Dating For People With Borderline Personality Disorder

I never know if my advice is cynical or not

WOE.

I.

There is very little useful dating advice for people with borderline personality disorder. Mostly, the advice is for people who might date us, and it’s “run away while screaming.” As a borderline reader, it kind of makes you feel like your options are “permanently ruin the life of someone you love” or “die alone.”

That’s not true. We can have good relationships, with some self-control and good partner selection.

II.

Having a certain diagnosis isn’t what makes relationships with some borderlines toxic. Having particular feelings and thoughts isn’t what makes relationships with some borderlines toxic, either. The thing that makes the relationship toxic is your actions. You have the ability to choose not to hurt people you date.

The most important advice for a borderline (in dating and in life) is to take responsibility for your own actions. I’m not saying that you have to be perfect; no one is. But you have to recognize that you are the single person who is most interested in your own happiness, and so the primary person who works on making you be happy is always going to have to be you. Other people can (and should!) help, but the primary responsibility is yours. And when you mess up, as you inevitably will, you need to recognize that you did something wrong, apologize, make amends, and try to do better. Sometimes you’re going to want to lie in bed sulking until someone fixes everything for you; sometimes you’re going to be defensive even when you kind of know that you’re the one at fault; this is normal. But eventually you have to pick yourself up, try to solve your own problems, and admit your own faults.

Lack of personal responsibility is not some unique borderline problem. Many neurotypicals have no sense of personal responsibility whatsoever. Whenever something goes wrong, it’s the fault of their boss or their spouse or the weather or the stars, and certainly not anything they did and could possibly change. Lack of personal responsibility is bad for your relationships whether you’re neurotypical or borderline, but it’s much more dramatically and explosively bad for us.

You don’t have to succeed. You don’t even always have to try. But you should be at least trying to try. This is the single piece of advice that will most improve your relationships.

You already know the borderline behaviors that are most likely to stress your relationships. Don’t keep your partners up past their bedtime dealing with your emotional issues; don’t interrupt them at work or school. Don’t send dozens of texts to someone who isn’t texting you back. If someone says they need a break, don’t follow them and try to keep talking to them. Don’t insult your partner or call them mean names. Don’t suddenly disappear off the face of the planet. Don’t threaten suicide when someone does something that upsets you; if you’re unsure how to judge the thin “asking for help with my suicidality” and “threatening suicide” line, don’t let the suicide word cross your lips. For the love of God, I know most of you don’t need to hear this, but don’t throw things or hit people or threaten them with violence; if you have this problem, you shouldn’t date until you have better coping skills.

If you do things like that, it’s important to work on them. Create a plan ahead of time for what you’ll do when you have the impulse to do things that will seriously hurt your partner. For example, if you regularly have crises at 1am, you might plan to text a few friends in different time zones, write down all your feelings in a letter that you’ll give to your partner in the morning, or play a distracting video game until you’re calmer. The plan won’t necessarily work the first time; be prepared to try a few different versions. You might not be able to get down to zero 1am crises, but even going from weekly crises to monthly crises makes your partner happier and your relationship more sustainable. And if your partner sees you making the effort, it’ll improve the relationship by itself.

III.

A lot of successful dating as a borderline comes down to partner selection.

If you find yourself going “I love this person so much, they’re exactly like me, we have so much in common,” ask yourself: is the thing you two have in common borderline personality disorder?

In general, people with borderline personality disorder shouldn’t date other people who have difficulties regulating their emotions. You both melt down at the same time and there’s no one to be the adult in the room. Your partner being upset sets you off because you’re scared you’re a bad partner, and you can’t comfort them. You constantly accidentally trigger each other. When you get clingy, they get avoidant; when you get avoidant, they get clingy. Fights escalate to the fucking moon.

I’m not saying you can’t date a mentally ill person, or even a mentally ill person with a severe mental illness. If you’re looking for a mentally ill partner, you need to aim for people on the calm end of the mental illness spectrum. Autism’s often good. Alexithymia. Dissociative disorders. Schizotypal tendencies. No bipolar people. No one with dependent personality disorder. No other cluster Bs.

