I’ve had nasty run-ins with two people with borderline in my life and from the beginning they both either 1. pretended to share my religion or 2. pretended to follow one extremely similar to mine. I’m very serious about my faith, so it was the most obvious thing for them to latch onto in order to gain my trust. As soon as they lured me into a “secure” friendship/relationship, they began to abuse me both sexually and psychologically and try to tear down my boundaries to gain sexual access to me. (The first person in particular tried to force me to change my religion entirely because it was “getting in the way”, I guess.)

When these two weren’t swallowing up my personality whole, they were both basically hollow inside. You don’t feel like you’re talking to a real person. They’re so uncanny. I couldn’t honestly tell you who either of those people really are, and I knew them both for at least a year. And they just find someone new to copy when they’re done screwing with your head. The second person wasn’t nearly as bad as the first, but I could tell this person moved on basically immediately and found someone else to mimic. In these really bad cases it never ends until they actually get help.

(Incidentally, I wound up befriending a third person with borderline this year and she’s never been bad to me in any way, shape, or form. But the first two people are the reason I’m so fixated on TP. The similarities drive me crazy sometimes.)