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Dating Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder

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Dating someone with BPDValentine’s Day is around the corner, and if you are dating someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), you may find yourself in a precarious position when it comes to celebrating the holiday. 

In the initial phases, a relationship with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder can be exhilarating. For once, you may truly feel like someone’s hero or heroine. When the relationship begins, your significant other with BPD might tell you repeatedly how you are the only person who has completely understood them. 

Your partner may share with you all of the ways in which others in their life have exhibited betrayal, and you, by comparison, are the shining hope in their life. This role makes you feel important, until one day, without any warning, it appears that your significant other with BPD other abhors you and is slinging at you the same accusations of betrayal they once ascribed to others.

BPD Symptoms That Can Make Dating Difficult

What’s going on here? You’re dating someone with Borderline Personality Disorder and experiencing the intensified highs and lows of interpersonal bonding that is often a symptom of BPD. People who are diagnosed with BPD have difficulty handling ambiguity — they tend to see the world as being either black or white – and maintaining interpersonal relationships. 

Let’s say you are tied up at work and can’t respond to a text message from your significant other for several hours. A person without BPD might understand, but a person with BPD might blow this gesture out of proportion. They might label you as inattentive, uncaring, or dismissive of the relationship, when in fact nothing could be farther from the truth.

This “splitting,” or dividing, everything into either good or evil will pervade the relationship. In an effort to correct the “wrongs” you have caused your significant other, you may find yourself being even more emotionally tender and sympathetic. Once the wounds have healed, your significant other with BPD may unleash another accusation against you, or against the world — this one more severe than the last. 

Everyone has a limit to how much futile comforting they can expend, and you may find yourself wanting to end the relationship — if your significant other does not first as a means of attack. If you do decide to end the relationship, take note that your partner may not react appropriately and you may feel threatened.

Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment Can Help 

The good news, however, is that there is treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. A caring, supportive significant other who has the maturity to understand that BPD is not a part of their significant other’s true nature is one of the best allies of a comprehensive BPD treatment plan, which can involve group therapy, individual therapy, and medication. 

As long as you and your partner are educated about the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, and a BPD treatment plan is in place, there is no reason why you cannot enjoy a romantic Valentine’s Day and a long and happy relationship.

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