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If I were to boil down all that I would like to have in a partner to one characteristic it would be integrity. People with integrity are comfortable with who they are and are honest. People with BPD and NPD pretend to be the dream partner in the beginning, and then all hell breaks lose when their cruelty streaks surface.
For me, seeking a partner with integrity means giving up on the falling madly in love dream because a person with integrity would not try to be something they are not. In a healthy relationship, from the beginning there should be some doubts about this person, as nobody is perfect. The question is: Do we like this person enough to overlook their faults?

Kindness and grace. Though that takes some intimacy and getting to know someone.

zachira,

As you mentioned integrity, falling madly in love and both people enjoying every second of the excitement, potential and realistically getting to know each other in my opinion has little to do with integrity.  Actually has nothing to do with a lack of integrity.

People with integrity fall in love, there’s plenty of honesty there. Someone with a mental health disorder hasn’t a clue about integrity on the most part.

Being honest, admitting who you are and keeping a natural balance of learning about each other while expressing intentions, all so complex.

Falling in love, hearing it back and trying to give your best to each other with intentions of continuing to do so with lots of room for mistakes, safe to be yourself.

Sorry, my ex would blast me endlessly that I have no integrity because I loved her so much.

My choice, safety of acceptance to be yourself, little or no judgement.

Zachira,

I apologize, I think I came on a little strongly, it just triggered me a bit.

I think after getting to know someone under normal circumstances with a healthy person, we are able to express our feelings and doubts and fears at the same time, sharing the good and bad.

I think we’re so temporarily damaged.

Falling, being in love is as real as anything else, we want it to last and can’t know, we want, but can’t control.

If the person we were with was more capable of the things we are, they would be capable of the work required in a relationship both want to last.

My BPD/NPD was very honest with her lies with consistency.

I would want empathy with acceptance because that’s what I have to offer. The willingness to learn about them and and the same in return.

good communication.

people so often act in ways to get a message across. passive aggression. tit for tat. testing. mind reading, and expecting others to read their mind. more innocent stuff like "if i do this for so and so, maybe they will do it for me".

i dont expect perfection. we dont all say everything thats on our minds, and we shouldnt, and that probably wouldnt be that much fun anyway. reading your partner is an important skill.

but good communication requires being in touch with your needs, with the needs of others, and the ability to be vulnerable. it involves being able to do all of that without blame and ascribing motives.

good communication would be a pretty good sign of emotional maturity, and therefore, other skills.

Early in our r/s, she told me i was a bad communicator.  I found a couples' communication class and told her about it.  I was game.  She said, "good luck with that." 

It took me a long time to realize that she's a horrible listener.  Good communication is reflexive and reciprocal.  She's recently told me that she thinks she has traits of autism,  and Aspie traits can manifest differently in women,  partly due to societal expectations that women are more affiliative and are expected to be more open with their feelings than men. 

I think there's something to this,  but it doesn't excuse throwing me under the bus by blame shifting.  She also sent her stbxh to therapy, so there's a pattern here...

zachira   :hi:
I think this is a good must-have for what you want in your partner. I think when you give and get enough integrity in a relationship, then it frees your energy to pursue things to grow your life. Thinking back to the relationship I had with my UexpwBPDgf, I feel a vast amount of energy was spent because of integrity issues.

I hope you get what you want.

I'm curious about your thoughts here.

I do think some people with integrity try to be things they aren't. I think a lot of people without mental illnesses try to be better than they are--as part of healthy growth.

For a pwBPD, I think they struggle with representing a whole self, while their actual self is fragmented. Whatever self fragment they may present to you at a time (e.g., an idealising-rewarding self), when combined with their lack of object constancy, that self fragment will be replaced with another (e.g., attacking-withdrawing self). From our standpoint as the ex SO, it's going to seem this person wasn't the bill of goods we bought. And when you add in the idea that self-fragments cycle to some extent--that can confuse us a lot. They aren't A. Now they are B. Wait, now they are C. But the next week they are A. So maybe they were A all the time.

