The Painful Reality and Consquence of "No Win"

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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.

Audio Programs on BPD for Borderlines and Non Borderlines by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks.

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For both those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and those who love and or care about someone with BPD often much of the interaction in your relationship is experienced in a "NO WIN" dynamic.

A "NO WIN" dynamic creates a situation wherein no matter what the non-borderline does in relation to the person with BPD they find themselves on the "outs" with them.

One of the hallmarks of BPD, as experienced by those who have it, is an inability to consistently relate to someone (especially someone close or trying to be close) without engaging in what is known as "push-pull" behaviour.

For the borderline in the throes of the angst-filled turmoil that this personality disorder leaves one in emotionally, there is a tragic dichotomy. This dichotomy is that the borderline, like anyone else, feels the need to be close to loved ones while at the same time having a terror-filled fear of this very closeness.

What results then is behaviour that's only constant is that of mixed messages. The mixed message given by those with BPD to those who care about them is "get away closer" (Jerold J. Kreisman, M.D. & Hal Straus, "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me") In my own experience this was certainly the case. I wanted so much to be loved and to love. The problem for many years was I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I liked or wanted. I didn't know what love was.

For years what I thought was love was really a child-like neediness on my part. What I thought I was trying to achieve; intimacy with an equal adult partner masked what was really happening for me inside. I was actually trying to be re-parented, or to be successfully parented. This meant that my expectations/needs/wants in any relationship were excessive. I was demanding. The saddest part of all of this is that it was that excessive neediness and the daunting demanding that pushed away what I so wanted. I clearly, without realizing it gave the get away closer mixed message.

There comes a time in this "dance" between the borderline and the non-borderline where the situation becomes "no win" for one or both parties. For the non-borderline there is often an overwhelming sense of failure and of "losing one's mind" as you try to make sense out of the borderline demands, hostility, mood swings and punishment. When I was caught up in this cycle, in borderline hell, I was so unaware as to what was actually going on. "Get away closer" was all I'd ever known in relating to others. When people who tried to be close to me would try to tell me how I was hurting them I would think that they were just jerking me around. (This was a projection as really I was jerking them around to make up for how lost and out of control I would often feel.) I thought they were just trying to hurt me.

It is a very scary and difficult place to be: trying to achieve the grey: love and be loved, give and take; while really only having the emotional capacity for the black and white polar opposites of either being loved, or trying to love, or of receiving or of giving but not any two simultaneously.

When I was in the throes of active BPD pathological thinking, interpreting and perceiving I was aware that I would do almost anything to feel in control. (To feel "in control" of myself I would need to be in "control" of my environment.)

This would manifest itself as my trying to control others and my environment but truly it was me projecting out my own need to control myself. I did not understand all the ins and outs of why I made it impossible for anyone to be close to me without being in a "no win" position. The mere fact that I put others in this "no win" position meant that I too (though I did not, at the time realize it) was just as much in a "no win" position. For me, however, that was okay, normal, or expected simply because I was re-playing out my past in which I never "won" what I so coveted: parental love, nurturance, acceptance and support.

I was not able to be emotionally close to my parents and be safe at the same time. I always got hurt. Therefore I projected this expected outcome onto every single relational experience I had or was about to have. The results: I hurt others terribly. I left them "walking on egg shells", in fear, feeling helpless (like I did) living in emotional chaos (like I was) and completely in a "no win" situation.

The crux of a "no win" situation is that it runs juxtaposed to what, on the surface, it seems all parties are seeking. In healthy relationships the goal is to honestly share yourself, to allow yourself to be known by others and to know others. For a borderline this is where the disorder most wreaks havoc. BPD interferes with one's ability to be able to relate in a healthy way. The reasons are numerous.

Firstly, the borderline has a very unstable sense of identity and if you do not know who you are then you really cannot know who anyone else is. The goal in relating then is to protect oneself and to hide oneself, whoever that SELF is.

Secondly, there is often a tremendous lack of honesty on the part of the borderline because they are not perceiving "the big picture" -- reality as it unfolds but rather in pieces of that picture and time that do not fit together. This happens due to the amount of the "here and now" that is perceived, and re-lived in the past when the borderline is "triggered" by events in the present. (There is a major dissociative component to BPD that, I think, professionals are finally, now really beginning to understand and deal with.)

