traits. Whether those traits are so severe as to meet 100% of the diagnostic criteria simply does not matter for your purposes. You are neither a court nor an insurance company.

 

Very true,though I am a person that doesn't want to be totally controlled by someone who may potentially have BPD because they exhibit some of the traits/behaviors.

 

I'm just glad I am free of the relationship and can move on with my life.

[niceguy31]

I'm sorry to resurrect this topic but I wanted to give a update on how I am doing because something rather strange happened to me today. I was contacted by a individual in a chat who had strikingly similar behaviors to that of my now ex girlfriend. When I made the accusation that I thought she was my ex girlfriend. She got defensive and denied it. Then talk of my ex girlfriend came about and when I told this girl about how my ex girlfriend was and why I had to leave the relationship. Then the main similarity reared its ugly head,and this girl split me black instantly. Laying a guilt trip on me saying my ex probably moved on and found someone that made her happy and how I'm a horrible guy for hurting her etc.

 

I'm not sure now if BPD is correct or if its possible there is a group of individuals out there who use chat and all to bully and berate guys like this.

[justwhoiam]

Hi niceguy31, I just read all your thread now.

 

I know I'm late regarding all of your questions, but I would like to answer as if it still were November. I'm not sure if it'll make any difference to you, but maybe it can be useful to other readers who'll have to face your same issues.

 

I am currently in a long distance relationship where trust issues are not just a problem....they are a common problem,and it is not me that is making it a common problem,it's her.

First, you can show your interest in a girl, and even tell her you'd like her to be your girlfriend, but please wait at least to meet her IRL before you actually ASK her to be your girlfriend. That is not only common sense, but also fair regarding yourself, because so many times, you meet the "gf" in person and you understand that a) you're not in love, b) you love her in a friendly way but are not attracted to her, c) you can't see yourself with her, etc.

 

Secondly, please always remember that *only you* can know the truth about yourself. A girl who's far away at times tries (or tends) to fill the gaps by herself, and at times (or often) wrongly so.

I remember quite a while ago my man was traveling. He texted me when he landed and then said, ok, got my car, now driving to my hotel. The drive to the hotel was like 20 minutes, given the worst traffic it could have been up to 40 minutes... Well, it took him over an hour, during which he got MIA. Since I was waiting for him as we were going to talk once he got to the hotel (there's a 6-hour time difference between us, and please remember I was looking forward to it after the long flight), I decided to check where he was. I could track his iPhone through the icloud's feature "Find my iPhone" and found out he stopped somewhere along the road and I thought he was having lunch. I was a bit bothered because he could have told me he was going to have lunch somewhere and I would have known it was going to take a while. It was unthoughtful of him. He didn't even text me from there and it would have taken him 20 seconds to just drop a line or less... Anyway, at last he was in his hotel room. I asked him where he'd been and he said just a lot of traffic. So that obviously started a series of misunderstandings and sort of an argument. For n-o-t-h-i-n-g! It came out that he just stopped to buy some water and didn't think he needed to tell me about that, as insignificant as it was. Of course he didn't know I knew he stopped somewhere... so you know the rest.

Everything could have been avoided by simply dropping a few words, like "It's gonna take an hour or so. ttyl" or something like that, instead of having me in apprehension. Moreover, I didn't know if he was traveling with any colleague, and all his behavior seemed to indicate he was with someone else and maybe having lunch with her, therefore no texting me... which also made me suspect something had been going on somehow.

 

So, what I suggest is: try not to let her fill in the gaps as much as you can, explain when you're not around, it makes everything better.

 

she is paranoid of losing me or of me becoming a cheater and cheating on her.

The fear of losing someone you love is more common that you might think. And it can happen it looks paranoid to you, but it's not if you look at things from a different perspective.

 

So much so that she will at times just outright make wild and false accusations to me of being a liar or a cheater or a catfisher,and she does so with no evidence to back up any such accusations,but it's not just the accusations that bothers me,no it gets worse!

Well, she never met you, so it can cross her mind that you're playing with her and other girls too. Or you're not exactly the person you claim to be. Meeting in person helps making some barriers fall down and trusting the other person on a new, better level.

 

Anytime i'm out doing stuff like grocery shopping or whatever and am busy to where I can't text her she gets paranoid that I'm doing something wrong (again not true) especially since she can't hear from me because i'm busy.

Now, don't get me wrong, at the beginning of my post I explain you need to meet the other person IRL before starting anything remotely binding. But assuming this is your standard behavior, you'd extend it if she were your real gf who is far away temporarily or more long-term. So I don't know what's really wrong with you. My man goes grocery shopping and he sometimes talks to me or texts me from there. Once he showed me shelves, to show me some products supposedly from my country and we had fun. I know of other people in here who share their time while grocery shopping, just as they would love to go grocery shopping together if they were not LD, like many couples. But of course this should not be a rule, you need to be free to do whatever on your own. Just, by the way you told this, it seems more a common thing for you that any errands have to be done with involving anyone else. I don't think you should have, because you didn't even know this girl, but if she were your real gf, I don't see why you couldn't, now and then. It's about being flexible, sharing, etc. And this becomes more evident with someone LD, because they don't share your routine IRL, if you understand what I mean.

