PERSPECTIVES: How do we know if we love our BPD parents?

[Think About It...]

How do we know if we love our BPD parents?

We often hear people say, "I love my mother/father, but..."

In this workshop, based on a thread started by OZtoAZ that sparked a lot of thought in other members, we would like to explore the question  How do you REALLY know you LOVE your BPD parent(s)?  What does that look like? Feel like?

[blackandwhite]

How do we know if we love our BPD parents?

We often hear people say, "I love my mother/father, but..."

In this workshop, based on a thread started by OZtoAZ that sparked a lot of thought in other members, we would like to explore the question  How do you REALLY know you LOVE your BPD parent(s)?  What does that look like? Feel like?

[OZtoAZ]

Love is such an abstract.  Yet I know I love my fiancé.  When I tried to break down "love" into its core components of "why I love him," I think of feelings and such--like Respect, Admiration, Honesty, etc. along with a healthy dose of me deeply caring for his well-being. I do not have a great deal of respect for my mother and the way she treated me, or manipulates others (very stealthily, I might add).  She lies for personal benefit.  She plays martyr for attention.  She can be so attention seeking as to turn someone else's funeral (not a close relation) into something entirely about her.  I don't admire my mother.  She's not honest.  

When I try to ask myself if I love my mother--all I can come up with is, "Well, I don't want anything bad to happen to her---but then again, I don't want anything bad to happen to my waitress, the neighbors, the guy walking down the street, my mailman, the lady driving in front of me, the bird on the wire...etc., either."

I see other people in this world who say they "love" people---and I look at the people they love and question the hell out of it.  I've seen people love abusive folks, druggies, "losers," criminals--lots of people who I wouldn't think would be deserving of a second glance, let alone "love."  So, "Love" can't be the ruler that measures the "quality" of a person nor relationship.  Yet, generally speaking, "love" is reserved for the most special of relationships.

So do I "love" my mother?  I kinda think the answer is No.  But that feels odd to say out loud, too...

SO...The even bigger question--"How does ANYONE know they love their parents?"  Again--what does that look like? Feel like?

[blackandwhite]

OZtoAZ,

I think you're reacting to two contradictory impulses. One is the societal taboo about not loving a parent. You're supposed to. If you don't, you're unnatural. Combine that with the fact that your mother has done little to nothing to earn your love and a great deal to earn the opposite. What do you get? A conundrum.

I hope this helps: I don't love my mother. I feel some compassion for her, some pity, some (rapidly diminishing) sense of duty. Love. No. If you'd asked me as a child if I loved her, I would have said, "yes, of course." It's too terrifying for a child not to love a parent. If you'd asked me as a younger adult, I would have used the old, "I love her, but..." Now, as a mother myself, I have a much better perspective on how cruelly and selfishly she behaved. She lost my trust and somewhere along the line, she lost my love.

People with regular run of the mill parents, not even the best parents in the world, know they love their parents because...they feel love for them. Just like you do for your fiance, I do for my husband and daughter. You just do. You could break it down, but you don't have to. It's just there, even if mixed with other feelings. We're all worthy of love--even the drug addicts, even the BPDs. But it's too much to ask the person who has been abused to be the one to love that particular abuser.

Again, I hope this helps: I'm giving you permission not to love your mother. It's okay. You may not want to advertise it beyond those you trust the most (the taboo thing), but it is truly okay.

B&W

[Nalyd]

I agree B&W.

Do I LOVE my mother?  I have really, really searched my heart, mind, and soul for the answer to this question for months.  That answer is no.  There are some mixed, jumbled feelings.  I care for her but I do not love her.  Some days I hate her.  Other days I feel sorry for her.   And then there are the days that I sit there scratching my head trying my darnedest to figure out what in the world she is doing.  I tell her I love her, but it is an empty. 

To love someone...  That is when their smile brightens a part of your day, their tears cause your own heart to break, and literally you love them so much sometimes your heart aches.  This is how I feel about my son, my husband, and my father.  They do not rule my emotions, they heighten them.

But my mother?  Nope, it just isn't there.  My new T told me "Well she is your mother, you have to love her?"  I felt like I was a the most horrible monster on the face of the planet when I flatly answered "No".  I'm not a monster.  I am a product of my mother's creation though I fight like hell to be me.  She smothered that love a long time ago.  If I was incapable of loving anyone then I would question my sanity.  But I can love.  The pain she has inflicted on me over the years is proof that I loved her once or that pain never would have existed. 

