pangolin

Am I the only one thinking that what he said doesn't seem that ridiculous? So you guys were broken up, and he wanted you to promise him that you would commit fully to the relationship? What do you mean "pledge your love" to him? Unless you whip out the black candles and the book of spells, the only thing you can do is promise you'll try to be present in the relationship and work on things as you go. Is that what he wanted? Or was he being crazy and he wanted some freaky religion-y commitment about your everlasting love? Were you in a position where you didn't want to commit to him? I only ask because you also said this: This sounds like you weren't comfortable committing to the relationship fully. That would also explain why he was asking you to promise you'd be with him. There was very little information in the original post. You didn't say he was abusive. I think it was too early for people to jump on the "he was toxic and abusive, fuck that guy!" train. I'm not saying he definitely wasn't abusive. Maybe he was completely awful and it's wonderful that you cut ties. I'm saying I don't know what was going on in your relationship. In the situation that he wasn't abusive and you two just weren't good together and brought out the bad parts of eachother. What I'm getting at is, make sure you really objectively look at what's happening on your end. Do you have commitment issues? Did something happen in your past that made it difficult for you to be close to your ex? You talked a lot about co-dependence. Why were you co-dependent? Was he co-dependent too? If you default to him being an abusive pos, and don't reflect objectively on the relationship, you could be missing out on critical things that made it fall apart, that could repeat themselves in future relationships. I definitely think you need to be broken up. This sounds like an unhealthy, toxic relationship. I also think you need to stay single (both serious and casual relationships) until you can reach a healthy place, because you need to be happy with yourself and in a good place to be able to tend to a healthy relationship. If you jump into something else now, you won't be able to give that relationship the care and attention to keep it healthy.

@Anna1 I always viewed Borderline Personality Disorder more as "distorted and unstable self-image" and "impulsive behaviors" and never put much thought into the mood swings before. I didn't even realize that this was relevant to BPD previously. I wish there was more access to the general public as this seems really difficult to research as a student if you don't have the appropriate materials. I wonder if BPD has an A-B-C sequence of "distorted idea of place in the world" --> "misinterpreting others" --> "mood swings", as in, the mood swings are a direct result of being unable to correctly process other's interactions with you, Or is it the other way around? You have mood swings, and so your mood swings cause you to misinterpret the intentions of others, which frequently damages your self-view? @Nahm I was approaching this more from an academic point of view. Is this an inappropriate place for my topic? Edit: Grammar

For anyone who knows about different psychiatric conditions: I have been trying to figure out the name of the disorder that is categorized by mood swings that cycle in very short periods of time. I've been thinking about the obvious bipolar disorder and cyclothymic disorder, but their mood swings are categorized as lasting >2 weeks. Even rapid cycling bipolar disorder takes at least a week. I'm referring to cycling that occurs in hours, and cycling that is very sensitive to outside forces (i.e. a significant other is having a bad day, and their gloomy mood and altered behavior for the day puts the person through a cycle of emotions.) I don't know much about personality disorders. Does borderline personality disorder have these traits?