Breakup Advice

Today we have a question from a reader about how to respond to a sudden breakup with a partner who has Borderline Personality Disorder. The reader has been kind enough to give us permission to post the question and our response so that others can benefit from them. We truly appreciate readers who provide such an opportunity.

If you have a question you’d like answered, please contact us. We will never post anything without your permission and, if you do allow us to post your question, will hide any identifying information that you do not want made public.

Now let’s begin with the reader’s question:

Hello,

My name is (name removed). I’m 20 years old. My girlfriend recently broke up with me on August 9th, 2011. We were together for 1 year and would of been 8 months on August 14th, 2011. I’m writing to see if I can get any direction. Let me explain.

She has Borderline Personality Disorder. At first the relationship was great, then she slowly started being mean, then she’d flip out on me every night over something stupid, and small. We lived together for about 1 year and 4-6 months in my parents house because she did nothing but complain about her family cause her mom is a alcoholic, she never knew her dad, her aunt is a backstabber and greedy and scummy. She praised her grandparents, even though her grandfather was a controlling, greedy, jerk. My family treated her amazing, let her live here for free, included her in everything. She had it good here.

Well, we kept fighting about her family, particularily that I didn’t agree with her grandfathers ways for he had recently done somethng rude to her, she did nothing but stick up for him. She kept trying to break up with me, however, I kept saying I’d change. A few days after all this went down, we was all normal. Everything was fine, she was talking about coming home to clean. She had things planned for months ahead of times. Even though I believe she talked bad to her family about me or told them I didn’t like them.

Everything was going fine, she texts me out of the blue and says, I think we should stay apart tonight. I replied, why are you being mean for? Next thing I know, she shows up with a big bag of chewing tobacco for me, and is all crying saying we need to talk. We go upstairs, she didn’t seem to know what to say, so she just said I can’t do this anymore. And I was like, why? Then a few minutes after she’s all crying histerically, she says there’s things about me that would make you hate me. She says she had a crush before me and has feelings for both of us. Which, I don’t believe, I think her family made her break up with me.

I know she had HUGE feelings for me. She always got me little presents, and she was ALWAYS here. She said she never had sex, then said she did off and on all the time. Well, it’s been a few days since then. I am upset about the happy memories we shared. Don’t know how to handle it. However, just a few days later, she texts me, last night actually, and said,”It’s (name removed), this ain’t my phone. I just wanted to let you know to to stop bothering me and stop trying to cause trouble and move on. I’m done completely, and never want to talk to you again or be friends with you so move on.”

Now, I haven’t said a single word to her. At all. I literally haven’t talked to her since that day she came to break up with me. And she came out of the blue and said that. My mom said it was probably her trying to get me to talk to her, to get a reaction. I just don’t understand, I didn’t ever hurt her in any way, never bothered her once after. Why’d she do that? It seems completely unfair and psychotic really.

The reader then sent the following short update:

Something new happened in these events. She had a “crush” before me. And he lives in Virginia. Turns out, he bought her a Greyhound ticket for the 19th of this month to go down there. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, he’s 22 and drinks alot. Has alot of friends. Smokes pot. She hates all of that though. Because of her alcoholic/drug addict mom. So I imagine she’s just running to him because the need for someone. She loves her family to much to possibly move there. I imagine it won’t last more than a week with them because she hates all of that. She’s only 20. So she’ll probably be back begging for me.

And now our response:

Dear Reader:

First, I’m very sorry to hear about this. I know breakups are painful in general and breakups with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder can be incredibly painful.

Now, before moving on to anything else, you have to stop and really understand the nature of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Many people are in relationships with people who have personality disorders, including BPD, but aren’t even aware of the disorder. So, for them, it can be even harder to make sense of the situation and figure out how to respond. You have the benefit of actually knowing that your ex has this condition. And you need to use that knowledge to make sense of this situation before deciding what to do.

People who have Borderline Personality Disorder are very emotionally unstable. Their brains simply don’t process emotions in the same way as emotionally healthy people’s brains do. One result of this is that they can’t be consistent when dealing with intimacy. So they can swing wildly from acting extremely loving to extremely angry and back again, sometimes within mere minutes, over and over. This can be very confusing because every time the relationship seems on the rocks, the next minute the partner with Borderline Personality Disorder can show up and act as if nothing ever happened and even be sweet and caring. So the other partner suddenly thinks things are fine again and, wanting desperately to believe that is true, begins to relax and enjoy the relationship again and indulge in those fantasies of how wonderful things are going to be.

