r/BPD • u/Acceptable_You_544 • 20h ago
đSeeking Support & Advice to people with FPs who have partners
how do you do it? i just found out and i feel so betrayed and somewhat offended though i donât know why. i have a REALLY bad problem with possessiveness. it ruins my relationships as the moment i find out you have a person that i realize you may favor more than me i automatically go into competition with them and it becomes a fight for attention and eventually i begin to attempt to isolate that person. i feel like iâm going insane, i just donât get why sheâd do this to me after i thought we were on the same page. now i think she hates me and that there must be something wrong with me why sheâd choose someone else over me. in just a matter of minutes i feel as if my life has lost all its meaning i donât even see the point in staying alive now whatâs the point if she has someone else. this is always the case. there is ALWAYS someone else someone else always has to end up in the picture. i can never just have someone to myself and that isnât a lot to ask for so i donât know why this happens to me so much. what should i do and how do i cope with this? i donât want to do anything bad again.
she was my everything in the sense where i did almost everything for her approval i was living solely for her and i had no issue with that because my life had gotten some form of meaning and it was to impress her and get her to like me as much as i like her..now what..
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u/aaqucnaona user is in remission 18h ago
Oof. Honestly this is part of why I'm starting to learn that having an FP kinda inherently sucks. The way your brain just goes from "we're on the same page" to "she hates me and my life has no meaning" is terrifying. Please know you are not alone in this, and you are not going insane.
What you're describing - the possessiveness, the competition, the need to have someone "to yourself" - is something I've been working through a lot myself. One of the most helpful things my own therapist helped me understand is that this possessiveness isn't just simple jealousy. It's a survival instinct gone into overdrive.
It comes from two things. First, a "scarcity mindset" (the deep-down belief that love and attention are limited, finite resources, so if your FP gives some to someone else, there is literally less for you). And second, the fact that our FP isn't just a close social contact; they often become our "regulatory lifeline" (like, the one person whose presence is the only thing that makes the bad feelings of emptiness and anxiety stop).
When you put those two together, seeing your FP with someone else doesn't just feel like a rejection. It feels like a life-or-death threat. Your "animal brain" sees a rival not just for affection, but for your very survival, and it freaks the fuck out. So please, hear this: your reaction, as painful as it is, is a logical (though dysfunctional) response to a perceived catastrophic threat.
You asked what to do and how to cope. The long-term work is a whole journey, but for right now, just to survive this moment, the most important thing is to try and create a tiny bit of space between the catastrophic feeling and what might be the objective facts.
One thing that helps me is a drill my therapist calls the "Evidence Locker." It sounds clinical, but it's a first-aid tool. Can you, right now, open a note on your phone and force yourself to write down three to five recent, objectively true, positive interactions you have had with your FP? No interpretations, no feelings, just the raw data. Like "She texted me good morning on Tuesdayâ or âWe laughed together about that show last nightâ or âShe gave me a hug when we said goodbye."
The goal here is not to make the pain magically disappear. It won't. The goal is to present your panicked brain with hard, factual evidence that contradicts the catastrophic story it's screaming at you right now ("she hates me, my life is over"). It's all just to remind yourself that other possibilities might exist.
Once the immediate crisis feels a little less intense and you can breathe again, the bigger question becomes how to prevent this agonizing cycle from repeating. For a lot of us, the reason we latch onto an FP so hard is because we're dealing with a deep, painful feeling of emptiness or a really shaky sense of self. Our FP becomes the source of our meaning and identity (like you said so perfectly, "my life had gotten some form of meaning and it was to impress her").
The long-term work isn't just about learning to "control" the possessiveness; it's about learning to fill that emptiness yourself, so you don't need another person to be your entire reason for existing. That part is all about consciously and deliberately building a life that is truly yours, separate from your FP. It's all about finding other sources of joy, purpose, and validation that you can control. This means aggressively investing time and energy in your own hobbies, your own platonic friendships, your own goals.
This isn't a quick or easy path, but it leads to a place where you can love someone deeply without losing yourself in the process. You deserve that. And those that love you deserve that too - you having internal sources of personhood and purpose is what will attract healthy relationships into your life, and make them sustainable rather than the trash fires that FP dynamics tend to be.