Borderline Partners’ Survival Guide

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A while ago, I have come out of a relationship with a women with borderline personality disorder. It was both the most intense relationship and the most damaging breakup of my life, and while there is a vast amount of material on the Internet for partners of borderliners, much of it is walls of text. What you really need, especially in times when the situation is bad, is a short overview, a checklist of kinds. So I’m putting most of the text into collapsed sections that you can open and read if you care about the details.

Click on the titles or anything with an arrow beside it to expand/collapse that section.

Why You Need This

Borderline is a relationship disorder – those suffering from it have massive troubles forming and holding on to relationships, and even when they manage to, they will do massive damage to their relationships and their partners. They don’t mean to, but that’s how the disorder works.
Details and Sources

Early Relationship Advise

1. If you still can get out now! why ?
   That sounds harsh, but I am dead serious. Google your own picture of what partners go through and decide if you really want that for yourself. There’s a reason I call this post a survival guide.
   For a short, personal account, this one is specific to male borderliners, but much of it fits to women as well. Consider especially this section: “Even if your radar’s pretty sharp when it comes to men, and you think you’re exempt from falling for a borderline disordered male, think again. This guy seems so wonderful at first, you can hardly believe it! It’s like you’ve been wishing for this kind of connection forever, and now it’s finally here. But as this relationship progresses, you’ll feel increasingly frustrated, confused and tormented. That fantastically open guy you met keeps shutting you out, and you end up painfully longing and yearning for the way it was.”
2. Get professional help for both your partner and yourself. why ?
   You will not be able to go through this on your own. The disorder is stronger than love and commitment, because it erodes the foundations of both (trust). You will need help for yourself because the hypersensitivity of borderliners makes it easy for them to manipulate the emotions of other people around them, and they do so routinely, often without even being aware of it. And they can not stop doing it, even if they love you honestly, because what drives them is the stronger instinct – survival. The borderliner subjectively experiences many minor threats as death threats. When your very existance is at stake, anything is permitted. Borderliners routinely manipulate others to make them feel responsible. When you spend your time with a borderliner, make sure you have means of keeping your own self stable. Borderline partners experience a much higher rate of problems such as depressions compared to the population average.
3. Ask yourself the hard questions early on. What are you going to do if…
   …your partner tries to kill herself? what?
   low-lethality suicide attempts are common among borderliners, even for minor causes. In the case of “my” borderline ex-girlfriend, she being alone in her room when I had friends over and we were laughing and having fun was enough to trigger a suicide attempt. I’m not kidding. I wish I were.
   …s(he) succeeds in doing so? what?
   about 10% of borderlines commit suicide. Suicide rates in most western countries are around 0.02% so 10% is a really seriously fucking high number.
   …s(he) injures herself, destroys items or damages furniture or other stuff? what?
   this is so common amongst borderliners, professionals are surprised if they are entirely non-violent. This is not the violence of healthy people, either. Rather the borderliner experiences an internal pressure that needs relief, and often cutting her/himself or throwing things around is the only way they know. There are skill-trainings available that teach them to get rid of the pressure in other ways.
   …s(he) leaves you? what?
   the borderliener experiences emotions much more strongly than you do. A minor fight can be a breakup experience for her/him. Something you barely notice can feel like a major reaction on her/his part. And her (let’s stick with one, for readability, I’ll use “her” – substitute “his” if appropriate to your case) reactions are also more extreme. In my case, I often wondered why the many breakups she announced seemed to be her only way to resolve any fight.
   …are you willing to stand your ground, no matter what? what?
   borderliners are expert manipulators. All the effects you see in regular relationships are at work here, but much stronger and faster. For example, if you let her have her way with certain things because you think it’s not worth the fight, she will learn to use the same method on you again and again, in other contexts.
   Borderliners need rules and clear limits. You need to establish a few rules and stick to them religiously, even if you think you’re overdoing it. For me, it took the sentence: “If this happens again, I’ll kick you out right then and there and your friends can come get your stuff.” to make her stop going through my personal e-mails.

