How Borderline Personality Disorder Affects Relationship

Borderline Personality Disorder

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) tend to have major difficulties with relationships, especially with those closest to them. Their wild mood swings, angry outbursts, chronic abandonment fears, and impulsive and irrational behaviors can leave loved ones feeling helpless, abused, and off-balance. 

Signs and Symptoms

Only a doctor or mental health professional can officially provide an official diagnosis of a personality disorder, but there are several key symptoms you can observe that might indicate a person has BPD. These include:

• Intense fear of rejection, separation, or abandonment
• Rapid changes between thinking someone is perfect to believing they are evil
• Risky behaviors including unsafe sex, gambling, drug use, or accumulating credit card debt
• Threats of suicide or self-harm
• Difficulty empathizing with other people
• Mood swings from euphoria to intense shame or self-criticism
• Frequently losing one’s temper

People with BPD are often terrified that others will leave them. However, they can also shift suddenly to feeling smothered and fearful of intimacy, which leads them to withdraw from relationships. The result is a constant back-and-forth between demands for love or attention and sudden withdrawal or isolation.

Another BPD symptom that particularly impacts relationships is called abandonment sensitivity. This can lead those with BPD to be constantly watching for signs that someone may leave them and to interpret even a minor event as a sign that abandonment is imminent. The emotions may result in frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, such as pleading, public scenes, and even physically preventing the other person from leaving.

Another common complaint of loved ones in borderline relationships is lying. While lying and deception is not part of the formal diagnostic criteria for BPD, many loved ones say lying is one of their biggest concerns; this can be because BPD causes people to see things very differently than others.

Finally, other symptoms of BPD, including impulsivity, self-harm, and dissociative symptoms, which can have an indirect impact on borderline relationships.

How to set and reinforce healthy boundaries

Talk to your loved one about boundaries at a time when you’re both calm, not in the heat of an argument. Decide what behavior you will and will not tolerate the person and make those expectations clear. For example, you may tell your loved one, “If you can’t talk to me without screaming abuse at me, I will walk out.”

Do…

Calmly reassure the person with BPD when setting limits. Say something like, “I love you and I want our relationship to work, but I can’t handle the stress caused by your behavior. I need you to make this change for me.”

Make sure everyone in the family agrees on the boundaries—and how to enforce the consequences if they’re ignored.

Think of setting boundaries as a process rather than a single event. Instead of hitting your loved one with a long list of boundaries all at once, introduce them gradually, one or two at a time.

Don’t…

Make threats and ultimatums that you can’t carry out. As is human nature, your loved one will inevitably test the limits you set. If you relent and don’t enforce the consequences, your loved one will know the boundary is meaningless and the negative behavior will continue. Ultimatums are a last resort.

Tolerate abusive behavior. No one should have to put up with verbal abuse or physical violence. Just because your loved one’s behavior is the result of a personality disorder, it doesn’t make the behavior any less real or any less damaging to you or other family members.

Enable the person with BPD by protecting them from the consequences of their actions. If your loved one won’t respect your boundaries and continues to make you feel unsafe, then you may need to leave. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them, but your self-care should always take priority.