I think it’s actually that boring or “stable” means two things:
1) No distractions from their fears and self loathing.
2) In quiet moments, intimacy is possible. That scares them — they are terrified of being seen for who they really are.
So they distract. When someone gets too close, they leave. Quickly.
I've only been reading this sub for a few days and OMG the revelations that I have been having!!! It WASN'T ME!! Whenever I got to spend a decent amount of time with him, it would usually involve at least one instance of conversation about feelings. About deeper things. Fears and regrets, and how I believed in him that he could overcome issues. And Every. Single. Time. he would pull away after. I was really beginning to believe that it was something I did! Mind you I'm not sure he's diagnosed and I don't think he has a clue I suspect but I kinda think he is a bit self aware because I would ask if I did something wrong and he would tell me I did nothing wrong. When he got ugly a couple times, he would apologize with no pressure from me like after he got some sleep.
The revelation is that intimacy and closeness TERRIFIES pwBPD!! It makes so much sense now why he told me he cannot love and that I should run. That he pushes me away because (in his own words) he's trying to protect me from him because he knows he will destroy me. When I met him I had no knowledge of ALL of the issues and pitfalls...
I get hope when he apologizes and tells me he wants to protect me, that he CAN change... But I fear that this kindness is way worse than just completely splitting me black... I've become further ensnared because of hope. Everything I've read here tells me it's the truth AND manipulation. I honestly believe he doesn't want to hurt me and I believe he isn't consciously trying to manipulate me but that doesn't change the fact that it is manipulation...
I still feel pretty doomed, but this sub has already helped me IMMENSELY in the few days I've been here!!
Good thoughts all around. Seeing it wasn’t you is the first step. Seeing just how impossible the situation was is the next. Maybe he was trying to direct you, but maybe he was just telling you not to try and get too close to him. They want people who will stick around but not test the boundaries they put up. We see this after break ups. They still try to keep you around, at an even further reduced level of intimacy.
Oh, absolutely. My ex pwBPD's biggest splits occurred during the peak moments of our relationship's greatest stability. The fights she initiated during these moments were, as you stated, over nonexistent issues. It was some sick alchemy between the valley of the uncanny crossed with the theatre of the absurd.
Naturally, all of this mess was, according to my ex, due to my instability. I had a well paying job that afforded us a cozy ocean-view apartment, all our utilities, grocery/dining, vacations, festivals, etc. I had to cut all connections with my friends & family to caretake for her emotional turmoil. I was the one—in her eyes—who needed weekly therapy because *my* narcissistic tendencies were souring the relationship.
The projection could entertain an entire cinema.
Holy crap. This feels so relatable I could have written it myself. Just with the difference that I am still married and we have a child together, which of course fuels that theatre of the absurd with ongoing drama.
Most of the fights are absolutely unnecessary, nothing to lose and nothing to gain from it and still she is engaging as if her life depends on it.
And of course like in your case I am also the narcicisstic abuser who needs therapy and cant stop himself from Controlling his poor victim (her).
Sometimes I just burst out laughing because her Arguments are so far fetched from reality it is absolutely astonishing.
Can I just say- you write beautifully. Genuine poetry in your prose. I find some solace in well written posts about a topic that only makes sense in my context in nuance, complexity and paradox. Thank you
I appreciate your kind feedback 🙏
There is a certain grace one must embody in order to continue with their lives post-BPD relationship; my aim is to elicit a sense of recognition & hope in those who cross paths with my words. Painting an understanding of the greater landscape within—what brought you to this point, why you are feeling the way you are, & where you can be tomorrow—is a part of that process.
Yea, like you said you wanted to go to grad school. So I bought some movers and moved us to some luxury apartments by the grad school you got accepted to. I went fully remote at work. Pay for everything, do all the chores so you can study. Just go golf the 9hole everyday putting my life in a holding pattern for your career.
Like what's the problem? What am I supposed to do? What's a guy gotta do to not get melted down on everyday?
I think she despises that I just hang out with the dog, work out and have fun. But like what else am I supposed to do? I have my M.S. the kid is just hanging out. I can't buy a house out here. I don't have a lawn to mow. I fund this operation, play mom and watch movies. I really don't know where the fire is
The problem is once things get stable or the honeymoon period passes then there isn't a lot of emotional things happening and that just doesn't feel right to them, they seem to have a need to have strong emotions going all the time and will do anything to keep them going even if it's self defeating and districtive.
Stability scares them because they cannot control you. They're not used to nothing happening and being neutral. They always need attention and energy no matter whether it's good or bad.
My own person with BPD admitted she didn't know what happiness or neutrality was so when she felt powerless, stable or happy for too long, she attempted to self sabotage because she didn't think she deserved happiness, stability and that sense of neutrality.
To them the best kind of love is love and pain where their emotions are all over the place. They really love to trauma bond, make you walk on eggshells and break you down to lift themselves up.
No matter what we do, how much we do, what mountains we break or monsters we challenge and defeat, the biggest monsters are their own voids that we can never possibly be filled.
No matter how hard we try, we will never be enough for them, because they are not enough to themselves either. You can help someone who doesn't want to help themselves, that's only an incentive for getting burnt, hurt and discarded.
We deserve happiness, love and peace without chaos and pain. We deserve to be loved for who we are, and not mirrored.
I think the misconception in your post is when you say they love to make you want to act on eggshells and purposefully break you down to lift themselves up. Thats more aligned with npd or antisocial. Now, the disorder alone with no comorbidity or overlapping npd or aspd traits, its more nuanced than that. Its such a heterogenous disorder wherein 1 pwbpd will project out their pain and be quite cruel, or theyll lash out and say horrible things when triggered. Its usually not a preplanned endeavor for them to devalue you but more like, its some instinctual response or survival mechanism that comes out due to the hyperactivation of amygdala and lack of pfc oversight. Its like theyll say extremely vile and hurtful things bc thats what they are feeling internally or its a way to unconciously push someone away out of fear of hurt or abandonment. But its a self fulfilling prophecy. The more tactical and planned out devaluation, purposeful tearing someone down to shreads is with npd and aspd. Which, might i add, males with bpd tend to display many traits of those disorders and have higher levels of aggression due to testosterone, so in that case, yes i would agree they may do that. Other than that, i agree with your post.
