Ending a Relationship with a Borderline - Contact or No Contact? The Illusion of Kindness.
What is best for you to do if you are in a relationship with someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and you are coming to the conclusion the relationship isn't working? What do you do if you want to end the relationship? Do you need to institute no contact or is there another way? What is kind and what isn't kind in this circumstance often experienced as a dilemma for relationship partner of someone with BPD - the non borderline?
There is much written about what many refer to as the "low functioning" borderline defined as the type of borderline that doesn't know how to cope with the ending of relationship - the type of borderline that punishes when he or she experiences loss - the type of borderline who stalks and does anything they can to try to make your life miserable. Are all borderlines the same? Do all borderlines behave this way or make these same choices when a relationship ends? The answer is, No.
- Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
- Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
- Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
Having said that not all borderlines are the same, sadly, it is still the majority of those with BPD that can not cope with the loss of a relationship without experiencing and/or becoming engulfed in and by the shame of abandonment and/or the rage that is caused in the borderline when feeling the rejected invalidation of the Emotion Dysregulation in BPD that is fueled for the borderline in any type of experience of loss.
So, you are a non borderline, who has come to the point where you are wanting to end a relationship with a person with BPD. You may be wondering if you need to do the "no contact" routine or not. How can you make this decision? What can you base your decision on? If you write to an email list or read a message board you may get a lot of feedback about how no contact is the only way. You might hear a lot of the kinds of experiences that seem to be all-too common and that can produce a lot of fear and worry.
Do all borderlines punish those who leave them? No. Do many? Yes. Do all borderlines stalk those who leave them? No. Do many? Yes. So how can you tell which group your borderline is most likely in?
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself as you think about as to whether you would be served best to choose to remain in contact or whether you need to take the no contact route.
- Does the borderline in your life consistently acknowledge and accept personal responsibility for his or her actions, choices, and/or behaviour?
- Is the borderline in your life in therapy? Are they working hard and are they committed to learning more effective ways of coping? Have you seen any progress that would indicate this?
- Do you have any information about any past relationship breakups and how he or she handled them? What can you learn from this information?
- Despite the fact that your relationship hasn't worked out, do you have open lines of communication - communication that doesn't degenerate into arguments? - Can you talk?
- Do you have children to co-parent? Is there cooperation there?
- Are you clear that any choices the borderline may make ("acting in" - self-harm) are his or her choices to make and that you are not in any way responsible for his or her choices whether you decide to be in contact or not?
- What do you need to heal? Do you need time and space? Do you need a break?
- Can you trust your borderline to respect your boundaries or not?
- Do you fear that your borderline will hoover and try to pull you back and that you could be pulled back into a relationship that you have now decided is not healthy for you?
Many people, when relationships end, need time and space to heal, whether BPD was involved or not. Often trying to just carry on with communication and contact can be an emotionally dangerous thing to risk. Often when leaving a relationship it comes from a head decision and not the heart. The heart - one's feelings often lag far behind the head. This is not such an issue or dilemma in the average breakup. However, when breaking up with someone with BPD, due to the nature of the relational dynamic coupled with the issues that most borderlines struggle with, the reality is that the chances of being pulled back in - or of pulling the borderline back in - yes - non borderlines can be the instigators of "hoovering" too - are, more often than not, very high.
- Inside The Borderline Mind
- The Shame of Abandonment In BPD
- Breaking Free of The Borderline Maze - Recovery For Nons
- Facing the Facts of BPD - On The Other Side For Nons
- Overcoming Denial About BPD and Love
Where Is Kindness In All of This?
Often these relationships, between a non borderline and a borderline, in their intensity do not end or are not ended until a great deal of emotional damage has been done. Where is kindness in all of this? Often it is lost to the very nature of the cycling of these relationships. Relationships that often undergo more than one breakup before they come anywhere near ending. Kindness is compromised each and every time there is an ending - a trying again - another ending - and so on. As the pain builds the chances of loving kindness diminish for the non borderline and most with BPD do not know a healthy enough kind of love to mix loss - loss that is often equated with abandonment with kindness.
