I Hate You--Don't Leave Me - Jerold J. Kreisman [41]
As a result of these and other societal forces, deep and lasting friendships, love affairs, and marriages have become increasingly difficult to achieve and maintain. Sixty percent of marriages for couples between the ages of twenty and twenty-five end in divorce; the number is 50 percent for those over twenty-five.8 Even back in 1982, Lasch noted that “as social life becomes more and more warlike and barbaric, personal relations, which ostensibly provide relief from those conditions, take on the character of combat.”9
Ironically, borderlines may be well suited for this kind of combat. The narcissistic man’s need to dominate and be idolized fits well with the borderline woman’s ambivalent need to be controlled and punished. Borderline women, as we saw with Lisa at the start of this chapter, often marry at a young age to escape the chaos of family life. They cling to dominating husbands with whom they recreate the miasma of home life. Both may enter a kind of “Slap! . . . Thanks, I needed that!” sadomasochistic dyad. Less typical, but still common, is a reversal of these roles, with a borderline male linked with a narcissistic female partner.
Masochism is a prominent characteristic of borderline relationships. Dependency coupled with pain elicits the familiar refrain “Love hurts.” As a child, the borderline experiences pain and confusion in trying to establish a maturing relationship with his mother or primary caregiver. Later in life, other partners—spouse, friends, teacher, employer, minister, doctor—renew this early confusion. Criticism or abuse particularly reinforces the borderline’s self-image of worthlessness. Lisa’s later relationships with her husband and supervisors, for example, recapitulated the profound feelings of worthlessness that were ingrained by her father’s constant criticisms.
Sometimes the borderline’s masochistic suffering transforms into sadism. For example, Ann would sometimes encourage her husband Larry to drink, knowing about his drinking problem. Then she would instigate a fight, fully aware of Larry’s violent propensities when drunk. Following a beating, Ann would wear her bruises like battle ribbons, reminding Larry of his violence, and insisting they go out in public, where Ann would explain away her marks as “accidents,” such as “running into doors.” After each episode, Larry would feel profoundly regretful and humiliated, while Ann would present herself as a long-suffering martyr. In this way Ann used her beatings to exact punishment from Larry. The identification of the real victim in this relationship becomes increasingly vague.
Even when a relationship is apparently ruptured, the borderline comes crawling back for more punishment, feeling he deserves the denigration. The punishment is comfortably familiar, easier to cope with than the frightening prospect of solitude or a different partner.
A typical scenario for modern social relationships is the “overlapping lover” pattern, commonly called “shingling”—establishing a new romance before severing a current one. The borderline exemplifies this constant need for partnership: As the borderline climbs the jungle gym of relationships, he cannot let go of the lower bar until he has firmly grasped the higher one. Typically, the borderline will not leave his current, abusive spouse until a new “white knight” is at least visible on the horizon.
Periods of relaxed social-sexual mores and less structured romantic relationships (such as in the late 1960s and 1970s) are more difficult for borderlines to handle; increased freedom and lack of structure paradoxically imprison the borderline, who is severely handicapped in devising his own individual system of values. Conversely,