How to know whether you have really loved your partner?

[lm911]

It made me think how can you say that you have loved your ex BPD ( with all his/her  characteristics) , or you have only loved " her/him mirroring you" ( meaning you have loved a person which is not real) ?

[Caredverymuch]

It made me think how can you say that you have loved your ex BPD ( with all his/her  characteristics) , or you have only loved " her/him mirroring you" ( meaning you have loved a person which is not real) ?

You can say that loved your ex bc you are not disordered.  For nons, love means something very different than a pBPD. Love is a beautiful non threatening gift and everlasting.  Love grows. Remains.  Is not just words.  Is not black and white.  Is not something you abandon or run from. Is not something you find immediately with every subsequent person in life. Is not something that hurts.  Is not something you dissociate and erase.

Love is everlasting.

I loved my ex entirely. My love was genuine and unwaivering. My love understood and forgave and encouraged and never ended bc times were difficult for him.  I told him often when he asked through tears, " why do you love me so much?"   And I would always say " just bc you were born."

This is why this experience tears our hearts and souls to shreds.  I never stopping loving him.  Nothing changed in me. 

It changed in him. And he stopped.  I just never got the memo.

[Deeno02]

It made me think how can you say that you have loved your ex BPD ( with all his/her  characteristics) , or you have only loved " her/him mirroring you" ( meaning you have loved a person which is not real) ?

You can say that loved your ex bc you are not disordered.  For nons, love means something very different than a pBPD. Love is a beautiful non threatening gift and everlasting.  Love grows. Remains.  Is not just words.  Is not black and white.  Is not something you abandon or run from. Is not something you find immediately with every subsequent person in life. Is not something that hurts.  Is not something you dissociate and erase.

Love is everlasting.

I loved my ex entirely. My love was genuine and unwaivering. My love understood and forgave and encouraged and never ended bc times were difficult for him.  I told him often when he asked through tears, " why do you love me so much?"   And I would always say " just bc you were born."

This is why this experience tears our hearts and souls to shreds.  I never stopping loving him.  Nothing changed in me. 

It changed in him. And he stopped.  I just never got the memo.

I know, its what kept me hanging on. Its what kept me hoarding money I could have used to take her on the vacation she wanted me to take her on and hated me for not doing it, or further paydown my debt so we could have a life, to instead get her an engagement ring so I could be one family with her, her kids and mine. Didnt know that canceling and trying to reschedule a vacation was going to push her buttons, among the other items on her ___ list, to put me finally on the blacklist. Painful. And Ive been replaced just that quick.

[CareTaker]

Didnt know that canceling and trying to reschedule a vacation was going to push her buttons, among the other items on her ___ list, to put me finally on the blacklist. Painful. And Ive been replaced just that quick.

Like a normal person, you fell in love with a fantasy. Your ex created what you where longing for. They are very good at that. Your love for her was real, because you saw the ideal woman, someone who you could spend the rest of your life with.

But once in trapped, they change to their real identity. Then you realize this is dysfunctional, but now you no longer in love, because you want to break away. But you can't. You addicted to them. In an earlier post I referred to it like being addicted to cigarettes. You know it is bad for you, but you can't stop. If you where in love at that stage, then I am in love with my cigarettes.

So initially your love was real. But in order to control you, she makes you addicted. Yip, don't tell me about lists. I had 3. All the things I did wrong over the period of 3 years, which would come up with every argument just to divert the attention off the original problem. Then there was the list off all the things I "promised" to buy or pay, which I never did. Then there was the list of things I still had to buy or pay.

I have been in a very loving relationship before, and never experienced any of this trash.

Run, and never look back. You deserve so much better. 

[Raybo48]

Simple answer.  My love wasn't conditional, it doesn't matter if she was BPD or not. 

[antonio1213]

My 2 cents:

• After the first 3 months of dating my exBPDgf I realized that I didn't like her as much as I should have. In fact I didn't like her at all. I pushed this thought out and blamed it on something else.
  
