When you meet someone new, NEVER assume who they really are, based on how they look and sound.
I've often said that working with core-damaged clients (and aren't most of 'em?) is like doing child psychology. It requires great patience, deep understanding of their primal wounds, and a fair amount of boundary setting, healthy adult modeling and discipline.
Working with adult-sized BPD clients therapeutically, is much like trying to assist a special needs child. Clinicians (and everyone else) are at a distinct disadvantage when working with this segment of the population, because they SEEM so intellectually bright and insightful, yet their emotional construct is no more developed than that of a 3 year old.
This lack of development shows up as naivete to the extent their lack of what WE think of as rational thinking and common sense, is alarming! Borderlines can come across as knowledgable and wise, yet their complete lack of understanding of human nature (and their own) can feel utterly mystifying to us. Sadly, it’s wishful thinking that our experience of this relationship will change and get better, keeps us staying way too long at the fair.
Would you expect a toddler to comprehend and respond to your most intricate or difficult feelings and inner experiences? Of course you wouldn’t~ but the saying, “hope springs eternal” is definitely in play, when our primal needs (those of infancy and early childhood) for touch, sex and warmth are even sporadically met.
We experience a significant absence of congruity when dealing with a Borderline we feel close to, because their responses and reactions may be so childlike, they don't come even close to lining-up with or matching their physical image. Due to the fact that people with BPD traits have learned how to ACT like they’re savvy and bright thru mimicking, copying or plagiarizing others, it's easy for us to PRESUME they're fully-formed, self-actualized individuals, particularly if they're coaches or psychotherapists~ but they are not.
Internet research , college degrees and book learning have NO relationship to emotional development. It's not something that automatically attends chronological aging or one's level of physical maturity~ and if you've ever been involved romantically with a Borderline, you understand precisely what I'm conveying here.
The consternation and confusion that is inherent within a close relationship with someone BPD (whether platonic OR romantic) is not an easy issue to navigate. We WANT to make allowances and excuses for their inconsistent, paradoxical behaviors, and so we do. A big part of this ability to disregard our inner warnings to get the hell out of these relationships as quickly as possible comes from having to adapt and adjust to aberrant and non-sensical behaviors we observed in our parents, while growing up. As kids, we had to 'normalize’ these to ourselves, just to keep from running away from home to seek experiences that made more sense to us!
What I'm saying here, is we grew up with confusion and pain, and developed a high threshold for coping with it. THIS is the precursor to falling for and remaining with someone Borderline Personality Disordered, and there are no exceptions.
The upshot of all this, is unless and until YOU get the type of help you need to heal and develop beyond where you became stunted in childhood, you will attract and be attracted to people who exactly match your own level of emotional development~ because like attracts like, and birds of a feather flock together.