But, as you may know from having been in this relationship for a while, for all intents and purposes we can say that it always swings back again in the other direction. Always. That is the nature of BPD. Back and forth. Back and forth.

BPD is not a minor issue. It’s a very deep and serious issue. For a condition to be classified as a personality disorder, it has to be deep and serious. What that means is that this person is extremely unlikely to change, and most likely will be unable to change, without committing to very intense therapy, probably for a long period of years. It doesn’t seem from what you say that your ex is doing any such thing and so, if you were to go back into the relationship, you could almost certainly expect to just keep going through this agonizing cycle repeatedly.

Imagine if your partner had a serious form of cancer and wasn’t getting consistent and high quality treatment for it. You wouldn’t expect them to be able to just suddenly cure it themselves, would you? And you certainly wouldn’t expect that you could cure it if you just loved them enough, right? Well the same is true with Borderline Personality Disorder. Your love cannot cure it. And without the proper treatment, your partner cannot just choose to change it and suddenly be consistent and caring and fair to you.

You see, at the heart of BPD is usually a serious trauma that the person has not resolved and may not even remember. And until they deal with the effects of that original trauma, which may have occurred early in childhood, long before you ever came into their life, they will not be able to commit to being a healthy partner.

As for the stories about the other relationship and your speculations about your ex’s family, the fact is that you may never really be sure what to believe. That is also the nature of Borderline Personality Disorder. People with this condition often tell various stories, change their stories, tell different stories to different people and so on. Sometimes even they themselves don’t quite know what the truth really is because they get so caught up in their own lies and different stories. You mentioned that your ex’s behavior seems psychotic. Well the reason it is called “Borderline” personality is that it is on the border between neurotic and psychotic and sometimes does lean over into the psychotic side of things. So you may not be far off in your assessment.

So now you are faced with a decision. I am sure you have strong feelings for this person and care about her deeply. And I’m sure that you want to help her. But you have to realize that you are not qualified to help her any more than you would be qualified to cure her cancer if she had that. Your ex has a serious disorder that you did not cause and cannot fix yourself and needs professional care for it. If she got that care and was totally committed to it, then she would have a chance of getting better over time. And it would be noble of you to stand by her as she did this if you were able to do so and if she was absolutely committed to recovery. It’s similar to sticking by an alcoholic as long as they have quit drinking and are going to AA meetings regularly, seeing a therapist and so on.

But unfortunately, it is relatively rare that someone with BPD will really commit fully to treatment. The ones that do that are to be admired and are great examples, but they are the exceptions. And again, you give no sign that this person is even thinking along those lines. If you want to offer your ex one last chance, then you could let her know that you can’t tolerate her behavior anymore, you want her to get help and that if she does you will stand by her.

But you are under no obligation to do that and, even if you did, the odds are slim that she would listen and suddenly make such a bold change. She might even just lash out at you even more aggressively. Apparently, your ex already knows that she has Borderline Personality Disorder so, if she isn’t dealing with it seriously, she may be in denial.

So as much as it hurts, and I know it can hurt incredibly badly, my advice is that your best bet is to appreciate that she did you a favor by telling you to stop talking to her. She gave you an easy out at the moment.

If I were you I would begin a “No Contact” policy immediately. That means:

• Don’t call her
• Don’t text her
• Don’t email her
• Don’t check her online profiles or sites
• Don’t talk to her friends or family trying to find out information about her

No matter how much it hurts, you don’t make any contact with her or take any action to involve yourself in her life in any way. And you commit to this for a significant period of time, at least three or four months, if not longer, I would recommend. Yes it will hurt, sometimes terribly because you are, in a sense, withdrawing from an addiction to her. But that is alright, even healthy, to feel that pain and go through it.

Now you are actually correct that she may at some point, sooner or later, come back and want to talk again or even beg you to return to the relationship. In the community of BPD relationship experts, this is known as “hoovering.” That is why, before going No Contact, you may want to send her one last email just letting her know that you’ve decided to have no contact for a significant period of time because the situation has become unhealthy for you. That way, she will know why you aren’t responding if she contacts you later and you will not feel the need to break up the momentum of your no contact phase to inform her of it later.

