Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who drove you crazy with desire and drove you crazy with nerves, both at the same time? With a woman (just as an example, might as well have been a man) who made you want to squeeze her neck and have passionate sex with her at the same time? Have you ever been in a relationship where you felt like you gave it your all and always felt like it wasn’t enough?

Have you ever been in a relationship where you were cheated on, found out about it but when you confronted the other person they convinced you that it actually felt like it and they were wrongly accused? Have you had a relationship that was extremely intense in every way that took you an extremely long time to get over (maybe you’re not even completely over it yet) and that you’re still thinking about even though it’s long over?

Have you ever been in a relationship that you knew was extremely hurtful to you but that you just felt you couldn’t get out of? Did it frequently happen to you in that relationship that every word you said was interpreted exactly backwards from your intention?

If you answered yes to at least some of the above questions, chances are good that the relationship you’re thinking about was with a person suffering from borderline personality disorder.

That’s if it’s just one relationship. If the description fits all your relationships so far then there are two possible explanations: either you suffer from a savior complex (which makes you the perfect romantic partner for a borderline) or you are the borderline in all those relationships.

Read on to understand what happened and more importantly why it happened the way it did.

What is borderline personality disorder?

Borderline Disorder is the name given to a personality disorder characterised by sudden mood swings, dichotomous thinking (black and white only) and little or no ability to exercise control over one’s emotions.

If it sounds familiar but you don’t recognise the name, you may be thinking of bipolar disorder (also called manic depression) which is also characterised by mood swings from depression to periods of uncontrollable energy (mania). But it’s not the same thing.

Bipolar cycles or bipolarity span long periods of weeks or even months, whereas the pace of mood swings in borderline disorder is much faster, often several times in the same day. Furthermore, borderline disorder is not a mental illness but an emotional disorder, a ‘blocking’ of the person’s emotional development at an infantile stage.

Different types of borderline disorder

Borderline personality disorder can only be categorised within a spectrum, not a precise symptomatology.

At one end of the spectrum is self-destructive borderline, prone to self-harming behaviours (substance abuse, engaging in high-risk activities, self-mutilation), and at the other end is borderline destructive towards others.

To help you understand how varied this disorder appears in different people, I will give you some examples of people who suffer from borderline personality disorder, as they have been represented in popular culture.

The self-destructive pole is fairly poorly represented in literature and films. Anna Karenina for example is a classic case of self-destructive borderline disorder. Another example is the character played by Wynona Ryder in the film Girl, Interrupted.

Borderline disorder at the destructive pole is portrayed much more frequently, perhaps also because it provides much more appropriate material for the need for fiction to present drama and tension.

Walter White (the main character in Breaking Bad) is a case of borderline disorder (this time combined with narcissistic tendencies and sociopathy).

500 Days with Summer depicts the love story between the character played by Joseph Gordon Levitt and a girl with Borderline Disorder (played by Zooey Deschanel). As is often the case after ending a relationship with a person with borderline personality disorder, this man also holds out hope that his great love will return to him. In fact, people with borderline personality disorder often remain in friendly and even close relationships with their ex-partners, and many of them hope that they still have a chance of getting back together. Another (usually smaller) proportion of these exes continue to maintain cordial relationships for fear of the reprisals that might occur if they cut off contact completely.

Original Sin is a film starring Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie that portrays her as a typical borderline. Also typical is Banderas’ obsessively repeated line throughout the film, “I know she’s not right for me but I want her in spite of it”. This is how most men in a relationship with a woman who exhibits the elements of borderline personality disorder feel.

Black Swan with Natalie Portman features not one but two borderline characters: both daughter (Portman) and mother. The black swan-white swan dualism is an extraordinarily illustrative representation of the dualism of borderline thinking in the extremes of black and white.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind presents the love story of two borderline people at different ends of the spectrum: Kate Winslet’s character is at the destructive pole and Jim Carrey’s character is at the opposite, self-destructive pole. She warns him early on that she is evil and will hurt him (as often happens at the beginning of these relationships) but he doesn’t listen and enters the relationship (also as often happens).

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is full of borderline characters. Scarlett Johansson (who plays Cristina) is a fairly typical borderline here, who doesn’t know what she wants but knows what she doesn’t want, namely a stable and loving relationship. Penelope Cruz is a borderline at the destructive pole (she suddenly reappears in the life of her ex-husband, played by Javier Bardem, after ending another destructive relationship and having a near-fatal suicide attempt, she enters into a ménage-a-trois with her ex-husband and his current girlfriend and she becomes the new target of his manipulative behaviour). Javier Bardem plays the classic facilitator for the borderline person, namely the rescuer, the knight on a white horse who comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress whenever she needs it, not realising that she doesn’t actually want to be rescued.

