Can you be on the same page (or even in the same chapter) with a Borderline?
Exploring and exposing the inevitable language barrier between toddlers and adults.
Borderlines are not Big Picture thinkers, nor do they have any sense of cause and effect.
You can tell a Borderline 24/7 that you’re not in-love with em, and because they lack deductive reasoning ability, they can’t draw conclusions from what you’ve said and be appropriately impacted by it. It simply doesn’t compute for them.
Try saying to a 2 - 3 year old you don’t love them, and while they hear the words, those words have no meaning for them.
IF however, you repeatedly say NO! to your Borderline's requests and demands, whims and wishes, just as with a small child, they will experience frustration, disappointment and or pain, and you’ll finally get your initial point (“I’m not in love with you!”) across.
When you repeatedly express that you are UNWILLING to respond to a BPD lover's stated needs and wants, they're able to FINALLY arrive at the inevitable conclusion: "This relationship's over," all by themselves! Such is always the case with a toddler who's living inside an adult-sized body.
Borderlines are incapable of making abstractions. You cannot expect them to take in the information you’re conveying, and make logical, practical sense of it. In short, the MEANING of your words escapes them! You are both speaking entirely different languages, and this is WHY you're circling the drain in your relationship, repeating the same things over and over again, and they don't seem to understand, retain or integrate it.
So, telling a Borderline you no longer love them or never have, means NOTHING to 'em. Where they go with this is, “I know I can change your mind, if I just TRY hard enough.”
Never say, “I CAN’T give you that” to a person with BPD features. You must emphatically say, “I WON’T give you that, or satisfy these needs of yours!” …or you’re giving them false hope that they can manipulate the situation (and YOU) to make ya change your position (and they’re masters of this, remember?).