I see a lot of people misunderstanding what this term means to them, and therefore find it perpetuates a cycle of repeated failures when it comes to trying to create stable, lasting relationships so I thought I'd share my insight to this through my own personal experience.

BPD is created from a ruptured attachment style which hasn't been resolved since the point it happened. Hence why on an emotional level, your emotions have not progressed from the point of childhood despite your physical orientation in reality changing. It's almost as though you were frozen at that point xyz happened, and therefore your approach to problem solving is that of a child still. A child will focus on short term relief to make them feel better over an adults strategy to overcome long term problems. As a child, you are also dependent on others to provide you with that emotional support and reinforcement too instead of being capable of managing it themselves.

Now, this creates an inherent need to recreate this attachment style because the original one hasn't been resolved and continues to hurt us emotionally. The childlike approach to solving this issue is to look for others to save us from it but because of the negative nature with ourselves and the original FP, the relationships we enter fail as a result because we replicate this with them. We mirror with another person the relationship we have with ourselves, and at the core it's because of that relationship with the original FP. We continually try and do the same things hoping for a different outcome because are stuck in that mindset - of a child not being able to comprehend the adult world so there is a disconnect between both emotions and intellect whereby they don't communicate with one another.

Once you understand who your original FP is and tackle that trauma head on, it creates a distance between you and a romantic partner. You do not become reliant on them to resolve a problem only you can fix, and you see yourself side by side with them instead of being dependent on them for emotional support. This is a completely healthily and natural position to be in and it makes everything easier to manage. There are a lot of similarities with grief and BPD in terms of the emotional cycles we suffer with, because our issues our unresolved and therefore we are almost grieving for that child self we feel we have lost. However, because we are no longer children we don't know how to heal that pain so it's a catch 22 until you realize where the problem comes from in the first place. You need to heal from the inside out - you feel empty because that trauma is unresolved.

I hope this helps.