This paper begins with an extensive review of the literature to date looking at the relationship between Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and interpersonal relationships. It points out that while many previous studies have shown a variety of personality disorders associated with BPD, none has really shown personality disorders alone to be predictive of BPD and none have specifically looked at the relationship between BPD and romantic relationships. The authors set out to see if the clinical features of BPD symptomatology could answer a number of questions in relation to romantic relationships. The questions were a) Are BPD symptoms associated with differences in the frequency of, length of, or amount of time spent in relationships? b)Do young women with BPD symptoms demonstrate greater chronic stress in the romantic domain? c) Do they have more frequent fights and arguments with romantic partners? d) Are they more likely to be victims of abuse in romantic relationships? e) Are they more likely to have unwanted pregnancies? and f) do their partners report less satisfaction in the relationship?
The subjects studied were 142 12th graders who were self-selected after filling in a self-assessment questionnaire and who agreed to yearly telephone follow-up interviews for the next four years. Interviews were conducted by graduate students in clinical psychology or licensed clinical psychologists. Axis II symptomatology was assessed at the initial interview using the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ) and the revised edition, PDQ-R. Depressive symptomatology was assessed at the initial interview using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R developed for non-clinical samples (SCID). Subjects were asked about episodic stress over the course of the study and chronic stress was assessed at the initial and all follow-up interviews. At each follow-up interview, subjects in a relationship ere sent a Dyadic Adjustment S...