Unstable relationships

If you have BPD, you may experience other people as either abandoning you when you most need them or getting too close and smothering you.​
When people fear abandonment, they may experience intense anxiety and anger. They may make frantic efforts to prevent being left alone, such as:

constantly texting or phoning a person

suddenly calling that person in the middle of the night

physically clinging on to that person and refusing to let go

making threats that they will harm or kill themselves if that person ever leaves them

This often has the opposite effect and tends to make people draw away from you or reject you.

Alternatively, you may feel that other people are smothering, controlling or crowding you, which also provokes intense fear and anger.​
You may then respond by acting in ways to make people go away, emotionally withdrawing or rejecting or using verbal abuse.​
These two patterns will probably result in an unstable ‘love-hate’ relationship with certain people.

For example, one moment you may think your boyfriend or girlfriend is the best person in the world and the love of your life. But when they do something minor to upset you, you suddenly feel intense rage and hatred towards them.

Many people with BPD seem to be stuck with a very rigid ‘black-white’ view of relationships. Either a relationship is perfect and that person is wonderful, or the relationship is doomed and that person is terrible. You can see this as another type of thinking distortion, because in reality, relationships are not black or white. People with BPD cannot always see this. They seem to be unable or unwilling to accept any sort of ‘grey area’ in their personal life and relationships.