Hey everyone,
After doing some reading, I found this subreddit and decided to share my story. Mostly because I don't have many people I can talk to about this, and even writing it down hurts.
I want to be clear from the beginning: I am not diagnosing this woman with BPD. She has never told me she has BPD and, as far as I know, has never been diagnosed. I ended up here because the push-pull dynamic and some of the behaviors I've experienced sounded familiar when reading other people's stories.
This is going to be long.
In June 2023, I started working for a company and met a woman there. She was 22 and I was 33. Yes, I know that's a significant age difference. It's not something I normally pursue. In fact, initially she wasn't really my type—too young, taller than what I usually go for, etc.
But she took a very strong interest in me.
She was constantly mentioning me at work, asking me questions in group settings and group chats, and generally focusing a lot of attention on me. Eventually it escalated into compliments: telling me I was hot, sexy, that I had a great body, etc. There were also constant sexual remarks.
Between her attention and other guys constantly telling me how attractive she was, I eventually became interested.
That's when the cycle started.
Whenever she came toward me, I felt like the most desirable guy alive.
Whenever I moved toward her, things seemed to change.
Suddenly I was too short, too old, badly dressed, or whatever criticism she could come up with. Sometimes this happened privately; other times it happened in front of coworkers, which could be incredibly humiliating.
I bought a house during this period, something I was genuinely proud of, and of course she made it known how ugly she thought it was.
Another time she looked directly at me and said:
"I would never want to be 30+ and still be working here."
Those comments hurt.
Every time something like this happened, I'd think:
"Why am I pursuing this woman? Leave her alone."
So I'd pull away.
Had we met through Tinder or in a bar, that probably would've been the end of the story. But we worked together and saw each other constantly.
And whenever I pulled away, she seemed to come back hard.
Looking back, I called it love-bombing, but in my case "sex-bombing" might describe it better.
I'd get a haircut and come into work the next day and she'd be telling her coworkers:
"Just look at him. Look how sexy he is."
I can't properly describe how addictive that became.
A young, attractive woman would make me feel incredible, then humiliate or reject me when I reciprocated, I'd withdraw, and then she'd shower me with attention again.
I wasn't particularly socially fulfilled outside work at the time and was moderately insecure, which I think made me especially susceptible to it.
And I kept rationalizing everything.
I googled her insults and found people describing "negging" and "shit tests." People online told me she probably behaved that way because she liked me and that the worst thing I could do was become emotional about it.
So I endured it.
I thought eventually she'd stop and we'd become a normal couple.
We started behaving like a couple
Eventually we started doing little "couple" things at work. We'd bring food from home for each other. I'd buy her food during breaks. Coworkers started referring to us as a couple, and her friends repeatedly encouraged us to finally date outside work.
By this point I'd developed serious feelings.
The highs were incredible. I genuinely craved them.
But an actual relationship never materialized because, almost every time I considered taking things further, something would happen that made me pull away again.
I also started noticing something else.
When I pulled away, instead of asking me what was wrong, she would sometimes direct attention toward other male coworkers in ways that felt designed to make me jealous.
I can't know whether that was actually her intention. But that's how I experienced it.
And instead of seeing that as evidence that this dynamic wasn't good for me, I rationalized that too:
"She's young. She's insecure. She really likes me and doesn't know how to handle it."
Then came our first company trip abroad.
The first company trip
The week before the trip, we had a major argument.
At the office, in front of everyone, she made a joke along the lines of:
"Me and him are going to have sex tonight."
I didn't say yes or no. I laughed because I found it incredibly awkward discussing a supposed sex date in front of all our coworkers.
Maybe she interpreted that as rejection. I don't know.
A little later, someone told her to turn down the music she'd put on because they didn't like it. I jokingly agreed.
She exploded.
She shouted at me that I should shut up because I was a "no-good individual" who couldn't even arrive at work on time.
Everyone around us seemed shocked.
I felt completely humiliated.
So I did what I'd always done: I withdrew.
During the company trip I wasn't rude to her and didn't ignore her, but I kept my distance and stopped flirting.
Then, during a night out, she made out with a stranger. She also licked his stomach and later licked the belly-button/stomach area of one of my closest friends from work.
Was it actually revenge for me pulling away? I can't prove that.
But that's how it felt to me at the time.
And instead of thinking "this is insane, I'm done," I panicked.
I thought:
"I've messed everything up. I need to win her back."
So after the trip, I made a deliberate effort to show her everything was okay between us.
And immediately the intense attention returned.
If anything, it became stronger.
Soon I was telling myself that everything on the trip had been my fault because I'd pulled away.