Finally, what do you do during this no contact phase? That is really the key to your healing. This is a time to take back – to withdraw – all of the energy you’ve been focusing on trying to make sense of your ex’s erratic behavior and trying to help your ex and apply that same energy to understanding and helping yourself. You see, most likely, you have your own traumas and issues that you’d rather not face and deal with. And that’s a big part of the reason that you may have gotten involved in the first place with someone like your ex who is a constant distraction and always creating drama. As frustrating as dealing with a partner like that may be, it keeps you focused on their drama and not having to think of your own. This is the nature of codependence. With your partner out of the picture, now you will be forced to come face to face with yourself.

There are several things you should consider doing during this self-reflection time:

1. Read good books about topics related to your breakup. Many of them are recommended on our site and in our Breakup Advice Bookstore.

   A few that you may find particularly beneficial right now are:

   	How to Break Your Addiction to a Person by Howard Halpern – This book will help you make sense of and get through the withdrawal pain you’re feeling right now shortly after the breakup.
   	Keeping the Love You Find by Harville Hendrix – This book will help explain the dynamics of why certain people are attracted to each other so you can fully understand why you attracted a person who is so unhealthy and why she attracted you. This will give you a lot of insight into yourself, what to work on to improve while you’re going through this healing period and what to look for in future relationships.
   	Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives by Pia Mellody – A classic book about why certain people take on the role of trying to rescue their partners in relationships.

   Also, it could be especially helpful for you to read books about Borderline Personality Disorder so that you can understand more about what you went through with your ex and really come to see that the issues are deeper than you alone could have fixed.

   Here are a couple of good books about Borderline Personality Disorder:

   	I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality by Jerold J. Kreisman & Hal Straus
   	Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger

2. Look for online support groups about relevant issues such as codependence, where you can stay in communication with others who have gone through or are going through this kind of painful experience. It will help you learn a lot and also give you a place to turn when you need to talk so that you don’t end up breaking your No Contact policy to talk to your ex instead.

   You are especially lucky in this area. Many people refer to a person who themselves does not have Borderline Personality Disorder, but has been in a relationship with someone who does as a “Non.” You are a Non. And there is a great support forum for Nons. I highly recommend you seek support on that forum as you will learn a great deal from people who know exactly what you’re going through and how to help.

3. Consider finding a therapist of your own to help you work through the issues that led to you being attracted to and attracting a person with BPD and to help you get through and process the pain of this breakup. Keeping the Love You Find can help you in learning about the type of therapist that might help you.

I know all of this can be somewhat overwhelming. And, as with any addictive situation, it hurts tremendously at first and the pain can even feel like it will never end. But this is actually a fantastic opportunity, if you do the things mentioned above, to grow enormously, become a healthier, stronger person, and ensure that your next relationship will be at least a bit better for you than this one. Years from now, you may look back on this as a huge learning experience and turning point in your life for the better.

Thanks so much for the question and for generously allowing us to share it with others who might benefit from it.

When in need of breakup advice, people turn to various sources. They may turn to friends or family for personal support and guidance. They may turn to a trained therapist or counselor for professional help. Or they may explore the wide range of books and videos on the market that offer advice on how to best survive and thrive through a breakup.

From these sources, they are likely to hear a range of different advice reflecting various schools of thought. However, despite the seemingly vast variances between the answers provided, they will tend, nonetheless, to fall into two fundamental categories. We will call these categories symptom-focused and origin-focused.

Symptom-Focused Breakup Advice

Symptom-focused breakup advice is aimed primarily at simply easing the immediate discomfort of relationship issues as quickly as possible. Thus, if a person finds talking to his or her partner or ex-partner painful, symptom-focused advisors may suggest seeking ways to distance from the partner, thus avoiding the symptom of pain. If a person feels restricted by their partner’s needs, a symptom-focused advisor may suggest seeking ways to escape those restrictions in order to feel more free and uninhibited.

