One of my most annoying BPD symptoms is my inability to hold onto emotions or the fact that someone in my life will come back to me after they physically leave. I could never explain this as well as psychologists can so Im going to post some excepts from a good article I found:
Lack of object constancy in BPD is a direct result of the core wound of abandonment.
In terms of the answer to the question “what is object constancy as it relates to BPD?” Borderlines do not have object constancy. They lack object constancy. They do not relate in any consistent way. That’s why you see the swing between all-good to all-bad, then back to all-good until they shift back to all-bad etc. Borderlines do not have the inter-personal skills to relate to “self” or “other” in any consistent or lasting way.
Lack of object constancy isn’t so much about emotional amnesia or a forgetting as it is about dissociation and splitting in which there are dual realities in operation at the same time or that shift back and forth, if you will. “Out of sight, out of mind, isn’t so much an inability to remember certain things about a person as it is more about abandonment fear that drives borderline defense mechanisms like splitting and devaluation to kick in because the state of being left alone isn’t tolerable when a borderline doesn’t know how to soothe him/herself.
Just as the young child in the playpen starts to cry when mother goes to work, for example, and experiences a discomfort with separation, not yet having the ability to understand they will come back, borderlines experience a triggering back to abandonment fear, abandonment trauma which they do not have the inter-personal skills to cope with – thus the maladaptive pathological defenses kick in. Often also those with BPD will punish “other” for leaving or being busy because when “other” isn’t immediately available to provide the soothing and reassurance the borderline needs, the borderline experiences feelings (related to original core wound of abandonment trauma which is often repressed – dissociated from) which is more about intra-psychic trauma and unresolved abandonment trauma from the borderline’s past than it is about actual “memory issues”. Borderlines cannot hold the experience of “other” or any connection to “other” when “other” isn’t right there.
Me, again.
All of this, is 100% how I feel and relate to the world. I absolutely feel a kind of discomfort in the back of my mind when people are away, like a small itch. Of course I know and have experienced that the more you try to control someone or take away the their own hobbies or alone time, the less time they want to spend time with you, they become unhappy and lose a bit of themselves. Because this has happened to me and I’ve seen it happen to others is why I fight so hard to ignore this itch.
I replay scenarios in my head over and over again of the people I love reading something or getting bad advice from someone and deciding not to be in my life anymore. I make thoughts up in other people heads when they are away like, “wow look at that woman, Marie will never be that beautiful”, “she really is fat”, “She is fucked up and really is not worth the effort.”
I can’t hold in my head that the people I love will come back to me because theres been so many times in my life that they actually haven’t.
Destroy What Destroys You 