Borderline Personality means ambivalence personified. Most non borderlines are baffled by the moodiness, emotional dysregulation and changeability of those with BPD. How can a non borderline cope? Nons often feel like the borderline in their lives is "pushing them out" or distancing them or "despises them" and treats them as if they do not exist. Why?

The Borderline: Ambivalence Personified

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I answer the questions of a non-borderline asking about being "pushed out", "despised" and treated as if they don't exist. I also talk about the ambivalent reality of the inner-emotional workings of those who have BPD.

A non-borderline asked me:

"Is it common for the Borderline to be in such a state of denial, that they can actually deny you from there reality to such a degree--that they actually believe that you do not exist?

My response is:

Yes and no. I think that this is how it seems to the non-borderline but it is not necessarily how it feels or truly is for the borderline. There is truth to the fact that you can get lost. You likely get lost in his transference and projective identifications....those most borderlines (until they get a certain amount of therapy...etc) are not aware of. They are re-living the past and re-experiencing someone from a past relationship as you....through you, sometimes with you, sometimes instead of you. I'm sure this varies for each borderline. For me, in the past, I had a partner who thought I never saw her....or that she didn't matter....she DID matter, and I DID know she was there and that she existed....even in the middle of my worst behaviour toward her....I was (felt) compelled to continue to act out "re-enact" my past through her....in that way she was, at times, lost to me and I (authentic me) was lost to her....she would be left experiencing me, the kid...the emotionally immature me acting toward her as I did my abusive father.

If your borderline thinks or believes that you do not exist, this, in and of itself, could be a projection of his about his own identity. (lack of identity) It may be hard to understand but most borderlines (again until a certain amount of work and healing takes place.... insight gained etc) do not know who they are. They seek to define themselves through the significant non-borderline in his/her life. Yes, in this way, you, who you really are, can be lost again to the borderline. He may feel as if he doesn't exist and put that out onto you so that it may well feel as if he doesn't get, or acknowledge or consistently (at all) hold *you* in his mind as existing for who you are.

The non-borderline continues:

"I know that he cares about me deep down inside--or I should say I think he does? Is this normal behavior.?"

My further response:

Normal behavior? Well, in my experience there is "normal" behaviour and then there is borderline behaviour....guess we could say it is "normal borderline behaviour?" He may be shunning you and your importance and name for example to distance from all of the chaos he feels inside. The chaos he feels is his, but he doesn't get that or can't cope with that so he's slung it out onto you (likely without knowing it). There is a great tendency to disrespect others because borderlines do not respect self, nor do they know themselves enough to be able to sustain other when there is internal chaos. (which is often.)

The non-borderline:

"We were close--not exceptionally close--because of his guarded and superficial ways--but close. He has completely shut me out, wants nothing to do with me, yet there is a little push and pull, "Subtle cries" if you will--"I hate you don't leave me" thing. Anyway, he seems to hate me-- despise me!! and deny me from his reality. I am wondering if this denial is all a cover--or does he really believe that I do not exist?

My response:

Please be careful, a borderline does NOT know how to be close...if there are moments of closeness they will be fleeting and not consistent. Thus the push/pull. That ambivalence is something, that I believe, borderlines experience from their care-givers as infants and young children. He likely wants to be close but when you got to some degree of close he likely felt like it was going to smother him, annihilate him, kill him....and so he pushed you out....then he feels "need" or out of "helplessness" needs.....wants to pull back but borderlines are truly STUCK with a tremendous FEAR of what they MOST NEED. This is the ultimate NO-WIN....it lives in the borderline's reality and is then projected out onto others.

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I don't think his "denial" is a cover....I wouldn't define it exclusively as denial either but rather his inability to cope with and decipher his own emotional ambivalence. You know how babies often throw a soother away, only to want it back instantly.....? That is the sort of emotional immaturity that a borderline is trying to relate with. The baby doesn't understand cognitively that the throwing the soother away has a consequence -- being without the soother. The borderline, in a narcissistic way, perceiving everything to revolve around them does not understand cognitively that pushing you away, ignoring you, acting as if you don't exist will, at some point, make it so, in terms of his life. He wants you close but he can't stand it. He wants you distant but he needs you close, simultaneously.

I believe there is much to why, but in a nut shell it is the ambivalence between love and hate, cold and warm, close and distant, etc all of which he likely got as mixed messages during the formative years of his personality....this is at least what I've worked it all back to in my experience. May sound simplified but point is he does not know how to relate to you (or anyone including himself) consistently. He cannot see the "big picture". He will remember and be aware of only parts of the truth that has been your shared experience at any one time.

