When You're in Love With Your Favorite Person

“Favorite person,” or “FP” is a term used commonly in the borderline community. Borderline personality disorder community, that is. A lot of people have a favorite person, someone they share their life with, trust more than others. But for borderlines, it’s often a whole different matter. Some would look at you and say you’re obsessed with this person. For some, it’s a friend, a professional or a colleague. But for people like me, it was the person I love.

Below is an example of what it can be like to be in love with your favorite person.

Being in a relationship with your favorite person is a beautiful curse. You love so much more than the average person, meaning it’s hard to even look at anyone else and find them attractive. You love your person with all your heart and would do absolutely anything to see them happy. If they’re happy, you are happy. You want to be with them all the time, be near them, talk to them. Their life almost becomes yours too. You adapt to their personality and start appearing with their mannerisms.

Firstly, bringing up the fact that you have an illness like BPD is a massive challenge. Your mind fills up with fears as if each fear was a cup of water about to drown your brain. You think of the stigma, the things people say about the illness. “People with BPD are ‘manipulative’ or ‘crazy.’” You question if they will leave after reading about their “crazy” partner.

The darker side of it is something others would call silly.

An ignored message, a slight change in voice tone, a blunt reply, all things that could have valid reasoning. One simple action that sends us spiraling. We start to panic. “Do they hate me?” “Have I done something wrong?” “Are they angry?” A billion negative thoughts and questions flood in, creating anger and sadness. Dwelling over that simple action until we cry and self-destruct. Our way of fixing it seems to be by causing an argument, wanting to stop talking to our FP completely or doing something drastic to get their attention back. There’s no sign of them messaging us, so we sit frantically checking if they are active, checking every minute because this person is our life. No one else matters.

After an hour of crying and wondering if they’re going to leave, we get our reply, “Sorry, my phone died.”

Now we feel incredibly ridiculous. We’ve been having a breakdown, getting angry and taking it out on ourselves for nothing. All because our brains are overthinking. It’s fine now, they came back, we are smiling again, life is amazing, love has been restored.

When the person on the other end of this is your boyfriend/girlfriend, it’s hard for them too. They have to deal with your reaction and bear the guilt of an action that is seemingly harmless. It can cause them to worry about how their actions will affect you as if you’re a piece of thin glass that will shatter if touched by anything.

Loving is hard. Having these irrational thoughts and reacting to them like we often do is exhausting. We seem so “crazy” because of it, but we aren’t. We are normal people, with brains wired to think a little differently, most likely caused by trauma.

We are trying too. Please be patient with us.