During the Relationship

1. Keep professional help ready. what?
   There will be times when you need a professional’s advise. There will be times when you doubt everything and aren’t sure of yourself anymore. There may be times when you get into a depression, or have your self-image damaged. Those are not the times to go looking for help, those are the times where you need a phone number on record that you can simply call and get help.
2. Stay out of the role of the culprit. what?
   Best put in this blog review of the book “I Hate You–Don’t Leave Me“: “A true borderliner continually plays the victim role. They have to be the victim of someone, something, constantly. As the partner of a borderliner, they will be the victim of you.”
   You can’t change what your borderline partner thinks of you. But do stay in control of what you think about yourself.
3. Get some basic knowledge about legal issues and dealing with the police. what?
   I can’t really sum that up better than DenBob here. There’s also the book “Love and Loathing”, summed up here – but I’ve not read that book, so I can’t recommend for or against it.
4. Define your boundaries and defend them like your life depends on it. what?
   It very well may. Borderliners will not respect your boundaries because their existential angst makes everything they do acceptable. After all, in their emotional experience, they fight for nothing less than their very existence.
5. Keep a (secret) journal of your interactions. what?
   This serves two purposes: One, it is for you because the intensity and swings in the relationship can make you doubt your own sanity. Having a written log of past interactions helps you get a better picture on what actually happened than your memory will. Your borderliner will twist the facts, and state her twisted version with absolute certainty. As a sane human, who would say he’s 99% sure of his version, you will lose against someone who is 100% convinced of their version. Being able to look it up can be your only way to keep your sanity. Two, in case things go badly, this will help you defend yourself against unfounded accusations.

Typical Borderline Behaviours

• If you get the feeling she is not listening to you – chances are you are right. what ?
  A borderline in a phase of anxiety will not register what you are saying. She has lost the ability to feel what is going on inside other people, her emotions are the only emotions in the world.
  So if you ever get the feeling that you are talking to a wall, and nothing you say matters, and she ignores you, and everything you say is countered by her saying something about herself instead of responding to what you said – chances are that whatever you said has about as much meaning to her as the roadside advertisement on your commute to work has to you – she may register it for a moment, but she does not relate to it, and the message is quickly lost in the next important (for her!) utterance of hers.
• You will never be at the “right” distance – she will always want you closer or further away than you currently are. what ?
  that is actually a central part of what makes up borderline, but it is especially true for partners. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be times when you snuggle on the couch and be perfectly happy. But a tiny event may dramatically change her desired distance.
  Also, many borderliners are obsessed with control. Controlling and manipulating others is one of the few ways they know to feel in charge of their world and not just a victim. You may find that any distance is just fine with her – as long as she is the one who sets the distance. If you try to, e.g. by asking for some space for yourself for a few days, all hell breaks loose.
• She will not fight fair. what ?
  borderliners are passive-aggressive. While they can appear nice and rational, never forget that they are internally driven by a fear of total destruction. This existential angst makes any and all means permissable. Unless you have been in a high-pressure life-threatening situation in your life, you are unlikely to relate to what’s going on inside of her, so from the outside, it appears as crazy as it is, but to her subconscious it makes perfect sense and she will rationalize it if challenged on her behaviour.
• She is not conscious of what she does. what ?
  Ok, honestly, she can be, at least partially. However, much of what makes up the borderline personality disorder lives beneath the conscious mind, and it takes therapy to even bring it up. Even then, in the particular situation, especially when it is an anxious or stressful one, she will use the incredible tools her subconscious mind has developed to survive, and she may or may not notice afterwards – borderliners are excellent at rationalizing.
• The disorder is stronger than you are. what ?
  You can not fight borderline and win. It is not an illness that you can drive out, it is a personality disorder that has become part of what your partner is. Cleaning that up takes much more effort and care than an illness. If she is unemployed, or has a broken leg, or a deadly disease, you can stand together against the problem. You can not stand together with someone who has borderline, they experience such existential angst that sooner or later, they stand on their own and consider anyone their enemy. You, their therapist, anyone. Not necessarily all at the same time, so you may experience phases in which she apparently allies with her therapist against you, or vice versa.

Late Diagnosis

There are high-functioning borderliners, who seem to be mostly normal, maybe a bit troubled but certainly not mentally ill – until something happens. This is them, not you! The disorder can hide for years. Even if you’ve been with your borderliner for years before they are diagnosed, everything I have written applies to them.
Details and Sources

Sex

Sex with a borderliner can blow your mind and you have good chances to experience some of the best sex ever. The price, however, is basically your soul and your happiness. Oh, also, it is unlikely to last.
Details and Sources

