Engineer Tangles with a Personality Disorder Partner

Reader’s Question

Have never done this, so not exactly sure what to say. I was recently in a dating relationship that ended very badly. In fact, the relationship was unhealthy most of the time, but went from bad to good, then went to mostly bad. I am dealing with some depression from the situation and have had difficulty pulling myself back up. I feel I understand my situation well and understand what happened, why it happened, and what needed to be done, but the problem I think is that I stayed too long and there is a lasting impact.

I was in a relationship with a severely narcissistic woman who was beyond anything I have experienced in my life. The relationship started with euphoria, but quickly started to break down. When I met her I was rather lonely and knew even then it was not a good time to meet someone, but my common sense as an engineer was outweighed by my sense of emptiness. At the time my work was rather bad, I had moved to a new city, and I had no friendship base. After the first week of dating her, I realized the relationship was wrong and saw all the signs, and actually told the woman the relationship would not work for me due to our differences. The relationship went through a roller coaster of me not being able to take her lack of empathy, and all her self centered approaches, to accepting her back after screams, begging, and threats of self harm. Each time I did accept her back, it only broke me down a bit more and I was very angry with her, but should have been upset with myself for allowing this to happen. I ended up getting to a point where my thoughts went from wanting and feeling empathy for her and her hurt feelings, to anger that she would pull this guilt on me. The time for this went from days in the past, to minutes.

When I finally broke after this loop, I was treated like I was found under a rock and was attacked with all that I had told her about what was happening with my work, and some other more personal things. The breakups with her were due to her continuing to go out with old boyfriends, saying they were just friends from the past and telling me that I was too old fashioned in my dating and trying to be controlling if I did not want her to go out with her “friends.” But she would also say that she would “marry him” if he would divorce his wife, or she was not going to stop going out with her old lovers just because we were involved. DC is truly a different city than the small southern towns I grew up in, so I tried to be accepting, but I couldn’t accept this lifestyle, knowing that if someone really loved someone they would not be needing to go to dinner with old boyfriends twice a week. When I pushed away, she would threaten to kill herself, or force her way in to my apartment, and beg me to stay. Not being used to this type of behavior, I did not know what to do and eventually gave in. Prior to this I had only once raised my voice in a relationship. After months of our interaction I found myself fighting, screaming, cursing and other things that only seemed to harm me and not her.

The aftermath of all this has left me very cynical, pessimistic, and lacking belief in our society. I have lost interest in the things I enjoyed like working out, and just general things, and have had difficulty pulling myself out from under this black cloud. I did see a professional for a while, but it did not do any good. My job is rather stressful, with a lot of responsibility, and I just turn off my feelings to handle my situation, and try to write when I am home and read. Maybe the answer is just time, but I thought I would write and ask if there were some ideas how to get the black cloud to float away.

Sincerely,
– Engineer with too much time to think

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

From your description, you’ve been emotionally exhausted due to your encounter with a Personality Disorder. Individuals with a Personality Disorder (see my introduction to personality disorders on this website) are extremely self-centered, theatrical, manipulative, and socially destructive. They use up, burn out, and spit out their partners — then move to the next target.

On the positive side, her behavior is textbook Personality Disorder. In fact, you can read about her techniques and manipulative strategies in an article I’ve written entitled “Identifying Losers in Relationships” on this website. We also have an extensive discussion group with over 700 entries from victims of Personality Disorders and Losers. These folks, by the way, make up 9 percent of the adult population (I thought you’d like to know that as an engineer!).

In dealing with the emotional trauma of the relationship, I’d read “Emotional Memory“. It deals with strategies for managing the traumatic memories that are collected in these relationships. You should also take a few of the depression inventories as PD’s often push their partners into a clinical depression as a way of maintaining their control by keeping your self-esteem low.

By the way, she is probably not gone completely. A Loser technique is to keep all ex’s on “back burner”, making casual guilt-ridden contacts from time to time to see if you’re still on the hook and available for additional use and abuse.

In your research, look at two specific personality disorders — Histrionic and Borderline. She exhibits characteristics of both PDs. I’d recommend doing what engineers do — read up on this, study the pattern, and figure out how not to make the mistake again. As you now realize, you’ve tangled with a personality far outside the normal range — and lived! Rejoice that you now only need to recover.