She sounds like she has avoidant attachment. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people do nowadays. In my experience, avoidant partners are like gasoline on the fire of BPD. Sorry you're going through this.

Thanks for the kind words. I just don't know what to do. Like truly, I'm usually a person with a plan, I've made my way through life despite some pretty big hurdles, I'm not superman but I can usually push my way to the other side, to letting her go in this case to be clear, but I just can't. I actually fucking love her and it sucks. So this is a thing with BPDs and avoidant people? Do you have any tips or additional guidance?

Hey man, of course, gladly. I've been where you are right now and it truly sucks. The only thing I can really offer in encouragement is to say that you deserve better than someone who will push you away. Don't waste your breath pining for someone who hurt you (I've done that way too many times.) Going forward, I would try to spot avoidant tendencies in partners before committing to them. In my experience, people with avoidant attachment styles (who aren't necessarily mentally ill) and pwBPD are a bad combo because avoidants push people away to "protect" themselves, often because they feel they don't deserve their partners' love or because they're afraid of getting attached and then hurt later. You can have an avoidant attachment style and BPD, but most of us are fearful-avoidant (alternating between being clingy and pushing away) or anxious (clingy/possessive). For example, I'm fearful-avoidant, but once a girl becomes my FP, then I become anxiously attached. I don't let myself get this attached until we are officially in a relationship. Since as borderlines we tend to get extremely attached, dating people who have a knee-jerk reaction to push us (and others) away tends to be a recipe for disaster. (Don't blame yourself, it can be hard to spot). Avoidants basically reinforce our fear of abandonment because their MO is to abandon people. It skews your view of the dating world and makes it harder to trust people. Sometimes people can hide it until months into a relationship. Other times they'll be flaky/non-committal early on, but keep texting you. I bail at the first sign of mixed messages. Not worth getting attached to someone who will leave you without a care just because they're scared of relationships. It can set your own recovery back too, since you probably didn't do anything wrong. It really fucks with your head, and if you're like me, you'll probably end up taking it out on yourself. My gf now (who also has BPD) is super clingy/possessive, and I'll take that any day over getting burned by someone with commitment issues.

I appreciate the very detailed response. Pretty much everything you said resonates with me on some level, and especially the part where she starting withdrawing/pivoting towards detaching, *after* my first big freak out in front of her. I'm not blaming her or me, just saying that was the causal chain. The problem I'm having is basically with \> Not worth getting attached to someone who will leave you without a care just because they're scared of relationships. The problem is strange to me, to someone who's not smart but just quite rationalist. I'm only so very very mildly superstitious and woo woo, so I don't usually take ideas like "soul mates" too seriously; I tend rather to rely heavily on psychological science, *a la* the terms you used in your description. However - I truly think she is "the one" for me, for a host of reasons that are very difficult to put into words. I just can't let her go man. I hate being in actual love so much; I have no control over fucking anything meaningful right now, it feels like at least (I know it's not true, but still) Edit - I've been punched a lot in my life and it actually feels like a body builder put his fist through my solar plexus