what is it like to be in a relationship with a borderline personality
Dating can be hard to navigate, even when things are going well. But when the person you're dating at first seems like the love of a lifetime, deeply passionate and emotional, so flips a switch, you might detect yourself hurt and confused. This can chop-chop start taking a cost on you and those around you.
Why is this person acting this way? They seem to have two sides, and you're never sure which you'll be getting one day to the side by side. Merely y'all similar them and want to brand your relationship work. If this sounds familiar, that person might accept borderline personality disorder, also known every bit BPD. Here'due south what you need to know before deciding if you want to proceed dating them.
What is borderline personality disorder?
Borderline personality disorder, also known as BPD, is characterized past farthermost mood swings, a variable sense of identity, and reactive behaviors. Individuals who have borderline personality disorder can experience intense emotions and accept impulsive deportment. Every bit a result, they tend to experience turbulent relationships. It's estimated 1.4 percent of the population suffers from borderline personality disorder, and nigh 75 per centum of those diagnosed with the personality disorder are women.
Simply a licensed professional can diagnose deadline personality disorder. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there are 9 diagnostic criteria for a BPD diagnosis. They include:
- Desperate attempts to avoid abandonment, whether legitimate or imagined
- A design of unstable relationships that alternate between idealization and devaluation
- An unstable sense of self
- Impulsive behaviors in at least ii of the following categories: substance corruption, reckless driving, reckless spending, binge eating, sexual activity
- Repeated threats of self-harm and suicidal behavior
- Extreme mood swings
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Intense acrimony
- Dissociative feelings, or disconnecting from your sense of identity or body
Not every person with borderline personality disorder will exhibit all of these behaviors. Behaviors may also come and go depending on the triggers, making a clinical diagnosis difficult.
The good news is you don't need a mental wellness professional to tell you something'southward wrong in your relationship. However, if you suspect the person you're dating has deadline personality disorder, they're probably engaging in enough behaviors to give you lot pause. Which ways it's time to ask yourself whether you want to stay with this person or cease the human relationship.
In that location are numerous misconceptions surrounding borderline personality disorder.
There'south a stereotype that those with deadline personality disorder are bad people or abusive. While this can be the case, it isn't always. Borderline personality disorder is a mental illness, and people who suffer from it can be, and often are, kindhearted and loving.
While the origin of borderline personality disorder is non fully known or understood, experts speculate it arises from a combination of genetic, environmental, and cognitive factors. There'due south no gene linked to borderline personality disorder, but shut family members have an increased risk of developing borderline personality disorder.
Childhood trauma, such every bit sexual or physical abuse and fail from parents, can as well put individuals at an increased gamble of developing borderline personality disorder. Furthermore, there may exist a neurological factor involved in deadline personality disorder, as sufferers lack the power to regulate their emotions, a task performed by parts of the brain.
Another common misconception is that deadline personality disorder is permanent. Although BPD is a personality disorder, it's treatable; those diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and treated can go into remission and no longer exhibit the symptoms that would lead to a clinical diagnosis in the first identify.
According to Virginia Gilbert, a Los Angeles-based therapist specializing in high-conflict divorce, intimate partner betrayal, and beloved addiction, "Many people believe that borderline personality disorder is an intractable disorder. But that's more truthful of egotistic personality disorder."
The reason? "People with NPD, says Gilbert, "tend to make other people miserable, while people with BPD make themselves miserable."
Gilbert goes on to say that "often, every bit they age, those with BPD get tired of weathering drama and gain enough self-awareness to realize the anarchy is of their ain making. Once they proceeds the motivation to change, they can apply the energy formerly reserved for chaos to personal growth."
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) tin facilitate this outcome. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which is more about processing feelings, Gilbert explains that DBT is a mix of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness.
DBT targets the thought processes and behaviors mutual to a person with deadline personality disorder. The treatment works to change such patterns while also addressing their underlying causes. In addition, Gilbert says 12-stride programs can be helpful because of the structure they provide.
And then what does all of this hateful? Contrary to popular belief, information technology's possible to enter into a good for you long-term relationship with someone who has borderline personality disorder, and while challenging, it can exist worthwhile and rewarding.
Deadline personality disorder tin bear upon relationships.
Those with borderline personality disorder are typically involved in many short-term relationships. Co-ordinate to Gilbert, "They're highly emotionally reactive and have difficulty setting appropriate boundaries, then partners often feel they're walking on eggshells and go preoccupied with trying to manage the individual's feelings for them to prevent outbursts."
