What You Need To Know About BPD and Their ‘Favorite Person’

Unpacking what a ‘favorite person’ is & how to heal from this relationship pattern.

One of the biggest hallmarks of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is having a “favorite person”. This dynamic walks hand-in-hand with some key diagnostic criteria including having a pattern of intense and unstable relationships, deep fears of abandonment, and chronic feelings of emptiness.

A ‘favorite person’ (“FP”) in BPD is not limited to a romantic relationship, although it is most commonly seen in idealizing an intimate partner. A ‘favorite person’ can be anyone that is turned to in order to validate a person with BPD’s feelings, to make them feel wanted, reassured, and to provide them a sense of feeling worthy and Good Enough. This may include a friend, a family member, a mentor, or a romantic partner.

A person with BPD has an unhealthy dependency on their ‘favorite person’ who can either make or break how they see themselves from moment to moment.

If their ‘favorite person’ is providing them attention, approval, and helping them feel safe and wanted, then there is balance. On the flip-side, if their ‘favorite person’ is busy, distracted, or does not respond to them in the way that they hope or need, this can trigger impulsive devaluation and a desperate attempt to find a new ‘favorite person’ to meet their needs.

Relationship Red Flags & the “Favorite Person”

Those with BPD and those with significant childhood trauma can struggle with forming and maintaining intimate relationships. They may vacillate between feeling smothered (engulfed) and pushing away on one hand and feeling “clingy” (fearing abandonment) on the other. This internal push-pull usually causes relationship tension where a person may not know where they stand from one day to the next.

If you are their ‘favorite person’, the stakes are raised where there is more expectations on you in meeting their needs to feel safe, wanted, and validated. Yet, because being a ‘favorite person’ is correlated with idealization and mirroring, being placed on a pedestal can make you feel good in the moment. making it that much more confusing when devaluation begins.

So, what can having a ‘favorite person’ look like in action?

There are a few common patterns seen that include: “challenging” their ‘favorite person’, living in an emotional push-pull, and fantasizing about the “fairy-tale”.

“Challenging”. Because of deep fears of abandonment, it is common to see a person with BPD “challenging” or “testing” those in their life. For example, a person with BPD may challenge their partner by saying that if the ever left them, they’ll never be back — while pushing the envelope to get their partner to leave. They may violate relationship boundaries, add new social media accounts and refuse to add their partner, or make accusations about their partner to family or friends.

If you stay, you “passed” the test, meaning that the person with BPD feels momentarily safe that they are not going to be left behind.

Yet, this also means that they will try to find other ways of upping the ante to see if you will continue to prove your devotion to them.

The Emotional Push-Pull. Here is where we see the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows that happen internally within a person with BPD, yet it manifests outwardly onto those in their life. This pattern is based on intermittent positive and negative reinforcement, which can strengthen a push-pull between two people, and create a traumatic bond.

For example, a person with BPD may place their partner on a pedestal for getting a promotion. They may look up to their partner as an idealized person by praising them, doing things to make them feel loved or appreciated, or turning to them for advice or support regarding their own job.

Yet, the same partner may trigger deep fears of abandonment if they have an unexpected out-of-town business trip as part of their new promotion. These fears of abandonment can manifest as accusations that the partner is not going on a business trip, but planning to cheat on them.

Now, instead of idealizing their partner and their promotion, they begin devaluing them. In extreme cases, a person with BPD may turn to self-sabotaging behavior or threats of suicide to gain their partner’s attention and care once again.

Fantasizing About “The Fairy-tale”. Reality can get distorted for those living with BPD. This is especially common with love-addicted behavior where fantasies of being ‘saved’ or ‘rescued’ can blur reality. For example, a person with BPD may romanticize a platonic friendship, or may misinterpret a person’s kind gesture as being interested in them romantically.

If they are their ‘favorite person’, anything they do or say is often internalized in a way that keeps the fantasy alive. Even if the person is a coworker or someone they don’t know very well, the person with BPD can still make them their ‘favorite person’ and begin holding them to their internalized expectations instead of who that person actually is.

Healing from the Pattern

Healing from a pattern of having a ‘favorite person’ can be challenging because people with BPD turn to others for validation, and for a sense of Self. Many who idealize their ‘favorite person’ report feeling pulled to that person almost like they’re an addiction.

It becomes cyclic; if they’re feeling empty or struggling with vulnerable emotions, they look to their ‘favorite person’ to make things all better.

If the person comes through, then all is well in the moment. If they fail, then the person with BPD usually turns to devaluing that person out of self-preservation and then turns to someone else to fill that spot (and their emotional needs), which reinforces the pattern.

A few goals in healing from the pattern include:

Learn Who You Are Outside of a Relationship. One of the hardest challenges for a person with BPD to do is to stay out of a romantic relationship long enough to unpack your core trauma, your patterns, your unmet needs, and to allow time to begin advocating for yourself, instead of turning to another to advocate on your behalf. By learning who you are outside of a relationship, you’re also learning what your unmet needs are, and how you’ve turned to others to fill that void.

Learn Where Your Unmet Needs Are. Both those with histories of extensive childhood maltreatment (abuse, neglect, invalidation, abandonment) and those with formal diagnoses of BPD share deep unmet needs stemming from childhood trauma. The most significant basic needs that goes unmet is safety. Safety needs include consistency, security, reliability, predictability, and trust, just to name a few.

Because trauma pulls the rug out from under a person, it violates their basic need to feel safe. Many grew up with caregivers who were unpredictable, unreliable, or emotionally immature which creates gaps in a child’s sense of safety and predictability in their world. Because of this, a ‘favorite person’ may be turned to in order to feel safe, to have all the answers, and to provide security and consistency for them.

By learning how these patterns unfold (and with whom), a person with BPD can begin teaching themselves how to meet their own needs, while reducing how often they’re turning to someone else to ‘rescue’ them.

Transitional Object. Here is where things can get tricky for a person with BPD who has a history of ‘favorite persons’. A ‘favorite person’ can be interchangeable depending on many things — if that person is meeting their needs in the moment, if they’re being idealized, and in what context that person has become their ‘favorite’ (friend, partner, family, etc.).

A common theme is to devalue one ‘favorite person’ for another — most common is one romantic partner for another. This pattern is counterintuitive to healing and self-awareness. What often happens is that out of desperation, a new ‘favorite person’ is turned to who may be toxic, unpredictable, or struggling with their own mental health.

A transitional object should not be used as exchanging one ‘favorite person’ for another, but in using an item such as a childhood stuffed animal, a letter from a mentor or teacher, or even an emotional support animal to help buffer moments of feeling vulnerable, or in times of stress.

The thing is, BPD has traditionally been stigmatized by society, including the mental health industry because of the level, intensity, and patterns seen in their behavior. Many with BPD are labeled as manipulative when in reality these patterns are often done on autopilot and out of conscious awareness.

The person has become conditioned to engage in certain (often toxic) patterns as a way of trying to push away their fears of abandonment and their inability to care for themselves outside of a relationship. They’re looking for help, support, guidance, to feel validated and to belong, as we all are.