When I look at my father I think there is a man who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.  There is a man who is just as broken and battered as I am, though probably worse.  There is a man I enjoy spending time with and one day I will miss him with all my heart.  He is my father and I am proud to be his daughter.  I may be a product of mother's creation but I have enough steel in me that I am definitely my Daddy's girl. 
 

[Sandcastle]

I like what B&W said; I think she nailed it.

I just wanted to add that Alice Miller mentioned in one or more of her books that generally we're raised on the commandment "Honor thy father and mother", but she makes the addendum, "Only if they honor you too."  It's very freeing (at least, it was for me) to realize that I don't have to love them.

And I don't love my parents.  My mother gives me hugs, and I hate it.  But it's taken ages to learn what love is, for me.  I'm finally getting the hang of it; I don't have an SO, but I do have a very good friend who actually does love me unconditionally; she's there to listen when I'm going through a rough patch, and she said her house is always open if I need somewhere to go. (Pity it's on the other side of the country, but it's there.) And when she gives me a hug, it feel sooooo different.  I can feel that she cares.  She understands me.  I cried when I saw her at my graduation because I was so happy to see her; if my parents would have come, I would have been miserable.

I also have a couple good friends in another state that I love, and they love me back.  I think some of it is trust; I can trust they'll be there, and they won't hurt me, and they understand me.  I don't trust my parents.  I mean, yeah, if something catastrophic happened they would be there, but I don't *want* them there.  I want the people who can see me for me.  And these are people I can let my guard down with and tell them everything and they're fine with it.  And it's taken a long time for me to get that far and to be okay with it.  Likely that's why I still don't have an SO; there's a huge trust issue in the way before I can get to the whole love thing.

[DigitalGhost]

Do I love my mother?  I honestly don't think so.  Sometimes I think I mistake obligation for "love" -- it's so hard to get away and free oneself from those ingrained thoughts that you HAVE to love your parents simply because they ARE your parents. 

If I think about love in general -- for me, it goes hand-in-hand with respect, caring, trust, liking that person -- and I just don't feel that for my mother.  I feel those things for my fiance, whom I love.  And for the friends I have that I love.  But my mother? No.  One can only be beaten down so much before you lose all of those things -- respect, care, trust etc.  I am sure at one point I did really love her but I had to free myself from her web.

The whole discussion reminds me of girl-friends I've had/have who are in bad relationships with men. "Oh but I looooove him" they'll say and I ask, "How can you love someone whom you don't trust, don't respect, are afraid of etc etc?"  To me, that's not love -- co-dependence, fear of being alone, wishful thinking maybe but NOT love.  Love should be something that makes you stronger and better, not fill you with dread and despair and self-loathing. 

And Nalyd -- I'm so sorry you T said that to you and made you feel bad for being honest.  I don't think that we are obliged to love anyone, regardless of their relationship to us.

[justrealized]

Allow me to add mine to the pile:  No I don't love my mother.

This is a question I was pondering a couple of years ago when she was acting out horribly and I was considering NC, which I have now done for about 2 years and I'm fine with it.

At the time I realized that at that moment, no I didn't love her.  However on closer reflection later on, I realized I probably hadn't loved her since sometime in my childhood, maybe between age 5 and 10.  ( A clue is one of my fondest childhood memories,  she was away in the hospital for a couple of weeks for a minor, not life threatening surgery, and my dad stayed home from work to take care of me and my brother.  It was such a pleasant , happy relaxed time.  Just with her not being there.  Coming home from school, watching cartoons, doing homework, nothing special, but happy and relaxed. )

The trouble is , friends you talk to, even a lot of therapists cannot fathom that its OK or desirable or even possible for you to have no love for your mother. Friends who have problems with their relatively normal parents, ie arguments, neuroses, bad habits, bad communication, they think that's what you're talking about.  They don't get it, because it's just out of their realm of experience,  but they don't know that some other kind of experience exists, and the less sophisticated people are quite judgemental about it.   "But she's you're mother..."
To you it sounds like some abstract mantra.
But to them , they think its just basic common sense, like believing in gravity.

Basically, the mother child connection has to be made properly within the first two years, or it isn't going to happen. This is even before we get into the various styles and levels of dysfunction that we experience with a BPD mother.
Of course you don't realize that, when you're growing up, because you're a child, and the outside world doesn't get it, unless they've had the same thing happen to them.

