Objective: Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) commonly have a Favorite Person (FP), whom they are heavily emotionally attached to and dependent on. This study aims to identify and illustrate the patterns of destructive FP relationships based on actual experiences described by those with BPD.
Method: A data mining process was conducted using raw data collected from online communities, such as blogs and social networks. An in-depth review of the information to better understand the natural course of the FP relationship was also conducted.
Results: Individuals with BPD form an intense and insecure attachment toward their FP, from which they enormously suffer. FPs can be their friends, romantic or life partners, or family members. As their feelings go beyond their control, being increasingly obsessed with their FP, they make their FP gradually lose hope in continuing the relationship and want to quit trying to fulfill their needs. The relationship finally ends when the FP stops being responsible for meeting their expectations and eventually drifts away.
Conclusion: This study suggests that certain FPs, distinctively named Teddy Bear Person, may behave in a particular manner to increase the likelihood of the FP relationship becoming more destructive. Moreover, the rejection sensitivity model should be discussed to understand their dysfunctional interaction.
Data collection: Public posts and comments available online were collected using the keywords “favorite person (FP) and borderline personality disorder (BPD)” in November 2021. Posts published between October 2016 and November 2021 were selectively collected; they were written mostly by those who voluntarily and publicly revealed themselves to be diagnosed with BPD and have or have had an FP. Online sites mainly included popular websites, such as themighty.com, reddit.com, and Quora, where people with common interests can form a supportive community to share helpful knowledge and actively interact with each other. Collected data were used for a text mining approach with RStudio to extract research concepts and reviewed to qualitatively explore individuals’ experiences and the relationship-dynamic.
To reduce noise, we included posts and comments written in English, containing any information on FP relationship experience, regardless of the story type or length. We then excluded posts or comments if they had no text content describing FP meaning, their relationship experience, or their feelings toward their FP and those that other readers could not relate to because the term is commonly used within the BPD community but not certainly defined as an official term yet. This final set of 207 posts and comments on their FP relationships was analyzed
…Favorite person in the borderline personality disorder community: FP has a unique meaning in the BPD community. A FP is a person who someone with BPD relies heavily on for emotional support, seeks attention and validation from, and looks up to or idealizes. When referred to as a FP, it goes beyond what other people would generally refer to as their best friend or favorite person. FPs are the object of complete attachment and extreme love from people with BPD. Therefore, those with BPD feel unable to function properly without their FP and fear that their FP will abandon them.
“While a best friend can be an FP, it’s usually so much more than that… a favorite person is someone you have an emotional dependence on, who can ‘make or break’ your day.”20 “You place the responsibility of your happiness onto them. They can make you feel on top of the world, or in the deepest pit depending on whether they are paying attention to you or not.” [21]
…The destructive FP relationship pattern implies that most FPs share particular characteristics that make them more likely to become an FP and contribute to the formation of toxic FP attachment. Identifying the shared personality traits in many, if not all, FPs to understand the relationship from which those with BPD enormously suffer is crucial. Our findings reveal that certain FPs gradually intensify their person with BPD’s symptoms and assume avoidance behaviors when conflicts arise. In this study, for convenience, we address them distinctively as “Teddy Bear Person (or TBP)”, based on previous research, demonstrating that patients with BPD tend to develop a problematic attachment to and emotionally rely on transitional objects, such as stuffed animals, that would provide them with emotional comfort and stability40, 41, 42. The association between transitional object attachment and BPD was so strong that carrying stuffed animals to hospital settings was also referred to as the “positive bear sign.”43