[Note: This post is a warning about an undiagnosed case of BPD and the real danger it can cause in a relationship. It is not intended to spread hate towards people with the illness. If you or a loved one have been diagnosed with BPD and are aware of the challenges it presents, I will respectfully say that this article is not for you.]
There aren’t many things that tick me off more than the popular advice to cut “negative” people out of your life.
The negative label is almost always used to conceal a bias against those with lower social status, and I hate that.
As you grow and mature, however, you’ll eventually meet someone who poses a legitimate threat to your well-being. And you’ll need to take proactive steps to deal with them.
I’ll talk about one of those types of people today.
Borderline Personality Disorder: What is BPD?
During my early twenties, I met a girl who I later realized was showing all the signs of high-functioning borderline personality disorder. But I didn’t need a diagnosis then to tell that something was “off” about her.
The National Institute of Mental Health defines BPD like this:
Borderline personality disorder is a mental illness that severely impacts a person’s ability to regulate their emotions. This loss of emotional control can increase impulsivity, affect how a person feels about themselves, and negatively impact their relationships with others.
The NIMH also lists multiple symptoms of BPD which include:
- Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, such as rapidly initiating intimate (physical or emotional) relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned
- A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
- Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
- Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
- Difficulty trusting, which is sometimes accompanied by irrational fear of other people’s intentions
And if I had to describe a BPD relationship in one sentence, it would be this:
She will fear abandonment so much that she will ironically create the drama that leads to it.
Now I really did like this girl at first, but my gut kept pointing me to red flags I couldn’t ignore, so I never got seriously involved with her. But I did end up using the small semblance of a relationship we had as a case study of sorts.
I know that doesn’t sound great on paper, but I had two reasons for doing this:
- Circumstances didn’t allow me to cut contact for the majority of the time I knew her.
- I was downright confused by her hot and cold behavior—one minute she showed strong interest in me and then the next she was running away.
I was younger at the time and didn’t have much experience with girls, so I didn’t think to do the smart thing and stay away. Besides, there aren’t many young men who would completely avoid an attractive girl who shows interest.
I do want to mention that men can have BPD too though, but it’s particularly dangerous with a woman because we don’t think of women as abusers. Plus the worst parts of BPD won’t become apparent until romantic attraction is involved. And what sensible person would say that having a girl who “loves” you is a bad thing?
But trust me, it’s a very bad thing. So you need to know what will make you vulnerable to her.
You will be susceptible to this type of woman if:
- You lack healthy boundaries
- You give (attractive) women preferential treatment
- You have an unrealistic view of love and attraction (i.e. you believe in “the one”, soulmates, etc.)
- Bonus: You are an immature Christian who believes that people pleasing at the expense of your own health is equivalent to loving your neighbor as yourself
Now before I go on, I want to say that if you are a person with this illness and have accepted responsibility for yourself by getting treatment, I applaud you, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you.
I know what it’s like to be in a mental battle, and it’s not easy, but I will respectfully say that this article isn’t for you. It is for the other person who will be affected by what’s going on.
My goal is not to direct hate towards you if you have the illness, but rather to protect the innocent people who have no idea what they’re getting into.
So please note that the rest of this article will be a little raw, and if you can’t handle that, I’d advise you to stop reading now.
Again, I am not trying to spread hate here. I am trying to convey the seriousness of this illness when it is left unchecked, and protect others from having their lives ruined by someone with it.
She Will…
It will all start out like a Disney movie. You will feel love at first sight, and you will think that you have found your soulmate. You will then talk to her and form an instant connection—one that will feel almost too good to be true.
She will quickly tell you that she is in love with you. The L-word will come faster than expected, but hey, she’s a girl. And girls do these things right?
Everything will be perfect at first…
But it won’t be long before you notice the red flags your biology conveniently ignored.
You’ll notice that she will be incapable of being alone. She will have to attach herself to someone else’s identity. This will be apparent when she mirrors you—she will feign interest in your favorite hobbies and adopt notable features of your personality.
Now granted, any girl who likes you will do this to some extent, but she will take it to the extreme, to the point where she is trying to become you (or whoever she thinks you are).
She will convince you that the two of you were born for each other and that you’ll never find anyone better than her.
She will make you think her needs are easy to meet, but then increase her requirements as soon as you try to meet them.
She will maintain a cute and innocent façade while her style of dress and raunchy interests will suggest otherwise.
She will always play the victim—even when facing consequences that are a direct result of her actions.
She will still proclaim her love for you but act increasingly avoidant towards you and your attempts to improve the relationship.