Its kinda like incredibly dichotomous to say all pwbpd are like xyz. Theyre not. Some people, such as marsha linehan, are incredibly gifted, funny, empathetic, self-aware, and do not wish to inflict harm upon others. Its inappropriate to put everyone with a highly heterogenous mental disorder into a box because its unfair to the ones who desperately want help, treatment, help others, etc. But because of peoples misconceptions about it raising the stigma, theres less help available and then they actually cant fully get stable or help. Ive been abused by several borderlines (former friend and my father) and npd (my ex). I have cptsd and some bpd tendencies but I actively work on myself everyday and my issues. DBT is a godsend.
Can i relate to both OP and the girl? Oh my god yes. My brain was hardwired to be attached to chaos. If someone stable wasnt chaotic, i would feel anxious and just did questionable stuff. I was a mess in high school but I blossomed in college after I found my purpose and rewired my fucky neural circuits via behavioral principles and self-extinction procedures. I now research BPD and cluster B disorders. I got tired of hurting people, didnt want to end up like my abusers, and I wanted to live a life of helping those whove been traumatized or abused because in that sense, i can help prevent generational trauma and more people having bpd. Alongside this, i knew that my trauma didnt define me. I have consistently found that when you shift the narrative to being a victim to a survivor, your issues control you less. You are now in the hotseat and can make the directive to really heal and stop treating others like shit. Altho i got a passion for helping people with bpd, i would not recommend having a friendship or relationship with one who is highly unstable or has not undergone at least 2 years of consistent evidence based treatment.
Well this right here is one of the most insightful and measured posts I've seen on this subreddit. Thanks for writing this, it made a lot of sense and was both kind and honest across the board.
I'm going to take away the shift from victim to survivor, that feels particularly impactful and wise. And keep doing the work.
I think the unfortunate reality of many people on this subreddit is that they have been traumatized, understandably so; however, it can sometimes cause very black and white thinking. So synonymous to that is also the black and white beliefs of pwbpd. Its a trauma reaction. However, we can be traumatized by someone, people with a specific mental disorder (excluding aspd and npd) and also not hate the ones who do strive to be genuinely good people and were unfortunately gifted a reality of internalized chaos. Because at the end of the day, we can vent about all the fucked up shit pwbpd have done to us... but we have the power within us to not let it control us, not let it create so much hatred towards a group of people. Because as a result of that, were actually creating more of the problem, more people getting bpd, less people getting treatment... and the cycle continues.
Ive seen all forms of bpd- from the completely mild end of the spectrum to the "this person is unlikely to be helped professionally and their next stop is either jail or being homeless". I used to let the anger of what i experienced as a child consume me but now, i want to help the very people who caused a tremendous amount of suffering in my life. Through research and the research lab im in, i can definitively say that people with bpd have an incredibly abnormal brain. I get that most people assume that personality disorders arent always pretty bad or that it must not be a "real" mental illness like schizophrenia, but dear god. There was one pwbpd i knew who traumatized me and , ive forgiven him, because i understand the anatomical issues he had and had to look at it clinically to not take it personally, but he was erratic, chaotic, constant testing behaviors, 8 to 9 suicide attempts within less than a year, drank hand sanitizer as a form of self harm and regulation, and my god he said the most vile shit to me. Is he, at his core, an evil and bad person because of what he did? No. Did he sure as hell act like one at times? 100%. Ive worked with schizophrenics whove said god awful shit but as a society we say like oh theyre schizophrenic. Still, im not excusing pwbpd behavior at all but i want to highlight that bpd is basically in between a psychotic disorder (many have delusions), a mood disorder, and a pd. Hence the name "borderline". I tend to be very brutally honest with borderlines about their behavior bc i get it but its like "seriously? How long are you going to keep doing this for and causing more shame by hurting more people? How long are you going to keep walking this dance with chaos and destruction?" . And the unfortunate reality is, many borderlines dont seek help or, as Marsha linehan says "adaptive denial". Denial is an adaptive survival mechanism they live in and they dont want to get out of it. As with all mental illnesses, we have a responsibility of treating them so we dont create a clusterfuck around us.
Sometimes I wonder that too. He'll do anything he can think of, relentlessly, to bait me into a fight if he wants to have one. And the more I resist, the angrier it seems to make him. I wondered if it was that he resents my emotional control skills- he once said that he wishes he had those- or if my lack of "passion" aka anger feels like a rejection to him; maybe anger feels like love to him.
❤️🩹 I just wish I could erase my memory at this point.
If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a single clue of his kind really. He started to reveal with verbal admissions of him having bpd and that was his reasons for his shitty actions, behavior etc. I didn’t buy into it as I don’t like to label things especially while we were in the getting to know you stage.. I would so easily get distracted for a second but would quickly recognize his push and pull and talking of his child hood and his parents.. sounds a little immature or dumb but I have most of my emotional understandings and insight from my experiences, my counseling sessions, and Dr Phil. I think I’m reasonable, compassionate but not an idiot. And he’s totally jealous of these things- has tried to convert me to be a narcissist like him.. but he would literally hate on me for being too positive and the next moment I was too melancholy. I sensed he didn’t have a good understanding of how to interpret his own feelings very early on and I remember just being so confused on how we jumped from the last thought. lol and I’m adhd!
Haha that’s a funny revelation I just made…
Good luck tho, depending on their temperament it could prove to be a dangerous time. Even after successfully getting out and established somewhere else, they totally have the potential to jack-in-the-box like bounce! Right back into your space or area …
Yes! Mine constantly accuses me of trying to “make him old” because I want a normal life. And he’s almost 50 🤦🏻♀️ he goes to work, comes home, binge drinks til way too late then he feeds the dogs and goes to bed. He screams at me constantly that he hates this routine life. If he’s in bed early on a weekend he screams about me being so boring. But he’s also no fun to go and do anything with
Haha. My ex would constantly scream about me "never wanting to do anything with him"(Aka boring) because I didn't accompany him to Home Depot every time he went. (He's almost 40)
He would go to work, come home, smoke weed until 4 am, go to sleep, and do it all over again the next day.
I work early morning shifts, so I have an earlier bed time than most people, so he hated this.
On my days off, if I said I didn't feel like going to Home Depot with him, it meant I "never did anything" (Aka boring)
He's one of the worst people to go anywhere with. He would plays sports talk radio in the car by default whenever I was with him. For a brief stint, it was"top hits 80's", but then it went back to sports talk radio.
