BPD: Rapid Approach To Relationships



Lots of people with Borderline Personality Disorder struggle with maintaining healthy romantic relationships. I have struggled with maintaining romantic relationships my whole life. As of right now, I have been single for about 7 months. Most of my relationships have only lasted around 2-3 months, right when the “honeymoon” phase starts to fade. I feel like the relationships end because I lack the coping skills I need whenever something bad happens. 

With Borderline, we have the fear of abandonment. When we’re in a romantic relationship, we are constantly worried that they are going to leave us. We’ll start getting thoughts like “they’re going to cheat on us” or “they don’t love me.” Any little indication that gets us to think that they’re going to leave gets these thoughts going. Then we start acting differently when we’re worried about that, and that actually pushes them away. This eventually will lead them to actually leaving, which is what we’re most afraid of. I actually have an example of that in one of my previous posts about the fear of abandonment where I thought in my mind that my boyfriend was going to leave me, and my behavior in response to that caused him to leave. 

I’ve always had an issue with staying single. 7 months is the longest I’ve gone in about 4 years staying single and not getting romantically involved with someone. On average, I would usually go 1-2 months before finding another relationship. I’ve gone as short as a week before I entered another relationship. I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve wondered why I couldn’t just be happy single. Why do I always “need” to be in a relationship to find happiness? 

Whenever I do enter a relationship, I tend to jump right in without much thought. I fall fast, I latch right on and I’m stereotypically the “clingy” girlfriend. I tend to fall faster than the guy falls for me, and I speak my mind about it, which typically scares them away. Then they start acting distant, which leads to the worry about them leaving, and the cycle starts over again. 

Does anyone else deal with this? I haven’t heard anyone (let alone anyone with BPD) talk about having this problem. The problem where you end up jumping from relationship to relationship and quickly “falling in love” with them. This could be a coping mechanism that some people use to deal with a breakup and avoid abandonment. I tend to think it does have something to do with BPD but I’m not 100% sure. I decided to write about this anyway. If you have any advice, what advice would you give to someone who falls too fast? 


Thanks for listening, I’ll talk to you next week! 

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