This is a very thoughtful piece and I really enjoyed what you have to say here. I feel as though you should if possible do a follow up about how being the favorite person, especially if in a relationship, puts you in a position that you have to use sex and validation as a currency to avoid the consequences of ever denying the wants of a partner with BPD. The silence, the threats, the tears, the uncertainty, the cheating, the potential violence against themselves or yourself.
Much like the hours spent with that puppy girl asking if they are still loved and wanted and finally giving up sex as a way to set yourself and them free of the nightmare that follows the request of one's own boundaries or the real or imagined abandonment in some other form.
How often does giving in to the physical labors under threat of unyielding emotional devastation flowing like a chosen poison between the devastator and devastee abandon all rhyme and reason of who the victim is? The one who cries or the one who fears the tears? Is there truth or simply temporary peace in the comfort given with one's body under these conditions for love?
I am starting to think in this context that to be with someone with BPD both sides exist in a constant state of being both the perpetrator and the perpetrated in a perpetual cycle. I can't say that's what I truly believe. In the consideration of these parameters expressed I don't know what else to take away from this. The back and forth of if consent is able to be present in this expression of this dynamic on either side really does come down to "sorta"
This is not the exclusive experience but it's a situation I am very familiar with. A very complicated one the more perspective I have on it.
Yeah, I was very confused when it felt like the essay cut off without flipping the coin and talking about what it's like in a situation where the Nikki is the *Bear's* FP and the appeasement and please-don't-leave sex offers are coming from someone you do not want to have sex with.
As someone who has favorite person'ed so many people this article makes me realize how much I absolutely never, ever want to be someone's favorite person. It's torture
This is one of the best pieces I’ve read from you!! I’m someone without BPD (tho
I have dependant personality disorder which plays into my relationships), and I’m dating multiple people (trans women and transmascs) who nearly all have BPD, and to whom I am the. I was sitting down reading this with my wife and it really really REALLY fucking resonated. I’ve been dating people with BPD for about a decade now and have learned many lessons for how to operate as an FP in a way that serves the folks I am in relationships with. Things like establishing “no is always an answer” for things as small as “hey can you chill in the kitchen with me while I do dishes” and offer praise and thanks for when my people do say no as a way of building up that feeling of security in asserting their wants, needs and desires. This piece gave me a lot to chew on on the fundamentals power relations that come from the FP/BPD dynamic.
Toward the end of the piece you wrote “ Obsession literalizes the fantasy of being loved more than anyone else in the world: completely, without reservation, without the risk of the other person choosing differently.” and holy shit that hit me like a ton of bricks. A big part of DPD as I experience it is this overwhelming fear of someone leaving while also not feeling like I can leave on my own accord. The fantasy you describe here is something that is a non-zero part of what I love about being in relationships with folks who have BPD, I deeply desire the idea that someone would never abandon me, that I am the center of their world, and tho that may serve me, it’s forcing me to reconcile that that is not a value neural networks hint to want and can absolutely turn into something deeply abusive very easily. Theres a new person I’m seeing who just began FPing me and I’m realising that this person is vulnerable in a LOT of ways, and that I am the only person they feel safe and secure with coming out of a really nasty breakup and no real friends. This article has me in a place where next I see him I’m going to tell him that I don’t think sex is something that I want to have as part of our relationship anymore, and that I’m going to do everything I can to reassure him I’m not going anywhere and that it doesn’t change how I feel about him as a person.
The other place it really hit me was with regard to my relationship with my wife. When we first started seeing one another we were very much hypersexual, and after a long time and lots of reassurance and confidence building within the relationship it told me that it wanted to be asexual (as an ace spec person this is no issue to me). In sitting down with it reading this together we had a really healing talk about how even tho I did all the reassurance in the world, there was still always this element of the FP dynamic that compelled to have sex with me even post realizing it wanted to not have that be part of the relationship.
