Imagine you're telling your partner about a frustrating phone call you had with your mom, and they jokingly remark "Well, we all know how much you love being right."
You know they're teasing, but you feel yourself starting to get angry. In fact, without meaning to, you’re now thinking of the last time your partner made an off-color comment. And the time before that. Before you know it, you’ve written them off as insensitive and uncaring. Despite starting the evening looking forward to hanging out together, you’re now questioning whether you even want to be with this person.
Yes, your partner's comment was insensitive, and it's certainly reasonable to feel hurt. At the same time, in the heat of the moment, that single interaction has overshadowed all the positive experiences you've shared and the qualities you usually appreciate about your partner.
All-or-Nothing Thinking in Relationships
For people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), experiences like this are really common. In fact, alternating between idealizing and devaluing others is one of the diagnostic criteria for this condition. When things are going smoothly, a partner, friend, or family member might seem like the most loving, supportive person in the world. However, that same person may suddenly seem selfish or untrustworthy after a disappointing interaction.
This pattern is sometimes called splitting, a form of black-and-white thinking in which people have difficulty holding positive and negative qualities in mind at the same time. Rather than recognizing that someone can be a caring partner who occasionally says something insensitive, the negative experience overshadows everything else.
These sudden shifts in how we perceive the people closest to us can be disorienting, making it difficult to maintain stable, lasting relationships. Indeed, negative perceptions of others, however temporary, can lead to behaviors that cause lasting consequences. For example, if you're convinced your partner doesn't care about you, you might lash out, accuse them of being selfish, or threaten to end the relationship. Alternatively, you might withdraw, stop responding to messages, or push them away before they have the chance to reject you.
Finding the Gray in Your Relationships
In BPD Compass, an evidence-based treatment for BPD, there are two strategies that are particularly relevant for combatting the difficulties all-or-nothing thinking can cause.
The first is the Relationship Compass, a tool for deciding your goals for a given relationship. The Relationship Compass replaces the cardinal directions (North, South, East, and West) with relationship objectives: I Need something, I want to Set a limit; I Want to get closer; I’m considering Ending a relationship.
The Relationship Compass helps you identify what you ultimately want from a relationship before you're in the middle of an upsetting interaction. That way, when your emotions threaten to take the wheel, you’ll have already planned behaviors that align with your compass.
Another important strategy from BPD Compass is the Dimensions of Trust exercise. Here, you’re asked to consider the various ways you can trust the specific people in your life. The dimensions on which other people are rated (0% to 100%) include the degree to which someone is on-time, emotionally supportive, does what they say they’re going to do, keeps your confidences, is trusted to watch your kids, etc.
Not only do you get to see that most people fall somewhere between 0% and 100% on any given dimension, but you also begin to recognize that someone can be highly trustworthy in some areas and less so in others. The next time you're tempted to write someone off as completely untrustworthy, you can revisit these ratings to remind yourself of the bigger picture and decide how to respond based on their actual strengths and limitations.
Together, these strategies create some distance between how we feel about someone in a particular moment and how we choose to respond. We can acknowledge that someone has hurt us without losing sight of everything else we know about them or the relationship.
Seeing the Whole Person
No matter how solid a relationship may be, there will be times when you hurt each other‘s feelings. It is important to recognize those shortcomings without allowing them to erase everything else we know about that person.
For people with BPD, this can take practice. Over time, you can get better at seeing your relationships in shades of gray; in other words, it is possible to see both the positive and negative qualities of someone at the same time. As you strengthen this ability, you’ll also get better at choosing reactions that align with what you ultimately want, rather than how you feel in a particular moment.
Want to build healthier, more stable relationships? The BPD Compass Companion Course teaches practical, evidence-based skills for managing intense emotions and navigating relationship difficulties.
