Submitted by Double_Rip_441 t3_127t20j in relationship_advice
I have been struggling dating my girlfriend with BPD (borderline personality disorder) but I want to make it work, I love her too much to quit out of the stress of handing it. We've been together overall for about 6 or so months, but there's already been multiple breakups (from her end) in-between. We started off great in a honeymoon like phase, but some issues caused us to break it up (my fault) and we eventually got back together with boundaries and ground rules set for our relationship. However, recently she's been having constant mood swings and shifts in how she feels. She'll go from being loving, caring, and sweet one day to seemingly not loving me the next, not even saying I love you back and stuff. It's like she changes into a different person without anything triggering it. Shell constantly go from wanting to be with me forever to thinking we should end the relationship, but then it'll go back. Besides these issues though, she's overall nice and sweet, and an amazing person. And I need help figuring out how to handle this please...
TL:DR: my gf has BPD, will go back and forth between loving me and seemingly not loving me, it's like I'm dating two different ppl, need help
Up-Town t1_jeg8fpc wrote
She's not a bad person overall... her normal self is sweet, caring, very loving, silly, and fun.
Rip, my experience is that most people with BPD ("pwBPD") are good and caring individuals, as long as you don't draw so close, for so long, that you start triggering their two fears. Their problem is not being BAD but, rather, being UNSTABLE.
Indeed, the key defining characteristic of BPD is the inability to regulate one's own emotions, resulting in unstable behavior. This is why, outside the USA, most countries call this disorder "emotionally unstable personality disorder" (EUPD).
It therefore is common for a pwBPD to exhibit the warmth, spontaneity, vulnerability, and purity of expressions that otherwise are seen only on the faces of young children. This is one reason why pwBPD usually are very easy to fall in love with. It thus is not surprising that 3 of the world's most beloved women -- Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Princess Diana -- all had full-blown BPD if their biographers are correct.
My GF has BPD. She will go back and forth between loving me and seemingly not loving me.
My experience, Rip, is that a pwBPD usually is capable of loving you very intensely -- but it is the immature type of love you see in young children. This means she will occasionally flip -- in only seconds -- from Jekyll (adoring you) to Hyde (devaluing or hating you). And a few hours or days later, she can flip back again just as quickly. These rapid flips arise from a primitive defense called "black-white thinking."
Like a young child, a pwBPD never had an opportunity to learn the emotional skills needed to handle two strong conflicting feelings (e.g., love and hate) at the same time. This means she has great difficulty tolerating ambiguities, uncertainties, and the other gray areas of close interpersonal relationships. She thus will subconsciously split off the conflicting feeling, putting it far out of reach of her conscious mind.
With young children, this "splitting" is evident when the child will adore Daddy while he's bringing out the toys but, in only a few seconds, will flip to hating Daddy when he takes one toy away. Importantly, this behavior does not mean that the child has stopped loving Daddy. Rather, it means that her conscious mind is temporarily out of touch with those loving feelings.
Similarly, a pwBPD will categorize everyone close to her as "all good" ("with me") or "all bad" ("against me"). And she will recategorize someone from one polar extreme to the other -- in just seconds -- based solely on a minor comment or action. This B-W thinking also will be evident in her frequent use of all-or-nothing expressions such as "You NEVER..." and "You ALWAYS...."
It's like she changes into a different person without anything triggering it.
Rip, yes, that is the way it seems to me too. It seems that there is no apparent trigger for her mood flip. But there actually is a very real trigger for each event. This trigger can be hard to see because that whatever you do will be hurtful to an untreated pwBPD much of the time.
For example, a comment or action that pleases her on one day may greatly offend her when repeated a week later. Moreover, she often will perceive you as being hurtful when you DO something and hurtful when you DON'T do it. In this way, you often are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
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, Rip, 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.
Consequently, 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. A pwBPD usually craves intimacy like nearly all other adults -- but she cannot tolerate it for very long.
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. This is why her sense of personal boundaries is so weak that she has difficulty seeing where HER feelings and problems stop and YOURS begin. Yet, as you back away to give her breathing space, you often 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 often will 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. At least, this has been my experience, Rip.