If you’re suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) you will usually experience your life as challenging, and your romantic relationships as intense, conflicted and not very stable. The effects of BPD can have a huge impact on your relationship. It can be painful and extremely difficult for you and your partner to work out how to be close, as you can have a longing for intimacy and at the same time a concern about being dependent and being rejected.
The thought process can be something like, “I want to be close but getting close feels risky, even dangerous”, so you can desperately want and ask for attention, and the next minute, feel like your partner is being too intrusive.
This mix of fear about closeness and lack of closeness can be very confusing and painful for your partner, as he/she is left feeling as though he/she doesn’t know how to please you and doesn’t know how to get it right for you.
Do I or does my partner have Borderline Personality Disorder?
Labels and diagnosis can be tricky and should always be tentative, when doing your own research. Sometimes, though, it can be helpful to have something to hang onto to know why you or your partner may be having mood swings and finding it difficult to cope when triggered in your relationship.
We all suffer from having trouble regulating emotions at times; however, if you know that this has been ongoing for you or your partner, it might be helpful to know more about this label and understand how you can improve the way you react to your partner if you suffer from BPD, or how to respond effectively if you think your partner may have traits of BPD.
12 signs of borderline personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder symptoms vary from person to person, but here are the common symptoms:
- Having an unstable sense of self (how you feel about yourself can vary enormously)
- Feeling isolated and empty
- Intense, highly changeable moods that can last for a few hours or several days
- Strong feelings of anxiety, worry and depression
- Recurring suicidal thoughts or behaviours
- Impulsive, risky, self-destructive and dangerous behaviours, including reckless driving, drug or alcohol abuse and having unsafe sex
- A difficulty feeling empathy for others
- Extremes between idealizing and devaluing those you are close to
- Difficulty controlling anger and temper towards people
- A persistent fear of being abandoned and rejected, including extreme emotional reactions to real and perceived abandonment
- A history of unstable relationships that can change drastically from intense love and idealization to intense hate
- Career plans, goals and aspirations that continually change
Many people experience one or more of these symptoms regularly, but a person with borderline personality disorder will experience many of the symptoms consistently throughout adulthood.
Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder
While the causes are not yet clear, research suggests that genetic factors and adverse life events seem to interact and lead to BPD. Those with BPD talk about experiencing many negative events during childhood. They typically experience primal fears such as rejection and abandonment.
Many of the behaviours of BPD overlap with individuals who, as children, experience caregivers as both a source of safety and a source of violation, and therefore as adults, develop a fearful-avoidant attachment style leaving them cautious of close relationships.
As Sue Johnson explains, such individuals have experienced being left in an impossible, paradoxical position and are now still caught in the mode of “Come here, I so need you but go away, I can’t trust you.”
BPD individuals feel threat towards love and safety
We all seek love and safety; in BPD, threats trigger coping that may look manipulative but reflects survival needs.
As one individual with BDP expressed, “My days and thoughts are not consumed by plans of how to push which button in whom. My actions are about survival and preserving my identity; they are not some pre-planned sporting activity”.
So much of the criteria for BPD fits with the dynamics of a couple where one or both individuals have experienced negative rearing environments as a child, with unpredictable outbursts of anger and demands for attention, while at the same time feeling smothered, as well as a profound sense of being unlovable.
If compared with narcissism, those with BPD have underlying emotional instability and fear of abandonment, as opposed to the grandiose self-image and lack of empathy observed in covert narcissism.
Borderline Personality Disorder is easily triggered
If caregivers were both safe and scary, adult trust is hard; with BPD, the stress tolerance window is narrower.
What it feels like to be a partner to a person with borderline personality disorder
For your partner it can be very confusing to know what has caused your distress and how best to respond, often feeling blindsided by your reactions. If you have BPD you will often resort to a range of behaviours to protect yourself like verbal abuse, perceived manipulation, and shutting down, all of which can shatter trust and intimacy within your relationship.
Your partner can then begin to feel unsafe, and no longer confident his or her deep feelings and innermost thoughts will be treated with love, concern and care. He or she will often walk on eggshells and hold back for fear of triggering you.
