I have been thinking about my self image a lot recently.
I was recently with some people and I imagined what would happen if my boyfriend showed up out of the blue. I was a bit tired which helped me in a realisation that before I could even react to seeing him, I would have to adjust my picture of myself. I would have to imagine myself as the victim impressed by his masculinity, or the upset naggy girlfriend behaving like my mother, just whatever, I would look in panic for a suitable persona before I would even allow myself to realise that it's him. And from then on I would play that role, until some trigger would not cause me to switch to another one.
How often am I even myself around him?
I guess never. The thought of interacting with him without any persona makes me terrified. This doesn't happen with friends. It happens with my every romantic relationship though, it starts already when I start liking a guy. In fact:
Whether I can imagine him as the abuser defines whether I will be attracted to him.
If I cannot imagine him as the abuser, I cannot play the "victim impressed by his masculinity" role, which means that I cannot see him as masculine, so I cannot be attracted to him in a sexual way. I think this is currently the only way in which I can be impressed by a man. Sad. Let me make it clear, that shit was deep in my subconsciousness all that time, I guess if I read it some years ago I would think "omg this is crazy", it is actually not so easy to realise it.
I remember a point in childhood when I started developing personas. It all started from my father wanting me to be a boy. He was very clear and persistent about not accepting me because I was a girl, so I developed a "boy" persona, which I would use to interact with him, as long as he was in good mood. I would go mushroom picking with him and fishing and I would feel good, but I wasn't sure "is it still me?". Then as the time went on I had even more personas, and one day, around the age of 10, I even tried to enumerate them and come up with some practical guidelines for myself about when to use which. I was actually asking myself: "wait a minute, is this the right thing to do?", as I was aware that it may be a bit weird. But then I decided that since life is way easier with those personas, I will stick to them.
I even developed some new ones in only recent years. It is actually super tiring to constantly have to play them. I am able not to play any only when I do not feel threatened that someone will emotionally invalidate me, this "someone" includes strangers, and sometimes even myself.
I would like to find an answer to: is this happening to other borderlines/people too, and how to learn to be attracted to a man in a healthy way. As currently I can't imagine any other way than being a bit scared and feeling very inferior.
[Edit] I found something on this topic in the following book "Adult children of emotionally immature parents" by Limdsav C.Gibson. They call those personas "roles" and the motivation to play them "healing fantasies".