Do they really love hard?

[blue6314]

Do people with BPD love at different levels with different people? Like can they actually have a love of their life? Can she love me more than her rebound guy? Or is it all the same to a BPD sufferer and their romantic partners just are more or less rotating objects in and through their lives?

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[once removed]

hi  blue6314,

are you asking, basically, was her love for you special, and your relationship unique?

[Ltahoe]

Idk to be honest but this seems like the hardest thing to accept with being in a BPD relationship. I struggle with it too, knowing it’s quite possible that this person you invest and give everything to may not love you on the same level.

Almost  all relationships someone loves harder it’s the way love is. My BPDw has even made comments about this. Idk why you don’t go love someone that can love you the way you love. I think she knows she doesn’t have the same capability for love as other people. So can they love? Perhaps the way they know how but it’s seemingly different than how we know how. Sorry I can’t tell you yes or no. But I truly believe they can’t love you on the same level you love them. But I do think they love the way they know how to love which isn’t your idea of love.

[Adrian26]

Or is it all the same to a BPD sufferer and their romantic partners just are more or less rotating objects in and through their lives?

Wow. I actually had this thought pop up quite often myself. In my mind the life of a BPD was a carousel, which would keep on spinning regardless of changing seats and riders.

[TheWire]

I have no insight but I agree that this for me in one of the fundamental questions you walk away with and it leaves you shook.

That being said there is probably no point dwelling on it because how can you ever hope to answer it?

[PeteWitsend]

My take is that their love is more "conditional" than a non-disordered person's love.

Being as charitable as possible to my BPDxw, I suppose there were times she truly felt warm, loving feelings toward me.  It's just that they were fleeting... and she had no problem disregarding those feelings whenever she felt like it.

On the other hand... is "conditional love" really even love?  

FWIW, a mutual friend told me she spoke with my XW and my XW told her she had begged me to come back after I moved out (which was true), but that she didn't love me, and only sent me those messages because she didn't want to go through the divorce and be a single mom.  

So... I guess my answer is no?

Kind of related... my XW would put what seemed to be an excessive amount of sappy, flowery, professions of family love around the house, buy custom family photo albums with statements of love on them ("Love keeps us together"... "Family is love"... etc. etc.), spent $100's on a blown up 2' x 3' family photo for our entryway...

but I had trouble squaring all that with the way she would scream bloody murder at me at the drop of a hat, over some minor inconvenience, or perceived slight. 

To her, love seemed to be an entirely malleable concept  that served her interests in that moment.

[PeteWitsend]

I have no insight but I agree that this for me in one of the fundamental questions you walk away with and it leaves you shook.

That being said there is probably no point dwelling on it because how can you ever hope to answer it?

100% true.

I suppose though that people dwell on this question more than others because it's particularly jarring.  the "love bombing" from pwBPD is so intense, that a lot of non's walk away wondering how anyone could be so careless with their feelings, and claim to love when they don't. 

For those who grew up in a stable home, with loving parents, or at least one loving parent, it can be really surprising to discover that a seemingly normal person could harbor such a cynical, disposable view toward love, esp. if it's a high functioning BPD, I assume, who doesn't display a lot of the more extreme forms of the disorder. 

This was probably the most disturbing thing to me.  It made me question whether I could ever trust someone again when it came to love and relationships. 

[TheWire]

100% true.

I suppose though that people dwell on this question more than others because it's particularly jarring.  the "love bombing" from pwBPD is so intense, that a lot of non's walk away wondering how anyone could be so careless with their feelings, and claim to love when they don't. 

This was probably the most disturbing thing to me.  It made me question whether I could ever trust someone again when it came to love and relationships. 

I definitely understand ruminating on it as I myself have done it. I try and remind myself that she is disordered and very impulsive in a way that I will never truly understand, she may have loved me but at some point it felt unsafe or it just got turned off. It's just a disordered approach to relationships, most people fall out of love over a long period of time, she seemed to do it instantaneously. Making it seem as though the whole thing was disingenous the whole time and it may have been but to me it felt real and I try and take that away, maybe it wasn't real to her or maybe it was but to me at least it was real. Beyond that, delving any deeper will likely just lead to further heart ache. I think there is this idea that you understanding things will lessen the heartache and that might be true to an extent but there comes a point where it doesn't matter how much you know, what happened, happened and you can't change that with information. At least that's my belief.

My main take away is that I try not to be more cynical but perhaps more realistic about what a healthy relationship looks like, or perhaps more specifically what it doesn't look like.