The Male Borderline~ Surviving the CRASH after your CRUSH (book preview excerpt)
PERFECTION IS ALWAYS A SUBJECTIVE STATE OF MIND
Both BPD males and females need to be perceived as being without defects or flaws. Shame is evoked for them if or when they are confronted with error or failure of any type. You could debate with them until the end of time about a mistake they’ve made. They will never acknowledge, much less own their failings.
Long-term relationships are very rare for this guy, due to his fear of intimacy. No emotionally healthy woman is willing to live with the deficits this issue causes in her romantic partnership. To ease his concerns about real closeness, Casanova is prone to having affairs, or in some way triangulating your relationship with various substances or behaviors that help lessen his terror about having you really matter to him. (What might become of him, if he lost you?)
You may be the ‘perfect’ lover or wife, and he'll still cheat~ or work far too many hours away from home. This isn't about you! It's about his lifelong struggles with closeness, abandonment and engulfment. You are not equipped to repair this in your lover no matter how deeply you’ve cared for him, so erase the notion from your mind.
So thirsty for narcissistic supply and replenishment is Casanova, he could have extra-marital emotional affairs with women which seem benign to him because they’re not sexual, but represent the kind of infidelity to you, that cuts even deeper than physical betrayal. He might maintain connection with past lovers in this manner, even after promising you he's broken it off. The male Borderline feels worthless and dead inside without auxiliary attention from females outside of his primary relationship, and the root of this addiction harkens back to unmet boyhood needs for Mother’s love and approval.