so i’m dating a girl, and last night she mentioned she had BPD. i didn’t think much of it, i wasn’t familiar with it. i just started doing research and went to reddit (maybe a big mistake) just to see what ‘real life’ people were saying about it. it’s /r/BPDlovedones and it’s basically victims of people who have dated someone with BPD…
it’s currently scaring the shit out of me and kind of making me have a panic attack. there was a post saying “Any advice for someone starting to date a person with BPD?” and literally everyone said “Don’t. they’ll ruin your life. the person they are now is not who they really are. they change themselves to adjust to your personality” and it all the basic patterns align with what i’m experiencing. it’s very scary. i don’t know what to do.
edit: yeah it’s just shitty non-BPD being very hateful and resentful. very insensitive, kinda dramatic. anyway
i know reddit is infamous for having these ‘victim’ groups who hate on a certain type of people who ruined their lives, and it feels very dehumanizing. i don’t think it is impossible to date this person and i don’t want to just stop seeing them. i don’t know what to do tbh. just very overwhelmed
My girlfriend was diagnosed with BPD like 5 years ago and I went through the same thing. I researched it, found a bunch of really alarming stuff online and freaked out.
We’re still together, in a long term, stable relationship, and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. My advice is don’t overreact. My psychiatrist’s advice, when I asked about it, was essentially that if I had decided I loved her, the new label doesn’t really change anything. All it did was create a vague sense of anxiety about the relationship, which turned out to be totally unjustified.
It seems to me that BPD gets a obscene amount of stigma. It is so fucked up that people with BPD are the targets of such frenzied hate, especially on these deranged internet communities. I don’t know if it exists on a spectrum and my girlfriend has a mild form or even if it’s just a matter of misdiagnosis. (She had been previously diagnosed with Bipolar, but it was changed to BPD after further evaluation). Speaking from my experience, I’d say you shouldn’t let it be a deal breaker.
Anyway, fuck the hate from the neurotypicals. You know this girl best and you’re the only one qualified to decide how you feel about her.