Can Someone with Borderline Love Others? | Triangular Theory of Love

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel this is dr. grande today's question asks can a person with borderline personality disorder BPD truly love other people now I've heard this question a few times and mostly the type of relationships that the questions are talking about are romantic another related question here is can a person with BPD actually love themselves so this video is somewhat similar to one I did on narcissism can narcissists love other people so I'm going to be using kind of the same format for this video as I did for that one so the technical answer really to both these questions of course is yes but here I'll be looking at the tendencies with a specific type of love how do people with BPD tend to behave so as answer this question first we'll be taking a look at the definition of BPD and of love how we can define love in a manner where we can talk about it in a meaningful way then I'll look at the different types of love and inside of each type I'll talk about the relationship between that type of love and a personal or line personality disorder so to define BPD we know that this disorder is a cluster B personality sorter in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual the DSM so it's in the same cluster as antisocial narcissistic and histrionic Personality nine symptom criteria with this disorder frantic efforts to avoid abandonment unstable relationship patterns sometimes called the love-hate cycle a tenancy to idealize and then devalue a romantic partner typically we see identity disturbance so difficulty with self-image impulsivity at least two areas that can be self damaging suicidal behavior affective instability like having trouble regulating emotions having a chronic feeling of emptiness inappropriate or intense anger or difficulty controlling anger and paranoid ideation or severe dissociation now interestingly with BPD comorbid psychopathology actually explains a lot of this function and romantic relationships so what this means is the disorders that tend to co-occur with BPD might should explain why people would BPD tend to have so much trouble in romantic relationships so not necessarily the symptoms of the disorder but the comorbidity so again kind of an interesting finding we see in the research literature so in the case of BPD we can't really just discount comorbidity with this disorder we'd actually expect to see comorbidity more often than not and really the common comorbidity would be other personality disorders especially in the same cluster but also the sorters like major depressive disorder or anxiety disorders like generalized anxiety disorder so now moving on to the definition of love this is fairly complex because love can actually be thought of as related to a number of fields it has a theological definition a philosophical definition we know that science is part of philosophy so it also has a scientific definition and that's the one I'm going to be using here in this video looking at love and trying to capture it in a scientific way to do that I'll be using what's called the triangular theory of love this is a fairly popular but of course somewhat controversial way of understanding what love is and what the types of love are so with this model love has three variables intimacy passion and commitment so intimacy is when you have a relationship where there is a feeling of closeness and connectedness passion represents a drive that leads to romance physical attraction and sexual activity commitment also called decision in the short term involves the decision that one loves another person and the long-term commitment involves a decision to maintain that love to stay in that relationship in a loving way only one of these factors has to be present for some type of love to be in a relationship and of course they're different combinations of these three factors that also point to certain types of love so now looking at the types of love the first one I'm going to mention here is only intimacy so this one is a type of love where we own let me see intimacy no passion or no commitment this type of love is called liking now this may seem kind of odd because usually we think of liking and loving as different but here in this model if you like somebody you also love them at least in this one way in the way of intimacy the way of feeling close one of the most popular methods for determining if somebody likes somebody else in this way is if two people are friends and one leaves so two people are close to one other one leaves and one of the individuals has feelings and thoughts of loss but they don't really obsess about they don't ruminate they're not preoccupied with the fact that that person left right so it's more cognition than it is feeling so if there's more than that if there's a preoccupation that would point toward another type of love some other type of of not the liking type of love so with liking somebody is passively missed not actively missed so can somebody with BPD have this type of love yes but I don't think it's actually fairly common often in clinical practice when we see people with BPD we see that intimate relationships more or less go in one direction or the other so don't really stay at the intimacy stage they move to add passion to add commitment or to add both one could argue that this type of love liking collapses under the weight of other BPD symptoms like anger unstable relationships and affective instability these same symptoms could also result in the passion component being added which would convert this liking to romantic love which I'll