And so she has what we call rejection sensitivity. She anticipates rejection, very sensitive to it.

And she has no effortless control. She can’t tell herself, this is the way I feel, this is what I want to do right now, but I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it because it’s going to have horrible outcomes for me, for others. I’m going to damage, I’m going to hurt, I’m going to have a bad impact on my future, on my love life, on my relationship, on people I love. She doesn’t have this.

She has what we call effortful control, effortful control, control that requires effort. And it usually fails.

And so when you’re like that, it’s normal to envy other people. And the classic borderline is very envious, exactly like the narcissist. She’s envious of other people’s talents, their positions, their happiness, and the capacity for deep relationships, object relationships. She wants what they have, she wants to be loved, she wants to be held, she wants to be accepted, but she knows she can’t, she’s envious. And this chronic envy makes it very difficult for her to function and gives her another motivation, another reason to push away people.

By comparison, the covert borderline is also unable to genuinely participate in group activities, but not because he’s envious, but because of, as I mentioned, his lack of empathy and his grandiosity and so on. So the covert borderline’s problem with interactions with other people, interpersonal relationships, any group activities, such as business, corporate settings, and so on. It’s the same like the narcissist, same reason.

And so consequently, the covert borderline is passive aggressive, sullen, surly, self-denying, and his behaviors involve cunning and very often premeditated malevolence.

While the classic borderline has a lack of regard for other people’s boundaries, she disregards other people’s time, limitations, obligations, resources, and she does this by being very clinging, very demanding. Now, she wants everything now, no delayed gratification, and she wants it in full. It’s not good enough to give her, let’s say, 90% of what she wants. It has to be 110. And this is of course disrespecting people, people’s boundaries and so on.

Now, all this gives you the picture that the borderline is highly unpredictable and she is, she’s capricious, she is totally, she, from the outside, she looks like a train car out of, you know, the slope. And she is unpredictable, and her behavior is explosive, and she’s impulsive, and she’s reckless.

And if you look at the covert borderline from the outside, it looks the same, but it’s totally different. What the covert borderline does, he is also unpredictable and explosive, but he does it in order to bully, in order to control. It’s what we call intermittent reinforcement. Hot and cold, approach avoidant, love you, hate you, gonna abuse you, and torment you, and taunt you, and torture you, going to then hold you, and hug you, and soothe you, and solve your wounds, and heal you. Intermittent reinforcement, you don’t know what to expect.

And the bully becomes the sole source of solace and consolation, so you become highly dependent. And this is what we call trauma bonding.

And the covert borderline has scorn for others, but he’s hiding this scorn behind a mask of pseudo humility, false modesty, false humility. He pretends to be humble, but he’s not. And many of his behaviors are attention seeking behaviors. He is a bit of a histrionic. Yes, even the men, they seek attention, but they don’t seek attention like the narcissist.

The narcissist seeks attention by displaying either his body or his mind.

Cerebral displays intellect, fireworks, pyrotechnics of the intellect.

The somatic shows his muscles, his tattoos.

The covert borderline is histrionic and is attention seeking, but not the same way. He seeks attention by displaying his vulnerabilities and his neediness. He kind of, for example, he can seduce a woman by showing her how much he needs her, how much of a child is, and how much she can be his mother, how much she is the, she is the only source of support, love, acceptance, how much, how much she means to him, how much she comes him down and rejuvenates him and provokes his creativity and so on.

So this is the type of attention he’s seeking, but he’s reckless. Make no mistake about it. Exactly like the classic borderline is reckless, but opposed to the classic borderline whose recklessness is intended to self-trash, the borderline’s recklessness is intended mostly to damage herself, to punish herself, to destroy herself, to defeat herself. The covert borderline’s recklessness is aimed at hurting others, at affecting others.

So if a borderline woman would sleep with a stranger, she would do this to self-trash, to harm herself, to damage herself, to punish herself, and she would never tell her husband.