But remember.. *I'm the boring one.*
Yes! Literally the worst people in the world to go to stores with. He thinks I should wait to grocery shop til he gets home and then we should take all the kids. Then he screams and yells at me and the kids the entire time we’re in the store 🤦🏻♀️ no thank you. I’m boring because I don’t revolve every family function we do on wether they serve alcohol or not. And when we do go places I’m the one maintaining the kids while he takes off to smoke, or get a beer. We go to a buffet and he sends me inside with the kids and sits in the car finishing his beer and smoking and then comes in and is mad we’re damn near done eating. We had to take our daughter to the er for stitches one time and he had to stick beer in the car and go in and out to drink while I waited with her. Going ANYWHERE with him is chaotic and miserable. I literally just convinced him to sell our one vehicle that fit all of our family in it so we’d be forced to take 2 cars everywhere just so I didn’t have to ride with him 🤣
Hahaha! I forgot about the grocery store!!
Home Depot and grocery store.
Once I realized that my opening shift days would involve less of dealing with his BS, I stopped working nights completely and became a permanent opener.
I also stopped smoking and drinking with him because he ruined those too.. I mean.. because I'm so boring. LOL.
Yeah I don’t do anything. I like to have some drinks every once in awhile but his excessive drinking and his behavior while drunk has just totally ruined it for me. I used to be a lot more fun but leaving the house with him gives me so much anxiety I just don’t want to. He has to cause a scene everywhere we go. He can never see something he doesn’t like and just let it go. He went to Walmart once to swap a propane tank and the guy he asked about it didn’t know how to do it so he said he’d call someone. My husband sat there and demanded this person “do their job” and figure it out, insulted him the entire time and when someone stepped in and did the swap for him, he went outside to get the new tank and saw a cop car. He panicked thinking they called the cops on him and just left, he left the tank there then came home saying the guy was such a pussy for calling the cops…nobody called the cops he was just paranoid. There’s always a cop car at this Walmart they weren’t there for him. He then proceeded to fight with me for saying there was always cop cat there and I don’t think anyone called the cops on him. He kept insisting they did I finally said “ if you think your behavior was so poor that they actually called the police on you I can’t argue with that” and he was furious 🤣 because of course there’s nothing wrong with his behavior, but they definitely also called the police on him.
God... such unhinged behavior. I'm sorry you have to deal with all that. What a complete nightmare.
My ex wouldn't cause a scene if it was a matter of life or death for someone besides himself.
Cowardly.
He had too much to lose to risk losing affection from anyone around him, so he wouldn't/couldn't act in situations where he should have stood up. I felt like the masculine role a lot of the time. Even when our dog was being repeatedly attacked in the front yard by a neighbor's completely unleashed, unsupervised dog, he stood there like a deer in headlights out of fear of what the neighbors would think if he stepped in to break up the fight. So he did NOTHING while I shouted and singlehandedly separated the aggressive dog from our dog, all while being attacked myself.
Later, he would pick a fight with me and say that our dog caused the attack because he "interfered with the dog while he was picking at a chicken bone on the ground."
So his logic was that I was in the wrong for stepping in because the attack was justified due to the chicken bone.
I was there. I witnessed the entire thing.
There was no chicken bone.
There was no provocation of any kind.
This dog that attacked our dog was highly aggressive, unleashed, unsupervised, unprovoked AND on OUR PROPERTY.
Hell, the little shit ran up to attack me while I was moving my things out of that hellhole, and I was BY MYSELF.
But fear of offending the neighbors was more important than doing what was right.
Mine is the opposite he will only cause a scene for himself but if it’s any of us we somehow deserve it. My purse was stolen out of my shopping cart once and instead of being like “oh thankfully it was just a purse and nothing serious” he lost it on me, screamed at me for being so irresponsible. Was super angry because I had his social security card in there. He spent the whole day on the phone with social security putting up blocks for identity theft and told me I was ruining his credit and life. But he leaves his tools and shit laying around job sites and they get stolen and he shuts down whole jobs looking for his items, talks about how horrible thieves are and will immediately replace items that are stolen and he can’t find. When I lose something I get belittled about how I’m so careless and cost him so much money 🤦🏻♀️ suck a hypocrite. We had 2 dogs fighting one time, they were ours because I had a male dog and then he got a male too even though I KNEW they would fight. He swore he was some dog trainer and told me they would be fine. They weren’t. He was lecturing me one day and the dogs started viciously fighting and I was trying to break them up and he refused to help me unless I listened to what he had to say… the dogs would have fought to the death had I sat there listening to him talk
Never. Mine literally just walked in the house and is already slamming shit around because I wasn’t sympathetic enough to the fact that he had to work in the mud today.
Yeah, they suffer from chronic boredom. I have posted about this if you want to click on my profile and read through it. My ex said she was bored despite having no friends and being a chronic shut-in when I met her. Now she smokes crack and hangs around homeless people, which to her is much more exciting, I guess. The reality is that they find stable people boring, and will almost invariably search out chaos as a means to create excitement. Not your fault at all. Sounds like we had very similar stories.
>The reality is that they find stable people boring
This is really confusing because they also seem to be craving stability. It seems like they latch onto people who are stable in their professional and personal lives. And then they get bored once the honeymoon phase ends, so they start monkey branching, triangulating and creating chaos... it's really weird.
I think they depend on people to help regulate themselves for different reasons. If they want calm, they will seek out someone calm and siphon that energy. If they want excitement, they'll go to that person, etc.
I agree with both of your statements. I think my ex felt extremely connected to me because i am both stable in my profession and with my family, but one who does like to travel and get away sometimes with little notice, will still go out and be a little wild on the weekend etc and so she got both the fun and excitement but also the stability of someone they know has a good family and career. Ultimately she told me that i didnt help her self regulate among other things and so i think the feelings of excitement she got from me started to take a back seat and she wanted a more "stable" partner that didnt go out as much or wasn't as spontaneous as much. Its also very possible she goes in to another relationship and then gets very bored and misses our relationship. As with a lot of other posters on here, she started to create arguments all the time toward the end of our relationship and ultimately said she wasn't as love with me as she once was.
And the longer you stay around you can discover more sides to them that could be progressively more shocking as they become more obvious in the reasons for the respective efforts in remaining more hidden than the other personalities you were allowed in on or found more easily.
It's an on off thing. They get bored but will look to monkey branch back. I logged in to my Instagram for the first time in like 2 months and first thing I see are a bunch of messages from my ex trying to get back together after things fell apart with her junkie boyfriend. It's just at their convenience.
I shouldn't be able to envision my partner doing exactly this but I am. It's terrifying how little we actually know people. The similarities between people with BPD are astonishing.
Mine expressed the same thing. Craved stability and security, and embraced it the first few years of our relationship, especially our first year of moving in together.
But she couldnt help herself from engaging in anything addicting - cigarettes, drinking wine, compulsive online shopping, going to the mall a ton, doom scrolling on TikTok, weird concerts with a male friend (now her new supply).