The bottom line is, if you reflect, and realize that you don't love your mother, there is nothing to be ashamed of, and you do not need to feel inferior to anyone.

And obviously its not like you can't experience or feel love, because you do, for other people.

So if you keep asking yourself "do I love my mother?"  you probably don't.  But there's nothing wrong with that. 

[stellaris]

Do I love my mother?  After all the abuse, the cripping damage she inflicted?

Well, I WANT to love her.  I WANT her to love me.  I want the wonderful, creative, loving mother she could be sometimes.  I want the wonderful birthdays, the handmade quilt and scarf, the rocking to sleep, the cool hand on my feverish forehead.  I want to rewind-erase the screaming rages, the neglectful indifference, the selfish manipulation.

I want her to call me, write me, and say "I'm so sorry, I was so messed up, my own parents were abusive and I didn't know how to be  a mother.  I tried for you, I know I failed.  You were so good and I made it so hard for you and I just wasn't strong enough."

And you know - that's there.  I know somewhere in there she's aware of that reality.  She's said as much to my sister - but she won't step up and say it to me.

So do I love her?  There's nothing more natural, more automatic, than a child's love for his or her mother - and a child's need for mother's love in return.  I love my son with quiet pride, I love my wife deeply and passionately.  I love my aunts, who were more a mother to me than my own ever was, my uncles, my close friends.  My mother - no, not anymore.  She has kicked and beaten that out of me over the years.  I think the potential to love her again is still there, if she could ever step up, but even that is dying slowly with time.  The slow fading of that spark is probably the saddest thing in my life, and I'm torn between once again trying to salvage something and my feeling that no, this time it is HER turn to actually act like a parent for a change.

Relationships are like bank accounts - they only hold what you put into them.  Those nine months of pregnancy put a lot in the bank for any mom, but if you keep taking out more than you put in, eventually they're empty.


Chris

[Deserve to be happy]

I think that real love is unconditional.  I unconditionally love my husband and sons.  There isn't anything they have to fear about losing my love.  My mother never loved me unconditionally.  She only showed me love if I was her happy little robot meeting her every need.  I loved my mom unconditionally even after her relentless beatings and verbal attacks.   I loved her so much that I thought her behavior was "normal" and did not even know I was suffering from the worst case of emotional abuse.  Eventually, when I was away from her long enough to recognize "normal" behavior, I started questioning my relationship with her.  The longer and farther I was away from her the more "clearer" my thinking got.  Until a couple years ago, Mother's Day I was looking for a card to express my love.  None of the cards represented my true feelings about her.  I love her in the sense that I respect her as a human being but I don't love my mother "unconditionally" anymore like I do my husband and kids.  I don't hate her and I still pray every night for her well being but I'm not willing to love this women unconditionally only to be abused.  I also understand and respect all those that have come to the conclusion that they don't love their mom.  Only you know what's best for you.

[nevermore]

My mother is a clear thinking, high functioning cruel mean manipulative non loving BP mother. I do not love her. I feel nothing. My father was an abusive enmeshed father. He lost his memory and I grew to love him. He died. I am very clear about how I feel about them.

[Marley]

Hi, I am new to this board. I have gone full circle with my probably BPD mother, but have to say I do love her. I do not like her, nor do I wish to be with her, or speak to her, and I certainly do not want to go and live in her strange emotional reality with her, but if I ever found a way to help her deal with her condition that does not compromise my own happiness - it is an illness after all - then I would try.

Note that I have not been physically abused so that does make it a little diferent for me.

[Violetta]

People with regular run of the mill parents, not even the best parents in the world, know they love their parents because...they feel love for them. Just like you do for your fiance, I do for my husband and daughter. You just do. You could break it down, but you don't have to. It's just there, even if mixed with other feelings. We're all worthy of love--even the drug addicts, even the BPDs. But it's too much to ask the person who has been abused to be the one to love that particular abuser.

Nailed it.

I've never loved my mom. I never had a chance to. My earliest memories are of her cruelty. Even if I had the ability to force myself to love her, I would choose not to. She doesn't deserve it.

It's not that a person should have to "earn" love. But in order to be loved, they do have a responsibility to refrain from doing things that earn them hate. You can't just do whatever you want to people, dump whatever cruelty and ugliness overflows out of you onto them, and expect to be entitled to their love and to relationships with them. And yet that is what BPD parents do. That treatment will form who that child is, and stay with them all their life.

