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I haven’t been single longer than a handful of months since I was eleven. What a statement, am I right?
Jokes aside, these relationships were often short-lived, volatile, and marked by a cycle of intense attachment and disillusionment.
It was after singlehandedly destroying one of the healthiest, most loving relationships I had ever experienced when I was 21 years old before asking myself, “Is it this hard for everyone else?”
I had so much unresolved trauma that I projected onto him. Setting expectations that were impossible to reach, and condemning him the moment he wasn’t perfect
That breakup, while well-deserved, radically shifted something in me. And I’m thankful it did. I might have never realized I needed that much help.
For the past five years, I made it my goal to foster healthier and safer relationships. Something had to change, and it had to start with me.
While I’m still early in my journey, I’ve built a strong support system that has helped me maintain a stable, loving relationship for over three years.
Whether it’s platonic, or romantic, I think finding a way to effectively and productively communicate your needs and boundaries is so important. And even more important to encourage the other person to maintain their own needs and boundaries — and that yours aren’t their responsibility.
If you feel stuck in a vicious cycle of reactive emotions in your relationships and want to try making steps in a different direction — stick around.
To keep it simple, there are 5 main actions I took to stabilize my relationships. I’m happy to share them with you, but, remember — there is no one-size-fits-all. Take what resonates, and leave what doesn’t.
- Relentlessly pursue treatment
- Understand your emotions, triggers, and symptoms
- Create argument boundaries and cool-down systems
- Take responsibility for your own emotions and reactions
- Nurture your own identity and individuality outside of the relationship
Now, easier said than done. But let’s talk further about how my partner and I made these steps to improve our relationship.
I pursued treatment relentlessly to find what worked for me
Hear me out. We both know that you already know this. You have probably heard it a thousand times as a disclaimer from any self-help article or video.
But having a diagnosis genuinely changed everything for me.
I’m painfully aware of how inaccessible treatment can be — especially in more rural areas and smaller towns. Where I live isn’t even necessarily a small town, and the treatment resources for me are extremely limited.
But there are things out there that have worked for people like us, or at the very least, a good majority of them. It’s just about figuring out what will work for you. But who even knows what that looks like in the beginning?
In my case, the first place I started was therapy.
It wasn’t easy, by any means. Especially as someone entering professional treatment with no clue of what good care looked like, or hell — where to even start.
Keep in mind I’m not a licensed medical professional, and you should take any advice I give with a grain of salt. Ultimately, go down the path that makes the most sense for your situation.
- Explore your options: See what’s available in your area. I went to Psychology Today to see what my options were. Whether they took my insurance or offered a sliding scale, specialized in areas I was struggling with the most, and their credential type so I knew if they could ultimately provide me with a diagnosis.
- Seek a diagnosis: This is the part that truly rocked my world. It gave the things I was experiencing a name. Mental health professionals stopped focusing on my depression and anxiety — and started looking at the bigger picture to mold their treatments around.
- Prepare to advocate for yourself: I was misdiagnosed plenty of times before I finally got someone to take a closer look at me. In fact, I was the one who brought up BPD to my psychiatrist before they finally sat down with the DSM and went, “Huh. Maybe you aren’t Bipolar.” Ask a lot of questions, do your research, and never continue seeing someone who tries to continuously push your boundaries or dismisses your concerns (especially if it’s medication!)
While a tremendous amount of the work I had to do to get where I am has been at home, I wouldn’t have found the tools/resources I specifically needed without the help of medical professionals.
I am making this the first tip because the rest can help with stabilizing your relationships, but ultimately, in the long run — treatment is what will prevent you from continuing to repeat cycles that are no longer serving you or the people in your life.
I made understanding my emotions, triggers, and symptoms a priority
Learning about myself was one of the biggest impacts on the way I navigated my future relationships, and how I communicated my needs / misplaced reactions.
I took notes, kept a journal, tried mood / habit tracking apps, watched self-help YouTube videos based on my specific struggles; all in an effort to educate myself on my symptoms and measure my recovery.