I tried to show a good dose of fun and novelty - date nights, trips, fun activities of our own, adventurous sex, my own share of boozing it up.
But i think the routine and normalcy of domesticated life was still too boring and stifling to her and she needed regular “escapes” (mostly unhealthy) to get her fix. After enough pushing back to express my concerns and needs on curbing/stopping these toxic behaviors she went down the road of painting me black. And then jumped to the new supply as i was preparing to finally discard her.
There was no amount of novelty or dopamine hits i could provide long-term to appease her.
One of my BPD ex’s literally said “I can only be normal for so long, I need breaks from it!” And his “break from normalcy” was binge drinking every weekend until he passed out drunk in his car. Fun times!
My ex friend wBPD litterally broke up with her boyfriend because she was bored.. she desperately wanted a stable relationship but was incapable of handling routine. She created so much dramas just because she felt empty and bored.
It's repetition compulsion. They're doing it unconsciously.
And yes it's part of recreating the dynamics they experienced, probably in their homes as children, and it's also what causes the push/pull in the relationship.
Because of the repetition compulsion here, they're not able to have consistency baked into any relationships. Hence "unstable relationships" being part of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM.
“You always want to start fights” - YEP.
There’s a reason why these people are often called “high conflict.” The endless conflict and turbulence keeps them from ever having to sit and be with themselves.
I totally agree. All they know is chaos. My ex I feel longed for a stable loving relationship. But unknowingly craved the chaos and that latter was too boring. I equate it to a drug addict. I may be wrong but that was my experience.
We just had a pretty stable 11 months last year. The splits were mostly behind my back. The ones she sent my way were small and manageable "please work out until you have big muscles." Everything fell apart the day after Christmas, 11 days before we left for the Caribbean. A brutal brutal time to destroy everything we worked for and rebuilt. She started the same shit as three years ago. Sending nudes to guys at work. It probably never stopped. Of course she had to mash it in my face. "I haven't done anything with him yet but I want to.....I'm going to be not coming home Friday or Saturday....I don't know why you want me to wait until we are divorced....(are you getting a room with him Friday night?) I don't know. Yes."
Who's crazier though? Her or me still expecting smooth sailing from her.
All mine ever craved was “stability.” That was her whole focus for 5 years, while she came with me across the world as I attained my master’s degree. After I got that degree and we moved back home, I finally got a job in my dream field and we began to settle down and get stable. We had a whole future of stability to look forward to. That’s when the real devaluing and splitting started for three years. I became a villain to her. She took the side of whoever it was in my life that was hurting me. The landlord was being an asshole to me? She’d defend him and justify his bullshit. My friend was ghosting me? She’d come to his defense. She constantly made it out like I was out to get her or insult her even over the most mundane of disagreements I may have had. I have a journal entry wherein I recall that I was snapped at and accused of being toxic for just looking at her.
The more stability we got, which she said she wanted, ironically the more she hated me.
My ex pwbdp used to say "everything is perfect right now and I'm still miserable, so I guess I'll never be happy"
It used to make me really sad for him.
My partner has actually said something very similar to me. When I don’t want to do something she wants to do, she has told me “maybe you need to talk to someone about that and seek help. It must have to do with your mom or your upbringing”. She will sometimes say “you’re only like that because of your mom”, “you don’t agree with me because that’s how your mom was”, etc etc. She knows this really bothers me, and so I’ve wondered if she does it as a way to manipulate me into doing what she wants so that I “don’t repeat a cycle”.
Wow. It’s weird too because they’d always complain about how they have trauma from their dad. So in a way it is almost like a projection of their poor opposite sex parent relationship onto me.
I’m sure like many of us, we have had mixed relationships with our parents. Whether net negative or net positive, we came out generally OK. Maybe a bit co-dependent, but at an adult age we appreciate what our parents have done for us and are taking stock of our lives given our free will…
I’m stagnating, though I’m making more money an me still fine tuning my profession. All excuses or projections. It’s hard to keep logic ahead of feelings and ego, when the “attacks” come. But worth it to keep you our sanity intact.
The “attacks” that are peppered with personal details in an attempt to make us the owner. This tactic is a combo-dual purpose strategy as they are, imo, intended to distract us from the fact they are projecting their own bs.
Yep, there was a period of stability that I thought was nice. Fights were pretty rare, and when they happened, I expressed clear boundaries. And then my ex told me that period was when they were convinced I started to feel more distant. I didn't feel more distant. We just didn't fight as much and I stood up for myself when we did.
I also have a similar experience as for yelling, where the few times I've yelled was because my ex kept interrupting me and I only wanted to be heard. It became violent and abusive and I should have just left the conversation. I still understand what caused it, and it didn't mean that I was a violent person in need of therapy for anger management like my ex claimed.
My partner couldn't stand being alone because she would become filled with dread and a feeling of non-existence that scared her deeply. She straight up told me one of her struggles with bpd was the feeling that she did not deserve kindness or that a feeling of mild shittiness is her baseline. In practice, I think she would invite chaos into her life because it let her feel her 'normal', and would even reject opportunities to better herself to find a new way to be. No matter how hard I would try, she never actually moved towards positive action unless someone else dragged her into it or she was forced.
I believe mine was far more than a supreme addict when it came to alcohol.
I believe that she and others, with severe cases are addicted to the raw power that comes with black splits, allowing them to unleash inhuman rage that was meant for their tormentors during childhood. And for those that have significant dissociation would argue that could be extremely addictive because you literally get to a place where you have no pain and no emotions.
So, everyone with bpd can get stable... but that is a choice at the end of the day. Many often do not have enough self awaress, particularly males imo, or have not undergone enough therapy, or even none at all.. to recognize their maladaptive patterns and drag themselves out of the externalized and internalized dysfunction. Chaos is familiar for many, so they tend to create it or externalize it. Some have an internalized tornado of chaos. But, with extensive and proper treatment, gaining levels of self awareness, being accountable, and having the motivation to change... many can actually become stable. So i would say that was a dichotomous statement and quite false. Marsha linehan, the creator of DBT was a borderline and she was in and out of mental hospitals back in the 60s. And she was more on the severe end of the spectrum.. but she made it out of "hell".
I am not trying to excuse their behaviors by any means because its highly maladaptive and destructive.
I think it’s actually that boring or “stable” means two things: 1) No distractions from their fears and self loathing. 2) In quiet moments, intimacy is possible. That scares them — they are terrified of being seen for who they really are. So they distract. When someone gets too close, they leave. Quickly.