For the non borderline contemplating or ready to make the choice to (for the first time or) once and for all end a relationship with someone with BPD your emotional health and well-being may have to take precedence over the ways in which you'd would otherwise want or wish you could you exercise more kindness.
Trying to be kind, or putting kindness first, can often lead to prolonging your heartache or adding to your own heartache.
Sometimes amid the collateral damage of what has been a toxic and unhealthy relationship it can be cruel, in a way, to try to be kind. Just as paradoxically, often, a borderline's cruelty can end up being the non borderlines experience, down the road, of wayward kindness.
Sometimes kindness isn't an option when pain you are in way too much pain. For those who decide they need to go no contact it isn't always a decision based solely on what one thinks the borderline will or won't do - sometimes it's a matter of what you need to heal.
In more cases than not, after such toxic and unhealthy relationship dynamics are played out, between the non borderline and the borderline the idea that kindness can be a part of a breakup is tantamount to nothing more than an illusion. An illusion that often has its roots in false hope on the part of the non borderline. Each non borderline have to be very careful that he or she does not sacrifice even more of him or herself in the illusion of kindness. Many nons struggle with the dilemma of their own needs versus the guilt they feel at the emotional state that the borderline is in.
In many cases, when relationships are being ended with those with BPD, non borderlines search for a type of closure that only hooks and traps them back into unhealthy relational patterns. Kindness is a staple of healthy love. Kindness is an illusion within the throes of dynamic of toxic unhealthy love.
- Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.
- Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together without audio or 6 ebooks bundled together with 2 audio programs 6 ebooks packaged together with 2 audio programs
- Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks or Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD - The Inner Chid Audio Program
Personal Responsibility Is a Key Factor
If the person with BPD in your life cannot take personal responsibility it is not unkind to enact no contact if it is what you need to take care of yourself and to heal. No contact is not, in and of itself, unkind. Often it is necessary. Often it is the healthiest thing that you can choose for yourself and yes, even for the borderline that you are breaking up with. No contact can be a gift that you give yourself and the borderline. The borderline may not see it that way, but, if and when he or she gets "real" in therapy, they will look back upon an experience of no contact as a very valuable lesson.
There are many times also when the borderline may well be the one that ends a relationship and does son on a dime, without warning, without notice, and without closure and by way of their own brand of no contact.
Non borderlines have a responsibility to, wherever possible, give the borderline a reason, and any sense of closure that is possible by way of a brief statement that you are ending the relationship and why.
The non borderline has to make sure that if you choose the contact route you aren't choosing it because you think it's kinder. You can't afford to put the borderline's feelings and lack of personal responsibility-taking ahead of your own feelings. You need to break free from that rescuer/parent role.
Each and every non borderline has to come to his or her own decision. There is no hard and fast rule. It is important to be clear about what you choose and why. Sometimes a non borderline may make the choice to stay in contact thinking it is for all the "right" reasons or the "kindest" reasons when really it still about false hope - false hope that the person with BPD will change to be who you thought they were or who you so wish they could be.
It is crucial for your own sanity, recovery, and health, if you are non borderline facing this decision, that you make it based upon what you yourself needs. That might sound selfish but ironically enough in relationship breakups often it decisions must (at first at least) be more black and white than not.
Whether you choose to have contact, give contact a try, or to go no contact, the main thing is that if you want and need out of the relationship, that you accomplish that and that you take care of yourself and any children involved to the best of your ability.
Non borderlines, after these types of relationships, need and are entitled to their own recovery. The choice to end a relationship with or without contact must be made on the basis of what you need in your own life to recover and heal from the pain that you, as a non borderline, are in.
© A.J. Mahari, July 19, 2008 - with addition of the video, June 15, 2009 - All rights reserved.
A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with BPD and non borderlines. A.J. has 5 years experience as a life coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world.
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