When Things Go Badly

• Expect the police at your door and have your defense ready. what ?
  Quite a few partners of borderliners apparently find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit or a police investigation for rape, violence or other made-up accusations when the relationship goes south. See above: She will not fight fair.
  One recommendation I have read multiple times is to have medical papers at hand explaining in short that she has issues and is being treated. Something you can hand the policemen when they show up. If you’re not married, chances are you won’t get such papers. See if you can find anything else. You don’t need to convince the police – they’re probably responding to an emergency call, they don’t care what your relationship issues are, they want to make sure that everything is ok. What you want to do is give yourself time and prevent them from cuffing you right then and there.
• If you are threatened with violence, or your borderline partner threatens to kill herself – call the police immediately. what ?
  This is the one time where you need to act to protect yourself and/or her, and do it right away. Do not underestimate this, do take it seriously. It really is simple: Would you rather call the police in  vain and say “sorry officers”, or have a serious injury or death on your consciousness?
• Expect your reputation to be ruined and take precautions. what ?
  Chances are good that she’ll tell all her friends and all your friends that you are a cheating, lying, abusive bastard. Or whatever else she comes up with. And she can be more convincing than you’d think possible. Remember, in her emotional world, she is fighting for survival!
  This one is difficult. Chances are you don’t want to hurt her by telling everyone ahead of time that she’s got a personality disorder. But, you absolutely must tell at least one or two people you can trust to not spread the news. And tell them in detail, with a few hints as to what could happen. These are the people who can stand by you when the shit hits the fan. People who have already been convinced that your irresponsible, selfish, evil actions ruined the relationship are less inclined to listen to your explanation. They may listen to theirs.
• Nothing in your home is safe or sacred. what ?
  If you have anything in a space that your borderline partner has access to that is irreplacable (valuable, unique or very personal), consider moving it to a safe place. Also, check your insurance. Yes, your borderline partner will damage and destroy your property if that’s what she thinks will help her calm her mind.
  Likewise, expect her to go through your e-mail, call history, browser history, the whole nine yards. If she fears that you may be leaving her (which she does a lot more quickly than a healthy woman would) she will suspect that you already have someone to replace her with, that’s a natural assumption for her. So she will go looking for evidence. And the conspiracy-theory self-validation will likely work for her: If she doesn’t find anything, that isn’t proof that she’s wrong, it is proof that you are hiding it deeper than she has looked – so far.

When It’s Over

• Put yourself together again. what ?
  It is very likely that your borderliner has damaged you more than you noticed, especially if the breakup was ugly. Get yourself a professional and have your mind checked out. I am serious. Depressions, a damaged sense of self, trust issues – basically, everything that the borderliner experiences she can manage to project into you. Make sure you get a diagnosis for borderline for yourself as well, just to be sure.
• Get certainty about what was and what wasn’t your fault. what ?
  Your borderline partner will try to put all the blame on you, or if she is smart, all the important blame, while keeping some token pseudo-guilt for herself so as to not tip off friends and relatives to the game she’s playing. Claims such as “you’ve destroyed my life” are par for the course for her.
  If the relationship had any duration worth mentioning, chances are that you have, in fact, made mistakes. The best you can do for yourself is clarity – realize what you did wrong, without shaming yourself. Mistakes are normal, we all make them. The important part about realizing your mistakes is that you become less susceptible to feeling responsible for things that weren’t your fault.
• Be ready for the rebound. what ?
  Chances are above average that your borderline ex-partner will come back. She has a big empty spot inside of her. For a time, she filled that hole with you, then she filled it with fights against you, then with hatred for you. She will come to experience the emptiness again, and filling it with you again is a likely thought.
  Make up your mind before she comes back. Make up your mind and then stick to it. Remember that a borderliner can be exceptionally seductive. As with all things, they are very intense in the things they do and feel.
• Don’t do the friendship thing. what ?
  It’s a bad idea for most failed relationships, but doubly so if the other one is a borderliner. Again, Shari puts it well: “You’ll likely hear this question posed in slightly different ways by your soon-to-be-ex-Borderline. Take a moment here, and ask yourself what friendship means to you–and if you’ve ever been treated with such disrespect, lack of concern and dishonesty in any relationship you’ve come to regard as one you could trust. Friends aren’t just acquaintances–these are folks we’ve learned (over time) we can rely on to have our back, as we have theirs.”
  Borderline is a disorder strongly related to trust issues. Ask yourself if someone who does not trust others as a core principle of their personality is someone that you can put your trust in. And if you can’t trust someone – would you call that someone your friend?

Read This

The articles I am refering to throughout this post, in no particular order:

• http://www.primals.org/articles/hannig03.html
• http://gettinbetter.com/casanova.html
• http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/06/walking-on-eggshells-dealing-with.html
• http://www.restrainingorderblog.com/2011/02/borderline-personality-disorder.html

There’s also “BPD for Dummies” that you can preview online. It has a chapter on “what to do when your partner has BPD”, starting on page 261.

Follow-Up Article

Borderline Survival Afterword

Related articles

• How Do I Live with Borderline Personality Disorder? By Sharon (risablairlovitz.wordpress.com)
• How do I live with Borderline Personality Disorder? (showard76.wordpress.com)
• Jade S.’s BPD Story (ontheborderlineblog.wordpress.com)