If society thinks that I have an obligation to love my mother, but turns its eyes away from the greater taboo of child abuse, then it can kiss my a--.

I was extremely lucky, as a teenager, to stumble across certain philosophies and pieces of writing that emphasized the importance of honesty, integrity, and fair treatment of people. They really taught me something my upbringing hadn't--that it is alright to not give people things that those people don't deserve, and haven't earned, even when they're demanding them from you with guilt and tradition. It really helped me see clearly that there would be other people in my life who deserved my love far more than my mom did. And there have been.

Some relationships just fail, through no fault of our own. In some rare occasions, that relationship is the parent-child one. That's us!

I don't know what it is like to love a parent, because my parents cheated me of that opportunity. It sucks, but I don't hold myself responsible for figuring it out--and certainly not for justifying it to clueless outsiders or (lord have mercy) judgmental therapists. I know what love feels like, and so do you. That's the point of life--sharing love, learning more about it, embracing it and helping it grow, to everyone's benefit. There's no obligation to do that learning with certain particular people or relationships.

Justrealized said:
"But she's you're mother..." To you it sounds like some abstract mantra. But to them , they think its just basic common sense, like believing in gravity.

That's exactly how I feel. Sometimes I feel like I'm from another planet as people who talk like this. But I've learned to just let it go, as an irreconciliable "cultural" difference. I can still be close to people who feel this way about their parents. But I am closer to friends who have had at least one abusive relative that they've overcome. They've been there.

"Basically, the mother child connection has to be made properly within the first two years, or it isn't going to happen. This is even before we get into the various styles and levels of dysfunction that we experience with a BPD mother."

That's oddly comforting to hear. Kind of makes me feel relieved--reinforces the relief I felt at recently giving up hope of "saving" my relationship with my mom. She was responsible for our relationship, the first two years of my life. She messed it up, trying to mold me into a little handmaiden. I owe her nothing.

"The bottom line is, if you reflect, and realize that you don't love your mother, there is nothing to be ashamed of, and you do not need to feel inferior to anyone. And obviously its not like you can't experience or feel love, because you do, for other people. So if you keep asking yourself "do I love my mother?"  you probably don't.  But there's nothing wrong with that."

Perfectly said. Helpful to me as well. Thanks.

Hope everyone has a good holiday. I will be thinking of you all and sending you the most comforting energy I can muster up!  

[OZtoAZ]

These comments from each of you are SO interesting and helpful!  It's relieving to read them--and hear each of your perspectives.   Thank you!  I am glad to know I am not the only one out there who has pondered the "love" question.  Reading these responses is very helpful and validating.  Keep 'em coming!

To all of you:  I wish you the Happiest of Holidays.  I know each of you carry your own burdens, given the BPD(s) in your life (past or present)...so I hope that you get the chance to carve your own traditions, happiness, and spend time with the genuine loved ones in you lives.

[Sasha026]

Yes, I love my mother. Unfortunately, she will never permit love. Never has, never will. I am only as good as my last sale.

I have gone so far over the edge to show her love. I have run to her, babied her, sat with her, ruined my marriage for her, given her everything, taken care of her... and on and on. But, sadly, to no avail.

Nothing ever came back. But... I had hope, so I kept on trying. Just recently, I gave up hope. While, it did give me some peace of mind to know that I finally realized my limits, I feel sort of sad. I regret that I made a terrible mistake all of my life by trying to achieve the unachievable. I've wasted years.

The problem is that it's is really not in my control. You cannot GIVE them love, they won't take it, don't understand it. Borderlines are emotional vampires, they will take and take, but never give. My mother would dangle the "carrot of love" just long enough to convince me that it could be possible, yanking it away as I eagerly grabbed for it, leaving me frustrated and angry.

They like anger. Comfortable with pain. I think, sometimes, it's the only emotions that they can understand. It's so sad. I had so much love to give, but, she just didn't want it.

[methinkso]

I have residual fog that I love my mother. I do not love my mother. Love is a feeling. Where I used to be ambivalant, I have nothing but pure hatred for her. I had hoped I could become unfeeling about her, but the pain is still here, worse than ever.

This might be a little eye opening for some. I am very freudian.

