The one that I was emotionally enmeshed with (exgf of 2 years) acted inwards. I don't know if fear is the right word but I very much wanted to prevent her from being so hard on herself. I wanted to prove to her that she was loveable--so still a white knight, codependent, captain-save-a-hoe mental schema, it was more of me needing her to appreciate the fact that she had to be awesome because she was with me.
But I had a lot of abundance and have always had a very low tolerance for disrespect from women (probably too low--I had my massive ego to protect and would eject women on the flimsiest pretext if I felt it threatened). I defended pretty ridiculous boundaries; I was afraid that she would do something that would force me to break up with her, which would make me 'lose the game' of proving she was loveable. I probably kept her too busy walking on eggshells for me to really worry about it. The idea that she would ever leave me wasn't really a possibility (again, my ego lol).
The only time she raged at me was about a year in; she was 100% convinced I was sleeping with her mom. I pulled away hard, was this close to breaking up with her, went on Google, found out about BPD, read all the horror stories about how the relationships ended. But then I thought, 'What the hell, I'm the exception' and we went right back into honeymoon mode for another year. I actually totally forgot about the disorder and slipped back into blue pill fantasy land until everything resurfaced in an epic way at the end.
At that point, my ego shattered and I was forced to confront all sorts of **** that my ego had been built up to suppress (which was a lot of fear and feelings of inadequacy). I'm not sure if I would've qualified for some sort of official NPD/BPD comorbid diagnosis--but I definitely had a lot of the traits--extremely grateful that my ex exposed those maladaptions for what they were.