But if a covert borderline woman would sleep with a stranger, she would make sure her husband finds out so that his property, which is she, she is his property, yes, so that he realizes how much his property is devalued by a stranger. It’s like she, by sleeping with a stranger, she has devalued her husband’s property. She punished him this way.

So this is the difference between covert borderline and classic borderline. The covert borderline is sadistic, punitive, it’s goal-oriented, and even when the covert borderline triangulates, he or she, they do it because they have a goal.

They want to achieve something, I don’t know, they want money. They ask for money, they didn’t get money, they’re going to triangulate. They ask for time, and the husband or the wife are busy, they’re going to triangulate, they’re going to punish, and it’s sadistic, I’m going to hurt you.

The classic borderline also triangulates, but she triangulates because she wants to revive the bond, she wants to feel again accepted, wanted, desired. By her primary partner, the triangulation partner is irrelevant. She would discard him in a heartbeat if the primary partner shows renewed interest, tries to reclaim her.

And so there are different, same behavior, totally different reason, and in this sense, the classic borderline is also a people pleaser, but a very limited set of people, mostly the intimate partner.

And so both types, the classic and the covert approach and avoid, they have what Freud called approach avoidance repetition compulsion. They constantly repeat the same cycle of approaching and avoiding, approaching, it’s very confusing, very disorienting, and it creates an unbelievable mess in the intimate partner’s mind.

And so the borderline knows this, and so she says, I’m approaching, I’m avoiding, I’m approaching, I’m avoiding, who can tolerate this? No one can take this for long, he’s going to abandon me, he’s going to leave me, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it, I must approach and avoid, it’s who I am, I can’t change who I am, my identity, my essence, my quiddity, so I know he’s going to abandon me, I know he’s going to reject me, let me do it first.

And so her own approach avoidance leads her to preemptive abandonment, leads her to abandon the relationship, to break up before it’s done to her.

And it’s easy for her to do because she has no object constancy. She has what we call object inconstancy, object impermanence, she out of sight, out of mind. The minute she broke up with a partner, she may feel guilty, she may feel ashamed, but she will not, the partner doesn’t exist anymore. If he’s not in her life physically, he is not in her mind in any way, shape or form. Perhaps as a transient memory, and even that passes very briefly.

So it’s very easy for her because no one is real, exactly like the narcissist, the borderline interacts with a snapshot. So a snapshot of the person, a representation of the person in her mind, an avatar. So no one is real. So when she’s away, she forgets about her partner. And this is why borderline, people with borderline personality disorder are at much higher risk of cheating.

By the way, there are no statistics. No one knows if they cheat more or not, or less or whatever.

But everyone agrees, they are at a much higher risk of cheating.

And the main reason is not because they’re impulsive, and not because of abandonment, anxiety, the main reason is object inconstancy.

If a borderline wife travels away to a conference, her husband ceases to exist, had never existed, is gone, erased, expunged from her mind, from her memory, from her emotions, and from her cognitions. She’s single. Again, she’s alone, she’s free. Until she returns home, and then he re-emerges, he’s resurrected. You know, it’s like a religious ceremony, ritual. He’s resurrected, he’s revived in her mind. On, off. Yes object, no object.

And this, of course, gives rise to a lot of drama. And classic borderlines use drama, they’re drama queens, when they use drama to manipulate and so on.

But it’s important to understand that the drama, which is very useful and an essential tool in the arsenal of borderlines, they use drama to obtain outcomes in reality, favorable outcomes, they believe.

But it’s important to understand that it’s easy for them to be dramatic because of the aforementioned issues.

Object inconstancy, when you don’t really get attached to anyone, when you don’t really bond with anyone, when you have highly dysfunctional attachment styles, avoidant, other, it’s much easier for you to create drama, for example, by triangulating, or by cheating, or by doing things with other people which constitute betrayal.

So the drama is an integral part of the fact that the borderline, classic borderline, is not entirely there.

Now the covert borderline also has object inconstancy. But his object inconstancy is very similar to the narcissist. He idealizes, he devalues, then he discards, and then he reverts or replaces, reverts to the original body or replaces.