Origin-Focused Breakup Advice

Origin-focused breakup advice, on the other hand, is aimed at discovering the deeper roots of symptoms and addressing them. Therefore, it is not as quick to advocate avoidance or suppression of relationship challenges. For instance, if a person finds talking to his or her partner or ex-partner painful, the origin-focused advisor does not necessarily suggest simply distancing. If a person feels restricted by his or her partner’s needs, an origin-focused advisor does not necessarily suggest immediate escapism as an optimal solution. Instead, they are more likely to promote proactive and constructive engagement in the conflict with an aim of more fundamental resolution. This very different approach stems from the origin-focused advisor’s more comprehensive understanding of relationships.

What Origin-Focused Breakup Advisors Know

The origin-focused advisor realizes some very important facts about relationships that give wise individuals pause before jumping to simplified conclusions about the cause or solution of symptoms.

He or she knows, for instance, that:

• We tend to project unresolved feelings from earlier life relationships onto current partners – If we struggled with certain traits or behaviors in our relationships with our parents, caregivers, relatives or others early in life, we may find our current partners triggering unprocessed emotions connected to those early interactions that have remained latent in us. Thus, despite the close association of the current relationship with certain symptoms, the true cause of these symptoms may actually lie not in the current relationship at all, but in past relationships.

• Sometimes, unpleasant symptoms are indicators of areas that need exercise, not indicators of a need to escape – For example, if our partner’s needs seem to restrict us, it may be a sign that we have chosen an ultimately incompatible partner. However, it may instead be a sign that we ourselves fear intimacy or limits and that our partner’s needs pose a healthy challenge, spurring us to finally face certain growing pains that we failed to confront earlier in life.

• Working through challenges in a relationship may strengthen it to levels beyond those attainable in relationships that are never seriously challenged – Many of us have been fed the fantasy, from Disney and elsewhere, that a healthy relationship should always be smooth sailing. In some cases, with very mature partners, smooth sailing does indicate a remarkably compatible partnership. However, in many cases, prolonged smooth sailing simply indicates a more casual, less engaged partnership. In the long run, most relationships will meet challenges. But these challenges are not necessarily signs of ultimate incompatibility. If both partners are willing to accept them as opportunities to learn, grow, practice and improve relationship skills, the challenges may eventually be remembered as pivotal catalysts in the development of real, sustainable love.

• Failing to resolve relationship challenges often leads to repeating them again in future relationships – If we simply opt out of confronting the challenges posed by symptoms in our current relationship, there is a high likelihood that we will find ourselves facing similar symptoms in a future relationship.

Comparing The Approaches and Roles of Symptom-Focused Breakup Advice and Origin-Focused Breakup Advice

Because they understand the aforementioned fundamental relationship principles, origin-focused breakup advisors are likely to take a very different approach to relationship challenges than their symptom-focused counterparts. The chart below contrasts some features of the two approaches.

This chart hints at our general preference for an origin-focused approach to breakup advice. However, symptom-focused breakup advice does have its place. In a certain set of relationships characterized by previously unforeseeable abuse, addictions or personality disorders, for example, the current relationship may indeed be the fundamental cause of unhealthy symptoms for one of the partners. In that circumstance, a fast, focused approach to escaping the relationship may be ideal or even necessary. Sometimes even an origin-focused advisor would agree that the immediate situation really is the origin of symptoms and requires swift and immediate intervention. And sometimes, even when a deeper origin-focused approach is eventually called for, it can be helpful to use a symptom-focused approach first in order to stabilize the situation.

Nonetheless, ultimately, we believe that origin-focused relationship approaches are superior in catalyzing lasting insight and health. This is especially true because, even in the portion of cases where a symptom-focused approach is most appropriate, an origin-focused advisor would be likely to recognize this. A typical symptom-focused advisor, on the other hand, is less likely to recognize cases where an origin-focused approach is optimal.

Imago Relationship Therapy: A Recommended Form of Origin-Focused Breakup Advice

One of the most comprehensive and powerful sources for origin-focused breakup advice is the field of Imago Relationship Therapy. This is why we highly recommend the field’s landmark books Keeping the Love You Find and Getting the Love You Want to singles and couples, respectively, who are struggling with challenging symptoms in their relationships.

One of the questions most commonly asked by people facing, going through or recovering from the end of a relationship is “How long to get over a break up?”

It’s perfectly understandable that many want to know the answer to this question. Breakups can be extremely painful and whenever we are in pain it is natural to be focused above all on when we can expect the pain to end.

