Partners of BPD – Ex’s and/or On And Off Again – Why?

Life Coach, BPD and BPD Loved Ones Coach, and Author, A.J. Mahari works with loved ones and those with Borderline Personality and has been since 1997. In all of the sessions she’s had with Loved Ones of BPD – siblings, other family members, parents, adult child of BPD, friends, partners, ex’s, or on-and-off-again partners and then Ex’s as well as a high percentage of non borderlines who have developed patterns (known or subconsciously) of a series of relationships with people with Borderline Personality. A.J. Mahari has become a leading expert in helping people to break free from the BPD maze and understand what they need to address in their own lives in order to stop trying to rescue. In order to stop trying to change the person/partner/relative with BPD and to gain more awareness into what is blocking their emotional detachment and healthy disengagement in any reactivity or invalidation or in many cases low or no contact and moving on.

The why of so many people staying caught up in the BPD maze is multi-layered. Each individual who is or has been in any form of relationship with someone with (especially untreated) BPD needs to ask themselves more about why they are where they are and why they stay. What are the obstacles to letting go? What is the fear? This and so much more is what I help my BPD loved one clients explore and work through.

So many people, on the other side of BPD – who do not have BPD – do certainly get enmeshed with a partner (on-again-off-again Ex then partner again) and because this is so painful and confusing an incredible amount of focus is put on the person with BPD. This means that loved ones begin in a myriad of ways to lose themselves often. This happens because they literally get addicted to the chaos and drama that has swept them up into the whirlwind chaotic and very intense and often codependent “relational world” of those with BPD.

It is a painful way and place to live. So, you might wonder, why do people do it then? Or you might be reading this asking yourself, why do I do it then? The answers to these questions take time to identify and to understand. Change is painful, no matter how much it is needed. For many, not all, but the vast majority of those loved ones or family members of someone with BPD who get into these toxic relational dynamics and toxic relationships with people with BPD where in patterned ways (in a lot of cases) break-ups only to make-up happen like clockwork, in a very cyclical way to where it gets absolutely predictible for the loved one.

There will always be, in the getting back together and trying again, another honeymoon phase. It may last a while or be very short-lived. In each and every cyclical honeymoon idealized by the person with BPD the loved one will, at some point, be jolted back to the old, known, painful, toxic and roller-coaster dynamics that led to a beak-up – or multiple past break-ups -in the first place.

One central question, among countless ones, that I help people to answer is what they are trying to avoid that is not resolved from their own childhoods or what they are trying to avoid for other reasons that keeps them making the same choices over and over and hoping in what becomes more of an illusion that things will change and that “if-only” their borderline would get help and change all would be well. This can happen but for most it doesn’t happen. People with BPD may go on to get therapy in the future but who you are going around in circles with is who you are involved with. You can’t wait or hope or try to rescue a borderline out of BPD while you continue to suffer and live the way you do causing yourself more pain than you realize and perhaps in all the confusion just left wondering why it all feels “so crazy-making” and why it all hurts so badly.

I help loved ones and relatives, in my Coaching process, to understand and to work toward what many must choose – letting go, facing their own issues, and creating healthy change in their lives by working on themselves and becoming more aware of what they are not doing well for themselves that keeps them stuck in the on-again, off-again, cycle that so many of these toxic relationships take. When will you decide, if your partner, or on-again, off-again BPD Ex, has had enough time to get to and really do the work in therapy before you will find the willingness and radical acceptance to break through your own denial?

The why people are in these types of relationships, rescuing, enmeshed, enabling, codependent and toxic with people with BPD is because they have some issues (as all people do to one degree or another) that need to be faced, addressed, and resolved in order to unhook from what feels so compelling but really isn’t healthy for you.

No one should have to live the way that people with BPD (whether they realize it or not) who have not sought treatment, won’t admit to or don’t know they have BPD, or who go to therapy but really never quite get to the work and commitment to the process of recovery required to change, become healthier and recover. False hope is what is at the heart of so much of the suffering of BPD Loved Ones. So many fear letting go for so many different reasons. This in and of itself is a profound obstacle to your happiness and your own recovery. BPD Loved ones do need their own recovery and that is what my Life Coaching with thousands of BPD Loved Ones has helped many to do, let go, heal, reclaim themselves, understand the how and why they got onto this painful merri-go-round and how to get off it and why you need to.

I have also written Ebooks, and written and narrated Audios to help people in their understanding and awakening and many of my clients have told me that my videos and Ebooks and Audio Programs helps them to realize that I can help them once they are ready to change and face the inevitable pain that change involves. Pain that is so healing and worth the resolving to free yourself from toxic relational patterns.

And this process of change and letting go, whether that letting go is going no contact or more of an emotional detachment is a process, does take time, and people need to learn new skills, boundaries, ways of communicating and much more in order to effectively make healthier shifts in their lives emotionally and to find freedom from from chaotic stress and intense relating that really isn’t about healthy love.

Partners of BPD – Ex’s and/or On And Off Again – Why?