Being in a Relationship with Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder!

Being in a Relationship with Someone with BPD;

If you’re in a relationship with someone with Borderline Personality, you know your life can be dictated by the push/pull, and the ups and downs of this disorder. How do you maintain your own mental health if you choose to stay in that relationship? The truth is that being in relationship with a borderline is very hard and choosing to stay needs to be a flexible decision so that if the behavior becomes abusive, you know that there are limits to what you will tolerate. In the meantime; Here are some insights and strategies.

Are they in therapy? If not, this will be a hard slog and you may want to set a boundary that you will only stay in this relationship if they get in and stay in therapy.
Are you getting the support you need? This will challenge the very core of your stability; do you have the support you need?
Insights; these will help you put some rationale into the irrational. First; the primary driving force is the fear of abandonment. If you look at every conflictual interaction, you can probably trace it to some fearful reaction to some perceived or real sense of abandonment. If it is real, you can address it directly; if it perceived, you can challenge it directly. When you put this as your understanding and focus, you start to speak the same language and stop going in circles with nonsensical arguments.
Whatever the emotion, does not ever justify abusive language, attitudes, or actions. People with BPD are prone to justifying their actions through their pain and when an empathic person understands their pain, and the fear of abandonment, it often leads to giving the person a pass on their abusive behavior. This is honestly the worst thing you can do; for them and yourself. When you enable their behavior, they will not learn to check, filter, modulate their emotions, and moderate their actions. They will usually even escalate their abusive language and behavior over time as they feel more and more entitled to their acting out when they feel upset. It’s critical to give them the message that you understand and empathize with their feelings AND you do not accept abuse in any form in your relationship. If they cannot commit to non-abusive communications and actions, you need to disconnect for you own mental health.
Boundaries are the most important skill you can develop. These are fueled by the above commitment to not accept abusive behavior, and they become the broken record to assert that conversations and conflicts will remain civil and sane. If you think of your intensity level on a 1-10 scale with 1 being very calm, and 10 being screaming abusiveness, it’s important that each of you keep tabs on your level number throughout a conflict. Nothing good happens between 5 and 10 so if either of you gets into that zone, either one of you can call a time out, take some time, calm down, and come back and talk when you’re both in a calmer state. The person with BPD will be upset by this as it’s the very abandonment they fear, but this alone can help them re-train themselves to calm and stay focused rather than going off the rails when starting to get upset. If you disengage when they escalate, they will learn to self-calm before you disengage. If they escalate to violence, that’s another of those signals this is not going to work, and you need to move on.
Time apart/time for yourself. This again, will be a trigger for the person with BPD and their natural desire will be to isolate you with themselves. It’s critical for your own mental health and their growth, that you don’t go along with this. You need time on your own and with friends, and they need to learn to be on their own and with other friends too. The pressure and manipulations will likely start to ramp up with whining all the way to fury and threatening to end the relationship. Stay the course with what’s healthy and not what keeps the peace. Part of the borderline’s manipulation strategy is to make life so difficult when you’re not doing what they want, that they gradually train you not to make waves, not to want anything that might make them uncomfortable, and thus to become their perfect placator. This is unhealthy for you and for the borderline. Again, you will become mentally exhausted, and they will be enabled not to grow.
Talk directly and honestly about the borderline behavior when it occurs. Again, do not become a placator. That means; ‘I can see that you’re triggered by me wanting to go play racquetball with the guys, and I understand that you’re fearful; but there’s nothing to worry about, and I’m going to be back in a few hours.’ Or ‘ you’ve been in a rage since I talked on the phone with my old friend, and I don’t appreciate being treated this way. I did nothing wrong and I’m going to go for a walk. I hope you can calm down before I get back.’ Or ‘I’m not going to stay here and be verbally abused; I’m leaving unless you stop now.’

Ultimately you both can find a healthy relationship if you both work at it. For you it’s about self awareness, self care, and being careful not to become a placater or enabler.