For anyone who has ever been enmeshed with another human being suffering a Cluster B Personality Disorder, it occurs to me that the suffering is greatest between the time we are devalued until we are indeed, thankfully, discarded.

For those fortunate enough to not know the meaning of a Cluster B Personality Disorder, it may be better to stop reading now. If you insist, then I will explain the characteristics of these people. A Personality Disordered human being has a pattern of behavior that is other than the norm; that is ingrained, and rigidly part of the individual’s personality. The Personality Disorders in the Cluster B family include the Histrionic, the Borderline, the Narcissist and the Antisocial individual. These are the dramatic and seductive people that we know. These are the people who can make the most rational person believe the most irrational things.

At first, it is paradise. They are exciting and sexy. They are adventurous. They seem to make us feel more attractive, more important and more brilliant than we ever even dared to believe. We have no idea that it is all part of a dance repeated by these people over and over again. We are idealized. We are the most perfect ideal of our own self- image.  These people have done the work of the makeup artist. We are seeing ourselves in reflection, but in perfect form. How could we not fall in love?

The idealization phase is heaven. Nothing could be better. It is a little bit heady in experience. We feel off-balance. We feel higher than we have ever flown before, but with a sense of danger. We are losing ourselves. It feels too good to be true. It feels to good to be true because it is.

One day, for no reason that we can identify, something ugly happens. We find ourselves ignored, or deeply insulted, or the object of rage. There seems no reason for this. It hurts like the stab of a knife to the soul. We try to make amends for this unseen thing we did to become less wonderful to our partner. In the back of our minds, I think we know that it is the beginning of something very different. We know, deep down inside that our partner is idealizing something or someone else. But we believe that it is a flash in the pan. They will surely see that what they have with us is so good, so pure and so real, that whatever is momentarily attractive will pass. We all become enamored with moments outside of our primary relationship. For most people, for people with solid boundaries, it passes like a movie and we return to real life without ever acting upon our fantasies. We assume that our partner will do the same. It lingers longer than we like, but things do get better. Life does not return to its previous perfection, but flickers of our dream return. We decide to be more attractive, more talented and more attentive so that we can insure that it doesn’t happen again.

But we have been devalued. We may be valued again, but never idealized. We do not understand because there is no reason why we should. So begins our loss of our own identity to try to recapture the love. We are living between devalue and discard. This is the common thread that binds the diagnosis to the patient with a Cluster B disorder. These people lack a developed sense of “self�?and so they borrow ours. In doing so, they become less enchanted with the image. We are now tainted with the horror they avoid. They see the phantom, distorted image of their own inner world. This, they cannot bear. We have lost our luster in binding to this partner. He or she must find a new specimen. They need fresh humanity that does not bear the mark of their own tortured soul.

We cannot understand at first. We have our psychic wounds, but we can tolerate and even enjoy our own company. Imagine what it must be like to consider one’s own company to be either nothing at all or something vile. It must be terrifying. From this point of view, it is understandable that this human must try to do everything and anything possible not to look in the mirror. They run away. They project the vile parts of themselves onto us. For some time, we accept the burden. We see they are in pain. We love them and so we take it on, hoping to ease the burden and help them feel better.

Time after time, we take on their pain. It is confusing to us that this seems to make them hate us so much more. It makes no sense to a person with an identity of one’s own. They look at us and see themselves. They rage and run; they insult and beg; they find fault and ridicule. We love them. In the confusion, we become traumatized and distraught. We fall into an abyss. We cannot see ourselves any longer. We have reached the ultimate irony. For the Narcissist, the Borderline, the Histrionic, and the Antisocial, to not be able to see one’s self is a great victory. For us, it is the ultimate loss.

When we reach this point, it is hard for us to know that we really do still have the upper hand. We believe that we are powerless and the disordered partner has all of the power. The disordered partner believes this as well. We become an annoyance to them, a reminder of their own true nature. The partner leaves us at the side of the road, presumably to die, and moves on to the fresh target.

As hurtful as any rejection is, our ultimate salvation is this discard. We mourn the loss and re-evaluate our priorities. We begin to acknowledge ourselves again. We have the gift of ourselves. When no one else is around, we are keeping company with a human being with a soul, our own soul. Gradually we take ourselves to work, to the store, to school. We rebuild bridges and construct new roads. We create ways to take our complete self to interact once again with others. We begin to heal.

Healing from the dagger of a Cluster B partner is a slippery journey. As we regain ourselves, we have not yet completely closed our heart to this person whom we loved. We are loving people by our nature. We have experienced the end to romantic love before and with healing from this wound. With the passage of time, we often find that a loving friendship or at least a fond spirit remains between our former romantic partner and ourselves. The disordered partner sees our new energy and thirsts for it once again. From our past experience with non-disordered partners, we welcome the overture.

It is quite surprising and disappointing when the disordered partner uses up our newly-acquired energy for life in short order and leaves again by the side of the road. Again, we must recover on our own. This dance can repeat itself many times. Each time is shorter and, thankfully, less painful. We learn to protect ourselves from the disordered, from the predator that he/she is.

In the end, the final discard belongs to us. We set the limit. We end the dance. They have no limits and are unable to do this. The abyss between devaluation by our partner and the ultimate discard by our choice is bridged when we realize that there is no going back in any way. No friendship, no enmity, there can be nothing at all.