What's "Love" got to do with it?
To most females, a boyfriend is the HUB of their wheel. Every decision they make revolves around Him, and how he'll respond or react to it.
When you're dating a Borderline, this aspect is greatly magnified. They think obsessively about ya and how to please you, seduce you, impress you, etc., in order to win you over and make you fall in love with them. This is their #1 priority, and they're hyper-focused on it (which is why you get all those VM's and text messages during the days you're not with 'em). They're intent on remaining on the forefront of your consciousness~ and at some point, ya get used to it.
A lot of material you'll read about on the Web and perhaps within my own articles, speaks of a BPD phenomenon that's been coined, "Love-Bombing." Coming on strong with you, is the Borderline's seduction strategy, and it's easy to get swept up into a kind of euphoria by it.
A male's Ego feels flattered by this influx of hyper-attention~ particularly if he lacked nurturant care and affection by his mother, as an infant and young child. Feeling WANTED is the most powerful aphrodisiac ever know to man~ but if you've begun dating a Borderline, it could turn emotionally risky, and even deadly.
We all want to be admired, respected and desired. It's in our DNA to WANT the feelings that are triggered in us when we meet another who inspires them. How easily we become accustomed to feeling GREAT about Ourselves under the adoring gaze of a desirable other! Only a fool would turn away from this addictively alluring sensation, right?
Human nature assumes, "if you feel so strongly about me NOW, you always will," and there's the rub. Fantasy and wishful thinking are always operating within us, because we grew up watching Disney Fairytales~ and they were often the bedtime stories many of us heard before drifting off to sleep.
A young child's mind is ultra-impressionable, and if it weren't, Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny could never have gained any ground! Just think of all the Easter candy that couldn't be sold each year! Ah, the utopian world we were all taught to see as credible and attainable, as youngsters!
Whether you want to believe me or not, your attitudes, expectations, hopes and dreams were acutely influenced by these childhood fables and tales. ENTER, the Borderline.
He or she is everything you'd ever have hoped for, or pretty darned close! Your BPD lover likes all the things You do, and it's impossible to NOT feel a magical sense of congruency and compatibility with this person.
Before ya know it, it seems like your two hearts are beating as ONE. There's a newfound sense of optimism inside you, ya probably didn't even notice was absent, before this magnificent woman or man came into your life and made everything in your world seem sunnier and more sharply defined.
It's like you're looking at your world thru a new lens, and appreciating details in your environment you never even noticed before. (I'm thinking about my favorite BPD movie here, "500 Days of Summer" and recalling a scene so perfectly illustrated, it's impossible NOT to relate to as a man utterly infatuated with a new love interest.)
Falling in love with a Borderline can happen to anyone, no matter how emotionally cautious you are, or how much you've educated yourself about this disorder. If it happens to psychologists and psychiatrists on a routine basis, what makes ya think YOU'RE exempt?!
The thing is, if you pay close attention to the tiny little things they do that are mildly disturbing, annoying, make something inside you shift or wrench a little and cause you to question if you should even be registering 'em in light of all the "good stuff" you're getting in that package, you might be heading into dangerous territory~ and never realize it till you've fallen off the edge of a cliff.
As soon as someone with Borderline Personality Disorder traits senses they've captured you, they're initially flooded with sense of relief. They can finally "relax." All their efforts to seduce you, have paid off. You are now THEIRS. For them AND you, this is both the good news, and the bad.
You'd think they'd be happy about this, wouldn't ya? Well, they ARE, but only for a few brief moments. Their Herculean challenge is over. This project has been completed. There's no more to DO. To make matters worse for the Borderline, you're now looking at 'em with Cocker Spaniel eyes, and fawning over 'em. You've gotten used to all that marvelous initial attention they gave ya, and you can't help but crave more of it.
A Borderline is motivated by the challenge of capturing your heart, NOT keeping it. Try to envision a housecat chasing a bug or rodent. As long as that creature is moving and trying to escape the cat’s playful fascination with it, the cat toys with it and remains intrigued. But if the object of the cat’s pleasure plays dead or gets severely injured in the process of play and lies still, the cat quickly loses interest and walks away.
The Borderline’s seduction game is precisely the same as the cat’s, which has nothing whatsoever to do with YOU, or your intrinsic value or desirability. It's all about his/her need for validation and confirmation they're acceptable and lovable. Once you give yourself over to them and you’re captured, the game ends. They don't quite know what to do with ya, other than to manipulate you to get what they want BEYOND your undying love for them and devotion.
Emotional claustrophobia is experienced by one with BPD traits almost immediately after you're hopelessly hooked on them. Due the fact that closeness and emotional intimacy are foreign and threatening feelings for a Borderline because they fear ATTACHMENT, the better you love them and the closer you get, the quicker they reject you. BTW~ attachment literally means Loss Of Self (what precious little they have) to a Borderline, so they can’t risk it.
Oh yes, they've been convincing you for weeks or months, to open up more and "let them in," but the moment you DO, the ground drops out from beneath you. That guy or gal you fell for is less available to you now. They'll step in real close, then abruptly step away. They can afford to do this shit, because you're now in too deep to SEE these behaviors clearly, and when they withdraw, you're more likely to blame Yourself for somehow having caused it, than recognize their wildly inconsistent behaviors as what they are: CRAZY.
Borderlines are NOT mentally ill. This ideation is a total falsehood promoted by naive, undereducated and inexperienced idiots on the Internet. They would have you sympathizing with these people, so you'll overlook or make allowances for a highly toxic partner, having been foolish enough to try and love one!
Personality Disorders (BPD, NPD, Codependency, Social Anxiety, Histrionic or otherwise), are NOT mental illnesses. They are PERSONALITY DISORDERS, which are environmentally cultivated in one's home environment from infancy onward, and I speak specifically to this in many of my website’s BPD articles. There is NOTHING wrong with a Borderline's mind~ in fact, they're often significantly more intelligent and cogent, than the average bear.
They're simply emotionally underdeveloped. Their emotional age is stunted. They lack capacity for rational thinking, empathy, impulse control and a sense of boundaries, which you'd normally anticipate from a grown adult. Borderlines are essentially 3-year old's trapped in adult bodies, trying to navigate life's intricate challenges.
Emotional development informs on moral development. Borderlines act horribly toward you in a relationship, because they're lacking a moral compass. They have absolutely no sense of cause and effect. No connection whatsoever, to being emotionally responsive or responsible to another.
They're literally desperate for your love~ but Love became synonymous with Pain for them during childhood, and they can't help but associate painful YEARNING for love, with the emotion itself. What this means is, when you SATISFY their deep craving for love, the painful sensations which they’ve long-associated with "true love" evaporate~ and VOILA! Suddenly, you're no longer the object of their intense ardor, and you're either gradually or abruptly dropped on your head.