Why do they have no friends?

[ForeverDad]

By the time we separated and divorced, my spouse had maybe 3 friends left.  They were other women who in some way depended on her.  I believed she likes being in control.  Even with subsequent fiends she had spats and suddenly they were no longer friends.  Whether she cast them aside or they did doesn't matter.

As her behaviors worsened over the years she did have increasing conflict with her co-workers and employers.  The closer they were, the worse it got.  She was closest with me so eventually she drove even us apart.

[Notwendy]

While BPD affects the most intimate relationships the most, friendship is still a relationship and it affects all relationships to some extent.

When BPD mother was younger, she was described as quite popular. She was very beautiful, intelligent, and charming. But she also has a social persona which parallels this. Behind closed doors is a different person.

Her friendships though seemed to me to be transactional and she has to be in control. She would often change circles of friends. She has had two long term friends since college. I recall being home visiting and one of them trying to call her and my mother refusing to answer the phone. Finally, I picked up the phone and talked to the friend. I thought it was rude to ignore her but BPD mother was angry at her for something. I guess the friend was accustomed to this behavior and it didn't bother her so much.

Covid made serious damage to BPD mother's socializing. She was an elderly widow at the time but still socialized with others. Because of Covid, all her social groups shut down and in addition, nobody wanted to risk exposing her due to her age making her so vulnerable to serious illness from it. She was very demanding and controlling with her few remaining friends. They have moved on. We moved her to an assisted living facility where people are very social but she won't participate in the social groups. It's apparent she is different from them in terms of her being able to manage a friendship. I think her friends tended to accommodate her behaviors but people she doesn't know well probably won't.

I think the isolation of older people during Covid took a social toll on them. It may have kept them safer from the virus but it has a negative impact on their connections.

[kells76]

My H's kids' mom has many BPD traits, and her husband has many NPD traits. I think the longest-term friend that either of them still have is Stepdad's girlfriend, who used to be married to Stepdad's former friend. I am not sure that either of them has friends who have been around for >10 years. They may have friends they've known for ~8 years, but those friends moved out of the country ~3 years ago.

What we do with the information that pwPD's struggle to make and keep healthy, lengthy friendships may depend on our relationship to the pwBPD.

Because it's H's kids' mom and stepdad, I don't feel the pull to "fix it" for them or to "help them see the light". I do use the information to help me take better care of the kids. For example, if the kids' mom has a falling-out with one of the kids' friend's families, we might try to facilitate the kids seeing that friend on our time, if Mom won't make it happen on her time.

Members in romantic relationships with pwBPD who struggle to keep friends may feel that pull to "fix it" for them, "help them not be lonely", explain their behavior to others ("she didn't really mean it, can you call her to work it out?"), etc. That's where it's important to work out personal boundaries and to decline to overfunction for the loved one. Losing friendships is a natural outcome of some BPD-type behaviors -- it isn't our job to rescue.

Members who have exited relationships with pwBPD may struggle with something different -- with a sense of superiority, escape, or "told you so": "That's what you get for being a jerk! I hope you're happy alone. It isn't that hard to be a decent human being". The task there is also to disengage and detach. If we're wrapped up in an ex's friendlessness, that means we're still giving them power over our lives.

Members with a family member wBPD, whether parent or child, may find themselves in either of those positions: feeling pain at their child's lack of friends and self-destructive behaviors that push others away, or feeling frustrated and "I wash my hands of you" with a parent's perpetual discarding of friends. It's never bad idea to try to find a balanced, centered perspective between those two poles, where we acknowledge the pain we feel at seeing a loved one alone, and the frustration at watching them be so hurtful.

[CC43]

There is a diagnosed person with BPD in my life, and she complains that she has no friends.  I think there are many reasons she has a hard time cultivating friendships.  First, her mood and outlook are pervasively negative.  It's not very fun hanging out with negativity and criticism.  Second, she's not active in life:  she's not in school, she barely works and she doesn't have traditional hobbies.  Without regular interaction with a peer group, it might be hard to meet others with whom she has something in common.  In parallel, she self-isolates and spends oodles of time watching TV and scrolling the internet, which aren't exactly friend-magnet activities.  Third, because of her unstable mood, she has outbursts, with seemingly insignificant triggers.  She has a history of standing people up without warning, and she doesn't respond to texts.  I imagine that a new friend would have a hard time putting up with that, leading to a pattern of unstable relationships, a hallmark of BPD.  Fourth, my observation is that she doesn't really know who she is or what she likes; if you ask her, she'll usually say, "I don't know."  That's not very engaging.  Fifth, she's extremely jealous when others are happy or successful; she feels inferior by comparison, and that makes her angry and/or depressed.  Misery doesn't love company, misery loves miserable company.  Finally, she tends to expect others to do things for her, which in the friend zone might involve making plans, hosting a party, etc.  So she hasn't figured out that friendships are give and take.  She's all take and no give.  In my opinion, these are some of the reasons for the lack of friends.  I feel a little sorry for her because her bad mood makes her miserable, and yet historically she's been resistant to working on improving her mood by following doctors' and therapists' recommendations.

[PeteWitsend]

Here's how my therapist explained it, and it makes good sense to me--intimate relationships require genuine and sincere emotional interaction--daily. People with mood disorders can't do that.

People with BPD have exaggerated and out of proportion emotions. They do OK with strangers most of the time because they don't have to interact with them much (on an emotional level). Friendships are much more difficult. People with BPD enter into emotional interactions in a very consuming way. This is less acceptable in friendships than it is in intimate relationships. It becomes too much in an intimate relationship as well. But it's "easier" to project those out of proportion emotions onto your spouse than your friend, because the spouse is more readily available....

I think that pretty much nails it.

I saw the same thing with BPDxw; she was actually very outgoing and social, and people were very charmed by this, especially guys, since when she would just meet someone new, she'd act like they were really interesting.  And I suppose to her, they were. 

She was very shallow though, and most of these new "friends" wouldn't last long, unless they were willing to feed her ego or go along with all her BS.

After our divorce, she cut most of them out, since almost all of them refused to take sides, or outright disliked her; women in particular told me she would go out of her way to make them feel bad if they were stay at home moms or didn't have white collar jobs.

One thing I noticed: BPDxw always NEEDED people.  she had no real hobbies or interests of her own.  And she was constantly sizing herself (or me, or us as a couple) to show how she was better than others. 

I attributed all this to her feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.  I've often made the analogy - and have seen others here use it - of a bottomless pit of need.  She needed attention, drama, and conflict, because it was all she knew how to use to fill the void.  She couldn't stand to be alone with her thoughts.