cover in a moment the fear of abandonment and subsequent frantic efforts to avoid abandonment can be triggered by intimacy alone and this can happen even in a relationship that fails to manifest a clear potential to lead to romance so two people can be friends they can be intimate at that level they can be at the liking stage and the individual borderline personality disorder may start to think that the relationship can be more but there's any type of attraction there's going to be again a push toward passion and even a push toward intimacy now this liking of course is only intimacy what if we have only passion this is called infatuated love it's intoxicating irrational usually short-lived associated with terrible decision and obvious to the person who's experiencing it typically the person who's experiencing it knows it's happening but it's extremely obvious to other people watching that person it can lead to both intimacy and commitment and many romantic relationships actually start with infatuated love so how about BPD and infatuated love I would say this type of love with BPD is fairly common infatuated love is highly consistent with emotional highs and lows affective instability people with BPD often fall hard for a potential romantic partner which typically means an extreme manifestation of infatuated love borderline traits are consistent with bringing a certain degree of intensity to relationships and its intensity can be thought of as infatuated love at least some of the time infatuated love tends to satisfy the feelings of emptiness we see with BPD even though this type of love is often empty itself this type of love can help somebody establish identity because people often identify based on a relationship they have so this will really speak to the identity disturbance symptom criterion of BPD so I covered only intimacy and only passion what if somebody has only commitment well this is called empty love for example an arranged marriage the commitment is made first and maybe we see intimacy and passion appear later maybe we don't also relationship could start out with more than just commitment and lose the other factors and be left just with commitment in the end so the relationship could become stagnant and that's why we think of empty love is the most fragile type of love so it is empty love appear lot with BPD I would say no it's not particularly common with BPD this type of love doesn't have anything of interest for a person with BPD they want intimacy and passion and this type of love has neither the unstable relationship pattern the frantic efforts to avoid abandonment the impulsivity all these things test a romantic relationship they strain a loving relationship and because empty love is so fragile it would cave into the string fairly quickly so this type of love either wouldn't occur or it would fall apart fairly soon after it occurred now in the case where a person with BPD has commitment passion intimacy and passion and intimacy dissipate were still kind in the same situation they're left with empty love and the relationship would fail usually quickly BPD is ultimately a disorder of disturbed attachment and this attachment can change and often does change fairly rapidly now the next type of love is companionate love and this is when a couple develops intimacy and commitment but they lose the passion where they never had the passion in the first place this is actually fairly common the spark is gone from the relationship but the couple is still close and they want to stay together does this happen with BPD I think this certainly happens some of the time but like some of the other types of love I don't think this is usually maintained for a long period of time so there's a few reasons here one reason the commitment part disintegrates as part of that love/hate cycle so in some ways in that devaluation phase that's going to move this companion love to the side that's going to break apart this type of love the second reason is the passion part might come back with the passion component being absent as is the case with companion love this only increases paranoia anger emptiness emotion dysregulation the frantic efforts to avoid abandonment and the impulsivity the relationship doesn't feel real to the person with BPD the passion part is really a defining element of the experience so again they're going to work to get that back the next type of love is romantic love and this is when a couple has intimacy and passion but no commitment so there's no decision made here to commit to the relationship nobody knows what's going to happen it's just kind of moment by moment some would argue that romantic love is were the same as infatuated love I view them as different so do we see this with BPD I would say frequently we do but briefly because the individual BPD is typically going to want that commitment there is a pressure for that early in the relationship some of this disorder is not going to want to have that uncertainty of intimacy and passion in the absence of commitment this gun seem like something's missing a feeling of emptiness a fear of abandonment the direction of the relationship isn't clear but the future of the relationship is important to someone with BPD which of course is understandable it's not just the here now not just the closeness and the intense feelings it is what's going to happen down the road is the couple still going to be together now one thing I've seen here sometimes is the partner of the person with BPD figures out that the commitment piece is extremely important and they may use this to manipulate the person with BPD so the partner won't commit or they