My partner has BPD (borderline personality disorder).I’ve known about this for quite some time and I’ve helped as much as I could to keep it under control and help them through it. Recently, my partner has been going through the ups and downs of BPD and has been struggling with episodes for about a week now. Every time I try to help them, they push me away in a very rude way and try to get me to stop talking to them. For example, I has told them that I loved them and that they would be ok, and they told me to kill my self. I’m trying my best to distance my self for the safety of them and myself. I know how they work and if I try to insert my self to much they will end the relationship there. Another thing that concerns me is that if I were to leave them alone, I have no clue what they would do to them self. If I leave them alone they always get worse mentally wise, but they get better communication wise. So I’m trying to help them in hopes that they don’t try to hurt them selfs again or even worse, but I want to distances my self to make sure that they get better. I have no clue what to do and I need help…
TL;DR: I need help on deciding if I should help my partner with BPD, or if I should leave them alone like they asked and let them heal but at the cost of their mental health.
2 comments
I’m assuming the title was supposed to say they’re gender fluid, so I’m going with that
It sounds like they really need professional medical help. Maintaining relationships during a mental crisis is not easy. It sounds like they may need to visit an inpatient hospital or behavioral health clinic for urgent disabling episodes.
You don’t deserve the verbal abuse, and they probably need to rely more heavily on family in this time.
**Should help my partner with BPD?**
OP, if your partner is an untreated pwBPD (person with BPD), your efforts to help her may well do more harm than good. Your problem is that whatever you do will be hurtful to her much of the time. A comment or action that pleases her on one day may greatly offend her when repeated a week later. A pwBPD often will perceive you as being hurtful when you DO something and hurtful when you DON’T do it.
This conundrum is due to the position of her two great fears — abandonment and engulfment — at opposite ends of the very same spectrum. This means you often find yourself in a lose/lose situation because, as you back away from one fear to avoid triggering it, you will start triggering the fear at the other end of that same spectrum.
Your predicament is that the solution to calming her abandonment fear (drawing close and being intimate) is the very action that triggers her engulfment fear. Likewise, the solution to calming her engulfment fear (moving back away to give her breathing space) is the very action that triggers her abandonment fear.
As you move close to comfort her and assure her of your love, you eventually will start triggering her engulfment fear, making her feel like she’s being suffocated and controlled by you. Because she has a weak sense of self-identity, she easily becomes very enmeshed in your strong personality during sustained periods of closeness and intimacy. Yet, as you back away to give her breathing space, you will find that you’ve started triggering her abandonment fear.
In my 15 years of experience with my BPD exW, I found that there is no midpoints solution (between “too close” and “too far away”) where you can safely stand to avoid triggering those two fears. Until a pwBPD learns how to better regulate her own emotions and tame her two fears, that Goldilocks position will not exist. This is why a relationship with an untreated pwBPD typically is characterized by a repeating cycle of push-you-away and pull-you-back.
Indeed, even if you are sitting perfectly still and not saying a word, a pwBPD who is experiencing hurtful feelings will project those feelings onto you. Her subconscious does this to protect her fragile ego from seeing too much of reality — and to externalize the pain, getting it outside her body.
Because that projection occurs entirely at the subconscious level, she will consciously be convinced that the painful feeling or hurtful thought is coming from you. This is why an untreated pwBPD usually BELIEVES the false accusations coming out of her mouth (at the moment she is saying them).
Hence, as long as you remain in a relationship with an untreated pwBPD, you will often find yourself hurting her — i.e., triggering her engulfment fear as you draw near, triggering her abandonment fear as you draw back, and triggering her anger even when you are sitting still and saying absolutely nothing.