My Addiction to Partners with Personality Disorders

by Lyn Nelson
(Jersey, Channel Islands UK)

My story. I came from a low nurturance childhood. My much loved father died suddenly when I was 7 and I was brought up by my angry, workaholic mother. In my eyes back then, she loved money and nice things far more than me.

My only sibling, my older maternal half brother came to live with us shortly after my father's death. He was already a teenage alcoholic and a gambler. He was mad at hell with our mother for abandoning him with his grandparents as a child and he was mad at me for what he saw as 'having had it all'.

Our mum died of cancer when I was 22. Thankfully my brother is now 16 years sober and as I now recover from codependency our relationship is developing - he is 52 and I am 44!

I would say I was a lost child who created a fantasy world for herself to live in, one in which I idealized my father and how my life would be had he lived. Thankfully I had a very loving paternal grandmother and aunt who I spent summer holidays with in Scotland - without their love and care I do not think I would be here today.

As I grew up I chose friends from low nurturance homes too (often worse than mine)and I absorbed myself playing 'miss stable and secure' while I nurtured them and tried to sort out the chaos in their lives. I became a crisis junkie.

After my mother's death my first love relationship ended and a host of sharks came into feed on the inheritance of the alcoholic gambler and his hippie kid sister. I found it a dark, dismal and lonely world to be in, at that time my bro's alcoholism was at it's peak destructive phase and my peers were not in a position to be able to support me emotionally.

I joined an austere spiritual organisation - or should I say my false-self did, rendering all the benefits I could have taken from a yogic lifestyle, meaningless. The philosophy of 'giving' and spiritual service only fueled my co-dependency onto a whole new level. I became disheartened and left the organisation after 5 years and jumped head long into a wild party lifestyle, travelling and a string of relationships with narcissistic or sociopathic men including womanisers and gold diggers.

I had 2 children to a man who posed himself as Mr Wonderful but in reality was more like Mr Narcissistic Borderline, the relationship was over by the time our 2nd child was born but through his connection to me I allowed him to abuse me emotionally for many years to come. My depression which I had always hidden erupted fully at this stage in my life and I struggled to raise my two daughters alone.

Being a survivor I got up after every fall and re-invented a new false identity to continue living through. My next relationship was with a severe borderline man who was very abusive but I got out after a year and made a firm commitment to myself to get better and that I would stay single until I was.

Enter my ultimate false-self, it was 4 years in the building - this was such a magnificent attempt that my inner voice was totally drowned out, so deeply had I bought into this deception myself. This humdinger of a false-self was healthy, fit, happy, confident, secure, organised and adventurous, she was ready to set up her own health and wellbeing centre in order to pass on the benefits of her own recovery to others!!! I decided I deserved a holiday first so off I went on a ski holiday in the Austrian Alps.

That's where I met him "The One", "My soul mate" he had every quality I had every imagined my perfect other half would have and the intense chemical reaction was huge. We met on a gloriously sunny day at the top of a mountain on skis! It was magical and other worldly and I believed with all my heart that he was the one for me and that everything would now be ok because we had found each other...

WRONG!!! Turns out he had suffered an even more abusive and neglectful childhood than mine and when those memories got triggered by reconnection to his birth family, his shutters came down big time and I was left out in the cold alone. At first I told myself it was ok, it was a crisis and I would be ok and he would return when the crisis was over...

WRONG!!! Mr Avoidant Personality Disorder did not return, he got worse! My abandonment issues were triggered at a core level and the demise of this relationship crashed through my own ego defenses like a road train - my rock bottom! I have deep gratitude to this relationship for finally getting me to the place I needed to be.

I'm about 14 months on now, I have a great Jungian Analyst who is helping me to process my childhood traumas. My children give me meaning and purpose in my life - I am determined to break the chains of dysfuncion so that their struggles into adulthood will be far less than mine and their children even less than that still.

I have also found deep meaning in being human and am slowly accepting myself as part of this human family regardless of the fact that I was orphaned so long ago. Previously, I always saw myself as a failure and an underachiever - Now I feel that I have the most important role a human being can have - Chain breaker, slayer of falsehood, recoverer of True-Self!

I've still got a long way to go but the difference now is that I am enjoying the journey, this is the ultimate adventure. My love and respect to all who choose to walk this road.

Lyn Nelson - Jersey UK