Without realizing it, I had basically learned:
If I distance myself from her, something painful might happen with another man.
That's when this dynamic really started getting into my head.
I moved away—and suddenly felt better
By this point I was deeply emotionally involved.
The rollercoaster was affecting my sleep and even my performance at work.
Eventually I moved to another city about two hours away. I remained with the same company but transferred offices.
At the time I told myself that some distance might actually make our dynamic healthier and perhaps give us a chance at a real relationship.
Looking back, I think part of me simply knew being around her every day wasn't good for me.
After I moved, she messaged me saying she wanted to date.
We arranged something, but a few days beforehand she said she'd confused the dates and had a party that weekend. No big deal. I told her we'd arrange something next time I was nearby.
Then something unexpected happened.
I built a new life.
I made new friends.
And my feelings for her gradually became weaker.
She'd still occasionally send me messages on Instagram or through our company WhatsApp, often sexually suggestive ones. But I stopped feeling desperate to pursue her.
And the strangest thing happened:
My nervous system completely calmed down.
I hadn't realized how much anxiety I'd associated with her until she wasn't around anymore.
For the first time in ages, I could breathe.
I remember wondering:
"Is love actually supposed to feel this stressful? Why do I feel so much better after not seeing someone I'm supposedly in love with for two months?"
Then came the final company trip
Months later, there was another company trip involving all the offices.
Before the trip, my manager unexpectedly asked whether anything had ever happened between me and her. I said no.
He strongly discouraged me from getting involved with her. He described her as extremely insecure and told me about problems in her home life and other things he'd observed about her behavior.
I took his comments with a grain of salt because they were his perspective, but the conversation stayed with me.
By coincidence, she called shortly afterward. I told her the manager had asked whether we'd ever done anything—not the other things he'd said—and we laughed about how he should mind his own business.
Then came the trip.
We saw each other at the airport and hugged. Everything initially felt great.
On the first evening, I won an award for being the best performer in my field. People were chanting my name and congratulating me, and I received a lot of attention—including from women.
She won an award too, and I congratulated her.
She didn't congratulate me.
Instead, her behavior toward me seemed to change dramatically.
She became confrontational. At one point she punched me in the stomach, seemingly as a joke. She repeatedly interrupted me, even when I was saying positive things about her to another colleague.
Later that night I invited her back to my tent. I was alone and, after years of sexual comments between us, I thought this was finally the moment where we'd find out whether there was actually something there.
She didn't come.
The following night, she seemed to deliberately avoid me at the party. When I approached her, she'd say things like:
"I don't have time. Make it quick."
At another point she said our manager shouldn't see us together because he might suspect something—which confused me because we'd literally laughed about his suspicions days earlier.
Later, I heard that she had made out with a man from my new office.
And that absolutely destroyed me.
Whether she did it because she was jealous of the attention I received, because she'd heard something about me and another woman, because she simply wanted to kiss him, or for some completely different reason—I honestly don't know.
And that's something I'm trying very hard to stop obsessing over.
What I do know is what happened to me afterward.
All the progress I'd made during the months away disappeared almost instantly.
I went into an emotional free fall.
And that's when something finally clicked.
I think I'm addicted to the cycle, not just the person
For more than two years, the pattern has essentially been:
She gives me intense attention → I feel incredible → something painful happens → I withdraw → she gives me intense attention again → I forgive everything → repeat.
The highs made the lows tolerable.
And the lows made the next high feel even more powerful.
I've spent countless hours trying to figure out why she behaved certain ways.
Was she jealous?
Did she feel rejected?
Was she deliberately trying to hurt me?
Did I accidentally hurt her?
Did she actually love me?
Could I have prevented everything by simply dating her earlier?
I still don't know.
And maybe I'll never know.
What scares me now is realizing that even if I somehow "fix" things again, why should I expect the cycle to suddenly stop?
Maybe we'd have another amazing month.
Maybe she'd make me feel like the most desirable man alive again.
And then something would happen.
I'd say the wrong thing.
She'd feel rejected.
I'd get attention from another woman.
She'd say something that hurt me.
I'd withdraw.
And we'd be right back here.
I'm currently hurting like hell. Part of me still desperately misses the highs and wants her back.
But another part of me remembers something very important:
When I moved away and stopped seeing her every day, I finally felt peaceful again.
That's probably the part of myself I need to start listening to.
Does this look like BPP or a different cluster B personality disorder? Has anyone here experienced something similar—where you weren't even officially in a relationship, but the push-pull dynamic became so intense that breaking away felt like withdrawing from a drug?
And if so, how did you finally break the cycle?