The Borderline Personality Disorder epidemic among women under 30 is easily one of the biggest issues that men face. Why isn't there anything on the sidebar?

BPD Red flags to look for

  • No long term friendships outside of family members
  • Self-harm / cutting scars
  • Raised by a single mother
  • Pattern of constantly moving to different places / pursuing different lines of work (lack of general life stability)
  • Related to the above, a general lack of established neutral 3rd party connections who can vouch for the person
  • A tendency to over-share things with you when you barely know them
  • A history of each and every one of their exes being some huge asshole who ruined the relationship on his own (you'll be the next one)
  • If possible, find out what drugs they're on, if they're taking them as prescribed and how they interact if there are many of them

At the very heart of a borderline's behavior is shame. This shame is the leftovers of a childhood fraught with neglect and abuse, which permanently left them doubting their lovability and genuine self-worth.

No matter how much therapy they try or how many self-help books they read, or how many support groups they join, self-loathing remains entrenched and implacable. As children, they were programmed to feel unlovable and undeserving of affection or care, so this is how they've learned to regard and treat themselves.

Trivial shortcomings or deficits can make somebody with BPD believe they have no right to live. So destructive is the Borderline's self-reproach for even minor mistakes that their inner narratives can make them want to die, which is key to why suicidal ideation or attempts usually coexist with borderline pathology.

Being involved with a Borderline lover means you're trapped in confusion, chaos and titillation. At the onset, they are perfectly delightful, charming and adoring, but you soon come to find that you can't relate to some of their odd or bizarre behaviors.

You ceaesely attempt to understand what makes them tick, but you cannot. In reality, their psychosis is something you shouldn't be able to relate to, yet you keep trying. This natural reflex to understand was implanted in you as a child, when you experienced difficult and confusing relational dynamics with your parent(s). You might also have observed troubling interactions between your folks, who struggled together a lot like you have with your BPD lover, so you've assumed that chaos is a natural part of a healthy relationship.

You might have grown up promising yourself that your own partnership or marriage wouldn't be anything like the dynamic you observed between your parents, but as that was the only 'blueprint' you had to draw from, you accept it as 'normal.'

If you had seen playful, loving interplay between two adults who admired and respected each other, you would surely be seeking that relationship dynamic for yourself. You would never settle for less, and you wouldn't be reading this right now.

When a child perceives frightening traits in their parent, like ragefulness, emotional instability, histrionics, or anxiety, they determine never to grow up to be like them.

The mere threat of this causes those who are drawn to Borderlines to amputate important feeling states like anger out of their personality, while allowing and accepting them in their lovers, just as they accepted them in their parents.

It's crucial to understand that the partner or friend of a BPD individual is typically core-damaged in a similar way that a Borderline is. They're core traumatized in the same ways. This is what initially magnitizes them to each other, and what keeps them trying to make things work against all odds.

SPLITTING

Black and white thinking, love you/hate you, come here/go away, and push-pull emotional gymnastics are hallmarks of intensely unstable relationship dynamics between individuals who have and exhibit borderline pathology.

We're all acquainted with this splitting reflex in Borderlines, but we usually fail to recognize this tendency within ourselves. The Caregiver, fixer/rescuer type who frequently attaches to people afflicted with personality disorders has virtually split-off all darker feelings, thoughts, and personality features from their own emotional repertoire.

The Borderline splits-off from the less favorable features within themselves, and cannot tolerate these negative traits in you. The People Pleaser has similarly split-off from his/her own "imperfect" or flawed aspects, but somehow accepts them in their Borderline.

In essence, we're talking about two damaged individuals who cannot accept themselves fully, or be emotionally sound and whole. This deficit triggers a lot of self-protection and posturing to avoid abandonment; "if I'm not at ease with all my parts, how could you be?", and frantic efforts to avoid rejection are engaged in by both partners.

SPLICING

As with film production, an editor's job is to splice out unnecessary scenes from a movie reel, then re-attach the ends of his celluloid to create seamless continuity.

The phenomenon of splicing allows a BPD partner to return after highly volatile or disturbing/disruptive ruptures in your relationship, and act as if nothing troubling has previously happened.

The Borderline averts abandonment with their perfectly orchestrated re-seductions in the hope that they can make you forget how horribly they treated you during their latest distancing episode. The partner is hyper-fixated on being pleasing, loving and forgiving after being given yet another chance.

The problem with this pattern is that the Borderline is never held accountable for their hurtful and destructive behavior. Without any accountability or boundaries, a borderline's unsavory behavior continues to repeat indefinitely, and their personality does not tangibly change or grow in any way.

Both Borderlines and non-Borderlines are proficient at splicing, editing out any negative memories so that a connection can be maintained. For the Borderline, this is automatic, given that they're incapable of sustaining stable, long-term emotions.

People with even a modicum of self-worth will not tolerate abuse, nor stay involved with anyone who treats them badly. The desire to "forgive and forget" is the expression of the splicing reflex you learned in childhood, when you tried to overcome a parent's criticism or callous disregard for your feelings and needs.

PROJECTION

The Borderline projects their disowned negative features onto you. You are a mirror upon which they can visualize all of their own negative traits. They may even accuse you of being a Borderline once they have learned about the disorder, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.

The core shame that's catalyzed within borderlines drives endless feelings of unlovability, inferiority, and deep despair. These feelings are childhood remnants from parental neglect and/or abuse, and their partner cannot fix this for them.

It does not matter how brilliant, talented or beautiful your Borderline partner may be. No amount of reinforcement or affirmation from you or anyone else will alter how they view themselves. All of their insecurities and self-loathing are projected onto you, their mirror, when they gaze into you.

A similar reflex drives the Borderline's need to pick fights with their partner, especially after an intensely loving, close and harmonious episode. When their attachment fears flare up, the horror of abandonment is right around the corner, so they have to destroy any feelings of closeness and attachment between you, lest you leave them first, before you have an opportunity to do it to them. They will then lay all of the blame on you, even if you had no intention of abandoning them. They will go through this attachment-anxiety-destruction cycle with all of their suitors and partners, and sometimes even with their close friends and family.

Borderlines do not relate to pain in the same way that neurotypicals do. If they did, they could not persistently treat their lovers with such careless and cruel abandon. The Borderline's lack of empathy is caused by developmental arrest, and it is the primary driver behind the emotional abuse of their partner.

The fact that Borderlines tend to remain far longer with abusive, emotionally unavailable or pre-attached/married lovers is seen as a paradox by many. The truth is that we are attracted to people who precisely match our own level of emotional development, and those who are damaged and/or stunted seek out the same in a partner.

Someone who is truly emotionally available doesn't remain involved with somebody who is not. Wishful thinking can't make a damaged person love you or treat you better. The 'perfect love' you experienced at the start of a relationship with a Borderline will never be fully restored, even during attempts at reconcilcement following the initial breakup. Once you've been seduced, the challenge of The Chase is over, and they lose interest in you. The type of partner you seek out echoes how you feel about yourself, and what you've grown up to believe you deserve as an adult. Until you learn to respect and love yourself, you will continue to be drawn to people with Borderline Personality Disorder.