If the pwBPD is constantly presenting you with shifting self-images, then I think the SO perception of them is that of a bundle of inconstant self images. So we may feel we never actually have a grip on what they are.

I think it's helpful to distinguish in our minds that most people we meet won't have those fragmented self issues. When we have a clear line between (1) a person with a fragmented self (e.g., pwBPDs), and (2) a 'normal' person, then that allows us to see how a person with integrity may want to be something they aren't at that particular moment.

I hope you meet more 'normal' people.   

Why does looking for someone with integrity mean you have to give up falling madly in love with that person? If you think of the most attractive people to you, then imagine they have tremendous integrity, then why does that exclude being able to fall madly in love with them?

Gotbushels,
Good to hear from you and your thoughts. I read that if you don't have any doubts or worries about a person when you fall for them, than you should be concerned because you are falling in love with an image projected. I think that it is true. The people with NPD and BPD project an image that they are the ideal partner to manipulate the other person to worship them. People who are comfortable being themselves show who they are from the beginning including carefully distinguishing that they are separate people and not the perfect partner though fine caring people. I think you are talking about falling in love as being the initial chemical high we have for someone when there is a strong attraction. Eventually the hormones die down, and we are left with either feeling warm affection for this person which is genuine love or becoming more unhappy as we come to see that we fell for an image not the real person. So I would say, be aware of the strong physical attraction keeping you from taking time to evaluate what kind of person you are really dealing with. The number one question I would ask: Does this person look and seem like he/she is comfortable in their own skin, accepting their imperfections, making amends for mistakes?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here zachira.

Yes. This makes a lot of sense to me.   

I think to see both the wanted and unwanted of a person--that to me seems that you want to have a more pieced-together image of a what a person is like. To have a more complete view of that person's character. That would then equip you to make the decision on whether you want to advance the relationship or not. So yes, what you said makes a lot of sense to me. 

Yes I agree with this too. On the surface (for the assumed NPD/BPD person in your example here) I think people who need to go to lengths to sell their selves conveys a bit of desperation, and that's unattractive. I think a lot of us do the selling in dating, but some people come from more of those positions of lack of self-image esteem, that causes them to oversell.

Re boiling down to integrity, I think this shows us what a good want integrity is. When someone has integrity, their character is more likely to have self-restraint, thereby not selling what isn't there. They aren't as likely to sell you a bill of shoddy goods. If we consider the 'goods' as a self, then a person with integrity isn't as likely to bring shoddy goods to your gives and takes in the relationship.

For the comfortable person in your example, I get a sense that this person comes from a position of greater self-image esteem. I.e., to them, this prospective partner would make a wanted person for a relationship, the relationship and the person matters to them, and if the feeling isn't mutual, it's not going to be the end of the world for them.

So yes, what you've said here makes good sense to me. What you want here would make it more likely to have you dating people with a more together self.

Someone who can be emotionally sensitive, and who possesses empathy.

Someone who knows what they want, and who doesn't pull away or sabotage things just as they are beginning to work out.

Gotbushels,
You summarized perfectly exactly what I meant. Thanks

Someone with emotional intelligence   

Honesty is at the top of my list.

Coming quickly after that...
Kindness
Intelligence
Humor
Romantic

Also just want to say that integrity and romance/passion are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Yes, you can fall hard for someone with integrity.

Panda39

I want to like my person's personality over time.
I have loved people before and not liked them.
I think the reverse is always better.
Being around someone I like is easier for me.
Maybe I am getting grouchy, but there just aren't that many people who I really like.
Which is why I want a person who has a personality I appreciate consistently over time.

#1. Common sense
#2. The capacity to admit they lied when the evidence is front of their face
#3. The ability to validate their own emotions.
#4. The capacity to accept blame when it is warranted
#5. The capacity to retain inconvenient facts/ truths about their behaviors and impact of their actions whether it makes them look good or not.