She will explicitly state how good she is for you—something no one who is actually a good part of your life will ever have to do.
Then she will start splitting. Remember how “perfect” things were earlier and how different you were from all those jerks who “hurt” her?
Well guess who the “abuser” is now.
What will you do to earn such a monstrous label you ask? It will probably be the heinous act of forgetting her second cousin’s birthday. Or maybe the vicious crime of looking in the direction of another woman. That is when you will turn into evil incarnate.
She will accuse you of manipulation, cheating, and slander while she will be doing all three herself (a.k.a. projection).
She will tweet about how terrible of a person you are.
She will see a picture your mom took of you while you were out to dinner with your family and accuse you of cheating.
She will cry about being the lonely victim yet somehow manage to keep a male “friend” around 24/7.
She will be a stream of passive aggressive behavior. She has a cute image to maintain, remember? So she can’t be direct with her assaults.
She will use a nasty form of manipulation called gaslighting—a subtle tactic that will make you question your own sanity. She will fabricate stories so much that you will apologize for things you never did. You will think that everything is your fault, and you’d be crazy to believe otherwise.
Soon you’ll be walking on eggshells and become a ghost of your former self. But don’t worry, she’s not through with you yet.
The feelings of hate you supposedly cause won’t be contained to her. She will tell all her friends—of which she’ll have many since she’ll appear to be charming and blameless to everyone else—about how evil you are and how bad you “wronged” her. And unless you have close ties to any of these people, they will believe her victim act. Plus our culture has trained us all to believe that any girl who cries wolf is telling the truth, so there’s that.
This will leave you isolated and afraid. And because you’re a rational human being who has some form of empathy, you’ll want to make things right, but you can’t, and you’ll never be able to, because the rules that apply to rational people won’t apply to her.
After months of giving her the benefit of the doubt, you will finally try to leave her, but her obsessive cries for you, the abuser, to come back will make you feel guilty for doing so, and you will believe that she has changed for the better. You will be wrong.
Things will get to the point where you won’t even exist anymore. You will just be a character entangled in her twisted little fantasy, and she will do anything in her power to keep you there.
You may even think that she’ll commit suicide if you wise up and leave for good. But don’t worry about that, because you will be the one breaking down while she quickly finds your replacement.
And eventually, she’ll sleep with other men in a manner so overt that you’ll struggle to believe that it’s really happening. Normal people would at least try to hide the wrongs they commit, but her complete lack of shame at this point will make it obvious that she is out of her mind.
An Ounce of Prevention
And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is pleasing to God will escape from her… (Ecclesiastes 7:26 NASB)
It’ll be hard not to take all of this personally, especially if you really did care about her. But remember that you are not dealing with a normal person who’s intentionally doing this.
There is a reason why all these BPD horror stories sound so similar (that’s a link to a subreddit that can be crass at times). You are dealing with a very defined and predictable set of behavior, not a person who has it out for you. But understand that you cannot win against this illness when it is unchecked.
So if you want to do the good thing and help her, tell one of her friends or family members who might actually believe you, and then YOU get outta there.
She does not care about you. You are a hard drug to her.
She is using you to fill a void that you will never be able to fill. But you are not responsible for her emotions, and you are not some child’s plaything. So learn when you just shouldn’t care, and move on.
Cut all contact with her and do not look back. Your sanity, your reputation, and your future depend on it.
-Drew
P.S. Here are a few BPD resources that I found to be helpful (both are affiliate links):
Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul Mason and Randi Kreger
- This book is a great introduction to BPD and how someone with the disorder thinks.
Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life by Margalis Fjelstad
- Another good resource for those negatively affected by people with the disorder.
Note: Both of these books mention “mindfulness” in small sections of each, and I’d be careful with that. If it’s simple self-awareness and controlling your thoughts then that’s fine, but other uses of the term refer to practices that are something else entirely, and I don’t endorse them.
I recommend both of these books for the info they provide about BPD, not because I agree with everything in them.
P.P.S. If you’d like to learn more about gaslighting and its effect on victims, see this article from Psychology Today.
The story is exactly 100% the same my own personal story. Thank you for wonderful excellent post .
Yeah, it’s pretty much the same story every time. All we can do now is add to awareness.
I really enjoy your writing, thank you for sharing.
Those commenting about autism, mental illness, etc., clearly haven’t had their soul drained by this personality. BPD is dangerous, evil, and usually can’t be “rehabbed” with therapy.
Thanks Veronica,
It’s tough to understand how stressful it is living around someone with this disorder if you haven’t experienced it, so I’ve learned not to take it personally when people who clearly haven’t seen the worst of this disease say I’m being hateful.