Thirdly, the lack of stability in relation to oneself leaves the borderline unable to trust his or herself or effectively meet his/her own needs. Resultingly, then we see the borderline being often extremely egocentric much as a child would be. This is because borderlines have not been able to mature and develop (according to the "healthy" stages of development) emotionally.

Often borderlines do not understand what it is that they are doing that a non-borderline so vehemently objects to.

If you are in a relationship with a borderline it is paramount that you understand that you cannot re-parent them without great cost to yourself. It is up to each borderline to work through these issues and to take responsibility for meeting his/her own needs. It is up to each non-borderline to make sure that they take care of themselves. No one can rescue a borderline from themselves, or from all of his/her tormented past that lives on within then in the here and now. If you try to do this you will surely end up in a "no win" situation. If you are there now I would suggest that you need to seriously look at the viability of the relationship and seek professional guidance. If you are there now and not prepared to change this painful situation for yourself than ask yourself, "What am I getting out of this that I continue to choose to live this way."

The "no win" dynamic occurs in any relational exchange in which one party is not taking responsibility for his/herself and for meeting his/her own emotional needs. "No win" is a very painful place to be for both the borderline and the non- borderline and it is equally unhealthy for both as well.

Many non-borderlines have asked for my insight into what they should do in various "no win" situations with their boyfriends/ girlfriends/spouses/adult-children/parents and from my own experience all you can do is to take care of you. I am one healed borderline because I chose to face my own responsibility in the losses I have experienced in my adult life.

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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.

Audio Programs on BPD for Borderlines and Non Borderlines by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks.

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All of the relationships that I've lost, the people that walked out of my life I pushed out of my life. I put them in such painful "no win" situations they needed to leave the relationships/friendships that we had in order to maintain their own sanity and health. They did not reject me but rather my pathology or lack of health. If you feel that leaving is what you need to do but are worried about how the borderline you care about will respond, please know that sometimes what is most difficult to do in the short run and what seems cruel and to be the most hurtful can really be a gift. If you take care of yourself, you give yourself that gift. If you do in fact have to leave your borderline, whether they realize it now, or will ever realize it you also give them the gift of an opportunity to grow and to seek further healing. I chose to learn from these loses, finally. The last time this happened to me I realized I had nobody to blame but myself and decided to take personal responsibility for my own life, get through it and to grow up.

If I hadn't experienced that loss I might still be in the throes of the transferences that I used to justify not taking personal responsibility. What I've said here may be hard for all to read, but I can tell you that I have lived it and that I know it to be true. Love doesn't have to hurt.

If you are borderline, reading this, please realize that if you do not work to heal you will continue to suffer loss after loss, not because you are not worthy, not because you are unlovable but because you are demanding, needing and expecting too much from someone (or a number of people). Look to yourself, find yourself, and take care of yourself and suddenly you will find that you have an abundance of people in your life wanting to know you, love you and support you. The transition to make is to become self-directed as opposed to "other" directed.

In life, it is essential that each of us come to understand that no one who is taken prisoner will volunteer to stay when they free themselves from what it was that trapped them initially. In life we need to learn how to make friends, to love others --freely, and to cease taking hostages.

Hostages always find their freedom sooner or later and when they do many a borderline feels betrayed and abandoned again: truthfully though what you need to realize is that you are not being betrayed or abandoned you have set yourself up (repeated your past) and by far the only betrayal and abandonment happening to you now (as an adult) is your betrayal of yourself and your abandonment yourself. The responsibility is yours.

"No win" is clearly the beginning of the end of any relationship. It is the fork in the road where needs can no longer be met in a healthy way. Whichever side of this you may be on, take care of yourself. Life does not have to hurt like that, it really doesn't.

Life is not about winning and losing; it is about living. In living we experience gains and losses, victories and defeats. In healthy relationships, the essence of what enables them to work is truth, fairness, mutual respect and yes, the freedom to be who one is, to have one's needs met reasonably and to be free to come and go. The goal in any healthy relationship is "win win".

© Ms. A.J. Mahari - May 30, 1999

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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.

Audio Programs on BPD for Borderlines and Non Borderlines by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks.

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