Relationship with someone who has a different condition

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Hi,

This is sort of a long rant about my experience as an aspie dating a person with another mental illness.

I was in a serious relationship with a girl from 2014 to 2019. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2017 after several incidents involving self harm and other physical violence that were getting progressively worse. Meanwhile I was still unaware of my own condition (though I had my suspicions).

In short, people with BPD experience emotions much more intensely than normal people. Just one casual "I love you" can overwhelm them with joy. Just one rejection ("Not now") can spark a violent tantrum.

Now I'm not "normal people" myself so I have a very hard time recognizing and responding to emotions. Basically the extreme opposite of BPD. That made it very difficult for me to avoid the flare-ups, never mind de-escalating.

Ultimately the violence never stopped so I had to end the relationship. Sometimes I still miss her because I know she couldn't help it. And perhaps I've said too many things that are normal to me but could be considered emotional abuse, which was then amplified by her BPD. Either way I had to put my safety first.

My biggest regret is not getting a proper diagnosis for my own issues. I think that could have helped me deal with the situation better.

This may seem surprising but some stuff I've read on this forum over my many years here makes me suspect that it's not that uncommon for us Aspies to have romantic relationships with people who have Borderline Personality Disorder. It also is not that uncommon for women on the spectrum to be misdiagnosed as having BPD. Meltdowns & black & white thinking are symptoms of both disorders so there can be some overlap. I had a mental breakdown when I was 20 over my 1st relationship ending & my psychiatrist diagnosed me with Aspergers & BPD. I highly doubt I would get the BPD diagnoses nowadays cuz I worked on myself some & realized that BAD anxiety & BAD OCD caused me to slip into a psychotic depression. I'm on meds for anxiety & OCD. Anyways my current girlfriend is probably on the border of having BPD. She may also be on the spectrum as well or at least has a lot of overlapping issues. She's never been violent with anyone except she did get in physical fights with her brothers growing up & it was usually them that started it. She talks about violence sometimes when she's angry & she does get upset easily but she doesn't talk about performing the violence herself. It's more like she wishes it would happen to certain people but she has no plans to try & make it happen. The closest to violence she'll get is throwing something at the wall or something which I've only seen her do a few times. It was NEVER directed at me or anything. She also used to hurt herself sometimes but she hasn't done that in a long time. A relationship with someone with BPD can be very difficult for most anyone & in some ways us Aspies may be worse at it. I may be able to handle it better than lots of Aspies but I'm not a typical Aspie in some ways. I love spending a lot of time with my partner, I'm very affectionate, & I can relate some because I've been very unstable in my past. I do not claim to fully understand what she's dealing with but she thinks I understand better than anyone else has. I try to work on myself some & I also highly encourage her to work on herself as well. She has a psychiatrist she's been seeing for years now. She tried counseling for a few years but it wasn't a major help but her counselor gave her a lower priority than she should of.

It sounds like you made a good decision by leaving her steven. Physical violence should NOT be tolerated. Love & regret can be a b!tch thou sometimes. There's probably lots of things you could of done differently. The key is to try & learn what you can from things & not mentally beating yourself up over it. We cant change the past but we can use the past as a guide to try & do better next time.

I can relate to a lot of this.

I'm just waking up to BPD traits in my wife after 8 years marriage.