Life can take spectacular turns, we'd never counted on.
When I entered private practice as an intern, I had no education or awareness whatsoever about BPD or NPD. Suicidally depressed people (miraculously) kept finding me, and I always used a core trauma approach as a means to help them heal.
Having surmounted my own suicidal depression at the age of 20 under the care of a uniquely gifted psychiatrist, I guess you could say I was uniquely prepared (experientially) to assist these clients.
In hindsight, some had BPD~ though not having been schooled about personality disorders, there was no way I'd have recognized this issue in my clients. It's like if you're a doctor, but you were never exposed to diabetes during your schooling or your residency, how could you spot diabetic symptoms, and diagnose it in your patients?!
Well, for many years, that was me. Still, I kept working in the only way I knew how, and my clients made significant strides. Years later when I more fully understood BPD, I changed the ways I worked with clients, because I was committed to getting them WELL. Not just "better," but Well~ which meant being free of personality disorder traits.
I never CHOSE to work with core-damaged people (which includes Borderlines and Narcissists). That segment of the population chose Me. I think we teach about what we know about, and I think there was a period of time I recognized myself waking into my office, having gotten far more intimately acquainted with Me.
As a young woman, I was aware of my reluctance to bond. I knew I could get emotionally naked with a man or physically naked with him~ but merging the two was a bit too scary. As I developed, healed and grew my self-worth, I surmounted that fear. Today, it's a non-issue... but it took a hellova lotta work to get here.
I think it's real important to get intimately acquainted with yourself, and be fully accepting of who ya are AND aren't. With any luck, you can learn to respect your limitations and deficits and HONOR em, because if you didn't have to cultivate various coping strategies and defenses during childhood to SURVIVE, you wouldn't have!
Not everyone has to have kids. Not everyone has to get married. Not everyone has to cohabit. There is no such thing as "Normal." There's only radical self-acceptance you should shoot for~ and if you don't have that, you have nothing at all.