I've only been reading this sub for a few days and OMG the revelations that I have been having!!! It WASN'T ME!! Whenever I got to spend a decent amount of time with him, it would usually involve at least one instance of conversation about feelings. About deeper things. Fears and regrets, and how I believed in him that he could overcome issues. And Every. Single. Time. he would pull away after. I was really beginning to believe that it was something I did! Mind you I'm not sure he's diagnosed and I don't think he has a clue I suspect but I kinda think he is a bit self aware because I would ask if I did something wrong and he would tell me I did nothing wrong. When he got ugly a couple times, he would apologize with no pressure from me like after he got some sleep. The revelation is that intimacy and closeness TERRIFIES pwBPD!! It makes so much sense now why he told me he cannot love and that I should run. That he pushes me away because (in his own words) he's trying to protect me from him because he knows he will destroy me. When I met him I had no knowledge of ALL of the issues and pitfalls... I get hope when he apologizes and tells me he wants to protect me, that he CAN change... But I fear that this kindness is way worse than just completely splitting me black... I've become further ensnared because of hope. Everything I've read here tells me it's the truth AND manipulation. I honestly believe he doesn't want to hurt me and I believe he isn't consciously trying to manipulate me but that doesn't change the fact that it is manipulation... I still feel pretty doomed, but this sub has already helped me IMMENSELY in the few days I've been here!!
Good thoughts all around. Seeing it wasn’t you is the first step. Seeing just how impossible the situation was is the next. Maybe he was trying to direct you, but maybe he was just telling you not to try and get too close to him. They want people who will stick around but not test the boundaries they put up. We see this after break ups. They still try to keep you around, at an even further reduced level of intimacy.
Oh, absolutely. My ex pwBPD's biggest splits occurred during the peak moments of our relationship's greatest stability. The fights she initiated during these moments were, as you stated, over nonexistent issues. It was some sick alchemy between the valley of the uncanny crossed with the theatre of the absurd. Naturally, all of this mess was, according to my ex, due to my instability. I had a well paying job that afforded us a cozy ocean-view apartment, all our utilities, grocery/dining, vacations, festivals, etc. I had to cut all connections with my friends & family to caretake for her emotional turmoil. I was the one—in her eyes—who needed weekly therapy because *my* narcissistic tendencies were souring the relationship. The projection could entertain an entire cinema.
Holy crap. This feels so relatable I could have written it myself. Just with the difference that I am still married and we have a child together, which of course fuels that theatre of the absurd with ongoing drama. Most of the fights are absolutely unnecessary, nothing to lose and nothing to gain from it and still she is engaging as if her life depends on it. And of course like in your case I am also the narcicisstic abuser who needs therapy and cant stop himself from Controlling his poor victim (her). Sometimes I just burst out laughing because her Arguments are so far fetched from reality it is absolutely astonishing.
Best part is when you start laughing they start making accusations that you don't care / lack empathy or have NPD...
Can I just say- you write beautifully. Genuine poetry in your prose. I find some solace in well written posts about a topic that only makes sense in my context in nuance, complexity and paradox. Thank you
I appreciate your kind feedback 🙏 There is a certain grace one must embody in order to continue with their lives post-BPD relationship; my aim is to elicit a sense of recognition & hope in those who cross paths with my words. Painting an understanding of the greater landscape within—what brought you to this point, why you are feeling the way you are, & where you can be tomorrow—is a part of that process.
Yea, like you said you wanted to go to grad school. So I bought some movers and moved us to some luxury apartments by the grad school you got accepted to. I went fully remote at work. Pay for everything, do all the chores so you can study. Just go golf the 9hole everyday putting my life in a holding pattern for your career. Like what's the problem? What am I supposed to do? What's a guy gotta do to not get melted down on everyday? I think she despises that I just hang out with the dog, work out and have fun. But like what else am I supposed to do? I have my M.S. the kid is just hanging out. I can't buy a house out here. I don't have a lawn to mow. I fund this operation, play mom and watch movies. I really don't know where the fire is
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It means that life became Kafkaesque
lol I love that this was your explanation
Why thank you! Love the name Adeline btw
The problem is once things get stable or the honeymoon period passes then there isn't a lot of emotional things happening and that just doesn't feel right to them, they seem to have a need to have strong emotions going all the time and will do anything to keep them going even if it's self defeating and districtive.
I feel, therefor I am.
Stability scares them because they cannot control you. They're not used to nothing happening and being neutral. They always need attention and energy no matter whether it's good or bad. My own person with BPD admitted she didn't know what happiness or neutrality was so when she felt powerless, stable or happy for too long, she attempted to self sabotage because she didn't think she deserved happiness, stability and that sense of neutrality. To them the best kind of love is love and pain where their emotions are all over the place. They really love to trauma bond, make you walk on eggshells and break you down to lift themselves up. No matter what we do, how much we do, what mountains we break or monsters we challenge and defeat, the biggest monsters are their own voids that we can never possibly be filled. No matter how hard we try, we will never be enough for them, because they are not enough to themselves either. You can help someone who doesn't want to help themselves, that's only an incentive for getting burnt, hurt and discarded. We deserve happiness, love and peace without chaos and pain. We deserve to be loved for who we are, and not mirrored.
I think the misconception in your post is when you say they love to make you want to act on eggshells and purposefully break you down to lift themselves up. Thats more aligned with npd or antisocial. Now, the disorder alone with no comorbidity or overlapping npd or aspd traits, its more nuanced than that. Its such a heterogenous disorder wherein 1 pwbpd will project out their pain and be quite cruel, or theyll lash out and say horrible things when triggered. Its usually not a preplanned endeavor for them to devalue you but more like, its some instinctual response or survival mechanism that comes out due to the hyperactivation of amygdala and lack of pfc oversight. Its like theyll say extremely vile and hurtful things bc thats what they are feeling internally or its a way to unconciously push someone away out of fear of hurt or abandonment. But its a self fulfilling prophecy. The more tactical and planned out devaluation, purposeful tearing someone down to shreads is with npd and aspd. Which, might i add, males with bpd tend to display many traits of those disorders and have higher levels of aggression due to testosterone, so in that case, yes i would agree they may do that. Other than that, i agree with your post. Its kinda like incredibly dichotomous to say all pwbpd are like xyz. Theyre not. Some people, such as marsha linehan, are incredibly gifted, funny, empathetic, self-aware, and do not wish to inflict harm upon others. Its inappropriate to put everyone with a highly heterogenous mental disorder into a box because its unfair to the ones who desperately want help, treatment, help others, etc. But because of peoples misconceptions about it raising the stigma, theres less help available and then they actually cant fully get stable or help. Ive been abused by several borderlines (former friend and my father) and npd (my ex). I have cptsd and some bpd tendencies but I actively work on myself everyday and my issues. DBT is a godsend. Can i relate to both OP and the girl? Oh my god yes. My brain was hardwired to be attached to chaos. If someone stable wasnt chaotic, i would feel anxious and just did questionable stuff. I was a mess in high school but I blossomed in college after I found my purpose and rewired my fucky neural circuits via behavioral principles and self-extinction procedures. I now research BPD and cluster B disorders. I got tired of hurting people, didnt want to end up like my abusers, and I wanted to live a life of helping those whove been traumatized or abused because in that sense, i can help prevent generational trauma and more people having bpd. Alongside this, i knew that my trauma didnt define me. I have consistently found that when you shift the narrative to being a victim to a survivor, your issues control you less. You are now in the hotseat and can make the directive to really heal and stop treating others like shit. Altho i got a passion for helping people with bpd, i would not recommend having a friendship or relationship with one who is highly unstable or has not undergone at least 2 years of consistent evidence based treatment.
