What a Long Distance Relationship Is like Living with Borderline Personality Disorder
As some of you may already know, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder last May during my 72 hour involuntary psychiatric hold. I had no idea what it even consisted of. I spent several months doing extensive amounts of research to better understand the diagnosis and why I received it. Within the last few months, my therapist has been focusing on my diagnosis, and has been working with me to help me better understand it. I have learned a great deal about myself just within the last few months due to the fact that she has been prying stuff out of me little by little, and slowly explaining that those particular things are the reason why I received the diagnosis.
As some of you may also know, I have recently found myself in a new relationship for the first time in several years, with the sweetest man alive. Unfortunately, there is a little bit of distance between us. But he has proven to me that he is willing to go the distance, and he has done a wonderful job of working with me and all of the things that come along with my diagnosis of BPD. Being in a long distance relationship when you struggle with BPD is extremely difficult and exhausting, not only for myself, but for the person I’m with.
It comes with a great deal of paranoia and fear of abandonment that the other person is going to leave you at any given moment. It comes with excessive amounts of anxiety that have you convinced that the other person doesn’t actually like you. You hate yourself, so you become convinced that the other person is talking to someone else behind your back or that they’re cheating on you. It doesn’t come from the fact that you doubt the person you’re with. It comes from the fact that you doubt yourself and think that the other person is better off with someone else, so you wouldn’t really blame them for cheating on you.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with BPD, it is a personality disorder that consists of a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by unstable relationships with other people, unstable sense of self, and unstable emotions. There is also frequent dangerous behavior such as acting on impulse, and self-harm tendencies.
I don’t have the best history when it comes to friendships. I always found myself sabotaging just about every single one, but never knowing why. I most definitely don’t have the best history when it comes to past relationships. I have found myself in a series of unstable relationships whether it be that I just wasn’t treated fairly and my wishes were not respected, or finding myself in severely abusive – both mentally and physically – relationships that have now resulted in my diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. My relationship with Shane has been the healthiest I have ever encountered. I’m still trying to figure out why, and I’m still trying to figure out how to not allow my BPD to do its thing and cause me to sabotage this one as well.
Shane is a little bit older than me. Something that I have learned is a healthy thing for me, considering I’ve always found that my emotional maturity level tends to be higher than what my actual age is. I like that he has direction in life, knows what he wants to do as a career, and has had life experiences that allow us to connect on a deeper, emotional level. From the very start, he was more interested in my personality and the values that I held rather than what I looked like or what I had to offer sexually. In my past relationships, I’ve always been viewed as an object, rather than a human being. I told myself that the next relationship I found myself in, I would make damn sure that it was with someone who cared about who I was as a person and not someone who cared about what I had to offer them sexually.
Shane has completely exceeded my expectations. I’ve always known what I deserve since my past relationships ended, but I never really thought that I would ever find someone to meet those expectations. So I would wrestle with myself day in and day out and eventually convinced myself that I didn’t actually deserve someone like Shane because I would never actually find someone like him; even though that makes absolutely no sense. Shane has met them and surpassed them by a long shot. I wake up every day wondering how someone like him could care about someone like me. I have a very warped view of myself. Even though people seem to think I come off as very confident, I actually have almost zero confidence in myself.
Unfortunately, my unstable sense of self and self-worth carries over into my relationship with Shane. In the past, it’s always driven people away. People, who I thought I could potentially date, ran away as fast as they could once they figured out the amount of work it takes to be with someone like me and work with my wants and needs that stem from my low self-esteem. Relationships that I’ve had in the past turned into something that was more like I was hanging out with a friend, because they didn’t want to be there for me emotionally. In other words, they weren’t strong enough to handle giving me what I want and need in a relationship.
Something that people fail to realize is that I’m not looking to find my identity in someone. I’m not looking for my identity in Shane. I’m looking for my identity inwardly and spiritually, and with the help of therapy, it’s working. What I’m looking for from Shane is reassurance and validation. I’m looking for recognition and affirmation that my opinions and feelings are valid or worthwhile to him.
Some days, I wake up hating myself more than the usual. I’ll feel even more self-conscious than I already do on a daily basis. In turn, that makes me convinced that he’s just with me because I’m someone that shows interest in him, and that he’s not actually with me because he likes what he sees in my personality and what I have to offer him in our relationship emotionally. I become convinced that he thinks I’m annoying, irritating, and ugly. In my past relationships, I always used that to sabotage the relationship and use it against the other person. I would accuse them of those things, instead of approaching them and letting them know that that’s how I was feeling and that I needed them to convince me otherwise. That would eventually start a fight and the result would be me curled up in the fetal position, bawling my eyes out because I was being told that what I was feeling was actually true.
I am slowly learning that I can’t accuse Shane of those things. I can’t accuse him of something that is irrational and illogical. Instead, I have to voice to him how I’m feeling. I learned from the very beginning that he was going to give me all the reassurance I needed until the day came that I was confident in myself to believe what he was telling me. See, I don’t doubt him or how he feels about me. I doubt myself and who I am which convinces me that he must feel the same way too. But anxiety is almost never true. The anxious feelings I get are almost never accurate or correct.
I have been good about letting Shane know when I need more attention than the usual, and when I need him to give me words of affirmation and reassurance about how he feels about me. He has been so good about giving me what I want and need. My only problem is that I view those things about me as me being high-maintenance or needy. I’ve always viewed being high-maintenance or needy as something negative about myself, but that it was also something I couldn’t help, and have therefore accepted them as part of my personality. My therapist told me yesterday that I need to stop calling myself high-maintenance or needy because of the fact that I say them in a negative way. She also said that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that I need more attention or words of affirmation than normal people.
I have found that it has been extremely hard not to accuse Shane of lying to me about how he feels about me. I have found it extremely hard not to pick fights with him in a test to see if he will stick around – something that people with BPD do very often with the people closest to them. It takes an incredible amount of self-control to be respectful to him and believe him when he tells me how he feels about me. But for the first time in a very long time, this is the one thing I don’t want to mess up. Through all of this, the one thing I am most thankful for is the fact that he has not allowed my wants or needs to drive him away. He has not been scared off by what I require of someone in a relationship. He has not judged me for the fact that I have more wants or needs than the average person. Instead of getting scared and running away like everyone else has done, he has stood firmly in front of me and gladly given me what I want and need. He has told me that he wants to help me and grow with me so that someday I will be happy and healthy. I hope that someday I won’t doubt myself so much. I’m always afraid he’ll think that I doubt him instead. Maybe someday it won’t be like that though.
If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text START to 741-741
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