4 Things to Say to Your Avoidant Borderline (5 Dynamics)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2022-11-24

When faced with the Borderline's incessant and injurious approach-avoidance, tell her this:

I am always here for you.

You are and always will be dear to me.

If I place boundaries it is not only for my self-protection but also in order to be strong for both of us

I will accept and respect any decision you make.

When the Borderline’s intimate partner is enmeshed and immersed in her shared fantasy as the external regulator of her dysregulated emotions and labile moods, he is likely to internalize her inner turmoil, thereby ending up amplifying it.

Once he gets disenchanted with her, she is likely to mirror image his newly gained unperturbed equilibrium by reacting with dysregulation to his perceived indifference and rejection.

Finally, the dyad settles into a transactional regulatory valley when the Borderline re-idealizes her partner within a new halcyon fantasy or withdraws into a nostalgic state coupled with desperate attempts to hoover erstwhile partners or descends into a promiscuous whirl.

EXAMPLE OF AVOIDANT (ACTING OUT) BEHAVIOR: PROMISCUITY

Drunken promiscuity - the most common variant - is often the confluenced outcome of five pathologies coupled with subclinical psychopathy:

1. Introject or object inconstancy

Out of sight - out of mind. The inability to maintain introjects of significant others or the incapacity to trust the permanence of meaningful others in one’s life.

2. Transitional or comfort objectifying

The failure to attach to or bond with or cathect (emotionally invest in) other people (to transition to object relations). Using other people’s bodies the way small kids use teddy bears or favorite blankets.

3. Identity disturbance

Fluctuating between mutually exclusive beliefs, values, behavior patterns, cognitions, and emotions (schema) owing to the absence of a core identity because of …

4. Pervasive dissociation

Amnesia, derealization, and depersonalization (feeling empty and unreal when alone or during sex).

5. Bad object

The punishment and denigration of an internalized bad object, egged on by punitive and sadistic introjects and a harsh inner critic (“I am a whore and I should trash myself”).

Put together, these mutually-reinforcing dynamics result in compulsive attention seeking and acquisition (conquests) to the point of indiscriminate people pleasing on the one hand or predatory behaviors on the other hand.

Sex is used as a currency with which to purchase a temporary reprieve from this internal inferno.

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