Beyond this basic filter: anyone you date, as a borderline, should have rock-solid boundaries. You want someone who will look at you sobbing on the floor in absolute anguish and say “I’m sorry you’re so sad, but my friend is only in town this weekend and this is the only time I get to see them. We can get dinner together when I get back.” This is the second most important trait for your partner to have, behind only “kind to you.”

I’m not saying that they should always ignore you being upset; that would be cruel. But they should weight their own happiness as much as they weight yours. They should know what they can give you without becoming resentful or burned out, and while continuing to have a life worth living. They should be able to ask themself, “if I cancel with my friend every time my partner is this upset, will I be happy in this relationship?”, and if the answer is “no”, they should be able to ignore how upset you are and do it utterly without guit.

In the long run, your partner refusing to set boundaries isn’t good for them or you. It’s no good for anyone if your partner overextends themself and then has to suddenly end the relationship for their own well-being. And you want to be able to trust that, when your partner is taking care of you, it’s because they want to take care of you and not because you manipulated them into it.

I find a frank conversation early in the relationship helps a lot. It filters out people who absolutely won’t be able to do it, and it sets expectations for people who can do it but might otherwise assume that they should do the normal “cancel my plans when my partner is sobbing” thing.

IV.

I’ve seen people say that borderlines only have happy relationships with narcissists or codependents. In my experience, this isn’t true at all. For many people, dating a borderline isn’t very costly; sometimes it’s even preferable.

First, in my experience, people who date borderlines often have a parent, sibling, or close friend with a severe mental illness. In some cases, they have a severe mental illness themselves. People who are experienced with severe mental illnesses often think of it as a normal part of life, rather than a strange and incomprehensible horror. It’s less costly to date a borderline person if you’re used to people being suicidal sometimes.

People who are experienced with severe mental illnesses often want partners who understand what they’re going through. You’ve likely experienced the awkward silence when you say something and realize you’ve misjudged, again, which parts of your life are suitable small talk and which parts of your life you’re not allowed to acknowledge in polite company. You’ve likely experienced the loneliness of realizing that any honest answer to “what did you do this weekend?” is considered oversharing. People with severe mental illnesses or severely mentally ill loved ones want to have relationships where they can talk about their lives without their partner freaking out or being utterly clueless.

Second, some people who like dating borderlines are reserved and unemotional. It’s obvious why we’d want to date those people: they don’t break down when we break down. But they can also benefit from dating us. Their lives are often kind of… boring? Some of them like it that way, but others want someone with strong emotions to liven things up. Of course, it’s ideal that you liven things up with romantic passion and thrilling adventures and childlike whimsy, rather than with hourslong panic attacks because your favorite mug broke. But honestly even the latter, in small portions, can make some people’s lives better. It adds interest.

Finally, some people who like dating borderlines like feeling useful and needed. You might say “Ozy! That’s just dating codependents.” But I don’t think so. Codependents sacrifice their needs to maintain a dysfunctional relationship with someone who is cruel to them; they desperately seek approval because they don’t feel okay in themselves. That’s different from a person who is secure and comfortable in themself, who sets firm boundaries and prioritizes their own needs, and who happens to like taking care of people.

Some people don’t feel happy in a relationship unless they’re needed. They want to comfort you when you’re sad, provide a reality check when you’re worried you have distorted thoughts, call the insurance to argue them into covering your meds, make you your favorite dinner when you’re having trouble eating, and transfer spiders outside because you’re both arachnophobic and vegan. They want you to smile at them and say “thank you! I don’t know what I would do without you. You make me so happy. No one else has ever been this sweet to me.” Very few people want to do literally 100% of the work in the relationship, but a lot of people actually prefer 60/40 or 70/30 to 50/50.

Many people with this need have been in dysfunctional relationships where they were exploited. So they’re looking for someone who takes personal responsibility, who is kind to them, who doesn’t want a codependent, who has good communication skills—and who needs them.

This completely valid relationship preference has been pathologized by our culture. It’s okay for someone to prefer relationships with people who need them. It’s not dysfunctional unless the person is sacrificing all their own needs to meet their partner’s or thinks that they’re only okay when someone else approves of them. A wise borderline would do well to find someone with this preference and give them all the gratitude, appreciation, and tasks they need to be happy.