I Hate You--Don't Leave Me - Jerold J. Kreisman [20]
The borderline’s endless quest is to find a perfect caregiver who will be all-giving and omnipresent. The search often leads to partners with complementary pathology: both lack insight into their mutual destructiveness. For example, Michelle desperately craves protection and comfort from a man. Mark displays bravura self-assurance; even though the self-assurance covers his deep insecurity, it fits the bill for Michelle. Just as Michelle needs Mark to be her protective white knight, so Mark needs Michelle to remain helpless and dependent on his beneficence. After a while, both fail to live up to their assigned stereotypes. Mark cannot bear the narcissistic wounds of challenge or failure and begins to cover his frustrations with alcohol and by physically abusing Michelle. Michelle bristles under his controlling yoke, yet becomes frightened when she sees his weaknesses. The dissatisfactions lead to more provocation and more conflict.
Afflicted with self-loathing, the borderline distrusts others’ expressions of caring. Like Groucho Marx, he would never belong to a club that would have him as a member. Sam, for example, was a twenty-one-year-old college student whose chief complaint in therapy was “I need a date.” An attractive man with serious interpersonal problems, Sam characteristically approached women he deemed inaccessible. However, whenever his overtures were accepted, he immediately devalued the woman as no longer desirable.
All of these characteristics make it difficult for borderlines to achieve real intimacy. As Carrie relates, “A few men have wanted to marry me, but I have a big problem with getting close or being touched. I can’t tolerate it.” The borderline cannot seem to gain enough independence to be dependent in healthy, rather than desperate, ways. True sharing is sacrificed to a demanding dependency and a desperate need to join with another person in order to complete one’s own identity, as kind of Siamese twins of the soul. “You complete me,” the famous line from the film Jerry Maguire, turns into an elusive goal that is always just out of reach.
Who Am I?
Criterion 3. Marked and persistent identity disturbance manifested by an unstable self-image or sense of self.
Borderlines lack a constant, core sense of identity, just as they lack a constant, core conceptualization of others. The borderline does not accept her own intelligence, attractiveness, or sensitivity as constant traits, but rather as comparative qualities to be continually re-earned and judged against others’. The borderline may view herself as intelligent, for example, based solely on the results of a just-administered IQ test. Later that day when she makes a “dumb mistake” she will revert to seeing herself as “stupid.” The borderline considers herself attractive until she spies a woman whom she feels is prettier, then she feels ugly. Surely, the borderline envies the self-acceptance of Popeye—“I yam what I yam.” As in her close relationships, the borderline becomes mired in a kind of amnesia—about herself. The past becomes obfuscated; she is much like the demanding boss who continually asks herself and others, “Yeah, so? What have you done for me lately?”
For the borderline, identity is graded on a curve. Who she is (and what she does) today determines her worth, with little regard to what has come before. The borderline allows herself no laurels on which to rest. Like Sisyphus, she is doomed to roll the boulder repeatedly up the hill, needing to prove herself over and over again. Self-esteem is only attained through impressing others, so pleasing others becomes critical to loving herself.
In his book Marilyn, Norman Mailer describes how Marilyn Monroe’s search for identity became Marilyn’s driving force, absorbing all aspects of her life:
What an obsession is identity! We