Maintaining Relationships With Borderline Personality Disorder
/A study of patience, practice & perseverance
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) makes maintaining relationships extremely difficult. If you or your partner have BPD you know exactly what I am talking about.
Rage. Blame. Confusion. Jealousy. Emotionality.
By the end of this post you will know what has helped me to navigate these kinds of relationships successfully and continually.
I have experience on both sides of the BPD coin. I had a traumatic childhood (one of the risk factors of BPD), as well as a genetic predisposition, with my father also being diagnosed. And since we tend to gravitate towards what feels normal, many of my relationships, both romantic and platonic, have involved fellow BPD sufferers.
I have been diagnosed with c-PTSD & BPD, and for the past five years have been receiving treatment. Prior to that, I was finding significant benefits from regular meditation, introspection, writing therapy and acceptance training. All of which are recommended components of Dialectic Behaviour Therapy.
Speaking from personal experience, when BPD is involved relationships are tumultuous. Fights seemingly come out of nowhere, past faults that (you at least thought were long forgotten) are rehashed, constant nit-picking, jealously and criticism.
This negativity is contrasted with occasional gestures of over the top sweetness, grand statements of love and compassion, and a willingness to go far beyond the norm to please you.
Typically, these relationships are short lived. They are highly passionate and intense, then seem to turn on a dime.
Go on any BPD forum or chat to anyone in a relationship with a BPD sufferer and they will corroborate these feelings.
So what can you do about it?
It is important to acknowledge that whilst BPD poses a unique challenge, it is certainly not a ‘relationship death sentence’.
What follows is a summary of the advice and actions that has helped me and my wife to have a happy marriage for the last seven years, as well as what I find works generally to manage the relationships that we have with others who have BPD (or at least show some of the symptoms of having it).
If you or your partner have BPD, do the following:
1. Get A Therapist For Yourself
A therapist should be a must for everyone. Having a detached person to talk to, to vent to, and to guide you is beyond important. Particularly so if one or both people have BPD.
Given the tendency to fight, nit-pick and dwell, an unbiased expert opinion can help you to detach and see the reality of the situation (as opposed to what your symptoms are telling you).
If you always go to your friend/partner for support, if they are the cause of an issue, who do you have to go to?
This is where the therapist shines. Ideally you get one before you need them. That way you have established a trusting relationship before you need it.
2. Meditate
Mindfulness meditation is one of the core components of Dilect Behavioural Therapy, which is one of the treatment/management options for BPD.
Meditation helps you to detach from your thoughts and not get so influenced by your emotions. It teaches you to see that you are separate from them and can thus have strong feelings, without having to act upon them.
Whether or not you have BPD, the ability to step back from strong emotions is key.
If you want to know how to meditate, read this or watch this.
“Your emotionality is not my responsibility”
3. Become The Mirror
If the BPD sufferer comes to you with heightened emotionality, remind yourself that their emotions are not your responsibility.
It is all too easy to get caught up in the strength of their emotions. All of a sudden you will find yourself managing their issues, apologising and taking the blame for obscure things that you didn’t cause, or have little control over.
The thing is that they are the one who is struggling, not you. And whilst you will want to assist them as best possible, you need to both ensure that you are not compromised, and that you are detached enough to see the reality that lies beyond their emotionality.
You do this by being the mirror.
Where they are emotional, try reflecting their emotions back to them.
“I can see that you are struggling right now…”
“What is it that is troubling you so much...”
“What has changed…”
“What would you like to see happen…”
Often getting into the weeds on an issue is pointless. They are emotional and likely won’t be able to introspect with enough clarity to get to the bottom of the issue.
4. Stall, And Defer To A Higher Authority
If they are asking you to do something or change something, don’t respond or take action on it instantly. Remember, they are the ones disrupting the status quo, not you.
Yes they are emotional, and yes that makes you want to help them. But it is important to realise that you may not be able to help (at least not right now) and that they may change their minds back very quickly.
I have found that when someone with BPD wants to alter the status quo of the relationship/circumstance, it can often seem to come out of the blue and feel like a personal attack.
What has likely happened is that they have ‘switched’ on you. They have been contemplating the situation/ruminating and come to the conclusion that something needs to be changed. They have then dwelt on this change for the majority of the time until they saw you. Then they offload it at you.
When this happens, I find it best to stall by deferring to a higher authority.
“Sorry I don’t know right now I have to see what X thinks of it first…”
“I will need to get back to you on that one, I am not in the right mental state at the moment…”
“I am not comfortable with that as it may be breaking the law (etiquette/routines)…”
“Let me consider how that request intersects with my religious beliefs, I will get back to you…”
By stalling, you are giving you and the other person time to cool down. They may have just wanted someone to vent towards, and having done so, they may be okay. This means you need to decide if you are okay playing that role for them of course.
