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I feel like we are so focused on them.  I want to understand why I allowed this to happen and the journey of healing I should expect.  Intellectually I understand my choices but when do I connect with my feelings.  It seems like every next borderline relationship makes my walls higher and more impenetrable.  My T says my whole life has been about avoidance, aloofness and attaching myself to emotionally unavailable women.  I know I'm emotionally unavailable too.  How do I break this cycle?

I'm told that I have a hard time letting myself feel anger and hurt, that I intellectualize and use empathic skills to avoid my own feelings. That seems to be a core recurring theme. This is not the same as what you're challenged with, Mr. Magnet, but it's related.

The overwhelming feelings of sadness and anger and longing and fear that are locked inside, that cause me to put up all the unhealthy defenses (of which depression is one)--they're in a different room than the thinking me. I had a session a few weeks ago in which the question came up: how do I tune into these strong emotions? I mean, how do I reach them, if not intellectually?

I don't have an answer.

Learning more about emotional availability is a great topic Mr. Magnet, it is the cornerstone of healthy relationships, romantic or otherwise.



“Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, M. Scott Peck [in The Road Less Traveled] defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own and another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues, “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will – namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.” (p.4)

“Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients – care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. […] When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotions in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called “cathexis.” […] Many of us choose relationships of affection and care that will never become loving because they feel safer.” (p.5)

Why would it feel safe to choose a relationship with an emotionally unavailable person?

I think one of the first steps to healing is realizing that you can't control the situation.  Many people come to this board with the idea that if they had been better significant others, if they had done one little thing differently, if they just had one more try . . . that they could make the relationship work.  One of the first steps of letting go is recognizing that the relationship pattern is so ingrained in the other person that your actions toward that person don't make much difference in the long run.  Some people come here trying to find the "trick" to BPD so that they can justify giving the relationship another try.  It takes a lot of time and acceptance to realize that the relationship is simply doomed to failure because of factors beyond our control.

I still get caught up thinking that my ex will realize what he lost and come back and want to give it another go.  Even if that's not what I want, I'd want the satisfaction of him wanting that.  You're not really free until you stop wanting anything they have to offer.

The reasons that we began or stayed in these relationships are so varied.  For some, it's because they're codependent.  For others, they got addicted to the other person.  Some of us have attachment issues of our own that we have to work out.  Some of us have narcissistic tendencies or are Cluster B ourselves.  I think part of what you see on this board might be because there are so many different healing needs, but understanding what BPD is can help you learn to let go, no matter what your situation is.

I think a lot of the terms and ideas are inter related.

Take the foundation of boundaries and enforcement.

If a boundary is paramount to what you believe in, then they need to be enforced at all costs.

When you enforce it, then you are automaticajlly putting the emphasis on you rather than others. When you look at a boundary as nothing more than an extension of you, than you realize its importance. It allows you to stay emotionally safe.

It lets you understand the difference between your needs and another.

This gives you emotional strength.

failing boundaries is because we want acceptance from an external source.

this need drives our own fears.

I think there are many roads to get healthy.

they all lead to Rome (aka you)

it sounds to me like youre doing a good job of that in T, mr magnet. i dont think these changes (healing) occur over night, but neither do they happen with time alone.

suzn asked you a good question in terms of your feelings. i think for the most part we all want to feel safe in our relationships, accepted, and loved. intellectually its easy to see that an emotionally unavailable person isnt in a position to provide those things, so why would we effectively set ourselves up to fail and why does it seem to hurt so particularly when we do? why do we then do it again?

i think the reasons are unique to each of us, but there are many common, sometimes overlapping "paths". greeneyedmonster, tryingsome, and steelwork named some of them. i think one underlying theme tends to be an unconscious fear of intimacy, which we present as a certain emotional unavailability, ourselves.

in eighth grade, i was on the receiving end of a lot of bullying. i was at a new school with no friends and everyone was more or less a threat. i was lonely and isolated, and i retreated into my head a lot. needless to say ive struggled with confidence ever since. i also came out of that year with a pretty high degree of rescuing tendency. i had a new found sense of self worth in helping others with their struggles. i fell for a troubled girl early in high school, a close friend. the harder i tried to connect, the more my efforts with her were rejected, resented, hurled back at me. the pain was mostly internalized. subsequently, i chose similar kinds of partners; achieving a relationship with them and "winning" their affections was an emotional victory and boosted my self worth. when their affections would wane, or when theyd inevitably dump me, it hurt worse every time.