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction play people affected by Borderline Disorder, in the form specific to the destructive end of the borderline spectrum, namely in combination with elements of narcissism and sociopathy. Something should be said here, namely that there is an essential difference between a person suffering from borderline disorder and a sociopath: the sociopath does not experience emotions, whereas the borderline person experiences emotions at a level they cannot control. Think of the character in Dexter: that’s a classic sociopath, unable to feel emotions and having to pretend to be a person like everyone else.Often the two disorders are confused because the manifestation is the same: both are completely lacking in empathy. But the reasons are different: the sociopath is unable to feel emotions, while the borderline person feels too many. The sociopath can only feign empathy, while the borderline has not had the opportunity to learn empathy. Another example of a borderline with elements of sociopathy is the character played by Charlize Theron in the movie Monster.

The Tudors features two borderline characters: Henry VIII but also his second wife, Anne Boleyn.

As you can see, people with borderline personality disorder are usually portrayed in films as at best deeply disturbed and at worst extremely evil and manipulative. But that’s not quite the case. To understand this disorder, I’ll have to explain how it arises and develops.

How borderline personality disorder develops

There are several causes that lead to the same effect, but they can all be categorised under childhood trauma. The most common causes of borderline personality disorder are the following:

• Parental neglect
• Parental neglect
• Parental alienation
• Physical abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Sexual abuse

The most common are those related to the relationship with parents, especially parental alienation.

What actually happens: the parents separate and the child stays with one of them (usually the mother). The mother starts an intense campaign to denigrate the other parent, making him or her out to be the worst thing on earth (this is what parental alienation is all about). At the same time, the mother presents herself as an innocent victim.

The child, however, wants to have both parents by his side, and so decides to do so on a symbolic level, becoming like both: both victim and villain at the same time.

This is how attitude changes and black-and-white thinking develop. Black and white actually represent the two parents.

What happens inside the mind of a person suffering from borderline personality disorder

Although these people might seem to you to be evil, manipulative and intentionally doing harm, this is usually not true. These people are stuck on the emotional level of a 3-5 year old, but with all the resources and experience an adult has at their disposal. Cognitively and intellectually these people are usually at an age-appropriate level, only the emotional side is underdeveloped. Therefore, they can function smoothly in the professional field and only in their personal life chaos, drama and suffering reign.

In fact, it is this misunderstanding that causes the greatest distress to people who enter into a relationship with a borderline person: the fact that they cannot understand that they are dealing with a perfectly rational person but with the emotional maturity of a very young child. And then, because they cannot dissociate the adult image from the real emotional level, they assume that all the behaviours they are dealing with are the result of malice or cruelty.

This is not the case and the borderline person is not an emotional predator most of the time: they simply haven’t learned empathy, they don’t realise the harm they cause others, they are unable to take criticism, whenever they feel rejected they simply cling to the rejecter and as soon as they feel they have stopped them from leaving they lose interest in that person.

I know it sounds bad but I remind you that we are talking about someone who emotionally is a child. I’ve heard the comparison between borderline and a lion killing an antelope: you can’t blame the lion for anything because it’s in its nature to do that. Although this view contains a grain of truth (in that the acts of a borderline person are not morally charged), such a comparison casts these people in an extremely unfavourable light and denies them both the suffering that led to the development of the disorder and the chances of recovery.

Think of it this way: many children hurt others (physically for example, by spanking them let’s say) simply because they don’t know that it hurts. If a parent or other adult teaches them that such actions have negative consequences for others and explains how others feel when someone treats them this way, over time the child understands the consequences and develops empathy. They become what we call adaptive. The child who will have borderline personality disorder has had no such education. Either no one bothered to explain it to him or not enough was explained to him. Under these circumstances, do you really think the comparison to a predator is appropriate?

Diagnosis criteria

Borderline disorder is famous among therapists and psychiatrists for the difficulties it poses in diagnosis, due to the fact that it often occurs in combination with other disorders and racks up symptoms of the most varied kind. It is often misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder (we have already explained the difference).