 

"Where the hell are you?" or "What they hell are you doing,and don't frigging lie to me"

This is a general rule you need to apply: whenever you let a girl talk to you like this especially early on in a relationship (but whenever down the relationship...), you're doing yourself a disservice. You are not making it clear you respect her and she has to respect you. And it can only get worse over time. Don't let this be acceptable. Man up. She can voice her disappointment in different ways, using different words. It might be she was not taught how, she can still learn. If otherwise coarse language is her standard no matter what, then you'd usually better steer clear for so many reasons.

 

We have had numerous arguements and fights,most (if not all) of which were initiated by her because she made some hurtful wild accusation,and then when I get upset because she makes the accusation,she then gets pissed off even more at me and claims i'm the one hurting her because I get upset by her accusing me of things I would never do to her.

Start from the fact that whenever a girl is mad at you for whatever reason, she thinks she's in the right. I'd dare say that she usually is, statistically speaking, but not always so. Obviously, I'm not talking about this girl specifically, maybe she really is just nuts. But too often guys have the wrong approach while in an argument with a girl/woman. Both think they're right, and that's when things go even worse.

I don't know what were the dynamics with her, so I don't really know. Suppose you were chatting with her and suddenly stop saying anything for 15 minutes, she can be bothered. You could just say "bbr" or "sorry, back in 15 minutes, if you need to go, bye! if you can wait for me, tts!" So very simple.

 

Regarding hurting herself, that sounds quite extreme. I know we sometimes say "you're killing me" or "i'm gonna die" and such expressions... but we don't really mean we are going to actually kill ourselves because of the breakup. Often we refer to being dead inside, because that's how you can feel when you lose someone. But never let someone be so into you when you never met them. You let them do this, so you are responsible as much as the other person. I don't buy all the "you're not responsible for their actions..." thing. From the moment you let someone get so close to you, play with them, get intimate with them on whatever level, you share responsibilities when anything goes wrong. This is another reason why you shouldn't let this happen, because she could be a minor or whomever, and you are responsible for what you say, do or promise.

 

she has even dumped me on more than one ocassion because of this paranoia she has.

Ok, so if she dumped you more than once, she's not gonna kill herself over you. Maybe she just gets caught up in the drama. Or she's plain sick. A past depression diagnosis doesn't mean anything in itself. Some people can go through depression in their life, but it's not a permanent thing that is going to stick with you forever.

 

Also, about the sister:

1) did you see her on cam?

2) how do you know for sure the person you talked to was her sister?

3) it could be the same person and she just claimed she was her sister...

 

Regarding BPD, what makes me think the person you were talking to did not have that:

1) she didn't portray herself as a victim, she was quite reserved about her past and didn't want to share much about it if anything at all. I guess she told you about being betrayed in the past only to justify some of her reactions

2) for what I have read from you, you didn't mention anywhere she lost interest in your thoughts and opinions, so I guess she was still genuinely interested in you

3) you didn't mention her complaining every single day about feeling sick or having pains constantly, as a way to get your attention

 

my GF has told me on occasion that she needed to take pain medicine cause she is in pain with a headache or something and I wonder if that's even true or if there are things like this I just don't know about

Now, who's being paranoid? What goes around comes around...

 

Lastly, I don't know about suicide threats. She might be playing with you (in a very bad way). And talks of suing you or whatever are quite scary/annoying. I wouldn't put up with any of that. I have no idea how you can have such conversations with anyone without any certainties on their identity, home address, etc. I really mean it. If we want to get serious, let's get serious, but that can't happen without sharing key personal information. Otherwise it's all hot air and online flirting with a stranger.

 

When some unknown person contacts you, make it clear you are not going to talk back to them, unless they make themselves clearly identifiable and share details with you that are verifiable. If they get scared out, they will run away and you won't hear from them anymore. Who has nothing to hide will glady share their details with you. Keep that as your own rule, and you'll be just fine, and screen people very efficiently.

Edited December 22, 2013 by justwhoiam

[niceguy31]

You raise some very good points,however the individual I chatted with the other day behaved so much like my ex girlfriend in that they were quite good at defaming me and making me out to be the bad guy,and when I finally confronted them I told them I did not appreciate their attitude towards me and that they had no place to judge me cause they didn't even know me,they got more mean and basically called me the bully.

 

Considering I have now interacted with 2 individuals who behave exactly the same way,I would not be surprised if this is some group of individuals who has nothing better to do than treat guys like this online.