When I was twelve, I'd had extreme emotional abuse at mother's hands since I was 5. The worst was 7 through 10.

I started having anxiety attacks then. I semi-consciously later came to believe that the anxiety attacks were caused by my fear that she would kill me if she could legally get away with it. My hating her was an intolerable thought as you all know.

This became an issue in my first T, even though I didn't learn of BPD until 20 yrs later. In the rohrshack (sp?) testing it became more obvious.

NOW I believe that twelve year old abused girl was having panic attacks because that girl wished her mother dead! So in a sense I was projecting and not owning my hatred of her then.

I think this is why I have never had any memory of grieving a 'loving mother'. I never have. She knocked that out of me in the crib.

She told me a couple of years ago that 'we' were all potty trained by the time we were a year old! And that aunt had her D potty trained at SIX months. That woman is a total psychological mess (even though she is a practicing clinical psychologist).

BTW, would anyone like to entertain me how one goes about potty training a 6 mo old? I can't see that is possible.

Guilt and fog is not love.

[No_Hiding_Place]

Hi folks!

First of all, a very merry Xmas to all of you!

Second of all, this post is a god-send. I started reading it last night on the couch with my fiance next to me. I was so relieved to see so many "Nope, can't and don't love my mother" responses.  I had this conversation with a friend of mine a few months back when she asked if, in the light of all my mother had done, if I still loved her. The very fact that I even paused was shocking to her, but she could understand. I think my answer was vague and non-committal, but it made me realise... Holy crap, I don't love my own mother.

But, as you all say, this is both to be expected and completely OK. I mean, the things that have been said to us, done to us, not said to us and not done for us... Is it any wonder? I pointed out to my fiance (who wasn't at all surprised to hear that although I adore his parents, I don't love my mother) that if I'm perfectly happy not hearing from them for months on end and PREFER it like that and in fact have a majorly averse reaction to any contact from them, does that sound like a loving relationship?

How can you love someone who has so thoroughly disrespected you, beaten you down emotionally, made you feel like you are utterly useless and unworthy, betrayed your trust a thousand times? You can't. And that's ok. It sucks for us, but it's not our deficiency that has created this.

 

[methinkso]

I think any of us who reach the point of thinking we don't love our mother (or other BPD relative),  must do it autonomously. That we can't be swayed but accept if we do or not. The right or wrong to it is only in ourselves.

I think it is MUCH more damaging if these feelings stay on the subconscious level.

Merry Christmas to all here (and sweet dreams tonight).  (I love this tree)

[Violetta]

I gave myself a hard time with the fact that, for me, it wasn't just that I didn't or couldn't love my mother. It is, at this point, that I WON'T love her. I won't try to make myself feel that feeling anymore. I got too used to defining "love" as something you made yourself feel, some twinge of guilty caring. A feeling of obligation and  need to prove myself constantly, to make up for the guilt I felt that my "love" was so weak and feeble. Love to me was constant guilt and overcompensation.

That carried over into, you guessed it, a very unsatisfying relationship with a man. I wasn't in love with him, but I cared for him, and I thought that was enough. Wrong. Just another mess I can ascribe to my crap relationship with my mother.

I've paid too much, for things that were not my fault; spent too much lifeblood trying to fix problems that I had no control over, and faults that I was falsely told I possessed. When I think of my mom, I feel dazed horror. I feel appalled at her as a person. Love her? I refuse to even try.

To force myself to love her would be an insult all the people who actually love me, and deserve my love back. I'd rather spend it on them, and on myself, than pour anymore of it into the black hole, never to be seen again. What a waste.

[Sasha026]

You know, now that I think about it. Hmmm. I don't know if I love my mother. I want to love my mother. I know that when I see her, I absolutely hate her. She drives me nuts. She drives everyone nuts.

Okay, I'm changing my post to read "I would love to love my mother, but I can't do it because she torments me." Does that make any sense?

[methinkso]

Yes, Sasha, that makes sense.

For many years I (and I suspect others) denied our true feelings we had about our BPD because striking out (by hating them) was just too uncomfortable for us. Intolerable actually. So we soothed ourselves by staying in the fog and guilt. That pain was less than facing our true feelings (for me, anyway).

We are not true to ourselves then and that can cause some pretty heavy inner conflict.

Maybe the day will come that society pressures parents to prove their love of their children, rather than (society) forcing children to prove love/allegiance to their parents. Now THAT would right things.