1 of 10

Write now Article Tools

Page 3 of 6

didn't learn the skills to care for others. Much of this transferred to my partner. Mainly the emotional detachment.

The key to understanding a BPD such as mine is their lack of self-esteem. You will hear about "fear of abandonment", which is true, but it all comes down to little to no self-esteem. I personally don't like abandonment, but my self-esteem is such that I can handle it, with difficulty perhaps, but handle it nonetheless. For my partner, though, abandonment was yet another confirmation of her feeling of worthlessness. The ultimate confirmation, in her eyes.

Everything my BPD did had to have the effect of not making her at fault. She felt so awful that any problem could not be, in her eyes, the result of her actions. She couldn't accept that she was faulty. This is not ego, this is protection of what little was left. Everything had to be someone else's fault.

There were no nuances. Everything was black or white. You were on her good list or her bad list. Few people, once on the bad list, could jump back to the good list. I've thought hard about this, and how it fits in. I think putting someone on the "bad" list made it easier for her to dismiss any criticisms that person had. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, the closer someone came to the "truth" about her, the quicker they ended up on the bad list. The less threatening someone was to "expose" any problem she might have, the more likely they'd be on the good list. As an example, doctors trying to resolve her physical ailments, or psychologists trying to resolve her psychological issues, were suddenly moved to the bad list they didn't know what they were talking about, they were incompetent, whatever. Their only real transgression was that they were astute enough to see through her and get too close to the truth. On the other hand, everything her astrologer (yes, an astrologer) said was God's Honest Truth. It makes no sense to "normal" people, but if you look at it from the lens of self-preservation, it all fits in.

I could write a whole book on this, and maybe someday I will, but to keep this reasonable I'll try to just touch on some other traits with some examples and give an interpretation to what was really going on.

Revisionist history if I remembered something where she was wrong, she'd recall it in a different way. Anything to keep her from being "wrong", which would be too painful. I finally got to where I wrote down incidents immediately after they happened, because I got to where I didn't

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about How to deal with people with borderline personality disorder?
We want to hear your view. Write now!