How Does Borderline Personality Disorder Affect Romantic Relationships?

This video answers the question: Does borderline personality disorder affect romantic relationships? Borderline personality disorder is a cluster B personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This is the dramatic, emotional, and erratic cluster. We see that for borderline personality disorder there are nine symptom criteria and only five need to be met for a diagnosis of the disorder. The nine symptom criteria are frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, unstable or intense relationships, identity disturbance, impulsivity, suicidal behavior, affective instability, chronic feelings of emptiness, inappropriate or intense anger, and paranoid ideation. We can see even if just five of these symptoms are met, this could interfere with a number of different types of relationships including romantic relationships. Interestingly, there haven't been many number of studies specifically on how borderline personality disorder is related to romantic relationships. One of the challenges here is that only about 20-30% of individuals with borderline personality disorder are dating, married, or cohabiting. Additionally, conducting research on couples is more difficult than conducting research on individuals.