He likely hates himself and you are wearing that now. He is punishing himself, and perhaps someone from his past, through you. Sadly, this will not change, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO...until he works in therapy to unwind what he is doing and why. He needs to take responsibility for what he is doing. He not a baby who is toying with a "soother" with ambivalence and yet to many borderlines that is what someone else in their life is.....a "soother".

If I may say....you will benefit if you can shift your focus from him and what he is or isn't doing....back to yourself and what you can do for you to meet your own needs. If you stay focused on him he'll always have you, essentially, right where he wants you....this will not auger well for you....it will cause you tremendous pain. Take care of yourself.....

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The Ambivalence

Ambivalence is simultaneously conflicting feelings toward a person or a thing, as love and hate. In the case of someone with BPD this core ambivalence plays itself out in all areas of one's life, especially emotionally and relationally. Ambivalence sits inside of each borderline where their core-identity (as yet unknown) "should" be. It is not there because the very essence of BPD is such that the borderline was unable to develop and mature their personality in a healthy average way. A person with BPD often feels ambivalence when it comes to what they like, what they don't like, who they like or who they do not like.

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This ambivalence also extends into other many other areas: morals, ethics and values, to name but a few. Borderline ambivalence traps the borderline between two parallel worlds. The two parallel worlds; more than just being the inner-borderline one and the outer non-borderline one are very much the worlds of hate and fear clashing endlessly inside of the borderline. Lacking the age-appropriate emotional maturity the borderline does not know how to cope with the anxiety, depression, anger, rage or myriad of other emotions that this core ambivalence brings forth inside. It is the inability to cope with the clashing inner-realities of fear and need that cause the borderline to project the ambivalent conflicts out onto others.

Once these ambivalent conflicts are vested outside of the self, and the person, the borderline can then feel as though they have enough strength and power to control them. Getting them "out there" (outside of self) gives one the illusion of control. This is also the reason why the borderline often seeks so hard to manipulate and control others and their outer environment as well. It is in this sense that the borderline expectation of being the center of the universe is very painfully played out. Each person in the life of the borderline cannot help but be assigned a planetary position or role in the borderline's ambivalent intra-psychic vacillating universe. So the borderline, standing in the "middle" of his/her universe, adrift from any real conceptualization of self, desperately and madly tries (no matter the consequences) to orchestrate the movement of the planets that surround him/her. These are very real and frantic efforts to ease the ever-mounting inner-turmoil that the constant ambivalent conflicts continue to generate. This ambivalent conflict is increased whenever a borderline tries to relate or be close to another human being. It can even begin to escalate when trying to relate to a pet. It is within the realm of relating and relationships that BPD is most destructively and painfully obvious.

What non-borderlines must understand and not lose sight of is that they are not the reason or cause of borderline ambivalence. They are not going to be the solution to it either. Borderlines live in two worlds at once; namely, the real world, and the borderline one. Once in awhile they overlap. More often than not they clash. The borderline often knows little more about why than the non-borderline. Therefore when each tries to relate to each other the experience is anything but easily understandable.

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The borderline needs to be loved while love strikes terror into his/her being. The borderline desperately needs to be heard and understood while his/her very words are missiles firing at you that sooner or later force you to retreat. If you retreat, the borderline will take it as a betrayal, an abandonment because the whole reality of the bits and pieces of borderline relating ability and tolerance revolves around the impossible to begin with. Life, in the here and now can never replicate the past in objective reality. This recapitulation exists only to and for the borderline, and leaves the non-borderline standing in a wind-swept hazy hell-cloud of galvanized glass gazing in from without and in the absence of any clear understanding. The borderline continues to live inside of that galvanized glass gallantly determined to destroy the agonized ambivalence of all that is black and all that is white. The non-borderline waits in disbelief in the grey-zone while borderline reality is loaded and unloaded in the white zone only. It is agonized and felt in the black zone only.

Ambivalence without recognition. Unattached fear leaves lonely one's needs. Fear sits in the black while need sits in the white of borderline thinking. What each borderline will benefit from doing is taking their black fear and their white need and melding the two into a grey co-existence that can then allow for the healing of the angst-ridden, agonizingly-acrimonious ambivalent asymmetry that is the pain of borderline belligerence as experienced from the inside by those who are borderline, and from the outside by those who care about someone who has borderline personality disorder.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari, November 7, 1999

Click Here To Purchase A.J. Mahari's Core Wound of Abandonment Ebooks packaged together, with or without audio programs.

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Ebooks On BPD For Borderlines and Nons by A.J. Mahari

Audio Programs On BPD For Borderlines and Nons by A.J. Mahari

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