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For countless years, I have felt depressed and incomplete. I would spend endless hours trying to come up with a reason as to why I was depressed, I could never find an answer. It became very frustrating my myself and my fiancee. She always thought that I was lying and not telling her the truth. But, honestly, I never knew why I had felt this way. I had everything I needed to be happy.

Her and I had gotten into an argument, and I had lost my temper. I threw my keys at the wall next to her, and she got scared and had left for the night. Completely understanding, I felt horrible for even doing something threatening like that to the person I love so much.

I have had temper problems before, in the worst case (2 years ago) put my in jail and I had to take violence intervention classes. The classes had really seemed to help me. It helped me to stop thinking of myself and worry about other people's feelings as well. I did not have one anger problem for the 8 months following the 26 week class. Just recently I again starting have this "rages" as I call them.

My fiancee left for that night, for understandable reasons. She came back the next day and we were working past our problems. I agreed to make an appointment to see a therapist and she what type of help I can get to make our relationship better, because I do not want to be this way either.

A couple nights later, I was depressed, which is rather common for me. I went out with some of my friends to go out drinking. I remember that entire night up until I had gotten home. The only thing I remember is slamming my head against the wall, then her and I falling to the ground. She got up and went to her room and called the cops. My friend came over to be with me that night as my fiancee went back to stay with her mom.

She has been at her mom's for about a week now. Then she tells me that she is going to be moving out for an indefinite amount of time. I was so torn up by this. I cut myself without suicidal intentions. I had my second appointment with my therapist that night (yesterday).

I explained to her everything... I didn't want to hold back because I truly want to become a better person. She started asking me a bunch of questions, and all my answers happened to be "yes." She then pulled a book off of her shelf and started reading to me about BPD. I was just in awe, everything out of that book described my behavior. She diagnosed me with BPD last night.

I felt so free after that appointment. The so many years of feeling empty, worthless, depressed, and no answer to why... and then all of a sudden know why. It was such a weight that had been lifted. And I am excited to finally get help for this.

My concern is, my fiancee moved out. I know other people with BPD will understand the difficulty of being abandoned. My therapist and I feel that her and I need to be together for support, so we can both get through this. Because of this disorder I have, she needs to be able to understand it too. We need to work together to better our communicative habits and how to better situations as they arise- work together. How do I convince her that this is what needs to happen, not just for me, but for her too? Her and I want to be together. We both promised to work through this. But, I know her healing process is different than mine; and that it is extremely hard for me to even consider helping myself without her in my life.

What can I do to help her understand and explain to her that individually we both need each other to move on from this and start out new life.

Thank you so much for the support.
Jake

hey jake
Welcome here
congratulations on taking the first step towards your recovery

Your girlfriend is NOT abandoning you. She's just fearful of you, hence she needs her own space and distance from you.

And I bet she wants you to recover, but right now she's just too fearful of you to come close to you. The distance and space now that you have between the both of you - that's actually something that you need to work on your own recovery.

Please read this thread, somehow I feel that you and this dude are in the same situation viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12491

Do let me know what are your thoughts after reading the thread

I read it and I can greatly relate to the situation.

I feel that I can't work on my problems with us apart. We are staying engaged, but I can't talk myself past thinking its over. I keep asking myself how long she needs or is going to be gone and she is the one I'm worried about...

I know she needs her time alone and not live with me, I'm just deathly afraid of losing her. Like this is the first step of seperation.

My therapist is telling me that we need to be together to work through things, is there a way I can ask this of my fiance?

One thing is very evident here: your abandonment fears, and this is something that you need to work on by yourself, unfortunately.

I personally DON'T think she's abandoning you, or that you're losing her. I think what she wants is just some time apart from you as she's terrified of your rages.
But I do think there is a way to let her know that you would like her to work together with you on your recovery. If you tell her you're serious about your recovery, and invite her to journey along with you, how about that?

We actually just had a talk about how I was feeling.

Like I said just in my last post, I am afraid this is the first step to me losing her. I felt that living seperately I would never or rarely see her. I expressed that too her and she gave me assurance that we will see each other a lot. She is actually staying at my place tonight.

I feel so guilty for causing her all this pain. And as I feel that this is horrifically difficult for me, its even worse for her because she had to take care of me and herself.

We talked about working together too. She agreed to join a BPD Family Support group.

All these assuring things telling me its positively going to work out. My stubborness or something is still running circles in my mind that there's no hope for us. I can't get past it.

Examine the evidence: all evidence points to the fact that she's going to stick by you, persevere with you in this recovery journey.

I would think that EVEN IF she chooses NOT to live with you, it's not a bad thing. It would be giving you some space that you need to work on your recovery, it would be reducing the hurts that you could have inflicted upon her (especially your rages) in your bpd-insanity moments. It would be giving her some space for her to breathe too (she deserves it too, and you got to respect that).

It's very clear to me that she's staying by you, so the evidence is very clear.

The thing about us people with bpd is that we have great abandonment fear, hence the way you're thinking (afraid of losing her, etc etc) is pretty normal for bpd folks like you and I. So I would encourage you to examine and work on your abandonment fears and issues. Some suggestions from my own personal experience:
a) examine where your abandonment fears come from - especially your past, what are the hurts / real abandonment that has happened to you that caused you lots of trauma. Doing this will give you great insight into the way you think

b) once you understand where your abandonment issues and fears come from, look at your current situation. examine the evidence (i.e: your girlfriend has agreed to join bpd family support group - that's POSITIVE evidence that she's NOT abandoning you but instead she's sticking by you)

c) learn some coping strategies to cope with your abandonment thoughts. The most important being to PAUSE and NOT act upon your abandonment thoughts and fears (i.e: frantic text messages and calls are a no-no.... coz they will scare your girlfriend away).

I'd say you have everything you got to recover well Now all you need is some time, patience and HARD WORK!

Hang in there dude! The day will come when you no longer have all these abandonment fears!

You have been so helpful for me. I really do appreciate your time talking to me.

I was trying to recall when my abandonment issues had started, I couldn't think of a specific event.

What came to mind was this- I had a huge issue starting pre school because I was away from my mother. I would have extreme anxiety and be hysterical. I missed over half of the school year because of it. Anything that happened before that, I don't remember. Could it have been something that simple that caused it? I rely greatly on a defense mechanism that involves purposely forgetting memories. Is it possible that I could have forgotten it completely because I was hurt so much?

My dad was never really around. Id maybe get to spend one day a week with him. He worked 2 jobs to support my stay at home mom and 3 other sisters.

could it be possible that you have forgotten (and that's your defense mechanism)?

I would say yeah, that's how you protected yourself against the abandonment trauma. I read it somewhere before that this is one of the ways we protect ourselves from trauma.

Since you can't recall, it's okay. Move on, it's time to move on with the present and the future.

Work on your abandonment issues now, and leave the past behind

You're most welcome, Jake. One day, soon you'll be helping someone else with their recovery journey too

Hey cake--

The temper problems sound all too familiar. Also the guilt that comes afterward. I know that horrible sense of abandonment.

From what you've written, I gather that your fiancee is just doing what she feels is necessary for the progression of the relationship. It's not necessarily a bad thing if you think about it. The space can be useful in finding clarity. However difficult it may be. Perhaps this can serve as the catalyst for real and lasting change, resulting in a relationship even stronger than before.

Best of luck to you and your fiancee.
I've been there and totally empathize.