i was learning some lessons along the way. it occurred to me, to some extent, that i was choosing girls i had a lot of misgivings about in the first place, that id overlooked or ignored. i learned about boundaries (read the book on em!). i started to regain an authentic sense of confidence. i was attracting and attracted to healthier gals though i failed to connect with them  :light:. there wasnt that spark, or i dismissed them as boring, or they werent ultimately interested. i think part of that "spark" was really a game of push/pull which i became determined to win.

to make a long story shorter, i found a gal my senior year who seemed different than my exes. lots of the quirks, lots of qualities that pulled on my rescuer tendencies; stuff i sensed we could connect over, but this person seemed much more loving and affectionate. sometimes too loving and affectionate even for me. that too was a powerful hook. i could keep my guard up while she seemed to fall harder, until i let it down. that was enough pain that i remained single for three years, generally terrified of the thought of falling for a girl and not trusting myself at all. then i met my uBPDex and the rest is history. what was safe about her? she liked me more than i liked her. she needed me, depended on me, immersed herself in my world and my ways, and expressed intense love for me. she was jealous and needy and clingy, and dysfunctional, all of which, for once, put me in a one up position, which also felt very safe; all of which was a powerful narcissistic hook. it was as if i could do no wrong, nothing to make her like me less or push her away. the result, of course, was ultimately the same.

it was at that point that i realized the common denominator really was me, but this was good and welcome news because i realized i had all the power in the world to change the dynamic, not that i was unworthy or unloveable, but that at the end of the day, i hadnt been true to myself. frankly, and not least of all, i realized i had a lot of misguided ideas about love and healthy relationships - i thought love was all an adam sandler movie  :).

so thats my path in a nutshell, and it involves several of the dynamics others have mentioned. your therapist says your whole life has been about avoidance, aloofness, and attaching yourself to emotionally unavailable women. so whats your story mr magnet? what are the themes and dynamics and when do you think they might have started? thats the place to start making our path clear. once we do, coupled with self awareness, we are better able to start making healthier choices.

If you have been in the practice of numbing when it comes to your feelings, as many of us have, it's best to take a break from dating and spend time alone to grieve. It stands to reason if we have numbed the hurt from past relationships we have also numbed (or lost a true connection) to all of our emotions. That includes allowing ourselves to be truly vulnerable and open to real love (as opposed to infatuation or a superficial definition of love) out of fear of being hurt.


This is a perfect example of us not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open. If we have high and impenetrable walls we still have much to grieve. Give yourself time to grieve, if you don't these painful emotions will wait for you, just under your skin, to experience them fully.

An example of this would be entering a new relationship and this new person says something or does something that triggers a memory from a past relationship (this can go all the way back to our experiences in childhood) and you feel or act on what you experienced from the past. This is an example of projection.  


This seems to point to FOO issues. What was your childhood like? What was your relationships with your parents like? Our belief system stems from our upbringing and if there are painful memories there we can inadvertently bring those right into our adult lives. It seems in a lot of cases this is where we laid our first bricks to those walls you speak of.


Breaking the cycle is to recognize that you have not fully grieved your past and to take the time to do so before entering a new relationship. Breaking this cycle is an investment in yourself, it takes time to identify what happened and why we have numbed our emotions. Working with a T helps tremendously, journaling can also help us become more clear about our emotions and helps us to get back in touch with them. This can be a painful process however it's growth and growing can be painful sometimes.

Being emotionally unavailable can draw us into codependent relationships with other emotionally unavailable people.  Once we identify this in ourselves and work to become more available we start recognizing this in others. That's the rub, if we can't see it in ourselves we will be hard pressed to see it in others and we will inadvertently continue the cycle.   Codependency: When Our Emotional Issues Affect Our True Availability (https://bpdfamily.com/content/codependency-codependent-relationships)

Have you and your T worked to identify what signs point to being unavailable?