Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can be trusted, but it's complex, often challenging due to core BPD traits like fear of abandonment, emotional instability, and difficulties with reality testing, leading to potential lying, manipulation, or intense reactions, though treatment (like DBT) significantly improves their ability to manage emotions, build trust, and maintain stable, healthy relationships. Trust requires consistent effort, strong boundaries, and understanding their struggles, with treatment being key to managing destructive patterns.
Loyal and Devoted
Yes, some BPD partners may be unfaithful, particularly if they act impulsively when emotionally dysregulated. The majority of the time, though, if they feel safe and loved in a committed relationship, they will value the safe haven you have created and they have sought their entire lives.
If you or your partner has BPD, it is possible to have a fulfilling relationship, although you will have more challenges than the average couple. Couples counseling and individual counseling can greatly improve your chances of being in the relationship that you want.
Those with BPD often cannot rein in their emotions and therefore struggle to rein in their behavior. Saying "Stop over-reacting" or "I don't understand you" invalidates a complex inner experience and can create more defensive volatility in BPD.
Being married to someone with BPD can make you feel like you're being left alone with your worries and stresses. The stress and uncertainty associated with caring for the individual through their mood swings can take an emotional toll on a spouse.
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.
Why BPD Symptoms Peak in Early Adulthood. In the 20s, identity formation and independence conflict with emotional vulnerability. Research shows impulsivity and mood swings occur most frequently between the ages of 18-25.
Conflicts and disagreements are difficult for people with BPD, as they interpret these as signals of uncaring or relationship termination, generating feelings of anger and shame.
Jobs that draw on empathy, communication, and understanding, traits often strengthened by lived experience with BPD, can also be deeply rewarding. Examples include: Teaching assistant or education support worker. Counsellor, peer support, or mental health worker.
Some common types of delusions that may occur in individuals with BPD include: Persecutory delusions: Believing that one is being mistreated, harassed, or conspired against by others.
Some couples stay together for years, while others find the relationship too volatile to sustain. The BPD relationship cycle is a recurring sequence of emotional highs and lows that can repeat many times unless both partners seek support.
How to Build Trust in a Relationship with Someone with BPD
When a BPD person is splitting, they may distort how they see things. One moment they feel good and the next they feel low. One moment they feel loved and the next they feel unwanted or abandoned. Borderline Personality Disorder splitting can destroy your relationship by inflicting pain on the partner.
Building stable relationships with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can be challenging, especially when trust has been eroded by past traumas and negative experiences. To navigate these complexities, it's crucial to stay grounded and consistent in your approach.
But there are lots of positive things you can do to support them:
Individuals with BPD may lie due to their emotional dysregulation and inability to tease out the truth from their fears. By helping the person with BPD to gain self-awareness of their lies and the damage they are doing, they may be motivated to find more effective ways of communicating their fears.
Be careful with alcohol or drug use.
While you might want to use drugs or alcohol to cope with difficult feelings, in the long run they can make you feel a lot worse and may prevent you from getting the support you need for your mental health.
The "3 C's of BPD" typically refer to advice for loved ones of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, reminding them: "I didn't cause it, I can't cure it, I can't control it," to help set boundaries and avoid taking on undue responsibility for the person's actions or illness. Another set of "C's" describes core BPD traits for individuals: Clinginess (fear of abandonment), Conflict (intense relationships/moods), and Confusion (unstable self-image).
An employee or coworker with BPD may be a good worker when not overwhelmed by their symptoms. However, the effects of BPD symptoms can vary with different workplace situations, affecting job performance and the ability to “fit in” with the work environment.
People with BPD have unstable moods and can act recklessly. They also have a hard time managing their emotions consistently. If you have BPD, you may have problems with daily tasks, obligations, and life events. You may have trouble keeping jobs and relationships.
How to calm a BPD episode? Grounding techniques, distraction, validation, DBT skills, cold-water face splashes, and crisis coping plans can help calm intense emotional episodes.
Many Autistic people are misdiagnosed with borderline/emotionally unstable personality disorder (BPD/EUPD), with most professionals preferring to accept the initial diagnosis rather than acknowledging the realities of what it means to be Autistic.
Conclusions: Parental externalizing psychopathology and father's BPD traits contribute genetic risk for offspring BPD traits, but mothers' BPD traits and parents' poor parenting constitute environmental risks for the development of these offspring traits.
BPD occurs equally in men and women, though women tend to seek treatment more often than men. Symptoms may get better in or after middle age.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are triggered by intense emotions, particularly fear of abandonment, rejection, and invalidation, often stemming from past trauma, leading to reactions like sudden anger or self-harm when feeling criticized, alone, or facing instability, sudden changes, or perceived neglect, according to sources like Borderline in the ACT. Common triggers include relationship conflicts, cancelled plans, perceived or real abandonment, reminders of trauma, or unmet needs like sleep, disrupting their fragile sense of self and emotional regulation.