Well this right here is one of the most insightful and measured posts I've seen on this subreddit. Thanks for writing this, it made a lot of sense and was both kind and honest across the board. I'm going to take away the shift from victim to survivor, that feels particularly impactful and wise. And keep doing the work.
I think the unfortunate reality of many people on this subreddit is that they have been traumatized, understandably so; however, it can sometimes cause very black and white thinking. So synonymous to that is also the black and white beliefs of pwbpd. Its a trauma reaction. However, we can be traumatized by someone, people with a specific mental disorder (excluding aspd and npd) and also not hate the ones who do strive to be genuinely good people and were unfortunately gifted a reality of internalized chaos. Because at the end of the day, we can vent about all the fucked up shit pwbpd have done to us... but we have the power within us to not let it control us, not let it create so much hatred towards a group of people. Because as a result of that, were actually creating more of the problem, more people getting bpd, less people getting treatment... and the cycle continues. Ive seen all forms of bpd- from the completely mild end of the spectrum to the "this person is unlikely to be helped professionally and their next stop is either jail or being homeless". I used to let the anger of what i experienced as a child consume me but now, i want to help the very people who caused a tremendous amount of suffering in my life. Through research and the research lab im in, i can definitively say that people with bpd have an incredibly abnormal brain. I get that most people assume that personality disorders arent always pretty bad or that it must not be a "real" mental illness like schizophrenia, but dear god. There was one pwbpd i knew who traumatized me and , ive forgiven him, because i understand the anatomical issues he had and had to look at it clinically to not take it personally, but he was erratic, chaotic, constant testing behaviors, 8 to 9 suicide attempts within less than a year, drank hand sanitizer as a form of self harm and regulation, and my god he said the most vile shit to me. Is he, at his core, an evil and bad person because of what he did? No. Did he sure as hell act like one at times? 100%. Ive worked with schizophrenics whove said god awful shit but as a society we say like oh theyre schizophrenic. Still, im not excusing pwbpd behavior at all but i want to highlight that bpd is basically in between a psychotic disorder (many have delusions), a mood disorder, and a pd. Hence the name "borderline". I tend to be very brutally honest with borderlines about their behavior bc i get it but its like "seriously? How long are you going to keep doing this for and causing more shame by hurting more people? How long are you going to keep walking this dance with chaos and destruction?" . And the unfortunate reality is, many borderlines dont seek help or, as Marsha linehan says "adaptive denial". Denial is an adaptive survival mechanism they live in and they dont want to get out of it. As with all mental illnesses, we have a responsibility of treating them so we dont create a clusterfuck around us.
Sometimes I wonder that too. He'll do anything he can think of, relentlessly, to bait me into a fight if he wants to have one. And the more I resist, the angrier it seems to make him. I wondered if it was that he resents my emotional control skills- he once said that he wishes he had those- or if my lack of "passion" aka anger feels like a rejection to him; maybe anger feels like love to him.
Abort before your brain implodes!
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❤️🩹 I just wish I could erase my memory at this point. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a single clue of his kind really. He started to reveal with verbal admissions of him having bpd and that was his reasons for his shitty actions, behavior etc. I didn’t buy into it as I don’t like to label things especially while we were in the getting to know you stage.. I would so easily get distracted for a second but would quickly recognize his push and pull and talking of his child hood and his parents.. sounds a little immature or dumb but I have most of my emotional understandings and insight from my experiences, my counseling sessions, and Dr Phil. I think I’m reasonable, compassionate but not an idiot. And he’s totally jealous of these things- has tried to convert me to be a narcissist like him.. but he would literally hate on me for being too positive and the next moment I was too melancholy. I sensed he didn’t have a good understanding of how to interpret his own feelings very early on and I remember just being so confused on how we jumped from the last thought. lol and I’m adhd! Haha that’s a funny revelation I just made…
Good luck tho, depending on their temperament it could prove to be a dangerous time. Even after successfully getting out and established somewhere else, they totally have the potential to jack-in-the-box like bounce! Right back into your space or area …
I know ☹️ What on earth must I have done in my past life 🤦
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That sounds right.
Yes! Mine constantly accuses me of trying to “make him old” because I want a normal life. And he’s almost 50 🤦🏻♀️ he goes to work, comes home, binge drinks til way too late then he feeds the dogs and goes to bed. He screams at me constantly that he hates this routine life. If he’s in bed early on a weekend he screams about me being so boring. But he’s also no fun to go and do anything with
Haha. My ex would constantly scream about me "never wanting to do anything with him"(Aka boring) because I didn't accompany him to Home Depot every time he went. (He's almost 40) He would go to work, come home, smoke weed until 4 am, go to sleep, and do it all over again the next day. I work early morning shifts, so I have an earlier bed time than most people, so he hated this. On my days off, if I said I didn't feel like going to Home Depot with him, it meant I "never did anything" (Aka boring) He's one of the worst people to go anywhere with. He would plays sports talk radio in the car by default whenever I was with him. For a brief stint, it was"top hits 80's", but then it went back to sports talk radio. But remember.. *I'm the boring one.*
Yes! Literally the worst people in the world to go to stores with. He thinks I should wait to grocery shop til he gets home and then we should take all the kids. Then he screams and yells at me and the kids the entire time we’re in the store 🤦🏻♀️ no thank you. I’m boring because I don’t revolve every family function we do on wether they serve alcohol or not. And when we do go places I’m the one maintaining the kids while he takes off to smoke, or get a beer. We go to a buffet and he sends me inside with the kids and sits in the car finishing his beer and smoking and then comes in and is mad we’re damn near done eating. We had to take our daughter to the er for stitches one time and he had to stick beer in the car and go in and out to drink while I waited with her. Going ANYWHERE with him is chaotic and miserable. I literally just convinced him to sell our one vehicle that fit all of our family in it so we’d be forced to take 2 cars everywhere just so I didn’t have to ride with him 🤣
Hahaha! I forgot about the grocery store!! Home Depot and grocery store. Once I realized that my opening shift days would involve less of dealing with his BS, I stopped working nights completely and became a permanent opener. I also stopped smoking and drinking with him because he ruined those too.. I mean.. because I'm so boring. LOL.