There is no fixed set of indicators of this condition, so a correct diagnosis can only be made by a professional. This text is not written for you to use to attack another person or to support your point of view. This text is written so that, if you have had or have a relationship with such a person, you can better understand what is happening to you and why you ended up here. I am not writing these things to provide you with ammunition in your argument with your partner. However, even if you did, you still wouldn’t get anywhere because the borderline person has extremely strong self-defense mechanisms that you won’t be able to defuse with logical arguments. So you’ve been warned.

That said, there are a number of things that can indicate the presence of this disorder. It should be said that, in isolation, such behaviours or attitudes are also common in people who do not suffer from borderline personality disorder. It is their combination that ultimately determines the diagnosis. Again, if you have no training in the field, don’t venture to make the diagnosis yourself.

Those elements that may indicate borderline personality disorder are the following:

• dichotomous (black and white) thinking
• this type of thinking also produces the typical borderline hot-and-cold behaviour: when it rejects you, when it seduces you.
• exaggerated fear of abandonment (of being left) accompanied by extreme emotions: anger, panic, depression, anxiety
• lack of acceptance of responsibility for one’s own behaviour, accompanied by complex defence mechanisms when someone tries to suggest a negative consequence of one’s behaviour
• exaggerated emotions (both positive and negative)
• lack of empathy (because she has not learnt this but also because she is overwhelmed by her own inner turmoil).
• irrational, impulsive or even dangerous behaviour
• duplicitous behaviour, repeated and cascading lies (when caught in a lie, instead of admitting it, she responds with another lie)
• in relation to duplicitous behaviour, if you look carefully you will see that often what she says is contradicted by what she does
• hypersexuality (extremely high libido)
• behavioural abuse: substance abuse, aberrant financial behaviour (spends everything), promiscuous sexual behaviour (numerous sexual partners, marital infidelity, extramarital affairs, etc. – see also the point above about hypersexuality)
• chronic feelings of inner emptiness and/or extreme boredom (tends to avoid loneliness at all costs because loneliness exacerbates feelings of emptiness/boring)
• physical and/or verbal aggression: we are talking about both physical violence (he/she fights, hits objects, walls, animals, people, etc.) or verbal violence (he/she uses vulgar words, swears, denigrates, slanders, mocks) and a particular form of aggression, which is very common in this disorder: passive-aggressive and subtly provocative behaviour. There is a lot to be said on this subject, but what you need to remember is that the aim of this particular form of aggression is to get a reaction from you, usually a negative one. The purpose of other forms of aggression is different (venting, intimidating the opponent and so on).
• A borderline person’s relationships always follow a pattern: the relationship starts with a stage of idealisation (the partner is put on a pedestal and is the best thing that could ever happen to them) and sooner or later reaches the stage of devaluation (in which the partner is the worst thing that could ever happen to them and the cause of all the things they are not happy about).

Treatment options for BPD

Borderline disorder is not a life sentence, but it is not a minor condition either. The consequences of a borderline person’s behaviour are often severe, both for themselves and for those in their lives.

There is no drug treatment regimen for this disorder, certain medications may only be prescribed to control certain acute symptoms (such as panic attacks, depressive or anxiety states).

The most effective form of treatment so far has been psychotherapy. Therapy options are generally as follows:

• cognitive-behavioural therapy
• dialectical behavioural therapy (a specific form of therapy developed specifically to address the disorder)
• schema-based therapy (an integrative therapeutic method that brings together elements of cognitive-behavioural therapy, elements of Gestalt therapy, psychoanalytic object relations theory or attachment theory)
• psychodynamic therapy (such as Adlerian psychotherapy)

It is difficult to say which of these approaches is more effective and I believe the answer is a combination of these approaches, depending both on how each patient reacts to the different approaches and on the severity of the disorder.

The reason I opt for a rather eclectic approach is that the person suffering from borderline disorder faces two categories of challenges:

• psychological wounds caused by childhood trauma
• incomplete adaptation in the present: underdeveloped skills of relating and relating to other people, low or non-existent empathy and so on

A psychodynamic approach is able to explore and heal the wounds of the past and a behavioural approach can readapt the individual to the reality in which he lives. Of course only one of these aspects can be resolved, but in this case the approach is incomplete and the success of the therapy becomes highly questionable.

I heard a person suffering from borderline personality disorder use the following metaphor to describe the situation such a person always faces: think of yourself as colour blind (in the most common form, i.e. not being able to distinguish red from green). You are driving a car and arrive at a traffic light but you don’t know whether you can pass or not because you don’t know what colour the light is. This is what happens when the borderline person tries to process feelings: they only see the extremes (black or white).

