However, the stability of a partner may have a positive effect on the emotional sensitivities people with BPD experience. It may require a great deal of work from both partners, but long-term relationships and marriages are possible for people with BPD.
Anyone living with BPD can still lead satisfying lives and take pleasure in long-term relationships and even life partnerships. With the proper treatment and support, people with BPD can and do have healthy and happy relationships.
Dating someone with borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be difficult at times, but it doesn't have to be something that harms your relationship. BPD symptoms can include complex and unhealthy thought processes, anxiety, poor self-image, and dramatic mood swings.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) isn't a personal choice. It's a mental health condition, and it can be managed. Can a person with borderline personality disorder feel love? Absolutely!
Know that you can live a normal life with BPD.
People with BPD often have risk-taking behaviors, such as overspending, drug use, reckless driving, or self-harm due to a lack of inhibition. Although these behaviors can be dangerous, and potentially life-threatening, many people with BPD are high-functioning individuals.
Those who have BPD tend to be very intense, dramatic, and exciting. This means they tend to attract others who are depressed and/or suffering low self-esteem. People who take their power from being a victim, or seek excitement in others because their own life is not where they want it to be.
People affected by BPD often have highly unstable intimate relationships. Usually of above average intelligence, they tend to fall in love easily, sometimes without getting to know the person.
Often, the person with BPD will react towards loved ones as if they were the abusers from their past, and take out vengeance and anger towards them. When the person with BPD feels abandoned, they can become abusive or controlling as a way to defend against feelings of abandonment or feeling unworthy.
Results found in a 2014 study found the average length of a BPD relationship between those who either married or living together as partners was 7.3 years. However, there are cases where couples can stay together for 20+ years.
“Clinicians should know that people with BPD can successfully marry or live with a partner in a stable relationship and become parents.
Intense episodic irritability or anxiety lasting a few hours or more than a few days). Recurring feelings of emptiness. Frequent intense, inappropriate anger or issues controlling temper. Severe dissociative symptoms or stress-related paranoia.
Dating someone with borderline personality disorder can be challenging. Your partner may have major difficulties with strong emotions, drastic mood swings, chronic fear of abandonment, and impulsive behaviors that can strain your relationship with chaos and instability.
Despite its many challenges, the prognosis for BPD is good. This means that while most people with BPD do experience residual symptoms even after time and treatment, in the long term, recovery and healthy relationships are possible.
BPD splitting destroys relationships because the behaviour can be impulsive or reckless in order to alleviate the pain, often hurting loved ones in the process. It can feel like everyone abandons or hurts them, often causing them to look for evidence, and creating problems from nothing.
So, why are BPD relationships so complicated? Individuals with BPD tend to idealize their partners and put them on a 'pedestal'. Doing this allows them to believe, however fleetingly, that they have found their soulmate. The problems arise when reality doesn't match up to their idealized version of the partner.
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.
For someone with BPD, the favorite person is deemed the most important person in their life. This person can be anyone, but it's often a romantic partner, family member, good friend, or another supportive person (like a coach, therapist, or teacher).
We're loyal partners and friends
Though there's often an assumption that we have unstable relationships – and in fact this is listed as one of the main symptoms of BPD – we are extremely loyal. As mentioned above, we tend to put ourselves last. Relationships are truly important to us, and our loyalty is strong.
People with BPD can act overly needy. If you take them out of their comfort zone, or when they feel “abandoned” they can become a burden.
These individuals often report feeling that emotions control their lives or even that they feel things more intensely than other people. In close relationships, a person with BPD may appear jealous, possessive, or hyper-reactive. These individuals often fear being left alone and have deep feelings of worthlessness.
These relationships go through an intense honeymoon period – one in which the BPD partner puts you on a pedestal, claiming that she has found the perfect match. What she's really looking for is someone to rescue her from the emotional agony and chaos plaguing her inner life.
As a symptom
Some people with borderline personality disorder (sometimes referred to as BPD) can be markedly impulsive, seductive, and extremely sexual. Sexual promiscuity, sexual obsessions, and hypersexuality are very common symptoms for both men and women with BPD.