How Does Borderline Personality Disorder Affect Emotional Relationships?
There is no relationship without disagreements. In the emotional bond, whether romantic or friendship, that is established between two human beings, the appearance of insecurities, jealousy and conflicts of various kinds are common. These difficulties are natural and common and do not indicate the existence of any underlying pathology.
However, in the case of people who suffer from borderline personality disorder (BPD), the ability to establish and maintain an emotional relationship is impaired. People with this type of disorder develop an insecure attachment in their relationships with others. Their affect is unstable and frequently varies between excessive dependence and flight. This translates into the appearance of intense fear of the possibility of separation and the deep fear of not being loved. The instability and manifestation of these feelings leads to the appearance of a whole series of problems in relationships.
In this article we will see what they are the difficulties that people diagnosed with BPD usually experience in their emotional relationships.
People with BPD often experience a range of negative feelings such as anger, anxiety and depression. These appear suddenly and with more intensity than for most people. Patients with this type of disorder can also act on their impulses; For example, they may leave a place suddenly or abandon a project or job without giving any explanation.
After an impulse or emotional change, the person may take several hours before returning to a stable state and may take days to recover. It is important to understand that in this type of disorder it takes time to return to an emotional baseline.
People who suffer from BPD often have prolonged episodes of these symptoms. These are likely to negatively affect your work and personal relationships and ultimately your physical health.
Emotional episodes are not only caused by negative events. People with BPD also experience greater euphoria and for longer periods of time when they have a positive experience. However, It is often more difficult to recover from events that are experienced negatively. Thus, they have a greater risk of harming themselves or others, and in serious cases they can even commit suicide.
All these emotional changes and their consequences make their relationships become more dramatic and experience more tension than those of most people. These effects are experienced more intensely by the close circle. Friends, family, and people important to them experience a range of emotional conflicts.
Difficulties in relationships with borderline personality disorder
As we have seen, people diagnosed with BPD present two characteristic and determining features: lack of emotional control and impulsivity.
The ability of people with BPD to maintain stable and satisfying intimate relationships is significantly affected by these traits. While these problems may be masked at first, emotional excesses can be interpreted as signs of passionate love or the imbalances typically seen at the beginning of a relationship. With the passage of time and the lack of emotional regulation, these issues make day-to-day life more difficult and endanger the viability of the relationship.
Thus, patients with BPD and their relationships face numerous challenges and problems. It should be noted that the difficulties that we present below are not significant from a diagnostic point of view, but can be understood as behavioral indicators observed by therapists in their patients’ relationships. It must be understood that each BPD patient is unique and so are their relationships; Consequently, not all of these problems are observed in every link. However, in some cases, a person may face several of the following challenges:
1. Codependency
People who suffer from borderline personality disorder are the ones who best represent the phrase “neither with you nor without you.”. Their emotions are unstable and alternate between flight and extreme dependence. What’s more, one is the consequence of the other. Generally, people with BPD present a type of insecure or disorganized attachment, accompanied by a codependent relationship dynamic. The idea of separation from the other causes him immense discomfort. They often live with the idea that the other person could disappear or abandon them.
Thus, the mere lack of contact with the other can cause anxiety, as thoughts of abandonment appear. To mitigate them, they may engage in self-harming or hostile behavior. People with BPD have a greater predisposition to addictions.
People with borderline personality disorder are often described as romantic. The moment they meet someone, they show immediate passion, especially when they fall in love. This affection may be perceived as very special to the other party. However, the feelings at the beginning do not remain stable and can vary in consistency in periods of love-hate. In romantic interactions with someone with BPD, one may feel loved at some times and hated at others, usually near the end of the relationship.
3. Dichotomy
People with borderline personality disorder often have difficulty processing information consistently due to stressors in their relationships. This is because your emotional state alters your cognitive functioning; the so-called “cognitive regulation deficit” is associated with BPD. They tend to process information from their environment in dichotomous terms, such as that all things are black or white, or good and bad, ultimately, BPD patients tend to form unhealthy thoughts. These ideas are formed instantly and do not last long, which is why they are considered irrational. However, this considerably affects their relationships, they alternate between loving and hating the other person or they involuntarily tend to idealize or demonize whoever they are with.
4. Exaggerated conflicts
Arguments seem to be something that people who suffer from borderline personality disorder like, so anyone who is in a relationship with them can become their punching bag. This is because they are highly resistant to conflict and often react with hostility to irrelevant details. During the discussions, People who suffer from BPD may take out their frustrations on the other person for no apparent reason.
As we have seen, receiving a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder means experiencing dramatic mood swings. These moods change quickly and can go from happy to upset or angry in a matter of seconds. Additionally, the person arguing can go from feeling calm and collected to feeling angry or stressed in a matter of minutes.
5. Manipulation and emotional blackmail
People with borderline personality disorder often treat other people as if they were actors who they can easily manipulate. However, they do not use relationships instrumentally, that is, to achieve goals with intention or organization. Instead, they tend to focus their attention, affection, and behavior on other people in a dysfunctional way, using emotional blackmail, victimization or seduction.
The feeling of emptiness is characteristic of BPD. Patients with borderline personality disorder often have a fragile self-concept that can change or fragment under stressful circumstances. This emotional insufficiency causes them to feel empty most of the time. As a result, they may experience separation anxiety and a tendency toward codependency in relationships.
7. Victimization
People with borderline personality disorder They often blame their problems on external circumstances. Typically, they blame others for their difficulties or struggles; They might even accuse others of being selfish, lacking compassion, or abusive. These arguments, usually made during confrontations, may initially cause discomfort, confusion, and guilt in the other. Ultimately, these arguments are defended very strongly to the end.
8. Lack of understanding
Living with a person who has BPD means dealing with daily frustrations because they feel misunderstood by their environment. Many times, this feeling is true. People always try to understand the moods, fears, insecurities of the other party in the relationship, but this due to the emotional intensity can be difficult in the case of people with BPD. This inevitably leads to lack of communication and emotional distance in the relationship.
9. Self-sabotage
Although people with borderline personality disorder ultimately long to build satisfying, long-lasting relationships, they often refuse to bear the burden of stability of affection. They have little patience for frustration and they find the inconveniences of everyday life a heavy burden. For this reason, they experience a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy when relating to others: they assume that the bond that unites them to others is damaged, and they behave in a way consistent with that idea, which goes from being something imagined to being something real.
Additionally, people with this type of disorder have difficulty differentiating between wants and needs, which causes them to become easily upset by small things and experience significant motivation problems. This is also related to their impulsive nature and rapid changes in attitude, which causes them to frequently change interests and even goals in life.
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