Well, behaviour therapy teaches you that the bottom light is green and the top light is red. It doesn’t help you see them, it just gives you an immediate solution that allows you to function effectively in the world around you. To be able to see colours, you must first heal the wounds of childhood and this is what psychodynamic therapy is used for, to remove emotional or psychological blockages.

As for the duration of therapy in a borderline case, this again depends on each individual situation. There are documented cases of people who have successfully completed therapy after only 1 year but also cases who have been in treatment for more than 10 years.

The success of therapy also depends on a multitude of factors, with national statistics (especially the US and UK) reporting an extremely high success rate: around 50% of treated patients were completely symptom-free at the end of therapy and the remaining 50% saw a considerable improvement in symptoms.

Even without treatment, acute symptoms associated with the disorder improve after the age of 40-50 years. When I say acute symptoms, I am referring to anger attacks, panic and anxiety attacks, depression and dangerous behaviour. However, the improvement of these symptoms does not usually increase the person’s quality of life because by that time the disorder has severely damaged or even completely destroyed the most important relationships with people close to them. As such, the sense of abandonment (which is probably the most painful symptom for the person) is not diminished at all, but rather increases as the person gets older. Treatment should therefore not be postponed on the grounds that the symptoms will eventually improve anyway.

However, there is a big problem with treatment: the specific nature of the disorder means that sufferers are among the least likely to enter and remain in therapy. The relationship with the therapist is not essentially different from the relationship with the other people in his or her life; it is still an interpersonal connection. As such, the idealisation and devaluation stages occur even within the interaction with the therapist. The therapeutic alliance is almost impossible to establish and the patient will always test the therapist’s limits, trying either to provoke him to get emotional reactions or to seduce him.

Usually borderline people do not realise they have a problem, their automatic response to any attempt by someone close to them to point out a behavioural deficiency is to turn everything against that person. They don’t have a problem but the other has a problem and they project their shortcomings onto them, they are innocent and misunderstood victims. Because they don’t realise they have a problem, they won’t even ask a therapist for help. When they do end up in therapy though, they are often there because close people (usually family members) have forced or pressured them to go. If they end up in these circumstances, therapy has little chance of success because the patient is not committed to therapy but is concerned with two things: proving to those who sent him there that they were wrong (and that he actually has no problem) and convincing the therapist that he is actually an innocent victim.

There is, however, a special situation that creates the conditions for successful therapy: if the person suffering from borderline personality disorder comes to therapy of their own accord, because they have (somehow) realised that the way they behave is harming others. We can say that, in that situation, the person has developed a primary form of empathy (or at least a form of responsibility for their own actions and, as a result, shame for their past behaviour). Here it would be fair to say that this person frequently causes psychological damage to those around him and that it is not possible to say exactly when (let alone if) he will develop this kind of awareness. Many borderline affected people never reach that point. And those who do, unfortunately, often end up isolating themselves simply to stop harming others, rather than seeking therapy.

Whatever the situation, what’s important to remember is that you can’t force a borderline person into therapy (actually, you can, it’s just pointless) and you can’t force awareness of the consequences of their actions, because most of the time they won’t hear you and will conclude that you have a problem. Keep in mind that despite often seeming like a fragile person who needs a rescuer, most of the time the borderline person doesn’t want to be rescued, because they don’t think they need it (just someone who understands them, in the warped sense of accepting all their behaviors, no matter how abusive).

Some statistics about BPD

There is currently statistical data stating that 70% of people with borderline disorder are women, 20% of people admitted to psychiatric hospitals suffer from borderline disorder and that 1-2% of the world’s population suffers from this disorder.

Personally I am not very sure that these percentages are representative of the whole population because, as I said in the previous point, in order to be admitted the person has to be aware that they have a problem and most borderline people do not have this awareness. Secondly, I tend to believe that these percentages are based more on borderlines in the self-destructive pole who are much easier to identify and who often show visible signs of self-destructive behaviour: a person who self-mutilates (cuts their hands for example) is left with signs, scars, easy to detect. A person at the destructive pole, especially if they have narcissistic rather than sociopathic elements, leaves no marks on themselves or others. At least not visible signs, just emotional trauma.

Moreover, women tend to be diagnosed more frequently with borderline disorder because men benefit from a cultural subjectivity that gives them some legitimacy for aggressive or dangerous behaviour, strong emotional outbursts (especially anger), substance abuse or numerous sexual partners.