Some have put forth a rule of thumb that says that recovering from a relationship takes half the amount of time that the relationship itself lasted. So, for example, if the relationship lasted two years, it would take one year to fully recover from its breakup. Or if the relationship lasted a year, it would take six months.

While it may be comforting to believe in such a specific heuristic, the truth is that, as with so many questions involving complex processes such as relationships, there is simply no easy formula to accurately determine this answer. To repeat what you will notice is a theme on this blog, breakups are not all the same. And the pain of different breakups can actually stem from multiple, and sometimes very different, processes. As we’ve discussed, breakup pain can represent healthy heartbreak, depression or relationship addiction withdrawal, as well as various other conditions.

And even if we knew exactly which condition the pain represented, in order to even begin to estimate how long to get over a break up, it would still be necessary to know several things about the particular person and relationship involved. Just some of these would include:

• Age – A young teenager may experience a breakup as far more intense and lasting than an adult.
• Experience – A person’s first breakup may be more painful and linger longer than later ones.
• Background – A person with a relatively healthy and supportive family background, all other factors being equal, may have a more solid foundation for overcoming a breakup more quickly.
• Character – Certain personalities adapt to change better than others and might be expected to cope more easily with a breakup.
• Other Underlying Conditions – An otherwise healthy person may heal from a breakup faster than a person who already struggles with other physical or emotional challenges or disorders.
• Nature of the Relationship – The more intense and intimate the relationship, the longer we might expect recovery to take.

There are many other factors that could affect how long to get over a break up, as well.

And yet, even knowing all of these factors, it would still be very difficult to estimate the length of recovery. While teens may stereotypically respond more intensely to breakups, any particular teen may get over a breakup faster than any particular adult. While we often think of first breakups as most painful, it is also feasible that someone, having undergone multiple breakups, might be hit even harder by later ones as they begin to despair of ever finding a lasting relationship. While a supportive family background may offer strength to more rapidly overcome a breakup, it’s also possible that a particular person with a more dysfunctional background could be more familiar with handling painful separations and thus recover from a breakup more quickly.

So, as you can see, while it is perfectly reasonable that a person would want to know how long their breakup pain may last, it is usually not very worthwhile to actually expect a specific answer. There are simply too many factors and too many variations among people and relationships to find one.

There is some potentially good news, however. The intense pain in the early days of a breakup may bring with it the sense that it will never end because – as explained so beautifully in How to Break Your Addiction to a Person – it commonly has its roots in very early childhood abandonments. Yet, quite often, this initial feeling is misleading and the pain does ultimately subside much faster than it at first feels like it will. And even if, for whatever reason, you do experience a more drawn out recovery period, you can use it as an opportunity to finally get the support you need to face issues that have been holding you back your entire life.

So, in other words, your breakup pain may not last as long as you initially feel it will, and, even if it does, if you commit yourself to the recovery process, it can catalyze a beneficial turning point in your life that you may otherwise never have realized.

It can be very difficult, if not impossible, to predict which of these paths any person’s breakup recovery will take. And, in truth, we are better off not spending too much of our time trying to make such predictions. The paradox is that it is often when we stop worrying about how long the breakup pain will last that we truly begin the path toward healing.

The old cliche says that a watched pot never boils. And waiting for the end of breakup pain is similar. The more we focus on the outcome, trying to figure out a precise time schedule, the longer the process seems to take experientially. It is when we focus elsewhere – reading insightful books about recovery, engaging with supportive people and groups, constructively working through our feelings and periodically using non-destructive diversions to keep our mind occupied – that we start to lose track of time and notice progress sooner than we expected.

The lesson is one that is true in many process-based situations. A baseball player will not do very well if he spends his time at the plate worrying about how many hits he has. That time is better spent lost in the process of hitting. A musician will probably not give her best performance if she is focused more on how long the song will last than on the emotion of the song. Focusing on the process allows the results to naturally emerge.

Going through a breakup is also a process. And though it is alright once in a while to stop and ask “How long to get over a break up?” you will be better served if you instead focus on simply doing the best you can at performing the process. Throughout this site we discuss and will continue to discuss how to go through the process of coping with breakups and getting over a broken heart. If you can spend most of your time doing the recovery and seeking the support you need to get through it one day at a time, rather than trying to predict the length of the recovery, the odds are that you will get through it both more quickly and more effectively than you otherwise would.