Seriously this piece is tremendous and I’m sharing it with all of my BPD/MAD friends and partners and I’m going to be talking about it in therapy this week. You are a fucking genius and truly invaluable within this space. This is work that is genuinely changing my life and the lives of the folk in my life for the better. You are brilliant, a fucking visionary Tara Knight, a goddamn revaluation in feminist thought. Like, holy fucking shit, THANK YOU!!!!!!!
Couldn't this concept be extended beyond this into no decision made in a society having true "permission"? Where is the line drawn? Is it possible to draw a line in a way that can be applied practically?
im so excited to finish reading this, i have bpd and ive had the same fp since 2020. i actually myself feel sometimes that im not actually consenting even though i am i feel like i have no self control and feel out of control of my own desire. i’ve never said no to her ive only ever said yes to her, and i did genuinely want it but is it really me that does or my mental health?. i ask myself that a lot. i want to have less sex with her, i think consciously about how i want to do it less all the time, but i can’t help how i feel for her when im actually around her and she asks to do it
hm another thing as well there have definitely been times where i didn’t necessarily want to but still did, because i get scared of abandonment if i reject. it triggers my fears to reject her, even though logically i know she wouldn’t be upset i still have uncontrollable anxiety rejecting. but that’s 0 fault of her own imo and my responsibility. though fpism inevitably does cause a power dynamic im a grown adult and its my responsibility to communicate
sex is also the only time i don’t fear her leaving me or being mad at me. i have 0 fear of abandonment if we’re actively having sex in the moment, im not sure why but in the time we have sex im temporarily cured of all anxiety
well yes i’m well aware of that and said that in my comment….? i’m not sure where you got the idea that i’m saying i have no agency or that im negating responsibility since i said your exact words myself in one of my comments, but thanks anyway. i also do genuinely want to do it with her 98% of the time as i said in my initial comment ❤️
This is a very thoughtful piece and I really enjoyed what you have to say here. I feel as though you should if possible do a follow up about how being the favorite person, especially if in a relationship, puts you in a position that you have to use sex and validation as a currency to avoid the consequences of ever denying the wants of a partner with BPD. The silence, the threats, the tears, the uncertainty, the cheating, the potential violence against themselves or yourself.
Much like the hours spent with that puppy girl asking if they are still loved and wanted and finally giving up sex as a way to set yourself and them free of the nightmare that follows the request of one's own boundaries or the real or imagined abandonment in some other form.
How often does giving in to the physical labors under threat of unyielding emotional devastation flowing like a chosen poison between the devastator and devastee abandon all rhyme and reason of who the victim is? The one who cries or the one who fears the tears? Is there truth or simply temporary peace in the comfort given with one's body under these conditions for love?
I am starting to think in this context that to be with someone with BPD both sides exist in a constant state of being both the perpetrator and the perpetrated in a perpetual cycle. I can't say that's what I truly believe. In the consideration of these parameters expressed I don't know what else to take away from this. The back and forth of if consent is able to be present in this expression of this dynamic on either side really does come down to "sorta"
This is not the exclusive experience but it's a situation I am very familiar with. A very complicated one the more perspective I have on it.
Yeah, I was very confused when it felt like the essay cut off without flipping the coin and talking about what it's like in a situation where the Nikki is the *Bear's* FP and the appeasement and please-don't-leave sex offers are coming from someone you do not want to have sex with.
My favourite recent quote about Dworkin is that she wasn’t wrong; she was just early.
TRUEEEE
As someone who has favorite person'ed so many people this article makes me realize how much I absolutely never, ever want to be someone's favorite person. It's torture
This is one of the best pieces I’ve read from you!! I’m someone without BPD (tho
I have dependant personality disorder which plays into my relationships), and I’m dating multiple people (trans women and transmascs) who nearly all have BPD, and to whom I am the. I was sitting down reading this with my wife and it really really REALLY fucking resonated. I’ve been dating people with BPD for about a decade now and have learned many lessons for how to operate as an FP in a way that serves the folks I am in relationships with. Things like establishing “no is always an answer” for things as small as “hey can you chill in the kitchen with me while I do dishes” and offer praise and thanks for when my people do say no as a way of building up that feeling of security in asserting their wants, needs and desires. This piece gave me a lot to chew on on the fundamentals power relations that come from the FP/BPD dynamic.