Therefore, I have a number of doubts about these statistics and believe that the two sexes are much more equally represented among those suffering from borderline disorder and, moreover, that the percentage of the total population is considerably higher than 1-2%.

An important clarification: throughout this text I am making the female gender an agreement and saying “challenging, changeable etc” because I am referring to the subject “person” not “woman”. Don’t fall prey to this misinterpretation, what I say can apply equally to a borderline male or a borderline female.

What is it like to be in a relationship with a borderline?

To describe the relationship we will have to divide the story into the two stages, idealization and devaluation.

In the idealisation stage:

• You think you’ve met your soulmate, they like what you like and get excited about anything you propose: the borderline person is chameleonic and adapts to your tastes as a way of making sure you don’t leave them. Chameleonism is also formed because, as the emotional side is underdeveloped, the whole personality is not fleshed out and as such can be more easily adapted to the person with whom they interact. Enthusiasm for your ideas should be a wake-up call for you. However, it usually doesn’t alert you and you find it fascinating because you’ve never encountered such strong reactions. If you saw the situation objectively you would find it at least strange to see an adult enjoying a walk in the park (for example) like a 3 year old child going to DisneyLand for the first time. You see, there are always early signs, but either you didn’t see them or you misinterpreted them.
• doesn’t respect your boundaries but fiercely defends his: at first you admire him for defending his integrity and think that his not respecting your boundaries shows that he wants you. In fact it doesn’t, he simply doesn’t understand the concept of boundaries and what appear to you to be boundaries he is defending are actually protection mechanisms against abandonment, not principles of life. Their role is to keep you from getting too close, thus giving you power over her, because if you get too close, you’ll see who you’re dealing with and you’ll leave her like everyone before you did.
• doesn’t follow social conventions, could be considered ill-mannered but seems so innocent to you that you see nothing wrong with it. There’s a lot wrong with that, just think how innocent an adult can still be.
• Is extremely sexually provocative but in an ambiguous way that makes you think she doesn’t realize what she’s doing; in fact, she realizes it very well and this behavior is a method of seduction. Seduction allows her to make sure you won’t leave. It is among the few conscious acts he does in interacting with other people.
• if he has narcissistic tendencies, he loves to be the center of attention
• Substance abuse: using legal drugs in large quantities (for example, when going out drinking until she can’t remember what she did that night – which signals self-control issues and an inability to stop when the time is right) or using high-risk drugs.
• Sex is fantastic due to the almost total lack of boundaries but also chameleonic behaviour. You seem to be soulmates in bed too, not just out of it.
• You think you’ve discovered something extremely special and rare and fear you’ll never find that thing again. How rare it is we have already discussed but about how special it is, you have to understand that what happened is actually a matching of personal histories, traumas. You actually have the same trauma related to your relationship with your parents or abuse. Only you negotiated the effects differently and instead of becoming a manipulative, selfish seducer like the borderline, you became someone who panders to others and tries to save them. That’s why you seem like soulmates, because you’re both hurt in much the same way. Furthermore, to become a person who pleases others, you needed to suppress parts of your personality that you find reprehensible or negative, parts that contain feelings such as disappointment, anger, revenge and so on. These parts are what Jung calls the Shadow. They are the parts of your personality that you deny and wouldn’t even recognize. If you don’t think this is you, answer the following question: would you describe yourself as a person who would never intentionally harm another person? If you answered yes, then you are a people pleaser, and your borderline partner has exactly those elements that your shadow has. Which makes you feel that the borderline person complements you and this contributes decisively to your fantasy about your soulmate.
• It warns you that it’s not what you think it is, which you will then prove to yourself. But you don’t heed the warning, because she’s too special to give up. Besides, you have a misconception steeped in popular culture (and maybe even family) that things worth having only come with effort, and you only become worthy of having them if you’ve fought the whole world for them.
• Is still friends with all her ex-boyfriends. This should be a serious wake-up call but, again, it’s not. You’re thinking she must be an amazing person if her ex-partners continue to stay in a relationship with her. In fact, ex-partners either want her back (because they’ve become obsessed with her, as you soon will be, or perhaps already are) or fear severe retaliation if they break off all contact. Keep in mind that having friendly relationships with almost all ex-partners is not normal, an ex-boyfriend doesn’t so easily turn into a friend or buddy. It happens, it’s true, but with everyone? Major red flag, you’re ignoring your risk.
• She’s verbally aggressive (talks way too loudly, laughs excessively loudly, swears or uses profanity frequently), physically aggressive (punches you in the shoulder so you see black in front of your eyes, then hugs you and laughs at you for wincing in pain), emotionally (he encourages you to share your innermost desires and thoughts with him – you’re flattered by his interest in you, but if you indiscreetly tell him, all those things will later be used against you as weapons, in arguments and especially when you show signs of wanting out).
• It speeds up the pace of the relationship tremendously: for example, you’ve known each other for less than a month but you’re already moving in together or making plans to get married. Again you interpret this as proof of the great fit between you but it’s just a tactic to make sure you don’t leave. It’s not uncommon for an unplanned pregnancy to occur because with the arrival of a child, you’re even less likely to leave. Unplanned pregnancy is also helped by a borderline person’s tendency to have unprotected sex or to sabotage their partner’s attempts to use contraception.
• She relies too much on other people: whatever she has to do, she has someone who can help her with it. As the relationship evolves, that person will increasingly be you.
• If you pay attention you will very quickly see another strong signal that you are dealing with a borderline person: many requests made in good faith (for example, asking her to see you at a certain time) will be interpreted as ways you are trying to control her. You will frequently hear responses such as “I do what I want with my time”, “you don’t tell me how to organise my schedule” or the classic “who do you think you are telling me what to do?”. Of course, this is an indicator that you might be dealing with a borderline unless you really don’t want to control their schedule or tell them what to do.