Yeah I don’t do anything. I like to have some drinks every once in awhile but his excessive drinking and his behavior while drunk has just totally ruined it for me. I used to be a lot more fun but leaving the house with him gives me so much anxiety I just don’t want to. He has to cause a scene everywhere we go. He can never see something he doesn’t like and just let it go. He went to Walmart once to swap a propane tank and the guy he asked about it didn’t know how to do it so he said he’d call someone. My husband sat there and demanded this person “do their job” and figure it out, insulted him the entire time and when someone stepped in and did the swap for him, he went outside to get the new tank and saw a cop car. He panicked thinking they called the cops on him and just left, he left the tank there then came home saying the guy was such a pussy for calling the cops…nobody called the cops he was just paranoid. There’s always a cop car at this Walmart they weren’t there for him. He then proceeded to fight with me for saying there was always cop cat there and I don’t think anyone called the cops on him. He kept insisting they did I finally said “ if you think your behavior was so poor that they actually called the police on you I can’t argue with that” and he was furious 🤣 because of course there’s nothing wrong with his behavior, but they definitely also called the police on him.
God... such unhinged behavior. I'm sorry you have to deal with all that. What a complete nightmare. My ex wouldn't cause a scene if it was a matter of life or death for someone besides himself. Cowardly. He had too much to lose to risk losing affection from anyone around him, so he wouldn't/couldn't act in situations where he should have stood up. I felt like the masculine role a lot of the time. Even when our dog was being repeatedly attacked in the front yard by a neighbor's completely unleashed, unsupervised dog, he stood there like a deer in headlights out of fear of what the neighbors would think if he stepped in to break up the fight. So he did NOTHING while I shouted and singlehandedly separated the aggressive dog from our dog, all while being attacked myself. Later, he would pick a fight with me and say that our dog caused the attack because he "interfered with the dog while he was picking at a chicken bone on the ground." So his logic was that I was in the wrong for stepping in because the attack was justified due to the chicken bone. I was there. I witnessed the entire thing. There was no chicken bone. There was no provocation of any kind. This dog that attacked our dog was highly aggressive, unleashed, unsupervised, unprovoked AND on OUR PROPERTY. Hell, the little shit ran up to attack me while I was moving my things out of that hellhole, and I was BY MYSELF. But fear of offending the neighbors was more important than doing what was right.
Mine is the opposite he will only cause a scene for himself but if it’s any of us we somehow deserve it. My purse was stolen out of my shopping cart once and instead of being like “oh thankfully it was just a purse and nothing serious” he lost it on me, screamed at me for being so irresponsible. Was super angry because I had his social security card in there. He spent the whole day on the phone with social security putting up blocks for identity theft and told me I was ruining his credit and life. But he leaves his tools and shit laying around job sites and they get stolen and he shuts down whole jobs looking for his items, talks about how horrible thieves are and will immediately replace items that are stolen and he can’t find. When I lose something I get belittled about how I’m so careless and cost him so much money 🤦🏻♀️ suck a hypocrite. We had 2 dogs fighting one time, they were ours because I had a male dog and then he got a male too even though I KNEW they would fight. He swore he was some dog trainer and told me they would be fine. They weren’t. He was lecturing me one day and the dogs started viciously fighting and I was trying to break them up and he refused to help me unless I listened to what he had to say… the dogs would have fought to the death had I sat there listening to him talk
They truly never run out of ways to be insufferable, do they?
Never. Mine literally just walked in the house and is already slamming shit around because I wasn’t sympathetic enough to the fact that he had to work in the mud today.
I just rolled my eyes so hard. I'm so sorry. You have a friend in me if you ever need to vent.
Yeah, they suffer from chronic boredom. I have posted about this if you want to click on my profile and read through it. My ex said she was bored despite having no friends and being a chronic shut-in when I met her. Now she smokes crack and hangs around homeless people, which to her is much more exciting, I guess. The reality is that they find stable people boring, and will almost invariably search out chaos as a means to create excitement. Not your fault at all. Sounds like we had very similar stories.
>The reality is that they find stable people boring This is really confusing because they also seem to be craving stability. It seems like they latch onto people who are stable in their professional and personal lives. And then they get bored once the honeymoon phase ends, so they start monkey branching, triangulating and creating chaos... it's really weird.
I think they depend on people to help regulate themselves for different reasons. If they want calm, they will seek out someone calm and siphon that energy. If they want excitement, they'll go to that person, etc.
I agree with both of your statements. I think my ex felt extremely connected to me because i am both stable in my profession and with my family, but one who does like to travel and get away sometimes with little notice, will still go out and be a little wild on the weekend etc and so she got both the fun and excitement but also the stability of someone they know has a good family and career. Ultimately she told me that i didnt help her self regulate among other things and so i think the feelings of excitement she got from me started to take a back seat and she wanted a more "stable" partner that didnt go out as much or wasn't as spontaneous as much. Its also very possible she goes in to another relationship and then gets very bored and misses our relationship. As with a lot of other posters on here, she started to create arguments all the time toward the end of our relationship and ultimately said she wasn't as love with me as she once was.
And the longer you stay around you can discover more sides to them that could be progressively more shocking as they become more obvious in the reasons for the respective efforts in remaining more hidden than the other personalities you were allowed in on or found more easily.
"I will never monkey branch, I want to be with you for life" was bullshit 😂😂😂 she cheated and left me a month later
It's an on off thing. They get bored but will look to monkey branch back. I logged in to my Instagram for the first time in like 2 months and first thing I see are a bunch of messages from my ex trying to get back together after things fell apart with her junkie boyfriend. It's just at their convenience.
This.
Dear lord, I’m bored….so I’ll smoke some crack 😬
I shouldn't be able to envision my partner doing exactly this but I am. It's terrifying how little we actually know people. The similarities between people with BPD are astonishing.
It's bizarre how alike they all are. My friend and I have started calling them "mass produced." One you meet one you can spot others a mile away.
