“Do you want him distanced, or do you want him around so you can keep telling him to go away?”

 

Forty-year-old client and her boyfriend are two Borderline personalities ramming up against and angrily bouncing off each other. And this question, that seems like pure Cosmo pop psychology, exactly hit the feeling and meaning of her dilemma. It gave her deep pause as she realized that to the neediest of people, rejection is connection.

This relationship has joined and disjoined nearly half-a-dozen times in six months. Each time has felt right and final. For many people without this personality disorder, there would be a three-pronged choice, as would exist for adult children of toxic parents: sever the umbilical cord and end it (but for the eternal molecules of child nostalgia); remain enslaved; or effect bound­aries. “Mother, I will call you at my own discretion, if I do.” But for the neediest person, there can be no boundaries: They are live walls that allow hope to seep through.

If she finally ends the relationship, that would torture her inner child, her little girl who never had the slightest bit of love. And that would create a felt impossibility, as the Border­line is all child but for the window dressing.

Psychotherapy rarely acknowledges that some people are doomed. And of course, that’s good, because the mind then finds alternatives.