I’m glad to hear you enjoy my writing and this post in particular by the way!
Persons with Borderline Personality Disorder should read this post ? it make him/her think different ?
You would think so, but that’s not usually how it turns out.
I love this article, on point with Borderline Personality Girls.
I dumped one recently and she quickly found her replacement, can’t help but feel I dodged a major bullet.
And I’m sure that same bullet looked harmless to everyone else
Read this, and yeah its 100% an exact timeline of this 2 yr relationship that destroyed me in sooo many ways
Sorry to hear that. Best thing to do now is to focus on the future.
You do understand that no one is born with borderline personality disorder right? It’s a result of trauma/multiple traumas which the brain couldn’t cope with and so created this unhealthy way to deal with emotions. They are not particularly ‘dangerous’ they are more likely to be the victims of many different wrong doings. You speak as if a BPD sufferer needs to ‘accept their responsibility’ as you put it, no one can choose how their brain copes with trauma, no one can choose not to have a mental illness, they are not evil people, they are people who are so scared of getting hurt because they have genuinely been shown the worst from people early on in life. People who have an emotional scale which is too high and too low for any human to feel. Something which is so distressing for that person that they resort to self harm or suicide. I think you need to do more research on BPD from actual sufferers or trained psychiatrists before posting a very victim blaming and misunderstood post.
I see where you’re coming from, and I mentioned most of what you said in the post. But suffering from a condition doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for your actions.
This post is meant to protect people who may not be aware of the illness and who could have their lives severely impacted because of it—similarly to how mine was and still is.
It is by no means a hate post. And I explicitly mentioned that I didn’t intend it to be one.
Plenty of research and personal experience went into this. So please be respectful of the other side as well.
“But suffering from a condition doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for your actions.”
Would you say the same thing for a person with autism, let’s say? Or a purely neurological condition such as epilepsy? You can’t expect a person to “take responsibility” for being sick. If you can’t deal with the symptoms of your loved one, that’s understandable, but it isn’t an excuse for stigmatizing posts about sufferers of a very serious and painful condition. Those diagnosed AS WELL as those with no official diagnoses. And explicidly stating something isn’t hate speech doesn’t make the speech any less hateful.
No-one CHOSE to have a mental illness. There have been multiple researches that showed different brain activity in individuals with BPD than in those without it. In other words, it’s been scientiffically proven that BPD sufferers (regardless of them being diagnosed or not) don’t and CAN’T choose what they will think, feel or do when experiencing an emotional “surge”. Can you decide that from now on you will think, feel and function like a borderline? No. Nor can a borderline decide that from now on (s)he will think, feel or function like you do.
Please also note that unlike someone who’s already in treatment, a person who hasn’t even been diagnosed with the sickness has no learned techniques of coping with it and nowhere to learn them the right way. And reading about them on the internet would not do the deed, even if they admit they have a problem; it takes months of individual work with a trained professional for these techniques to start working because the patient has to absorb them on the emotional level as well as on the intellectual (which takes time even for a neurotypical person and, again, brains affected by BPD are different).
The only responsibility a sick person has concidering their sickness is to seek treatment. Providing they live in a community that offers high quality treatment for BPD at a price affordable for that individual. Which is also a kind of shady because mental illness often impects your attitude towards seeking help and the idea of something being wrong you in the first place; denial is a subconscious defence mechanis which isn’t any more under one’s control than the illness itself.
OK, now I see I made some grammar and spelling mistakes and I hope it doesn’t interfire with the clearity of the post. English is not my native language so please have understanding.
There’s a lot going on with this comment, but first, I’d say yes, I would say the same thing to people with other illnesses. Obviously the degree of functioning they have would determine the extent to which I’d hold them accountable, but that doesn’t remove all responsibility.
To turn this question around, would you hold a person accountable who had PTSD from a BPD relationship? Would they be responsible if they made other people suffer because of their own trauma, or is the person with BPD the only one who gets a pass?
The reason I put those disclaimers on the post is because the actions of BPD sufferers are often excused as unavoidable, but the people they terrorize (unintentionally) are left to just deal with it. I understand that this is a real mental health condition and there is no easy solution, but we can’t let that be a no-fault excuse for everything a sufferer does.
I agree 100% with Drew.
I wish I had read this article and many others that you wrote when I was in school.
Thank you very much.
I take issue with your reply which is typically of our unaccountable society today. I have heard so many lame excuses by mentally abusive women who hurt their husbands and kids it makes me want to vomit and just because they are women they get away with it.