In the devaluation stage:

• you begin to see that some things aren’t quite right: you begin to suspect that the emotional overreactions aren’t quite normal, and you begin to catch her in a lie – you find that there is a considerable discrepancy between what she says and what she does. No need to wonder, the period of seduction is over and as such a period of calm and quiet has begun. This period severely unnerves the borderline person who seeks constant stimulation. This is why he or she is starting to argue with you, has increasingly frequent emotional outbursts, and begins to make unfounded accusations (especially about suspected infidelity, etc.). All this happens because the borderline person is used to anticipating disaster since childhood, and is used to chaos and drama following periods of calm. They therefore control their anticipatory anxiety by simply provoking disaster. Yes, it’s not pleasant but at least you don’t sit around waiting for something that’s going to come anyway, that’s pretty much the reasoning.
• Whenever you point out discrepancies between what she says and what she does, she convinces you that you are wrong and you accuse her unfairly, she is a victim and you are unbearably cruel for being able to believe that about her. In fact you have a problem and she has to suffer because of it. The “you actually have a problem” tactic is a very common borderline defense strategy. Two other tactics are also very common: either she becomes aggressive and blames you for things you didn’t do or think about, or she becomes humble and sad, causing you pity and pity (the first is more common in a destructive borderline and the second more common in a self-destructive borderline).
• Generally, during arguments between you, it manages to make you question your own mental health: perhaps you have been perceived as and actually have a problem? It’s difficult to defend yourself from such a psychological attack but here’s one way: does it happen to you only with her or with everyone? If it’s only happening to her, where do you think the problem is?
• she frequently feels that you don’t respect, love or appreciate her enough; she tells you this just as frequently
• you start to feel tired of arguments, sudden mood swings, accusations, duties (I said above that she relies on you more and more to do all sorts of things for her)
• clear signs of infidelity appear: she flirts with other people including in front of you (if you say something, you find out that you have a sick jealousy), you discover phone calls or internet conversations with other people, she doesn’t answer the phone for long periods of time (but she gets terribly upset if it happens to you). It’s not uncommon to find out at some point that, when you met, she was in a relationship with someone else only she didn’t see fit to tell you (the relationship was going very badly anyway through no fault of the other person, obviously). You may even find out that she cheated on you by having sex with someone else but even if you catch her in bed with someone else, you’ll have all the blame (because you don’t respect, love or appreciate her enough, as I said above). Either that, or it actually appeared to you.
• She offers you affection a little bit at a time and only to keep you from leaving; the borderline does things for others only for them to do things in return. For example, whenever you signal that you want to leave, they offer you sex and when that doesn’t work, they resort to FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) tactics.
• You start to feel more and more:
  • tired most of the time because everything is achieved with great effort when it comes to her.
  • frustrated because no matter what you do it’s always like her
  • anxious because you don’t know what’s coming next, every day is a new surprise; you used to love it at first but now it’s become a burden
  • you don’t recognise yourself because you’ve radically changed your way of life to please her

What a relationship with a borderline person leaves behind

Post-traumatic stress disorder

It’s not uncommon to feel like a soldier returning from the front line after coming out of such a relationship. You’ve been in a war (emotional, true, but no less traumatic) and now you have to readjust to the ordinary world. It will be hard but it’s not impossible. You’ve done this at least once before (when you left home to live with your parents).

