My reaction is to instead completely IGNORE the abusive behavior of the partner, and only attach my thoughts to the great and amazing things they do, and how I may lose that person.
This is very similar to the BPD behavior of "painting white." It is a natural reaction to abandonment fear. If you fear being alone or abandoned, you'll find every excuse to keep people in your life, even ones whose behavior is toxic to your well-being.
Parents define "love" for kids. If a parent says "I love you" to a child, the child has no idea what those words mean. The child looks to the parent's behavior to learn what love is. So if the parent says s/he loves the child, and behaves in a way that is abusing, or abandoning, or demeaning, the child learns to associate that with love.
Another ex boyfriend of mine -- not the one I typically post about here -- would panic whenever I said, "I love you." For him, he had learned that when someone said that, it meant that he was responsible for making them happy, and would be punished otherwise. Not surprisingly, he responded by saying, "I don't want to be loved by you!" I had to actually sit down and explain to him that to me, loving someone means caring about them and wanting them to be happy. This idea was pretty well lost on him and he's still learning it. Childhood impressions of things like love stay with you for a lifetime.
