Loving Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder: Tips & Advice

The emotional instability, relationship difficulties, and impulsivity that characterize borderline personality disorder (BPD) can make loving someone with the disease difficult. The individual’s loved ones may be severely impacted by these symptoms, making it hard for the affected person to build and sustain relationships.

A person with borderline personality disorder can throw their loved ones for a loop with unpredictable mood swings, explosive anger, persistent fear of abandonment, and impulsive and irrational actions.

How Is It to Live With Someone With BPD?

Spouses and relatives of individuals suffering from borderline personality disorder frequently say that their interactions with them are like being on an endless emotional roller coaster.

You may feel trapped in the relationship and hopeless because of your loved one’s borderline personality disorder symptoms unless you take severe action, including ending the relationship or persuading your spouse to seek therapy. Nonetheless, you could surprise yourself with how much you’re capable of.

Manage your own reactions, set clear boundaries, and work on communicating better with your loved one to improve the situation. Even though there is no silver bullet for BPD, many people with the disorder do improve with therapy and support from loved ones.

Those with stable personal life and a strong social network tend to heal more quickly than those without either.

Following the tactics outlined in this article can improve your life even if the person with borderline personality disorder (BPD) in your life refuses to acknowledge the problem or get professional care.

Challenges You May Face

You may be familiar with the “eggshell effect,” when you feel like you have to walk on eggshells at all times to prevent anger or conflict. There’s no telling how your loved one will be feeling on any given day. It’s natural to second-guess yourself, worried that a misstep may result in an adverse emotional reaction.

Here are some other obstacles you may face:

1. Emotions of Love or Hatred

Individuals with BPD frequently go through phases when they either idolize or devalue their loved ones. It’s common to feel invincible or like a perfect match during the idolizing period.

Nonetheless, the shift frequently occurs rapidly, making it appear as though you have done nothing well. If you press them for details, they can get defensive or even lie to you.

2. Always Feeling the Need to Reassure

Trust problems and paranoia may coexist with BPD. Individuals with BPD may project their anxieties of repeat transgressions onto you because they have a history of betrayal, adultery, or abandonment. The problem is that it may appear that no amount of comfort you offer will help.

3. Fearing for One’s Safety

Individuals with a borderline personality disorder may exhibit destructive or impulsive tendencies. If you break up with them, for example, they may make suicidal threats. Family members may begin to feel hopeless or trapped as a result of these serious worries.

4. Responsibility and Accountability

You may feel responsible for the suffering of a loved one, either directly or through contributing to it. This might be the result of poor self-esteem in some cases. Sometimes it’s a defense mechanism after being gaslit into thinking you actually did something wrong. The negative effects of this outlook on relationships are all too common.

5. Making Excuses

Justifying your loved one’s actions might be difficult. For instance, you could try to protect them against criticism and get angry when others challenge them. The alternative explanation is that you believe they are helpless.

Managing Your Loved One’s Borderline Personality Disorder

When your loved one has BPD you know how severe the symptoms can be. Your connection with a loved one may feel strained and shaky at times. You could feel like you have to tiptoe around them in case they explode.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is difficult for people with BPD since they often feel alone and unsupported. Yet, that’s no excuse for their cruelty or taking advantage of you.

Spending time learning about their disease, talking to them, setting appropriate limits, and caring for yourself may deepen your connection and support them through therapy.

Here you will find some helpful suggestions:

1. Understanding BPD

Learning about BPD is the first step for loved ones and other support individuals who wish to help in a meaningful way. Understanding the motivation behind challenging behaviors increases the likelihood that you will respond constructively.

For instance, typical everyday disappointments might escalate into significant interpersonal difficulties for people with BPD. But, depending on how other people react, these clashes can be mitigated or even avoided altogether. Most individuals, for instance, would not let a canceled lunch date throw them off their schedule.

A person with BPD may have a strong emotional reaction to something as little as a canceled lunch since they are more prone to see it as a rejection or abandonment. A person with borderline personality disorder could get angry and irritated instead of merely delaying or changing their plans.

That this is a fear-based misperception, and expressing your want to connect is a beneficial response. Instead of reacting to bad or improper behavior, concentrate on rescheduling the date.

2. Always Tell The Truth

Your spouse may be completely sure that people are treating them unfairly, but you shouldn’t encourage this view unless you also believe it to be true. Because persons with BPD may be naive or perhaps unaware of how their actions influence those around them, it is crucial that you provide their spouse with honest criticism.

Try to help them see how their actions may have contributed to the feeling of rejection or unfair treatment they are experiencing. Do this as gently and compassionately as possible.

3. Attachment-Based Conflict Management

Long-term care and sticking together through happy and sad times are hallmarks of a healthy attachment. Disagreements and confrontations can trigger unpleasant feelings like anger and shame for people with BPD since they are misinterpreted as indicators of disinterest or the end of a relationship.

The person’s support system can assist them in gaining perspective and understanding that healthy relationships include conflict. Acceptance and attachment may heal and bring about genuine change in BPD when a support person stays involved despite obstacles.