Well… I was diagnosed with BPD recently, and my family, my friends, and even my boyfriend who I did him a lot of awful things until to breaking himself, but he haven’t stayed away of me, in fact, I told him one day to leave me because I just didn’t want to live anymore, but he didn’t leave me, he knew that something was wrong with me when I began with a strong crisis, because he has mental problems too, just one time he tried to stay away, but he understood that I needed his support, that he can manage my ups and downs with intelligence and love. They are learning with me of how to manage my several mental illnesses (I have anxiety disorder and mayor depression). In your article, you show us like we don’t have the capacity of loving someone, that we don’t have empathy, and we don’t care if we hurt someone, but it’s the opposite, we feel so much ghilt for everything, we try to be perfect with other people, and we try to be perfect in everything we do, we are so sensitive, and that’s why we have a lot of mood changes,.. My boyfriend told me that I needed a psychologist, after one of my suicidal crisis, and I went because of him, now I going for me too, because when I got my diagnosis, something changed inside of me because I realized that my behavior wasn’t normal, and he changed of how he react in front of my “craziness”.
This post is more about someone who has an undiagnosed case of the illness and refuses to acknowledge that they are hurting others. I have nothing but respect for you and everyone else who is working through an unfortunate situation to improve the well-being of all.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Awareness on both sides is the best way to keep people from being hurt.
I had an affair after 11 years of marriage, my wife I loved so dearly became disabled with no medical diagnosis. I took care of her as best I could while dealing with many challenges in life at the same time. When this other women came into my life I thought God answered my prayer.
While going through my divorce I married this women. Everything was like a movie, I could have cared less for my soon to be ex wife. My son was 8 years old and accepted this woman and we all lived together.
Then everything changed, I became a wife beater and abuser titles she gave her ex husband, she called me a Loser. I could not understand how.
My life was destroyed following my own lust, cops locked me up and she left my son to fend for himself. I thought I was crazy for a very long time, she called me a narcist, every post on instagram was about narcism and I believed this for 3 years.
Finally my life is falling into place again after nearly come close to bankruptcy and losing my house and son my job and my life as I knew it
I want to Thank You for writing this article, I wish I read this a long time ago. Everything is true about Red Flags
I pray to God no man goes through this, I have become too afraid of Women. My libido is out the window, it’s something I wish I could get back
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sorry you weren’t able to read something like this beforehand, but it’s always good to know that there are people who have been through something similar.
Praying that things go well for you from here on out.
I am 6 months into weekly therapy after ending an 18 – month relationship with a man who I believe has BPD or BPD traits. I have never been so damaged by anyone in my life. The chaos, distortions, and rage he exhibited sucked the life right out of me. Having gotten away from him, I am slowly putting my life back together again.
There is new (2019) NIH-FUNDED research that may have found a genetic cause (9th chromosome), I understand that the current theories include sexual and other early life traumas, and early or inconsistent neglect by a primary caregiver (generally the mother).
Even though BPD behaviors are often described as maladaptive attempts to manage a siege of uncontrolled emotions, their sheer abuse and vindictiveness toward loved ones makes me wonder if there is an abusive element at work. In other words, the Cycle of Abuse, wherein the victim of abuse later becomes the abuser.
I’m sorry to hear about your previous relationship. I know it can take a long time to recover from the highs and lows, but I hope it’s going well.
From what I’ve seen, there definitely is some connection to past abuse or a genetic cause. It’s important for us who have seen the bad side of the illness to remember that the other person is suffering too—sometimes due to causes outside their control.
Thanks for your comment, Drew, and for having this thread on BPD in the first place.
One of the issues that makes recovery so difficult for a partner is that in many cases, the person with BPD does not allow for closure after a breakup, and perhaps more importantly, does not take responsibility for their part in the dysfunction. As I understand it, this too is a characteristic of the disorder, since “taking responsibility” means accepting that one played a role in the deterioration of the relationship. As I understand it, this can be too painful for a person with BPD to admit, and therefore the parter is frequently blamed for the breakup (projection).
I strongly feel that if a person with BPD or BPD traits has some degree of self awareness, they should take the responsibility of opening up to their partner about it. In my case, I was completely blindsided, even though I discovered that my bf believed that all of the women in his life had left him because of his “moods.” If he was aware that his moods could significantly impact a relashionship, I feel that he should have shared that with me early on in our relationship. Not doing so put me in a vulnerable position, and led to months of confusion and hurt.
I gave the benefit of the doubt to one with BPD traits, and I deeply regret it. Best thing to do is cut all ties and move on.