While I wouldn’t recommend getting as lost in the sauce as I did, since it absolutely nosedived me into burnout — it did genuinely help me.
For example, since my partner and I were both diagnosed with ADHD, I read the book “The ADHD Effect on Marriage” by Melissa Orlov. This book revolutionized our relationship.
Since my partner and I live together, we built up so much resentment over each others limitations — without realizing that’s all they were.
Limitations.
We suffer from a lot of shame since we have spent a long time measuring our success based on neurotypical standards.
The concepts in that book helped us have a lot more compassion for each other, and start working on productive ways to tackle the issues we were facing, specifically tailored to our separate struggles with ADHD.
It’s the same with everything I’ve read on BPD. It’s helped my partner manage my meltdowns easier — in moments where I’m far past self-soothing, and it’s helped me better understand when to step away.
A lot of my relationships and friendships could have been salvaged if I had a solid understanding of myself earlier in life.
It gave me the words I needed to be upfront about my struggles, and helped them understand how best to support me during those times.
I created a cool-down system and fought (mostly) fair
We developed a “Fight Fair Agreement,” if you will.
There were a few ground rules when it came to arguments, and of course — there were many. Here were our ground rules. Feel free to take what feels good here, and leave anything that doesn’t:
Fight Fair Agreement — Argument Absolute No’s:
- Yelling
- Name-calling
- Character attacks
- Going to bed angry
- “Cheap shots” (things you 100% know will hurt the other person)
- When a pause is called — respect it. Do not force the conversation.
The moment one of these ground rules were broken, a pause was initiated immediately. It wasn’t until three years into our relationship that we finally implemented a pause and cool-down system — without a doubt, it’s significantly improved the outcomes of these fights.
When a pause is called, we split to separate rooms to regulate.
Since I get very dysregulated, I require a structured cool down system so that when him and I return to each-other later to talk about what the argument was truly about, its a much kinder and loving conversation.
Everyone’s cool-down system, of course, will look different — but here’s the gist of mine:
- Retreat to cool-down space: I take the bedroom, and my partner usually takes the living room. This helps make sure we don’t keep “feeding the fire,” if that makes sense.
- Make my environment and body as comfortable as possible: For me, the room must be dark as possible. I lay down, go under a heavy blanket, and place a pillow over my head for pressure. Having some sort of comforting scent also helps too.
- Ride out my emotions, but don’t let them overcome me: Sitting with my all-consuming emotions is uncomfortable, but necessary. The first wave hits the hardest, but if I can ride it out — I can figure out its name. If I can’t ride it out, well, we have a back-up plan for that.
- Switch to self-regulation techniques if needed: These don’t come easy to me in the moment, so I usually frantically return to whatever self-care app I’m obsessed with that week. For instance, Finch specifically has a “First Aid Kit” with self-regulation techniques. Most mental health-related apps have those, and I personally find them very helpful.
- Vent and explore emotions: I journal. Yes, I know. Shocking. But it’s literally just one long string of consciousness into my notes app. When I return to these logs later, I end up feeling empathy for myself. Which is not an easy emotion for me to come by.
- Distract and move on: If I let myself, I will ruminate on a bad interaction all day. We don’t have time for that. We’re going to open TikTok and watch our silly little videos instead. Or pull up a funny show, play a video game, draw, write — whatever takes up enough brain power to keep us from drowning.
Of course the severity of the emotions change the approach, but it’s nice to have a system in place that I can reference when everything else feels out of my control.
It’s comforting for me to know that, ultimately, I’m the captain of this ship — and we’ll sail the direction I want to go.
I’ve got it down to a science. Now, usually 10–15 minutes alone by myself in a room to regulate is enough before I want to crawl back to my partner and go over what happened. With a lot of apologies on my end.
I’m gonna hold your hand while I say this: You are responsible for your own emotions and reactions.
When we come together later to discuss arguments, or break-downs in communication, we always try to provide space for both parties to explain their side of the story.
We often find that our perceptions of what happened during the argument are two completely different experiences sometimes.