I defer to a higher authority because it is harder to argue against it. Your ‘logical arguments’ can be picked apart, but your mental state/mood can’t be.
If you say ‘I am not feeling up to this discussion right now’, it is very hard to argue against that. Similarly, if the decision required a third party, that third party needs to be contacted and needs to consider the proposition. This takes time, and cannot be forced. Finally, the laws, morals and religious beliefs are dictates of those ‘above us’ and cannot easily be changed.
“Let them sleep on it. They may change their mind on their own.”
5. Get Them To Summarise What They Want
After you have given your reasons as to why you cannot respond instantly, ask them to summarise what they want to happen, perhaps as a text/dm/email. Say that you want the clarity, so that you can fully understand what they are after and why (all true).
Doing so will get them to drill down on the specific things they want, rather than focusing on their own emotionality.
In my experience, these kinds of interpersonal issues quickly devolve into fights over emotion and intention and tone and other unrelated things. The act of asking (or being asked) has caused the person with BPD to become emotionally volatile, and thus they will struggle to stay on topic and may get offended at unrelated things.
This all obscures the real issue and often leaves it unresolved.
By getting them to summarise what they want in written form, you can sidestep all of that mess and see the request for what it is, and decide accordingly.
6. Stop Caring So Much
It is tempting to want to get into the weeds on their emotionality. To break it all down, to get to the root of the problem and work it all out. To hold each other’s hand through the emotional turmoil, the hate and the misunderstandings.
But you need to stop caring so much. It is painful, but sometimes the best thing you can do is to take a step back from it all. Let them know you care about them, but don’t get so emotionally involved in every issue (trust me, there will be many more to come, all just as bad as this one).
Do this for your own sake. And for them as well. Train yourself to recognise the serious drama from the random fluctuations of mood. Save your energy for when it really matters.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a massive advocate of open and honest communication. The basis of all healthy relationships is trust and talking, but you also need to realise a couple of things:
Firstly, you have limited time and emotional energy. You can only spend so much time with any single person before life commitments arise, or you simply lose the capacity to connect.
Secondly, not all problems are created equal. When I feel emotionally charged, I feel like it’s the worst thing I have ever experienced.
It’s not.
Only after years of therapy and meditation, have I been able to differentiate as such.
Some of the best healing has come when my wife couldn’t support me through a crisis. By dealing with it on my own, I grew far more than if she had have simply solved it for me like usual.
7. Take Their Statements Literally
Tone, analogies, implications and hints. These are the tools of manipulators and often employed by people with BPD to get what they want without outright saying it. If they make you say it, if it is your idea, they are not to blame – or more specifically, they can blame you for it later.
I no longer play this game. I ask for and give direct communication. I talk straight and answer the question that is asked. If I am not sure, I ask for clarification.
I will not respond to hints or implications anymore.
This has the effect of getting the other person to specify exactly what they want or what they are trying to tell me. That way I know, and they know, that we are on the same page.
People with BPD are (at times at least) game players. I refuse to play.
This refusal means less drama later down the line as we both are speaking far more clearly than had I jumped at their hints and tone.
This is a hard skill to master, requiring lots of practice and confidence, but is very much worth doing.
8. Have A Hard Line
All people will push the limits of a relationship. People want your time, money, and resources. This is human nature. Unfortunately, if left unchecked, someone with BPD can end up monopolising you completely, only to drop you on the turn of a dime.
To manage this, I have hard lines. I know what I will do for and with someone, prior to them asking/taking from me.
This way I know that no matter what happens, no matter the force of their emotionality, I will be secure. If my line is about to get crossed, I will take action.
The alternative is a slippery slope into darkness, isolation and over reliability on one person – not ideal at all.
Setting a line is hard, keeping it is harder still. But it can and should be done. Wherever possible I will tell people my lines. Both with them, and with others. That way everyone knows where I stand and what will happen when people push too far.
This is a protection mechanism, one that I have found invaluable over the years. Enabling me to both stay internally safe, whilst still maintaining relationships.
9. End Toxic Relationships
All of this sounds like hard work, and to be honest it really is. But for the most part relationships with people with BPD are possible and extremely rewarding.
However there will be some relationships that you find toxic.
How do you know if you are in a toxic relationship?
- You dread seeing the other person
- You leave all/most interactions with them in a worse mental state
- You leave all/most interactions with them in a worse physical state
- They are abusive to you (physically, mentally, sexually)
- They take actions to undermine you
If you find yourself in a toxic relationship with anyone (BPD or not), end it. If you have tried all of the above, and its still not working, it may never work.
It is okay to let relationships go – even something as ‘sacred’ as marriage. You may feel shame at breaking up, or at wasting all that time, or because they were old school friends. But don’t let those feelings cause you to stay with someone that is causing you harm – ultimately you will only end up wasting more time, money and effort on a relationship that is doing nothing positive for you.
Good luck, and if you want to connect with me on this, please reach out and do so!