Toward the end of the piece you wrote “ Obsession literalizes the fantasy of being loved more than anyone else in the world: completely, without reservation, without the risk of the other person choosing differently.” and holy shit that hit me like a ton of bricks. A big part of DPD as I experience it is this overwhelming fear of someone leaving while also not feeling like I can leave on my own accord. The fantasy you describe here is something that is a non-zero part of what I love about being in relationships with folks who have BPD, I deeply desire the idea that someone would never abandon me, that I am the center of their world, and tho that may serve me, it’s forcing me to reconcile that that is not a value neural networks hint to want and can absolutely turn into something deeply abusive very easily. Theres a new person I’m seeing who just began FPing me and I’m realising that this person is vulnerable in a LOT of ways, and that I am the only person they feel safe and secure with coming out of a really nasty breakup and no real friends. This article has me in a place where next I see him I’m going to tell him that I don’t think sex is something that I want to have as part of our relationship anymore, and that I’m going to do everything I can to reassure him I’m not going anywhere and that it doesn’t change how I feel about him as a person.
The other place it really hit me was with regard to my relationship with my wife. When we first started seeing one another we were very much hypersexual, and after a long time and lots of reassurance and confidence building within the relationship it told me that it wanted to be asexual (as an ace spec person this is no issue to me). In sitting down with it reading this together we had a really healing talk about how even tho I did all the reassurance in the world, there was still always this element of the FP dynamic that compelled to have sex with me even post realizing it wanted to not have that be part of the relationship.
Seriously this piece is tremendous and I’m sharing it with all of my BPD/MAD friends and partners and I’m going to be talking about it in therapy this week. You are a fucking genius and truly invaluable within this space. This is work that is genuinely changing my life and the lives of the folk in my life for the better. You are brilliant, a fucking visionary Tara Knight, a goddamn revaluation in feminist thought. Like, holy fucking shit, THANK YOU!!!!!!!
I love your perspective on this, highly interesting and thought provoking.
Couldn't this concept be extended beyond this into no decision made in a society having true "permission"? Where is the line drawn? Is it possible to draw a line in a way that can be applied practically?
Great insights in this post. The time is ripe for Dworkin's ideas to make a comeback.
im so excited to finish reading this, i have bpd and ive had the same fp since 2020. i actually myself feel sometimes that im not actually consenting even though i am i feel like i have no self control and feel out of control of my own desire. i’ve never said no to her ive only ever said yes to her, and i did genuinely want it but is it really me that does or my mental health?. i ask myself that a lot. i want to have less sex with her, i think consciously about how i want to do it less all the time, but i can’t help how i feel for her when im actually around her and she asks to do it
hm another thing as well there have definitely been times where i didn’t necessarily want to but still did, because i get scared of abandonment if i reject. it triggers my fears to reject her, even though logically i know she wouldn’t be upset i still have uncontrollable anxiety rejecting. but that’s 0 fault of her own imo and my responsibility. though fpism inevitably does cause a power dynamic im a grown adult and its my responsibility to communicate
sex is also the only time i don’t fear her leaving me or being mad at me. i have 0 fear of abandonment if we’re actively having sex in the moment, im not sure why but in the time we have sex im temporarily cured of all anxiety
well yes i’m well aware of that and said that in my comment….? i’m not sure where you got the idea that i’m saying i have no agency or that im negating responsibility since i said your exact words myself in one of my comments, but thanks anyway. i also do genuinely want to do it with her 98% of the time as i said in my initial comment ❤️