Those who care about you can lend a hand after an argument by phoning or stopping by. Pay attention to the individual, not the action, and show compassion and forgiveness. You don’t have to like the person, just not their behavior. They need to know that you still care for them even though they have BPD.

4. Act With Assurance And Dignity

Trauma in childhood is strongly related to borderline personality disorder. A diminished sense of safety and control in relation to oneself, others, and the environment is a result of having experienced trauma in early infancy.

Helping someone with borderline personality disorder (BPD) requires an approachable demeanor that encourages mutual respect and trust.

It’s tempting to make decisions for the person with BPD because you think you know what’s best, but it’s better to give them as much autonomy as possible. Demonstrate faith in their talents and ask how you may be of support.

5. Always Act In A Predictable Manner

A common symptom of borderline personality disorder is instability. Yet stability is good for everyone, and those with BPD may learn to operate within the structure as they recover from their disorder.

One approach to ensure that one always follows through on promises is to practice pausing to reflect before making them.

For those whose partners suffer from a borderline personality disorder, this can be challenging. A meltdown, screams, and accusations of abandonment are all possible reactions. But adding fuel to that emotional fire is one of the worst things you can do at that time.

6. Praise And Reward Responsible Actions

Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking you need to save your partner every time they misbehave. Let your partner hold off on making any further purchases until they get paid again. To someone with BPD, every rescue is a warped sign of dedication and a detour from the path of wanting and needing to improve oneself.

Recognize your partner’s efforts when they prove reliable and take charge, especially if it’s in an area where they’ve struggled before.

7. Assist Them In Dealing With The Pain Of Being Abandoned

The borderline has to quit blaming other people for how they feel and stop trying to shift the blame onto them. Unless they face and process their feelings, they will continue to experience abandonment.

These feelings of abandonment must be addressed so that the borderline may recognize them, identify their causes, and learn to control them. This allows them to focus on the present with their spouse instead of bringing up old scars from the past.

The only way a borderline can develop a safe and loving relationship is if their partner can help them adjust their internal working models by helping them get over their fear of abandonment.

8. Set Boundaries

Setting and enforcing appropriate limits or boundaries may be very helpful in helping a loved one with BPD develop behavioral control. Having boundaries in place can help your loved one cope with the pressures of the real world, where institutions like schools, workplaces, and the law have very clear expectations for conduct.

By putting up limits on your partner’s conduct, you give yourself more control over how you respond to his or her unfavorable actions and reduce the confusion and instability in your relationship.

When people in a relationship respect each other’s personal space, they are more likely to treat one another with kindness and consideration.

Yet, limits are rarely a quick remedy for troubled relationships. The situation might even worsen before it improves. The individual with BPD is extremely sensitive to criticism and worried about being rejected. This implies that setting limits in a relationship might be met with resistance if neither party has done so previously.

If you give in to your loved one’s anger or abuse, you are merely encouraging them to act out in this way more often. Yet being solid in your convictions may be liberating for you, helpful for your partner, and transformative for your relationship as a whole.

9. Protect Yourself

Borderline individuals sometimes display frightening levels of indifference in their day-to-day interactions with others. Their priorities are solely focused on satisfying their own desires. In order to exert power and control over those closest to them, they frequently resort to using guilt and a false feeling of duty.

Think about what your loved one regularly demands, uses guilt or abuse to get from you, and prepares a defense around it. Then, make it very clear to them what self-defense measures you will take.

You are entitled to security in terms of life and limb, property, and finances. If a close friend or relative is pressuring you to give them all of your money so they may buy a car, you have the right to reject and to say so “I’m stopping all of my monetary aid to you. Working is essential if you want to be able to buy the things you want.”

10. Know Their Triggers

Your loved one may appear to be too sensitive. Yet, patterns are likely to emerge if you look closely enough. The most typical precipitating circumstances are feelings of isolation, rejection, or hostility. Individuals with BPD are very reactive to anything that evokes memories of rejection or abandonment.

You, as a caretaker, need not protect your loved one from every possible emotional or physical stress. Yet, if you know what may set off an explosion, you can take preventative measures and set appropriate limits.

Summary

It may be challenging to love someone with borderline personality disorder, but it is possible with these strategies. Building a good, healthy connection with someone who has BPD takes time, but it’s doable with the right attitude and approach.

Above all else, keep in mind that BPD is a serious mental health illness that calls for expert care. Support your friend or family member as they take the first steps toward recovery by encouraging them to get assistance.

The problems of caring for someone with BPD can be mitigated via knowledge of the disorder and the cultivation of skills for successful communication and coping.

Maintain your space, focus on your own needs, and ask for assistance if you feel overwhelmed. Just being there for a person with borderline personality disorder (BPD) can do wonders for their mental health.

Finally, when conflicts emerge, both spouse should be prepared to talk things out and demonstrate compassion. Notwithstanding whatever challenges you may have, the rewards of loving someone who suffers from a borderline personality disorder (BPD) will always outweigh them.