Opposites attract usually when there are personality disorders involved.  Why is this?  Because the disorders complement each other in an intricate dance.  Each individual has a broken sense of self that complements the other in ways that healthy selves cannot fulfill.  The unmet needs of one individual, fit perfectly with the unmet needs of the other.  Each envies the part of the other that he or she does not understand or has disowned about self.  

For the purpose of this article, I will use the term “personality disorders” to describe the conditions I discuss.  However, I want to point out that most personality disorders stem from early childhood attachment trauma, and complex trauma. I do not like to label my patients with these terms, nor do I think there is a benefit in calling someone “a Borderline” or “a Narcissist.” For the purpose of describing the relational pattern I wish to discuss in this article, however, I have chosen to use these terms.  

Individuals with personality disorders will seek to compensate his or her own deficiencies by another’s characteristics.  Each partner sees the other person as “their other half.”  However, that half is one they have cut or split in themselves, so they’re essentially attracted to the thing they’ve rejected, or have a negative attitude toward.  This happens in healthy relationships too, but is much more common in those struggling with personality disorders.  What exacerbates the situation, is that each partner stirs up an unconscious, unresolved part of the other.  Usually both partners are developmentally arrested.  

As I have stated, for the purpose of this article, I will use the term “Borderline” and the term “Narcissist” to characterize individuals suffering from both Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. The pairing I would like to discuss is that of the Narcissistic/Borderline Personality couple.  The Narcissist and Borderline are both fundamentally missing a core sense of self.  Underlying their relational pattern and dynamic is both of their early attachment wounds.  The Narcissist’s need for withdrawal and the Borderline’s emotional reactivity and fear of abandonment, intensifies as each worsens.  Let’s take a moment to define each personality disorder. I would like to do so using a Psychodynamic lens.   

According to the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM), Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder tend to see their own unacceptable feelings or impulses in other people instead of him or herself.  The individual will tend to express contradictory feelings or beliefs without being disturbed by the inconsistency, and will tend to idealize others in unrealistic ways, and then devalue them shortly thereafter.  Often, conflict or animosity is stirred up by the Borderline between other people, and he/she manages to elicit in others, feelings similar to those he/she is experiencing (e.g. when angry, acts in ways to provoke anger in others).  The Borderline has an internal sense of instability, and emotional lability, and has difficulty with affect and emotion regulation.  

Underneath, he or she lacks a stable sense of self, and feelings about self, seem unstable and ever-changing.  The individual is also prone to feelings of profound emptiness, and is often unable to settle into life roles (e.g. career, occupation, lifestyle, etc.).  Someone with Borderline Personality ultimately has a grave fear of abandonment, and his or her emotions will change rapidly and unpredictably.  His or her relationships tend to be unstable and chaotic.  The Borderline personality often has marked periods of anxiety or depression, and has vulnerability to substance abuse and other addictive behaviors.  Those with Borderline Personality often experience projective identification, whereby he or she fails to recognize troubling aspects of one’s own personality, but feels absolutely certain that another person has those undesirable qualities and treats that person accordingly.  

The Narcissistic Personality disordered individual on the other hand, also has an unstable sense of self, but overcompensates with a lack of empathy, self-aggrandizement, a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others.  Narcissism refers to the fact that these individuals live their lives organized around maintaining their self-esteem by getting affirmation from external sources outside themselves.   Narcissism can be normal, and all of us are narcissistically wounded in some way.  However, it is when an individual becomes so obsessed with gaining approval, and has such extreme sensitivity to criticism, that it tends to be more pathological. Preoccupied with how they appear to others, “narcissistically organized people may privately feel fraudulent and loveless” (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, p. 177).  Narcissists, like Borderlines, tend to both idealize and then devalue others.  “Despite the importance of other people to the equilibrium of the Narcissistic person, his or her consuming need for reassurance about self-worth leaves no energy for others except in their function as self-objects and narcissistic extensions” (p. 183).

So, what exactly happens in the dance between the Narcissist and the Borderline?  

The Borderline views romantic attraction as reflecting an absolute view of the other as all good when conscious needs are being met, and all bad when they are not. Naturally, no partner can sustain this idealization. Furthermore, the Borderline individual’s tendency to project unacceptable aspects of their own character onto those around them will eventually shatter the perfect image they have of the Narcissistic partner, whom they then devalue and attack. If their partner has a Narcissistic personality structure, this devaluation is as traumatic as the self-object failures of childhood, and causes intense pain. The Narcissistic individual may react with rage or withdrawal, which then triggers the Borderline partner’s abandonment fears.  The Borderline feels abandoned, anxious, and emotionally deregulated, and the pattern begins all over again, as the Borderline’s anxiety triggers the Narcissists wounds and desire to withdraw.  Both individuals unconsciously and consciously use manipulation and control of others to meet their own emotional needs.

Whole object relations mean an individual is able to see someone as not simply all good or all bad.  Both Narcissists and those with Borderline Personality disorder struggle with this. Each have an equally hard time holding the capacity to simultaneously see both the good and bad qualities of a person, and accept that both exist.  They also struggle with “object constancy” whereby they are still able to see an individual in a positive light when hurt by the individual.   Someone who has solid object constancy, is able to maintain one’s positive feelings for someone while one is feeling hurt, disappointed, frustrated, or angry with the person.

According to Elinor Greenberg, PhD, “Borderline and Narcissistic individuals often fall in love because they are at approximately the same level with regard to their “Intimacy Skills.” They both are likely to be in the early stages of learning how to successfully maintain intimate relationships. In the beginning, everything may seem blissful because they both share the capacity for making fast, intense romantic attachments without looking very closely at the other person’s real personality. They are both likely to believe that they will get exactly what they have been longing for from their new romantic partner. Each sees the other as a dream come true.”  

Unfortunately, as the relationship progresses, each individual lack of “whole object relations” and “object constancy” make their relationship emotionally volatile and extremely unstable.