Contagion

When you spend a lot of time around a borderline person you start to pick up some of that person’s characteristics. It’s not unusual, it happens in all couples. The problem here is that those characteristics are disruptive and make you think you’re starting to go crazy too. Don’t worry, with time they will diminish and therapy can help you eliminate them more easily.

Low self-esteem

How could you stay in a relationship for so long that hurt you so much? That’s the question that eats away at you the most and eats away at your self-esteem and self-confidence. That and the thought that maybe it wasn’t the right decision to break up. I’ve already told you what got you into the relationship and why the attachment is so strong. Remember what we were talking about about emotional development level: you tried to have a mature relationship with a person with the emotional maturity of a 3 year old. Don’t second-guess your decision just because you still feel attachment to it. Remember how you felt in that relationship and don’t think that if you resume the relationship, it will be better this time because it won’t be.

Personality dilution

You lost yourself in that relationship. Gradually all of your boundaries were broken and the more you did for her, the more it seemed like it wasn’t enough. This was because the target of your affection lacked the ability to interpret gestures or emotions correctly and either didn’t receive them at all or misinterpreted them as negative. That’s why it was never enough and never will be until that person learns to work with emotions and feelings.

Attachment problems

Maybe now you don’t trust women or men, or you think that no matter what, you will still run into someone similar. This is likely to happen as long as you don’t work through your own pain and come to terms with your personal history. But now you know how to recognise the early warning signs and can decide to stop the relationship developing. If you don’t present yourself as a possible victim, the borderline person won’t attach to you. And not everyone you meet from now on will have this disorder. Some will, and if you’re careful you’ll recognise them early on, others won’t, and those you can move forward with in the relationship.

What thoughts are going through your mind after such a relationship

You might be plagued by a lot of other thoughts besides the pain of losing the relationship, regret and guilt that maybe there was something wrong with you. These thoughts range from:

• Revenge: remember what I was saying, a person with the emotional maturity of a child cannot be held responsible for their own actions, even if they have caused harm, no matter how much you would want them to suffer for what they did. If you think this way you probably continue to see the person as a fully developed adult: remember that this is not so.
• Blame yourself for abandoning them so hard: this person worked before they met you (not optimally, but they worked) and will continue to work without you. Just like you will without her. In fact, staying in the relationship poses serious risks to your emotional and psychological integrity, and the longer you stay in the relationship, the greater those risks become.
• Shame because you didn’t defend your integrity and let the other person walk all over you or do what they wanted: the borderline person was offering you something you lacked and you accepted all those things and turned a blind eye (especially at the beginning of the relationship, when you had clear warning signs) to keep getting it. You don’t have to be ashamed of that, but you also don’t have to think that a relationship like this is the only way to get what you want.
• The way he was sipping you with his eyes and listening to your every word filled a hole in you that you may have forgotten was even there. Now that you’ve remembered and, moreover, the other is no longer there to fill that void, you feel it and it hurts. But the solution is not to depend on another person to make that wound hurt less but to take care of the healing yourself: go to therapy, your partner is not supposed to be your therapist or facilitator.
• did he really love me or was it all a game? He loved you as a child can love and for the borderline person everything is a game, but not necessarily with the intention of hurting you but because he has not learned any other way. He loved you in the sense that he loved to think he loved you but most likely he didn’t love you the way you imagine love.
• Obsession: there are 3 elements that contribute to the formation of obsessive thoughts:
  • the tactic called warm-release that the borderline person uses has made you always wonder what he will do next time – will he seduce you or reject you? The result is that you think about that person more and more often and this sets the obsession. Obsession is often a habit, a practised behaviour not necessarily something that happens out of the blue.
  • Your rational side tries to reconcile the impulsive and childish behaviour with the adult appearance of the borderline person. If you look at the person as a child you will no longer feel the need to understand their behaviour on a rational or logical level.
  • hope that it might be better and that you can go back to the original period of seduction, when they looked at you as if you were the best thing in the world. There will be no return of that period because now you are already conquered. Now it stops you from leaving in entirely different ways. Specifically, you no longer have the benefits of the beginning, only the disadvantages.

And yet, can you be in a relationship with a borderline person?

Yes, if you really want to, you can, with a few conditions that probably aren’t fully met in your case anyway.

