What is best for you to do if you are in a relationship with someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and you are coming to the conclusion the relationship isn’t working? What do you do if you want to end the relationship? Do you need to institute no contact or is there another way? What is kind and what isn’t kind in this circumstance often experienced as a dilemma for relationship partner of someone with BPD – the non borderline?
Borderline Personality – Enabling Versus Helping
The difference between enabling and helping someone is often one that is blurred in Borderline Personality Disorder. It is blurred by both those diagnosed with BPD and family members, loved ones, relationship partners (ex’s) – non borderlines of those who have BPD.
Family Members Relationship Partners (Ex’s) – The Painful Paradox on the Other Side of Borderline Personality
For anyone who is a family member, relationship or ex-relationship partner of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (often referred to as non borderlines) there is a central painful paradox that is a common experience.
The Borderline Dance & The Non Borderline Quagmire
There is a central truth about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It is a truth that is all-too real and painful for both those diagnosed with BPD and those who are family members, relationship partners (ex – relationship partners) children or parents or friends of those with BPD (non borderlines).
Borderline Personality Disorder creates layered situations from which extrication is very difficult. This is true for the borderline or the non borderline.
There is a dance that takes place between those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder(borderlines) and those who try to relate to them (non borderlines). It is painful. The reality of Borderline Personality Disorder in a loved one, partner, family member, or friend, sets up a toxic and painful quagmire for the non borderline.
Borderline Personality Disorder and Relationships
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) puts a tremendous strain on even the best or closest relationships. Whether you have a partner – husband or wife, a girlfriend/boyfriend, friends or even a family member with BPD – any or all relationships can be very strained, if not lost, if those who have BPD do not work to heal much of the aspects of how the BPD traits affect them and the ways that they relate to others.
In my experience, when I had BPD, the most profound area of life that was affected by BPD was that of relationships. In my experience with BPD, that was the case right from my relationship to and with myself, to the relationships within my family of origin, friendships and romantic relationships. All were drastically affected by the way in which BPD had manifested itself in me.
A.J.’s Memoir About Her Life with BPD and Recovery From BPD
My Up-coming Memoir about My Life with Borderline Personality Disorder and my Recovery From It I am currently writing a memoir about my recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. In this memoir I will be sharing relevant experiences from my life,
Awareness of The Core Wound of Abandonment Will Change Your Life
It is the core wound of abandonment in those who have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) that is the source of insecure or non-existent attachment that leads to the toxic and unhealthy ruptured relationships that have at their centre emotional enmeshment and an insatiable need for love. These broken relationships, often rupture under the weight of the child-like behaviour and needs of the borderline still searching for the much-needed unconditional acceptance, validation and love of a parent as the result of unmet early childhood developmental needs.
Why Do Borderlines Often Discuss Their Troubled Pasts Repeatedly?
Those with Borderline Personality Disorder – especially if they aren’t getting treatment – not only often discuss their troubled pasts but they are re-living them more often than not. Troubled aspects of the borderline’s past are triggered in many ways but most commonly and most often through attempts to relate to others. This is the primary basis of so much of the behaviour (and often abuse) that family members or relationships partners of those with BPD (non borderlines) see and often have imposed upon them.
The Legacy of Toxic Relationships
It is in and through the dynamic of toxic unhealthy relating and relationships that The Personality Disordered and The Non Personality Disordered Interconnect and Suffer
Toxic relationships seem to be pervasive to the point where healthy relationships are in the minority. Toxic relationships are proliferating and have been doing so for the better part of the last few decades.
Toxic relationships are the coming together of adults, who carry wounded children deep inside of them, and who were raised in dysfunctional families that by their very nature are also toxic.
Toxic relationships are battle-grounds mistaken for what is thought of as “love” in which the personality-disordered and the non-personality disordered come together, intersect, interconnect and increase each other’s pain and suffering no matter how hard they try to make things work. (sometimes both parties in a toxic relationship are in fact personality-disordered)
Narcissism, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Borderline Personality
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is part of a wider continuum of narcissism not the sum total of it all. NPD is not the sole domain of narcissism. Narcissism, to varying degrees, is also a part of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Narcissism is a primitive defense mechanism common to both personality disorders though not manifested exactly the same and not serving the exact same purpose always. Narcissism in BPD is not as extreme as it is in NPD. However, that distinction made there are many people who are diagnosed with both personality disorders. Both NPD and BPD can co-exist within an individual.
Finding Hope From The Polarized Reality Of BPD
In this program A.J. Mahari talks about how those with Borderline Personality Disorder can find hope from her own experience as someone who had BPD and has recovered. Mahari knows what it is like to fight the battle of borderline negativity to find her way to the hope that helped her to go on and recover.
Facing the Facts On The Other Side of Borderline Personality Disorder – Nons
Facing the Facts of Borderline Personality Disorder – On The Other Side of BPD – For Loved Ones and Family Members of those With BPD Audio Program by A.J. Mahari examines 10 Central Key Facts about Borderline Personality Disorder that every “non borderline” will benefit from a greater understanding about.
Relationships: The Borderline Dance of I-Hate-You-Don’t-Leave-Me
“I hate you, don’t leave me” is a borderline mantra. It is a theme driven by a lack of known true self and primitive fear and anxiety generated by profound intrapsychic wounds in early developmental years by those later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This dance or dynamic of pathological regressed relating on the part of those with BPD is the root cause of so much pain for those with BPD and those who love and care about them in relationships. It is a central causative reality as to why so many relationships fail.
