I have borderline personality disorder with a lot of commitment & abandonment issues. I’m in a relationship with a man I love but who has depression & all those years of negativity are really starting to drain me. I feel stuck. Recently I met a guy who’s adventurous & fun & passionate & says he loves me & wants to make me see the world & I don’t know if I like him or just the attention or the wild & free person he wants me to be. I feel lost & horrible for both of them. I don’t want to hurt them.

First, bpd is incredibly tough and you have my respect and support for working on it. I am not a mental health professional, and since you know your problem is partly informed by your bpd, you really should talk this out with a therapist or someone who’s helping you work with your bpd.

If you are feeling drained by your current relationship, that’s a problem. Have you talked to your partner about this? Have you worked with him on ways to shift some of the burden of negativity off of you? Is he working on his depression with a therapist, medication, or other things? If this is something you haven’t worked on addressing, definitely do that. If you have tried to alleviate this problem but still feel drained and dragged down, consider that maybe this relationship isn’t healthy for you.

This new person may be helping you realize that you’re not happy in your current relationship - that you want fun, and adventure, and positivity - and that’s actually pretty normal. But be careful of idealizing this new person. New people often seem more exciting and interesting than current partners just because of the novelty and the fact that you can’t take their affections for granted. Dating him will not solve all your problems - eventually you will settle into his habits too. It’s possible that he’s just generally a better person for you to date, but it’s also very possible that the real issue is the boredom and negativity in your current relationship.

Try taking this as a signal that you’re unhappy and need something to change. Maybe that change means working with your current partner to improve things. Maybe it means leaving him to try and find who you are without that relationship. Maybe it does mean dating this new guy. But be introspective and intentional when working out what you really need in this scenario vs. what you may be idealizing or projecting onto.

My romantic partner wants to have one or more qpps and im trying really hard to be ok with it. I have BPD and so i feel like them wanting this means that im not enough for them. Theyre really good about reassuring me this isnt the case, however the feelings refuse to go away no matter how hard i try. I want to make this work because i want them to be happy. Im just wondering maybe if you have any advice on how to keep the jealous feelings away.

The thing is, when it comes to jealous feelings, or any kind of feelings, you don’t “keep them away.” You can’t shove feelings away into a dark closet or stamp them down and ignore them. Feelings demand to be felt, and just fighting them rarely works. Don’t get down on yourself for ‘failing’ to eradicate feelings, because that’s not your fault.

The first thing I’d suggest is to talk to your romantic partner about what having queerplatonic partners means to them. In what way is it different than friendship? Why is this type of relationship threatening to you? You seem to have already done some powerful introspection work and identified that you feel like your partner wanting this means you’re not enough. Try and get more specific with that. Is this about intimacy? Sex? Quality time? Sharing specific interests and hobbies? Knowing where these feelings stem from helps you address them at the root.

Also, since you know you have a mental illness that makes this extra hard, if you’re not already, definitely work on this with a mental health professional. BPD can be really frustrating, but there are ways to manage and treat it. Here is my page on mental health care for poly folk.

Finally, you wrote that “I want to make this work because I want them to be happy.” Be careful with that. You are not obligated to put yourself in a painful situation for the sake of someone else. If you honestly try your best and you just are still feeling insecure and jealous in this relationship, it might be time to rethink the relationship. Don’t force yourself to ignore your own needs - maybe you just aren’t happy with a romantic partner who has qpps. That’s okay to know and own about yourself.

ive recently fallen for someone other than my partner, and everyone’s ok w it, that’s all cool. and my partner has fallen for them too, and we’re thinkin about a polyfi triad, maybe? its all really nice!! but i’m suddenly intensely jealous and it’s ass. i know it’s rooted in a combination of my bpd and history of abandonment, but i feel super, super hopeless. is jealousy something that can be overcome with effort? i love them both so much but i hate feeling like they’re going to leave me. like everything was fine until my partner fell for my ambigusweetie too, and then suddenly i can’t stop “knowing” that they’re plotting to leave me together. i’m severely paranoid+mentally ill, so even tho jealousy is something lots of ppl go through it’s particularly intense and since it’s not something that can be overcome Immediately, i just. feel super hopeless. i am actively talking to them both about it, bc nothing happens without communication.

First off, you deserve major kudos for recognizing that your perceived reality might be influenced by your illness. It can be really hard to validate your feelings without falling into the trap of thinking they represent reality, and it sounds like you’ve made serious strides in handling the paranoia and fear that your brain makes you deal with. You are working hard, you are tough, you are strong, and you should be very proud of yourself. 

My first piece of advice would be to communicate with your partners about this, but you’re already doing that! Ten thousand gold stars for you. Hopefully they can work with you to find things that reassure you of their commitment and affection for you. Try identifying specific things they can say and do that help you manage your painful thoughts. Mental illness are no joke, and they’re really tough, but you have two supporters at your back to help you fight.

I am not a mental health professional, but I can tell you that the paranoia and fear of abandonment that come with bpd can be treated with DBT and CBT. If you aren’t already, start seeing a therapist who specializes in helping people overcome jealousy, fear of abandonment, and other symptoms of bpd that you’re dealing with. If possible, find someone who works with the poly community.

Remind yourself that you are not psychic - whatever you think other people are thinking is just coming from inside of you, it’s not an objective observation. I do not have bpd, but I often deal with fear and anxiety about what I worry other people are thinking, and this self-exercise often helps me walk through it:

• Do I trust myself to enter into healthy relationships with trustworthy people?
• If I trust myself to identify trustworthy people, then doesn’t it follow that I would trust this person?
• If this person says they care about me, and I trust them, why not believe them?
  
• Is it more likely that this person is lying to my face and putting effort into pretending to care about me, or that they really do care about me?

Now I don’t think a thought exercise of four questions is going to cure a mental illness, but it’s something that helps me rebalance when I find myself spiraling into fear and paranoia about whether people close to me really care or are planning to abandon me. Good luck, great work - keep on keeping on. <3

I’m grey-ace and poly. my partner has bpd and is adverse to being open even though they pushed for us to be poly when I wasn’t ready. now I’m finally at a place where I can open my heart to others, but they are extremely jealous. what should I do?

There’s a lot going on here. If your partner pushed you to do something you weren’t ready for, that’s a red flag and something that needs to be addressed.

When a partner deals with borderline personality disorder, all the communication processes and healthy practices required for polyamory can be difficult, but are all the more necessary and rewarding. If they are seeing a therapist, I recommend you ask them to work on this in therapy, and even offer to attend a few sessions. Ask for some concrete things you can do (usually DBT techniques) to help them manage their jealousy and the fears that jealousy might stem from. Shit Borderlines Do has a great collection of resources on BPD, including a section on relationships.

If your partner’s jealousy can’t be handled in a healthy way such that you two can be polyamorous in a way that meets everyone’s emotional needs, your choice is to stay monogamous, or break up if being mono is a dealbreaker for either of you. Realizing that polyamory doesn’t work for you isn’t a failure, it doesn’t mean you were wrong - it’s totally okay to try things out, and it’s important to be honest with yourself about whether it’s working!