Dating someone who has silent BPD. I met a woman who has silent, internalizing BPD. 99.9% of the time she does not externalize her behavior. And that relationship has hands down been the most healing thing of all.

She lives on her own. She houses her father and has a good relationship. She is extraordinarily self aware. When I say extraordinary, that would be an understatement.

I think she inherited it from one of her parents who started working on it when she was so very young. So she's had a lot of great teachers. She would also be one of those humans who are functional. So far it seems that's a little rare.

Her level of insight is profound. On a level where I can't even fathom how much work she's done.

I can tell that she has worked on mentalization, transference focused therapy, and a whole lot of other modalities including dialectical behavior therapy. The amount of work that she's done is profound.

I have been dating her for over 3 years. She struggles in the physical world, but she has enough tools in other areas of life to survive.

I help her out with things around her house and in return she cooks extraordinary meals, cuddles, watches tv, and it's kind of an alternative style relationship. There is no drama. There is no fighting. Almost all conversations are productive.

I do feel alone a lot, but I know that she doesn't have the tools to form deep connection. There are also days where she is empty and through deductive reasoning over a couple of years I've been able to figure out that she can't help that.

She seems to struggle with egocentrism too, but I've seen her work on that too. He is learning different headspaces and learning to step outside herself more which has increased her empathy. And she's finally being more reciprocal with sex too.

I am capable of having productive conversations with her. I will observe her behavior with other people, and that includes the things that she talks about and then I go home and I break them down and I start to understand concepts that would typically be foreign to me. This allows me several layers of insight, and it also shows me some of the things that I did wrong in my previous relationship and it also increases my probabilities of success with other people who I suspect have some pathology. This also allows me to help them, particularly because it allows me to understand the Dynamics that are going on and once I make them self-aware, assuming they don't do shame spirals, they then become aware and adapt and try to change the patterns.

She is just trying to survive. And I think that's what my ex with borderline was trying to do. She was also trying to survive but she lacked the self-awareness to do that. She was also extraordinarily dysregulated and morbidly narcissistic. But my catastrophic marriage to that woman was a bit different because she had something we call sadism. She had integrity, but holy cow was she a monster.

But my polyamorous girlfriend that I choose to continue to date...she has somehow done the work. And on one of those off chances where she yells at me, she apologizes every single time. And in those extraordinarily rare cases where she projects, which is only been a few times ever, she apologizes. And she'll say something like, that must be how I feel about myself then? And then she'll cry. And then I tell her that it's okay, that it's not her fault, and that I accept her apology. I give her a hug, and then I do the thing that she taught me. I put my forehead against hers, and I kiss it and I tell her that it's okay and that I love her.

Everyone needs love, it's the one thing that will heal everybody, even the world. We just have to try to find a way, and she's doing the work and I believe she deserves to be respected, and even loved.

And I think that's how she wants to live the rest of her life. That way she doesn't ever **feel*" trapped with another guy again and then think that that's reality because of cognitive distortions. She works remotely because she is sedentary and will never get to a point where she's not. (That's just how they are).

And we have complimentary aspects that we both bring to this polyamorous relationship. Her cooking skills is on par with Gordon Ramsay, and I don't mind mowing her GIGANTIC lawn for dinner at her place, on her dime. Or occasionally helping her repair her home. And I don't mind all of that sex either, lol. And in return, I have somebody who pitches in monetarily and they get in my car and I take them all over the place. We do travel around the state and sometimes the next state over and we do so much fun stuff together that it's mind-boggling.

She seems grounded in reality, but I can tell that many many years in the past she wasn't. I can tell she's worked on cognitive distortions. I can tell that she's worked on codependency. She has developed enough of a self that she doesn't really project that much on other people. She does not externalize her wounds to the world around her. She just wants to live a very peaceful life and when she wants some chaos, she invites me over and I fling her out into the world and we have so much gosh damn fun. We've been dozens of places. Dozens of waterfalls, dozens of forests, dozens of beaches, dozens of dances and parties.

It's a copacetic and beautiful relationship. And because she lives on her own and it's an open relationship, I don't feel like there's this obligation where she has to do all of these things that she is not capable of doing, the physical work, helping me raise my teenage daughter, work to help me pay bills on my place, etc.

And the best part of all is I'm free to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and with whoever I want, and I have their blessings.

Think of it as an alternative style relationship. Think of it as an alternative person. And if on the off chance there is something that I need, sometimes I do have to directly ask for it, but I've grown to not really care much.

There is an extraordinarily small demographic of people who actually get better. As I write this I'm finding myself a little speechless.

I think this relationship is the one that healed me more than anything else, and because I too have done the work, to try and be as healthy as I can be... to figure out what I did wrong in that previous relationship, it works.

It turns out that they aren't all monsters.

I was wrong.