only provide a weak level of commitment in an effort to control the relationship and this manipulation can be fairly effective stringing the person with BPD along for months if not years with the promise of a future commitment moving on to the next type of love we have here fatuous love fatuous love is when passion leads to commitment but not intimacy now theoretically commitment could lead to passion that happens sometimes but usually we think of passion is happening first this type of love is characterized by the quick establishment of a long term relationship like if a couple gets married quickly there's no true understanding no closeness no real connectedness but there's a lot of passion and energy and at least a tenuous commitment we see this all the time with like celebrities for example we see stories of a couple that meets on Monday they're engaged on Tuesday and married on Saturday now that may be a little bit of an exaggeration but that's kind of we see kind of a quick progression to the commitment now the failures with these type of relationships is extremely high and this type of relationship is actually extremely common with individuals who have BPD essentially all we see here is the individual of BPD and often the partner believe that the intimacy is really there because they think the passion also takes care of the intimacy but of course the intimacy is not there it's fatuous love so they believe essentially that they have complete love which I'll get to in a moment the extremely high level of passion can temporarily compensate for and imitate intimacy see the poor judgment associated with high levels of passion leads to the poor decision to make a long-term commitment the idealization phase is also key to fatuous love facilitates both passion and commitment so moving to the last type of love I'll cover here it's called complete love or consummate love and this is when you have intimacy passion and commitment all together at the same time this is what many people think of when they think of the perfect romantic love and individuals with BPD feel the same way they want connectedness the intensity and the excitement and the commitment of a long-term relationship again this is completely understandable now with BPD achieving this type of love certainly occurs with some regularity because individuals with this disorder are prone to offer or demand all three variables of love quite quickly but maintaining this type of love can be difficult so many of the symptoms of BPD can affect one or more these factors and again all three factors have to be present to see consummate or complete love the fear of abandonment reduces intimacy it can also reduce passion the feeling of emptiness can make a person feel that the intimacy is not really there even if it is the devaluation phase of a love hate cycle can destroy all three of these factors inappropriate or intense anger can destroy all three factors as well and I think identity disturbance can play a key role here when somebody's in a loving relationship that rises to a level of consummate love part of their identity is in that relationship there's an investment in the relationship at an identity level the individual with BPD struggles with self-image and that distortion of how they view themselves extends to a distortion of how they view that relationship their appraisal of the quality of the relationship will be as unsteady as their self appraisal so overall looking at BPD and constant love essentially there's an inability here to feel comfortable and secure in a relationship which in large part is defined by stability something so good something perfect something ideal must be at risk it must require more effort to maintain there's no sitting back there's no resting there's no point where success can be accomplished again at least in the mind of somebody with borderline traits there is no believing at a really deep down level that one can be or that one deserves to be loved this completely which makes it very easy to answer the second question I mentioned at the beginning of the video can somebody with borderline personality sorter really love themselves we talk about self-love we're really not talking about something that can be covered by the triangular theory of love this theory is only appropriate when you have two people involved self love is usually thought of something like self esteem there's somebody think well themselves do they think they're worthy do they believe that they are good enough to be loved by others in a sense are they secure with who they are with their own identity with this being the understanding of self love the answer would be no or at least it would be a great challenge and perhaps this is a key part of borderline personality sorter so I know whenever I talk about topics like BPD and love there'll be a variety of opinions people who agree with me and disagree with me and have other thoughts and examples from their own experiences please put those opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of borderline and love to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 219,404

Keywords: Borderline, borderline personality disorder, borderline love, triangulation theory of love, intimacy, passion, commitment, empty love, infatuated love, fatuous love, companionate love, consummate love, romantic love, loving versus liking, manipulation, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, unstable relationships, impulsivity, paranoia, anger, chronic feeling of emptiness, affective instability

Id: IrNWzmd9grU

Length: 16min 58sec (1018 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019