So the cycle of the covert borderline resembles the narcissist and the cycle of the classic borderline resembles a hurricane. No rhyme or reason, no goal or direction, nothing, incomprehensible.

How about functioning in society?

The classic borderline has, as Kernberg was the first to describe, a hole, a void. It’s a human being superimposed on a black hole. There’s nagging emptiness, void, and aimlessness. And this creates a lot of social anxiety, shallow commitment to anything and everything, including vocational commitment, profession, direction of life, family, relationships. Everything is fleeting. Everything is passing. Everything is ephemeral. Everything is here today, there tomorrow. Everything is aimless. And everything, of course, is meaningless as we started the conversation.

This creates a lot of social anxiety, as you cannot function in society if you do not adhere to some tenets and principles which imply the existence of some meaning.

Society, the collectives within which we operate, institutions, they all are based on assumptions, implicit or explicit, that they embody reify meaning and generate meaning. In the absence of meaning, you can’t function socially. Your attitudes are militant and charlatan-like.

And the classic borderline knows this, so she’s very socially anxious.

Compared to that, the covert borderline is socially charming and charismatic and actually consistently engages in hard work. And he’s doing this work to seek admiration. So it’s pseudo sublimation, what we call it. It’s channeling his impulses and needs and urges towards socially acceptable goals. But to seek admiration, not like the narcissist.

The narcissist is indiscriminate. The narcissist is attention promiscuous. First come, first serve. Anyone can give the narcissist attention and it’s good. And the narcissist seeks as much attention as he can from as many people as he can.

The covert borderline seeks admiration and attention from his love interests or from people who are meaningful to his ability to regulate his emotions and his internal grandiose space.

Again, his grandiosity is tied intimately to emotions. So he would, for example, be grandiose in his love life. He would seek perfect love, perfect intimacy, amazing intimacy, unprecedented. The first in history, he would write sonnets like Shakespeare. And this is his grandiose. So he would seek admiration and so on, but from his love interest, facilitators towards the goal of perfect love. Or he would act within this space while the narcissist has no boundaries and regulated space, he is all over the place. Narcissist is indiscriminate.

And that’s one myth propagated online by self-styled experts and so on, that the narcissist is discriminant. For example, he has a preferred type of spouse or preferred type of intimate partner. That’s wrong. It’s not true.

Now the covert borderline has intense ambition and he’s often successful. He’s preoccupied with appearances. And these he shares with a classic narcissist, but again, the goal, the direction, the aim is emotional regulation, being more successful at emotional regulation via the agency of another party.

The classical borderline by comparison is nothing of the sort. He has multiple but superficial interests. He’s chronically bored, as we mentioned. His aesthetic taste is imitative. It’s an exact rendition of the covert borderline.

What about ethics, standards, ideals? We mentioned at the beginning the identity diffusion or identity disturbance. If you don’t have identity, you don’t have values. And indeed, the classic borderline is ready to shift values to gain favor. He changes values. He reflects and mirrors others. And in this sense, he’s very much like a psychopath. The classic borderline grooms people.

The difference between psychopath and classic borderline is that the classic borderline does it intuitively, reflexively, instinctively and unconsciously most of the time.

The psychopath does it knowingly, manipulatively as a strategy. But both of them groom and they groom by mirroring, but becoming the other person.

So it’s very easy for the borderline because there’s nobody there. Exactly like the narcissist, there’s nobody there. There’s no identity. There’s no core.

So she changes and shifts values. She lies. She’s a pathological liar. Classic borderline are pathological liars. They tell you, good morning, look out the window, call the meteorological service and buy a newspaper just to be sure that it is morning. So they are pathological liars.

Many of them are addicted to materialistic lifestyle. They externalize cathexis. They cathect, they invest emotionally in objects because they can control them. They will never be abandoned or rejected or humiliated by objects. Although this is also possible with classic borderline.

And some of them have delinquent tendencies. They’re antisocial a bit.

That’s where the secondary psychopath comes into the play.