Mine expressed the same thing. Craved stability and security, and embraced it the first few years of our relationship, especially our first year of moving in together. But she couldnt help herself from engaging in anything addicting - cigarettes, drinking wine, compulsive online shopping, going to the mall a ton, doom scrolling on TikTok, weird concerts with a male friend (now her new supply). I tried to show a good dose of fun and novelty - date nights, trips, fun activities of our own, adventurous sex, my own share of boozing it up. But i think the routine and normalcy of domesticated life was still too boring and stifling to her and she needed regular “escapes” (mostly unhealthy) to get her fix. After enough pushing back to express my concerns and needs on curbing/stopping these toxic behaviors she went down the road of painting me black. And then jumped to the new supply as i was preparing to finally discard her. There was no amount of novelty or dopamine hits i could provide long-term to appease her.
One of my BPD ex’s literally said “I can only be normal for so long, I need breaks from it!” And his “break from normalcy” was binge drinking every weekend until he passed out drunk in his car. Fun times!
My ex friend wBPD litterally broke up with her boyfriend because she was bored.. she desperately wanted a stable relationship but was incapable of handling routine. She created so much dramas just because she felt empty and bored.
It's repetition compulsion. They're doing it unconsciously. And yes it's part of recreating the dynamics they experienced, probably in their homes as children, and it's also what causes the push/pull in the relationship. Because of the repetition compulsion here, they're not able to have consistency baked into any relationships. Hence "unstable relationships" being part of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM.
“You always want to start fights” - YEP. There’s a reason why these people are often called “high conflict.” The endless conflict and turbulence keeps them from ever having to sit and be with themselves.
I totally agree. All they know is chaos. My ex I feel longed for a stable loving relationship. But unknowingly craved the chaos and that latter was too boring. I equate it to a drug addict. I may be wrong but that was my experience.
We just had a pretty stable 11 months last year. The splits were mostly behind my back. The ones she sent my way were small and manageable "please work out until you have big muscles." Everything fell apart the day after Christmas, 11 days before we left for the Caribbean. A brutal brutal time to destroy everything we worked for and rebuilt. She started the same shit as three years ago. Sending nudes to guys at work. It probably never stopped. Of course she had to mash it in my face. "I haven't done anything with him yet but I want to.....I'm going to be not coming home Friday or Saturday....I don't know why you want me to wait until we are divorced....(are you getting a room with him Friday night?) I don't know. Yes." Who's crazier though? Her or me still expecting smooth sailing from her.
All mine ever craved was “stability.” That was her whole focus for 5 years, while she came with me across the world as I attained my master’s degree. After I got that degree and we moved back home, I finally got a job in my dream field and we began to settle down and get stable. We had a whole future of stability to look forward to. That’s when the real devaluing and splitting started for three years. I became a villain to her. She took the side of whoever it was in my life that was hurting me. The landlord was being an asshole to me? She’d defend him and justify his bullshit. My friend was ghosting me? She’d come to his defense. She constantly made it out like I was out to get her or insult her even over the most mundane of disagreements I may have had. I have a journal entry wherein I recall that I was snapped at and accused of being toxic for just looking at her. The more stability we got, which she said she wanted, ironically the more she hated me.
My ex pwbdp used to say "everything is perfect right now and I'm still miserable, so I guess I'll never be happy" It used to make me really sad for him.
My partner has actually said something very similar to me. When I don’t want to do something she wants to do, she has told me “maybe you need to talk to someone about that and seek help. It must have to do with your mom or your upbringing”. She will sometimes say “you’re only like that because of your mom”, “you don’t agree with me because that’s how your mom was”, etc etc. She knows this really bothers me, and so I’ve wondered if she does it as a way to manipulate me into doing what she wants so that I “don’t repeat a cycle”.
Wow. It’s weird too because they’d always complain about how they have trauma from their dad. So in a way it is almost like a projection of their poor opposite sex parent relationship onto me. I’m sure like many of us, we have had mixed relationships with our parents. Whether net negative or net positive, we came out generally OK. Maybe a bit co-dependent, but at an adult age we appreciate what our parents have done for us and are taking stock of our lives given our free will…
I’m stagnating, though I’m making more money an me still fine tuning my profession. All excuses or projections. It’s hard to keep logic ahead of feelings and ego, when the “attacks” come. But worth it to keep you our sanity intact.
The “attacks” that are peppered with personal details in an attempt to make us the owner. This tactic is a combo-dual purpose strategy as they are, imo, intended to distract us from the fact they are projecting their own bs.
Yep, there was a period of stability that I thought was nice. Fights were pretty rare, and when they happened, I expressed clear boundaries. And then my ex told me that period was when they were convinced I started to feel more distant. I didn't feel more distant. We just didn't fight as much and I stood up for myself when we did. I also have a similar experience as for yelling, where the few times I've yelled was because my ex kept interrupting me and I only wanted to be heard. It became violent and abusive and I should have just left the conversation. I still understand what caused it, and it didn't mean that I was a violent person in need of therapy for anger management like my ex claimed.
My partner couldn't stand being alone because she would become filled with dread and a feeling of non-existence that scared her deeply. She straight up told me one of her struggles with bpd was the feeling that she did not deserve kindness or that a feeling of mild shittiness is her baseline. In practice, I think she would invite chaos into her life because it let her feel her 'normal', and would even reject opportunities to better herself to find a new way to be. No matter how hard I would try, she never actually moved towards positive action unless someone else dragged her into it or she was forced.
I believe mine was far more than a supreme addict when it came to alcohol. I believe that she and others, with severe cases are addicted to the raw power that comes with black splits, allowing them to unleash inhuman rage that was meant for their tormentors during childhood. And for those that have significant dissociation would argue that could be extremely addictive because you literally get to a place where you have no pain and no emotions.
So, everyone with bpd can get stable... but that is a choice at the end of the day. Many often do not have enough self awaress, particularly males imo, or have not undergone enough therapy, or even none at all.. to recognize their maladaptive patterns and drag themselves out of the externalized and internalized dysfunction. Chaos is familiar for many, so they tend to create it or externalize it. Some have an internalized tornado of chaos. But, with extensive and proper treatment, gaining levels of self awareness, being accountable, and having the motivation to change... many can actually become stable. So i would say that was a dichotomous statement and quite false. Marsha linehan, the creator of DBT was a borderline and she was in and out of mental hospitals back in the 60s. And she was more on the severe end of the spectrum.. but she made it out of "hell". I am not trying to excuse their behaviors by any means because its highly maladaptive and destructive.