Yep. It feels wrong to shut off your kindness for people, but sometimes your health demands that you do.
Awareness matters. Thank you for the post. https://armchairdeductions.wordpress.com/2018/09/16/chaos-and-elucidation-the-borderline-koan/
This is everything she did!
Why does it hurt so bad after so long? I can say it was all lies, that she didn’t care and set it all up for me to fail. I was falling over having panic attacks, she breadcrumbs me for 2 months before I did something she felt was enough to finally say she was done. She treated me like a criminal, threatened to bring the police if I didn’t leave for her to get her things. I still can belive it! Then I actually do it and even pack her things and text her I’m leaving and she still brings them! She tried to use it as some kind of proof I did something wrong. Then she’s posting things about women’s shelters, people are saying she was tagged on biker road trips I don’t even know what to think.. but it doesn’t matter. I never abused her or even yelled, it makes me sick to think about how much I opened up to her and believed evehthing she said. I had to take medical leave, it’s ruined my career, my mental health, relationships with my family. After 6 months she sends one last disgusting email twisting our past so even promises she made from the start when we first opened up were becuae she felt sorry.. told me all these horrible things and dared me to reply basically treating a restraining order.. I hadn’t seen her in 6 months or more.. I didn’t reply, then a full month after that I was backing up pictures to a shared album that I owned lol and she tried to use that for an emergency order of protection against me. She even tried to set that up to screw me over more.. what kind of a person does that?!? How could they use treat other people and try to take all their issues out on someone who they claimed to love so much?
This girl claimed to be all about mental health, I thought she was the most genuine caring person I’d ever met. She tried to train me like a dog and to a point it worked. 🙄 I wasn’t perfect but I paid for anything I’ve done that she used against me long before we met.. I feel so sick thinking about living next door to her for 5 years, the way we fell do hard in love.. I opened up about eveything to her felt love I could be honest she claims I presented a false self.. it’s all protection! I was honest about eveything even before we started dating its a big part of why I fell in love with her.. I saw a quirky but lovable severely anorexic girl trying to better herself, but the truth is she’s not. And for eveything she talks about compassion and human rights and charity and everything, I know what she did to me. She claimed to the child of narcissists and a boardeline mother.. that her sister, best friends everyone was a Narcissist.. maybe they were but I’m not i can admit my many faults, I have stuggled often with melancholic depression. I was diagnosed at 12 years old with major depressive dissorder. I went to therapy for years, I was on meds for years.. I was also abused as child.. within the first few weeks of finding out about some of it she was using it against me.. she uses it to justify some of her cruel actions now! I’ve been in groups online in real life on message boards talked to so many counselors and therapists the last year.. and this girl feels no remorse. She never even looked at me, not a glance in my direction in court. She accused me of stalking and being some awful abuser.. she used my past she knew about from the start she used eveything. Gave me the silent treatment and tortured me for 2 months, had me filling out worksheets promising she loved me and we’d work it out.. she never looked at me again or planned to come home. She admitted she planned all of it for months.. she probably planned it our whole relationship! Looking back there are so many things I never questioned or took her at her word for.. some of the things I’ve found out since are so unbelievable.. she is the one who ghosted so why am I stuck haunted, in shock that a person I thought I knew and loved completley could be so maliciously cold. I truly adored her… she meant more to me than just a girlfriend.. she gave me hope in the goodness of people. Eveyone around me is hurting, she even tried to take my support away.. get to my family.. those guys think you wanted me to off myself or take me to court and didn’t care either now.. I’m glad they were able to see through it.. I still believed in you.. I always would have.. why did you chose me? I just wanted to be loved like we always promised eachother.. I’m sorry for the things you didn’t like but this is not right.. you psychology tortured me in the worst ways for me personally after trying to get me to open up issues about inner child adornment!! You wanted me to quit my job and stay home with you weeks before you left!! Why ?! How could you live with yourself? Do you really just not feel anything?
You’re right Katie, none of it makes sense. The most difficult part of this illness is realizing that a great person never really existed.
The only way I was able to cope with it was remembering that I never dealt with a “normal” person. I had to remember that it wasn’t a rational person who hated me or accused me for legitimate reasons. It was simply an illness showing it’s symptoms.
Once I accepted that, I stopped waiting for apologies, I stopped pleading my case, and I stopped looking back. I accepted that time as the lost investment it was, but I also made sure to never forget what I learned.
It’s so important for people like you and me to speak out about this disorder if we want to protect others. The mainstream doesn’t get it, and outsiders are quick to blame the very people who were hurt the most, so we have to spread awareness before the innocents are changed forever.