To love someone with Borderline Personality Disorder is to be in the midst of a beautiful and terrifying weather system. One moment, the sun is shining so brightly you feel thoroughly warmed and held, absolutely seen. One minute, everything is fine; the next, heavy clouds come in with zero warning and an unexpected, violent emotional hurricane rips at the entire base. This disorder would be mapped in human psychology as extreme difficulty in managing emotions. But, on a purely human level, it is the experience of cohabiting with a heart that experiences everything at maximum volume.
When you link your life to another person who is grappling with this condition, you are signing up for an incredibly complicated process. It is a journey of fiery love, devastating miscommunication, and incredible growth. Society often stigmatizes Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), portraying those who have it as manipulative, or that they are too difficult to love. In order to genuinely assist someone who is shouldering this psychological burden, we need to see beyond the clinical labels. We come to understand both what their often-exhaustive storm, the incredible depths of passion, and a genuine possibility for securing a stable seat can be, and how to truly love them well.
The Downings: Dealing with the Emotional Storms
The most exhausting element of loving a person with this (or any) condition is the sheer, unexpurgated unpredictability of their emotional pivots. Most people have a mental armor protecting them from the minor scratches of life. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in particular is an example of this complete absence of protective skin. Its every emotional sensation feels like a fraying nerve hitting free air. A late text message, a distracted look, a shift in your tone of voice all can cause a sudden wave of anxiety or set off such a huge overwhelming wave of panic.
Their brain frequently misreads these little details as solid evidence that abandonment is coming. This crazy primal fear of being left behind puts them in total survival mode. They may angrily lash out, or try to push you away all the way; they may completely freeze. They do so to insulate themselves from the heartache they know is coming.
“The feeling that breaks your heart could be the same one that mends it.” — Nicholas Sparks
This fear often causes a psychological defense mechanism called “splitting.” Splitting is failing to be able to have contradictory thoughts or feelings about someone at the same moment. It demands the brain to perceive the world in stark black and white. You are either wholly flawless or wholly broken. You could be put on a pedestal that is perfect pearly white on Tuesday and hailed as the greatest partner in the universe. By Thursday, a slight argument could turn you into a cruel, unfeeling enemy.
Going on this emotional rollercoaster conveys a huge burden onto your own mental wellbeing. You live your life tiptoeing around the minefield of carefully chosen words that can land you in hot water at a moment’s notice. You will do everything to avoid setting off the next storm, but you end up feeling worn out, on edge and universally misunderstood.
Reality Check: Their anger or withdrawal during an episode has almost nothing to do with you. It is a mirror of their own internal terror. They are battling an unseen war within their own head. You’ve got to learn how to separate the person you love from the panic that momentarily seizes them.
The Good News: Being Loved in High Definition
It is so easy then to get drawn into just the thrashing winds. But doing so they completely miss out on the magnificent, breathtaking landscape of their mind. Loving someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, you get to experience human connection in high definition. Their ability to experience joy, passion and empathy is simply incredible because they don’t have hard-edged emotional filters.
They care with an intensity that is unmatched. When they do tune in to your emotional state, though, it’s with a deep, almost psychic sense of intuition. They see when you are hurting silently, even if you aim to disguise it with a brave smile. They have an uncanny skill to catch the vibe in a given room. They are also some of the most empathetic and compassionate people you will meet, because they know the exact level of heart-wrenching emotional agony.
Moreover, their passionate emotional current often energizes brilliant creativity. They engage with art, music and nature with a raw, vibrating delight that makes the universe seem breathlessly alive. When they feel safe and bonded to you, they will defend your dreams, rejoice in your successes, and protect your honor from the worst of humanity with a fervor that most people could only dream of earning.
Reality Check: No matter how beautifully intense their love, good boundaries remain important. But you can understand their passion and empathy while also not accepting the destruction they chose to wreak.” True mental wellness must come from a balance of both.”
The Options: Let’s Build a Solid Bridge
It is absolutely possible to foster a healthy, sustainable relationship with someone who has this disorder. It just takes a different set of tools than a regular relationship. This connection is built on a specific, powerful communication skill: validation.
It does not mean you agree with their erroneous facts when validating their emotions. It just means you recognize the reality of their pain. If they accuse you of trying to abandon them when you took an hour away to read a book, don’t it argue with them about the book because it will just panic #13. Instead, you address the underlying emotion directly. You say, “It makes total sense that you’re feeling scared right now. I know how much it hurts when you are out of touch with me. I’m read-ing, but I am not going anywhere.” This small change halts argument and soothes their nervous system, which is in a state of panic.
“There is a space between stimulus and response. And between those two is our power to choose our response.” — Viktor E. Frankl
It is also essential to encourage professional support. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is the gold standard for DBT. It trains the brain to tolerate depths of distress, regulate extreme emotions and express needs safely. You can’t be their therapist, but you can become their safest, most consistent cheerleader as they do the heavy lifting of rewiring their own mind.
Guarding Your Own Mental Wellness
You cannot serve calm water from a completely empty cup. It’s also a very high-risk position for caregiver burnout supporting a partner with intense emotional needs. You may begin slow and steady erasure of your own hobbies, decrease in your social circle and neglect your own basic needs as you attempt to keep the peace.
Mental wellness requires you to have a strong, independent sense of self outside the relationship. You have to create quiet, fully predictable places for yourself to rest. You need friendships in which you don’t have to jigger anyone else’s feelings. It really matters, get yourself into therapy.” You need a sanctuary to acknowledge your own weariness, hold clear lines in the sand, learn how to forever depart with full-bodied compassion when a tempest is just too perilous in which to reside.
Setting a boundary isn’t an act of cruelty, it’s an act of great love. When you say to your partner, “As much as I love you, I am not going to engage in an argument with you while my process is you yelling at me so what I am going to do is go out of the room for twenty minutes,” what you are doing is creating a very predictable structure. A brain so afraid of chaos may as well be a brain that needs clear, consistent and calm limits more than ever.
Choosing the Journey
Caring for someone with Borderline Personality Disorder is never a nonchalant, simple walk in the park. It is an enormous, incredibly difficult ascent up a really steep mountain. There will be nights when the winds howl, and you wonder if you have what it takes to take another step.
But by the time that storm passes, you will be left standing in some form of life and a place of incredible depth and profound emotional intimacy. You will discover so much more patience and forgiveness, and how much the human heart can contain than you ever thought possible. Be very compassionate with their pain, but fierce with your peace. When you establish a foundation of strong boundaries, authentic validation and a commitment to your mental health, you can develop a beautiful yet long-lasting connection that will endure virtually any storm.