1. You must constantly draw boundaries and be prepared to defend them with all your energy. Again, it’s the same way you raise a very young child. The difference is that now we’re talking about an adult who has had time to fix his own behaviours and also develop defence mechanisms against your attempts at “parenting”. As a result, just because you defend a boundary once doesn’t mean that it will become the rule. Be prepared to do this several times a day for (possibly) the rest of your life. Furthermore, you have a sensitivity that the borderline person is aware of, which means it will be extremely difficult for you to defend those boundaries because you will be blamed for being mean, a jerk and so on. Are you prepared to face and overcome this sensitivity every day from now on?
2. If the relationship has reached an advanced stage of devaluation then you’ve already said extremely hurtful things to each other, he’s cheated on you at least a few times (maybe you’ve done the same) and you no longer trust each other. At this point any relationship is hard to salvage, let alone one where a borderline person is present.
3. Just because you draw boundaries doesn’t mean they won’t be broken sometimes. Are you prepared for physical or verbal violence, infidelity, constant reprimands and so on?

If you’re prepared for all that and understand the risks and consequences then no one can stop you. But ask yourself beforehand if it’s worth going through all this, especially as the relationship will most likely never return to the idealisation stage. And be careful not to somehow go from the saviour attitude to the martyr one because that is even more damaging, plus you will be in competition with the borderline partner who also feels like a martyr. You see, that’s pretty much the situation when you’re dealing with a borderline person: whatever you do, you lose. Or, as the expression goes, heads you win, tails you lose.

As I said, people with borderline personality disorder are not evil and, most of the time, do not understand the harm they cause by their own actions. And even if they did understand, this was the way they managed to survive their terrible childhood suffering (of being neglected, abandoned or abused by their own parent) and it wouldn’t be fair to blame them for surviving. The primary responsibility of a living organism is survival and only then (if at all) other things like not harming others. However, you went through much the same experiences but chose a different path of survival. Therefore, you are not responsible for this person. Each person is responsible for their actions as well as their own mental or emotional state. Besides the fact that you won’t be able to make him well by force, you’re also not in a position to do so because of the extremely complicated and toxic relationship that has developed between you.

How to end a relationship with a borderline person

Ending such a relationship is difficult and often even more painful than the relationship itself. Ending the relationship, however, has the advantage that after an intense period of suffering, the relationship comes to an end, whereas if the relationship continues, the suffering will never end. There are a few things that can help:

The relationship must be ended firmly and quickly. Any attempt to negotiate on the part of the other should be refused without much thought. There will be attempts: see each other less often, see other people (this is a terrible trap, lest you fall prey to temptation), he will lure you back with sex (which will stop if he manages to stop you from leaving), he will bring you numerous reproaches, will seem to collapse in pain and suffering (this suffering is a bit like love for you – he wants to suffer because he’s seen it done that way and may even believe it at the time but if you leave and make the stimulus go away, the apparent suffering stops). If you don’t give in there will be a period where he will bombard you with attempts to reconnect: phone calls, emails, unexpected visits (usually at odd hours). Stalking may also occur: stalking you on the street, showing up in places where he knows you are likely to be, stalking you intensely on the internet (social media especially, you may want to deactivate your accounts for a few weeks as a preventative measure). Resist any “how are you, are you ok?” questions. which are seemingly innocent but aim to re-establish the connection. If you don’t resist you’ll only prolong your own suffering and even end up back in the relationship. All these attempts to reconnect can go on for much longer than you’d expect: think in terms of months or even years. As time goes on, however, the attempts become rarer but your ability to resist becomes better. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that, at some point, you’re strong enough to see each other again. Most likely you’ll pick up right where you left off and all the suffering up until then will have been for nothing.

Never say “maybe”, this will only fuel the other person’s hope that they have a chance of resuming their relationship with you.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they’ve changed: anyone can fake change for a short time but you’ve already seen what that person is really like.

Ultimately confess that you are exhausted, depressed and confused and that you want to end the relationship for his or her sake. A borderline person will find it easier to get out of a relationship where they are given the opportunity to blame everything on the other person (remember what I said about responsibility).

For more details, you can buy my guide on How to get out of a relationship that is hurting you by clicking here

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If you have been in or are in a relationship with someone with a borderline personality disorder, I hope you now have a better understanding of how things are and what you can do to make things better for yourself. Borderline people are not fundamentally bad or evil but they are still very selfish and emotionally immature, which usually causes a lot of suffering to those who try to get close to them.