u/Affectionate_Cake385 — reddlx

Edit: just read through my post and now I am thinking there is nothing unhealthy, unreasonable, or abusive to any of the details I described. I am doubting wether or not to delete the post. Maybe I am just a super boring prude. Please be kind.

I will try to keep this short. I dated a woman (- I am a female myself) for 6 months. Quickly, she told me that she had been diagnosed with BPD. Later, she told me that had been changed to PTSD.

As all of you guys might have figured out, things were super intense, I actually feel like I lost myself in it for a while. I am super embarrassed because I am a well-educated academic, I have a nice family, and nice friends too, I feel like I should be too smart to end up in something like this. I have had several kind and healthy partners before her. My own take is that I had been single for a while (4 years), working a lot, and suddenly I realized how much I missed a date, an intimate partner, a girlfriend, so I decided to try dating again. Often times, people don't interest me; I appreciate deep conversations and I definitely also drawn by conventional beauty. Most people talk about superficial stuff and I am easily bored by that (and yes, I should work on that, and I am really trying to). Anyway, I suddenly met this woman on an app. She is very beautiful and she instantly hit me up with deep conversation and I was into it right away. Because she was what I considered back then emotionally intelligent, socially aware, able to keep up an interesting conversation, I allowed myself to finally just go with the flow and spend some time kissing, talking, having sex and fool around like I used to do before work got the best of me.

But quickly things escalated in ways I still have a hard time understanding. There were drug-use, violence towards multiple people (- not me), theft, a general disrespect towards authority and other people in general (- such as going to the dentist without having brushed her teeth for two days because "I don't care about it, I pay the dentist, it's her job to deal with whatever situations and she is used to it"), eating, drinking and sleeping-patterns were basically like a teenager home alone (drinking to the point she would pass out and be put in bed by friends, eating 5 pastries for breakfast, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, fastfood and energy drinks only, sleeping for 14 hours during day time and awake all night) and what not. It was super weird, as I clearly felt my own boundaries being pushed on topics like drugs; she would go to raves and do MDMA bought of the street combined with smoking lots of weed and cigarettes. I would say, this doesn't feel safe to me. She would say - that is okay, but I like doing it and this is how I am. I didn't know how to argue with this. Lots of people act like that, you know? There were many encounters with both police, lawyers and what not, but every time it was "random incidents" and she couldn't really be bothered by it, things just happened, she was neither sad, ashamed, angry or worried about it. When I said "none of neither my family or friends, or your family or friends, ends up in these situations, don't you see this is not normal?" she would say "well, guess I am just a shitty person then" and seem completely unbothered by it.

She was super, super, super intense. Conversations would be super fucking interesting, she would make me laugh like no other, and she always believed in me. Sex was out of this world amazing. She never yelled at me, she never called me a bad name, she never did anything obvious against me and yet I was completely drained by december and I had to ask for a sick-leave from work. She wanted to talk on the phone every morning, every night, text throughout the day, and she would ask in the morning "so are you home tonight, so I can call you? Do you want to have sex tonight? Do you want to sleep close?" every day. I consider myself to be super loving and into everything intimate, but I felt so exhausted. She stated very early on that she wanted to be my girlfriend, I kept saying no, I didn't feel safe. I said, I need us to know each other better and spend some time dating. She was very jealous and clear on wanting to date monogamously - and so I thought we did. At january she suddenly disappeared for weeks without notice. I asked her what happened. She told me straight up, that she had been on multiple dates and now had a girlfriend. She then proceeded by telling me how much she loved me, desired me (very graphic descriptions and references to our sexlife, my body, our dynamics), missed me, that her heart wasn't in it with this new partner, but she "needed distraction and entertainment". She also said she "couldn't leave the new partner as this person is very much in love with her and she couldn't bear to do it to them". She also send me a love letter consisting of four pages.

I instantly blocked her on all social media and I haven't looked back. I don't understand a shit about this, but all I know is that this is super, super, super messed up. But please, does this sound familiar to any of you guys and do you have any input? Any input or experiences would be greatly appreciated. My friends and family are all aware of this, they are super supportive, and they are all afraid that I might go back to her. I won't. As confused as I am, I know that this has not been love and while she is a great person doing her best something is definitely wrong in a very abusive way. I am just looking for recognition, experiences and maybe advise on what to look out for next time.