The BPD lover: Pros and Cons
At the start of a new romance with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder traits, it’s hard to hang onto your autonomy. He or she wants to be with you almost constantly, and will often craftily insert themselves into your daily life, and special events or activities you may have traditionally reserved for close friends.
It feels marvelously validating to be wanted, and pursued by an attractive, appealing other. We’re inclined to adjust our daily routines and normal schedules to accommodate all the extra attention we’re getting from them.
Before long, having this person share so much of our time and focus, starts feeling like Our New Normal. Add to this, we’re getting Love-Bombed by him or her, and the verbal validation we’re receiving feels pretty darned wonderful, especially if we left behind a childhood that was fraught with insecurities and concerns about our lovability and true worth.
Before we know it, we’ve adapted and adjusted to sharing our life with another person and it’s mostly effortless, because who in their right mind doesn’t want a love life? My point is, there are a lot of internal changes that take place within us, when we begin converting from an “I” to a “We,” and they’re often so subtle, we don’t even realize they’re happening. Basically, we’re experiencing ‘attaching’ to another, and under normal, healthy circumstances, this attachment deepens and grows.
When we begin noticing feelings of being manipulated, controlled and gaslighted by our lover, we naturally want to fix it. If we can muster the courage to speak about how their actions or words make us feel. If we state how disturbing these incidents are to our ability to trust them emotionally, they may react defensively and turn the tables on us, attempting to make the issue in question, OUR fault. This is a defensive strategy all Borderlines use, and it’s called, “projection.”
I dated a man years back who insisted I sleep entwined with him. I like my space in bed, and normally prefer not sharing it with another~ but as sleeping close was his wish, I tried to accommodate it. It wasn’t long before I adapted and began liking it, but then I started finding him on the edge of his side of the bed when I awakened in the morning! When I gently brought this up to him (because I felt confused), he became angry, and acted like I was at fault for not addressing this issue sooner!
Borderlines initially pull you in close, then push you away. You’re basically on an emotional see-saw or roller-coaster, with someone who has BPD traits.
With someone who has borderline traits, you’ll hear a lot of self-contradictions. They’re quick to blame you for setbacks or disappointments you had no hand in creating. If they’re angry at you, their remarks will feel shaming, guilting and/or emasculating. BPD females craftily use critical comments that mean to erode your masculinity. They’ll mock you, abuse you, disrespect you, and within the same hour, wonder why you’re rebuffing them, for wanting physical closeness or sex.
One of my online BPD articles speaks to splitting, splicing and projection in the Borderline personality. Splicing is when someone with BPD traits treats you badly, and soon after, acts as though that event never took place. So, you’re still hurting from their abuse, but they try to make you forget it ever happened, just like a film editor would splice a segment of celluloid out of a movie reel, if it wasn’t critical to the enhancement of the movie.
Every time you talk things thru with a Borderline and think you’ve reached a resolution (with any luck), they fail to integrate and hold it. So that same issue keeps happening over and over again, because one who’s emotionally underdeveloped cannot make use of problem-solving endeavors. You are literally trying to reason with someone whose emotional age is about 3 years old~ and how can you realistically expect change to occur and be lasting under these circumstances?!
What’s important to know here is, there’s never a need to “set boundaries” with an emotionally healthy, self-actualized adult. They are acutely aware of their own feelings and needs, and would never violate Yours. Borderlines have no capacity for empathy, so they’ll invalidate your feelings, ignore your needs and violate your boundaries, till the cows come home. You see them as an adult, because that’s the body they’re encased in, but underneath their veneer you have the equivalent of a toddler.
Your only job, is to recognize this stuff is going on in your relationship, and muster the exceptional courage it takes to realize that a Borderline is not someone you can go the distance with. The minor irritations and frustrations you experience near the start of your romance will be magnified 100-fold, once you’re in a fully committed relationship with this person.
In short, when we’re talking about a future with someone borderline disordered, we’re signing up for a world of chaos, pain and frustration. Just as they monopolized all your time and attention at the start of this romance and it felt utterly wonderful, it now feels utterly dreadful.
Borderlines are attention whores. It matters not to them, whether they’re getting positive attention or negative attention from you. A young child will act-out and drive you crazy, just to be punished, because even painful attention feels better to them, than no attention at all.
People with BPD traits thrive on chaos, drama and pain. It’s what feels normal to them~ so don’t be too surprised when they continue behaving in ways that are annoying or upsetting to you. Manipulating your emotions is great sport for a Borderline. They thrive on the sense of control it gives them.