To finish the lyrcis of this Allison Krauss song…I build my world around you, I need you so, baby even though, you don’t need me, you don’t need me, no, no….
While I’ve always liked this song, I tend to listen more carefully to the lyrics these days. If you’re in a regular relationship, these lyrics don’t seem that alarming. But if you’re in a relationship with a BPD, the alarm bells are going off like crazy right now.
For most of us, we enjoy being around the people we love but we enjoy our alone time as well or enjoy being around other people. Clinginess is not a virtue. Quite frankly, it’s just the opposite. It’s a yucky trait that drives us insane. Will you please jsut leave me along and give me a little space? But for the BPD, enmeshment is an important part of the relationship. It signifies attachment on the deepest of levels. More than attachment, it involves intertwining one life with another such that undoing the relationship would be virtually impossible. Because of the fear of abandonment, intertwining the relationship reduces this fear. Going to it’s extreme, emeshment is the strongest form of dependence one could have. And as Scott Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, “Dependence upon another is not love. To be dependent upon another being is to be a parasite on that being.” And that’s why it feels so icky and unattractive to us. But the BPD couldn’t care less. Because it’s not about your feelings, it’s about theirs. And their fears out trump your needs every single time.
Are you involved in a relationship that can be described as enmeshment? If so, good luck because untangling this mess is going to be worse than untangling the Christmas lights that were put away last year.