The second discussion is usually the kindest, and most productive. I try to truly understand my partner’s feelings, and acknowledge where I went wrong.
We’ve created a safe space for each other where we can be vulnerable and take accountability without being shamed. Or admit that something we said was out of turn, not respectful, or not even necessarily true.
We try to explain the feelings behind the reaction, but we don’t let it be an excuse. Every argument and moment of tension that my partner and I have has just been a stepping stone to better interactions in the future.
The only reason this works is because I love him more than I love being right. And I know how my disorder can affect people, especially when I split.
When you put in the effort to realize where you were wrong, and take steps to change the way that you navigate your interpersonal relationships — it does wonders for both of you.
Vulnerability is uncomfortable, especially when real or perceived abandonment is on the line. But if you don’t trust your partner to treat you with kindness, and speak to you with love when things get hard — there’s a lot more going on than your symptoms.
I nurtured my own individuality and identity outside of our relationship
I have never had a stable sense of self, and that’s just another symptom of the whole shebang, baby. Every inch of me is just a little piece of someone else I’ve inherited along the way.
I have always been the person where my partner was my best, if not only, friend — by choice. I would spend every waking hour either with them or talking to them. A lot of my interests, dialect, and energy matched theirs to the point we were unidentifiable from one another.
All this to say — finding who I was outside of my relationship was important. Not only for his sanity, but for mine.
If you’re like me where your day begins as soon as you are able to be around / talk to your partner, or find yourself attaching to all of their hobbies and interests — then I’ve got some advice for you.
- I spent time alone: Why would I hang out alone when I could hang out with my favorite person in the world? Well, turns out it’s important to spend time alone, necessary, even. I started taking my mornings and some of my evenings to myself. I journal, meditate, enjoy the stillness of the living room in the quiet hours of the day. I’ve often avoided being alone, but it’s helped me reconnect with the person I was before this relationship. However vague of an idea that was.
- I maintained my friendships: I have a bad habit of making my partner the center of my universe, and silently (subconsciously) disappearing from everyone else’s lives. I’m trying to make an effort to keep in touch, to stay involved in my personal friendships. Hanging out with them on my own rather than every outing becoming an “us” thing.
- I set personal goals: A lot of my goals have always been centered around our little family — my partner and the dogs. Lately, I’ve been focusing on what’s best for me. I’ve set goals to improve my mental health, reconnect with my hobbies, and figure out what truly makes me feel fulfilled out of what’s good for both of us.
- I pursued my own personal interests and hobbies: At the start of relationships, I tend to inherit my partner’s interests. If they’re into Fortnite, I end up playing too, even though I don’t enjoy FPS games and prefer casual farming sims. Recently, I’ve been getting back into hobbies I enjoyed before — like writing and web design. Oh, and of course, playing every farming sim I can find.
Working on trying to develop these parts of myself has been important for our relationship — because my day no longer depends on how he’s doing or what he feels like doing outside of us.
It’s unfair to the other person if you make them your entire world; especially if you unknowingly put the responsibility for your well-being onto them.
I stabilized my relationships by my willingness to manage my symptoms, even if I wasn’t always perfect
At the end of the day, that’s what has kept my relationships stable.
I was tired of the endless turmoil that came with unstable relationships, and hated that I lost so many people I cared about from realizing any of this sooner.
I won’t lie to you. None of this is easy, nor is it immediate. It’s taken me so long to get to where I am now, and even then I’m not perfect. We still have bad days, or hell, bad months. But I have never had a relationship that was so filled with love, understanding, and patience.
Once I found the words to explain my situation, and the systems to manage with the help of my partner and friends — it changed everything. It humanized me in my own eyes, as well as other people’s.
I already said it earlier, but I’ll say it again because it’s really important that you hear me when I say this. It is an unrealistic expectation that you are going to manage your symptoms perfectly.
Give yourself grace. Keep yourself in check. And keep going. Be the safe space you wish others would be for you, and they will follow.
You, and everyone else who loves you, will thank you for it.