These relationships end because the person'due south behaviors become too much for the other person to handle. "Relationships with an untreated BPD individual can feel exhausting, a never-ending process of putting out fires," says Gilbert.
Sometimes those with BPD are aware of how their symptoms can be destructive to relationships. This agreement can cause the partner with BPD to go out a relationship out of fear their partner will leave them first.
"People with BPD," says Gilbert, "typically take suffered attachment trauma in their early years, and they recreate the feel of insecure attachment in later relationships. They crave closeness merely have difficulty tolerating it, leading to the 'I hate you, don't leave' miracle."
Still, a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder doesn't need to exist the death knell for all relationships — present or future. Equally discussed before, with proper treatment and a strong support organisation, including a devoted partner, individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder tin can piece of work to change the mental processes that cause them to appoint in harmful behaviors. Simply there'south no guarantee of success.
What'south the all-time way to suspension upwards with a partner who has deadline personality disorder?
A major motivating factor for individuals with BPD is an intense fear of abandonment, whether real or perceived. Understandably, someone with borderline personality disorder might consider a breakup abandonment. This perception tin evoke explosive emotional reactions from them. Those reactions can exist both self-destructive equally well as directed toward the person initiating the breakdown.
Your instinct might be to answer similarly. However, reacting volition generally only bring most more pain, prolong the breakup, and encourage more negative behavior.
Gilbert'due south advice is to exist "gentle, nonetheless business firm." She says, "Don't go defensive and over-explicate your decision to leave; brand it simple. And don't lay blame on them since that will invite more drama. Instead, say that it hasn't been possible to accept a healthy, stable connection, and yous're catastrophe the relationship, so both of you take the opportunity to find what you want."
Gilbert advises limiting interactions during the breakdown, keeping whatsoever necessary communications concise and free of emotion. If your ex becomes angry or reactive, don't give them the attention they seek. Instead, set firm limits to the amount of communication between you both. Get "no contact" if you have to.
"Going 'no contact,'" Gilbert says, "volition proceed you from getting seduced by promises of change and reuniting. Make the breakup for good."
Dating someone with borderline personality disorder can potentially impact kid custody if you lot're divorced.
If you do decide to engagement (or go along dating) someone who has deadline personality disorder, continue in mind that if they're not in remission, their behaviors tin create an unhealthy surroundings for not just yous only besides your children. In add-on, depending on how much of an upheaval this person creates in your household, it could potentially threaten the existing child custody arrangement yous take with your ex.
According to Elise Buie, a family lawyer and guardian ad litem from Seattle, the all-or-cipher thinking typical of those with BPD can wreak havoc on your life and the lives of everyone around you. "Either you lot're with them or confronting them, and if they turn on you, beware. They'll seek to destroy you and your family at all cost."
Buie goes on to say that "such all or nothing vindictive thinking does not bode well in an already stressful, child custody state of affairs."
As for moms and dads engaged in salubrious co-parenting? Not even they, says Buie, will be immune to the firestorm that tin come from a spouse dating a person with BPD. "When a parent believes their child is in harm'south way due to the presence of an outsider in their child's life, they'll normally do everything in their power to keep their child abroad from that person. That could involve going to courtroom to keep the other parent away."
Buie suggests parents enquire themselves whether "dating this person is worth jeopardizing the time you accept with your child and their wellbeing." Mostly, Buie says, information technology isn't.
One last give-and-take…
Everyone has a threshold for what they're willing to deport in a relationship, and it's important to sympathize yours. A relationship is supposed to enhance the quality of your life. If it's not, there's no shame in walking abroad to find one that does. The all-time way to care for someone else is get-go to demonstrate that you care for yourself.
More than from Marin:
- Dating and Fitness: How Tackling Pandemic Weight Proceeds Can Improve Your Honey Life in Unexpected Means
- 9 Tell-Tale Signs You lot're Dating a Narcissist
- Can Men and Women Be Just Friends? How To Handle Opposite-Sex activity Friends in a Relationship
Cassie Zampa-Keim is a nationally known matchmaker, relationship motorcoach, and online dating strategist based in Marin County, C.A. For more three decades, Cassie has helped thousands of clients find satisfying relationships and love. Cassie has been happily married to her husband, Mike, for over twenty years. Together they share two daughters, Kaylie (xx) and Lauren (17), a son, Evan (xiii), one dog, a bunny, and lots of laughs.
Source: https://marinmagazine.com/community/relationships/what-you-should-know-about-dating-someone-with-borderline-personality-disorder/
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