And if you swing between trying to cling to the relationship and then threatening to break up, this puts further stress on your partner and strain on your relationship.
What to do if your relationship might be affected by BPD
A diagnosis can help treatment but avoid rushing to label; consider the person’s life, care, and support.
When someone says that they or their partner suffers from BDP (whether they have certain traits or have been diagnosed) the most important factor to keep in mind is that it is potentially scary for them to be in close relationships, just like it can be as scary for anyone to not have their relationship.
As one individual diagnosed with BDP said, “When I was diagnosed, I think for me it gave me a sense of hope that I would get better. Unfortunately for me I shared my diagnosis with my ex and then everything went downhill from there because then everything that had been negative in our relationship was my fault.”
Rather than fixate on diagnosis, remember both partners share responsibility and must work on problems together.
How Couples Counselling can help borderline personality disorder
Navigating closeness and distance in BPD relationships
Finding the balance between closeness and distance tends to be tricky in most relationships; however, it can be extremely hard when someone with BDP interprets their partner’s signals differently than they intended, to know how to respond to their partner’s (potentially over-the-top) reactions.
Noticing and regulating emotional surges
Emotional outbursts happen; notice them and seek support to regulate, responding instead of reacting to protect closeness.
Making sense of disconnection
Moments of disconnection are confusing; many struggle to know how to respond.
Learning co regulation in counselling
During relationship counselling sessions, we show you how to co-regulate with each other by identifying what triggers lead you to conflict and distance, how you are being perceived by each other, what your partner is truly longing for, and how you can appropriately meet each other’s needs.
Building safety through couples therapy
Couples therapy can help couples to slow down and listen and understand their own feelings and needs, as well as the feelings and needs of their partner. With support and understanding, partners reduce tension and fear, building safety and closeness.
Evidence based treatments for BPD
Beyond couples therapy, effective BPD treatments include DBT, ACT, TIST, and Schema Therapy.
What DBT teaches
DBT was developed by Dr Marsha Linehan who experienced her own struggle with BPD and is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy that relates a person’s thinking to their behaviour. There are four main skills taught in DBT, including core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. The self- soothing focus of DBT has intuitive appeal for sufferers and therapists alike.
Hope and recovery with consistent therapy
If Borderline Personality Disorder traits are impacting your relationship, you do not have to manage it alone. With the right support, it is possible to reduce conflict, improve emotional safety, and rebuild trust and connection.
At The Hart Centre, our therapists can support you with relationship counselling and couples therapy to help you understand your triggers, communicate more clearly, and learn practical ways to co regulate during emotional surges. We can also support individuals with evidence based therapies such as DBT informed approaches, ACT, Schema Therapy and related interventions.
We work with clients across Australia, with dedicated services in major cities including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Adelaide offering support both in-person and online.
Resources
1Agrawal, H, Gunderson, J. Holmes, B & Lyons-Ruth, K. Attachment Studies with Borderline Patients: A Review. Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2004; 12(2): 94–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10673220490447218
7Borderline personality disorder. National Institute of Mental Health. (December, 2017).
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/borderline-personality-disorder/index.shtml
2Johnson,S. (2009). Attachment Theory and Emotionally Focused Therapy for Individuals and Couples, Perfect Partners. In Obegi, J. & Berant,E. (Eds.) Attachment Theory and Research in Clinical Work with Adults. (pp. 410-433). Guilford Press. http://www.creatingconnections.nl/assets/files/Sue%20Johnson%20ObegiCh16.pdf.
3Leichsenring, F., Leibing, E., Kruse, J., New, A. & Leweke, F. Borderline personality disorder. www.thelancet.com Vol 377 January 1, 2011.
4Mason, T., & Kreger, R. (2010). Stop walking on eggshells, Taking your life back when someone you care about has borderline personality disorder. New Harbinger Publications.
5Ratner, R. (Director), Troemel, P., Sandieh, S., Gabrosek, A. & Ratner,R. (Producers). (2019). Borderline (a film). [Video recording]. Studio Comma. https://borderlinethefilm.com.
6Salters-Pedneault, K. Romantic Relationships Involving People With BPD. Very Well Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-romantic-bpd-relationships-425217
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