  

• She seemed to "love" the hell out of me. She told me all the time how much she loved me, and told me she loved me more than I loved her. I would always tell her I loved her too but in the back of my head I would say "Yes you do love me more than I love you"
  
  

• She would talk about getting married, having a kid with me. Of course I would say I wanted the same thing but in the back of my head I would say "I don't want to have a kid with you".
  
  

• She b**ch at me and than beg for forgiveness and say sorry and that she loves me. I would tell her she wasn't a b**ch and I loved her….then of course in my head I said "YESSS! you are a b**ch! and absolute b**ch"
  
  

I told myself I loved her all the time. I told her I loved her all the time. It was always in my head that I didn't "love" her as much as she loved me. It was always in my head that she was a huuuge b**ch, angry, mean, selfish and self-centered. It was always in my head that there was not a TRUUE connection, like one that two people in love would have.

To tell whether you really loved your partner you need to look back on your relationship and see if you felt the real connection that people feel when in love. I did maybe 5% of the time but the other 95% I didn't. Only you can tell if you were in love or not but most likely it was just infatuation, and extreme attachment

[lm911]

I can't really tell if it I loved her or it was an addiction like a drug. That is what is keeping me awake all night long   I felt the connection between us, I was thinking all the time about her, I was at her disposal at any time, but there were times when I was able to look at her from distance and analize her behavior towards other people and say to myself " How can I love such a person, I don't aprove her altitude, I don't love her"

[Bak86]

I've never loved anyone like i loved her. We had the same background, we had the same interests, we could talk for hours, we supported each other during rough times, we were kind to each other, we loved each other very much. Then... .BOOM, she flipped a switch. Within moments she turned into someone i didn't recognize. I loved her, even when she tried to belittle me, she had crazy mood swings etc. I tried to support her with every little fiber in my body i have. Sadly it's never enough for these people.

[hope2727]

I've never loved anyone like i loved her. We had the same background, we had the same interests, we could talk for hours, we supported each other during rough times, we were kind to each other, we loved each other very much. Then... .BOOM, she flipped a switch. Within moments she turned into someone i didn't recognize. I loved her, even when she tried to belittle me, she had crazy mood swings etc. I tried to support her with every little fiber in my body i have. Sadly it's never enough for these people.

Have you been spying on me ?    

That describes my relationship to a T. We were a great team and overcame many hard things then one day the switch flipped and kaboom. Voldermort.

Just came from counselling where we discussed among other things this topic. He told me I definitely loved him because my love was consistent and constant and unconditional. It did not fluctuate in my feeling towards him. I still don't. I know I love him unconditionally I'm just unwilling to live in unhealthy conditions.

[maxen]

this is a tremendously honest thread. posters are saying things which i know were true of me too but which i still have a hard time acknowledging.

• She would talk about getting married, having a kid with me. Of course I would say I wanted the same thing but in the back of my head I would say "I don't want to have a kid with you".
  
  

when it came time for us to start a family, i got cold feet. i was uncomfortable with my wife's spending and drinking and laziness and her refusal to acknowledge that this impinged on us and on me. i felt that i'd be doing the lion's share of the raising, and she implicitly agreed, and on top of that i was taking care singlehandedly of a mother approaching 95 years old who had a disorder of her own. i think those were sufficient reason for me to stand back. but apart from the practicalities, by that point in the back of my mind i was also thinking, "do i really want to be associated with her closely enough to have a child?" that was a lack of love.

[Blimblam]

I struggled with this myself. A part of the second guessing

Myself. And looking up a bunch of idealized definitions of what love is and  materialistic reductions of what love is to brain chemicals.  Also seeing a bunch of stupid memes on the conditions of love. 

The simple answer is your experience of reality was real to you and valid.

The complex answer is you will have to do archeological digging into your psyche and challenge everything you think you know about who you are and reality itself.