Earlier this year, I wrote * There’s No Way Every Man is Avoidant Attached, *about the fact that men who are simply not-that-interested in a particular woman are recast as “avoidant attached” so that the woman in question can maintain (at least for a while) a relationship that probably should have ended, or absolve herself of responsibility after the fact. At the time, I wondered if straight men did anything like this, but straight men don’t have a habit of posting about attachment theory. So I shrugged it off as something weird that only women do.
After all, “fake” or exaggerated and speculative diagnoses is a tendency that, at least if you go by the stereotype, is more of a woman thing. When people post about parents with an insufferable desire to be “special” getting their high-functioning kids diagnosed with autism (note that I do not agree with this descriptor) they are usually referring to the mothers, not the fathers, even if in reality, both parents of mildly autistic children are often involved in the diagnosis. When people refer to adults who make a self-diagnosis “their entire personality,” they are typically referring to women with ADHD or mild autism, not men. The idea is that women crave attention and have a stronger desire to be a special main character than men. And perhaps, inundated with this stereotype, I didn’t stop to think about the speculative diagnosis that men are handing out like candy—borderline personality disorder.
About as frequently as women claim to have dated an “avoidant attached” man, men will claim to have dated a “BPD” woman. And, similar to how women discuss tips for avoiding the avoidant-attached, men warn each other to steer clear of women who appear that they might have BPD.
There’s just one problem—a lot of these women don’t have BPD.
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