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Author Topic: Did they really love us?  (Read 957 times)
Deeno02
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« Reply #60 on: December 05, 2014, 03:03:55 PM »

No.  Not love.  More like infatuation.  Sure, it's all they know but that rings very hollow.  Calling something that it's not just because of a disorder doesn't make whatever the hell I experienced for the last 6 years love.  What I felt (and perhaps what you all felt as well) is more closely represented by the way a child loves a new toy.  Some toys last longer than others but no one plays with the same toys forever.  Yes, we gave our partner great joy while we were their favorite toy.  We went everywhere together.  We snuggled up together at night.  They only played with us and shut out all the other toys.  They had never gotten a toy as special or as awesome as we were to them and they wanted to play with us all the time.  But they gave us attention and played with us only on their terms, only when they were in the mood. 

Then our paint starts to chip.  Our threads begin to unravel.  Our stuffing begins to fall out.  We aren't that same toy we were when they unwrapped us at Christmas.  They start to realize this and stop playing their favorite games with us.  Do they try to put us back together?  Do they help during our times of need when our threads start to unravel?  No.  But pretty soon, there's a new shiny package under the tree for them to unwrap and "love" all over again.  Then we are shelved, only to be revisited when they get bored or one of their new toys breaks.  Or we are donated and never seen or heard from again.  Hopefully the latter is where we end up so we go to someone that loves us just the way we are.

What they gave us was not love.  Those are not the characteristics of love.  Love is permanence.  Love is understanding.  Love is reciprocal.  Love does not need.  Love does not use.    Calling it love because they don't know any better doesn't mean that it's love.  It doesn't somehow make everything that's happened "o.k."   

Well said. Great explanation. So sad, but true.
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PaintedBlack28
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« Reply #61 on: December 05, 2014, 03:31:33 PM »

I don't think so. Maybe I'm wrong, it may depend on the severity of their condition.
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« Reply #62 on: December 05, 2014, 03:35:32 PM »

Very well put together, yes. I agree 100%.
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« Reply #63 on: December 05, 2014, 04:09:03 PM »

Every relationship is different, who's to say who loved who? The one that was attached to me did so out of survival. She was living at home with her crazy parents, who routinely crap talk each other and everyone else too. Negative to extreme, of course, you would have to know them to see this. Did she love me? No. She lives my home and my bank account, but not me. I was a necessary inconvenience to her.
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Pingo
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« Reply #64 on: December 05, 2014, 10:42:17 PM »

This workshop on ":)id he/she ever love me?" is pretty eye-opening, and written by someone who is a mostly recovered pwBPD: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=68978.0

I found this fascinating, having wondered this myself when thinking "would someone who is supposed to love me and have my back treat me this way?"

People love in the way their deeply held belief system allows them to. So yes, it's love under their understanding which is likely different than your understanding of what love means in a committed romantic relationship.

But read the workshop, seriously, it gave me a new perspective on the question.

Thank you for this Elpis, it was interesting.  One thing that stood out, one member summarised it:

Love = Trust

There is another thread right now all about the lack of trust we had for our exes.  Me included.  So how could I have fully loved him when I didn't trust him?  Did I split my feelings of mistrust off so I could love him?  Certainly couldn't be unconditional love when I had these untrusting feelings lurking under the surface.  I agree that his love of me was immature and he saw me as an object to hold tight to.  But I also question my own love for him and how I was also immature and needy.
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Infared
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« Reply #65 on: December 06, 2014, 08:05:08 AM »

No.  Not love.  More like infatuation.  Sure, it's all they know but that rings very hollow.  Calling something that it's not just because of a disorder doesn't make whatever the hell I experienced for the last 6 years love.  What I felt (and perhaps what you all felt as well) is more closely represented by the way a child loves a new toy.  Some toys last longer than others but no one plays with the same toys forever.  Yes, we gave our partner great joy while we were their favorite toy.  We went everywhere together.  We snuggled up together at night.  They only played with us and shut out all the other toys.  They had never gotten a toy as special or as awesome as we were to them and they wanted to play with us all the time.  But they gave us attention and played with us only on their terms, only when they were in the mood.  

Then our paint starts to chip.  Our threads begin to unravel.  Our stuffing begins to fall out.  We aren't that same toy we were when they unwrapped us at Christmas.  They start to realize this and stop playing their favorite games with us.  :)o they try to put us back together?  :)o they help during our times of need when our threads start to unravel?  No.  But pretty soon, there's a new shiny package under the tree for them to unwrap and "love" all over again.  Then we are shelved, only to be revisited when they get bored or one of their new toys breaks.  Or we are donated and never seen or heard from again.  Hopefully the latter is where we end up so we go to someone that loves us just the way we are.

What they gave us was not love.  Those are not the characteristics of love.  Love is permanence.  Love is understanding.  Love is reciprocal.  Love does not need.  Love does not use.    Calling it love because they don't know any better doesn't mean that it's love.  It doesn't somehow make everything that's happened "o.k."    

Well said. Great explanation. So sad, but true.

I don't know if that is "correct"... .but it sure is exactly what I experienced from my end of things. The depth was only there on my end... .and at this point... .whatever was going on at her end... .I just don't care. That's his problem. :-)
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Deeno02
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« Reply #66 on: December 06, 2014, 08:43:31 AM »

No.  Not love.  More like infatuation.  Sure, it's all they know but that rings very hollow.  Calling something that it's not just because of a disorder doesn't make whatever the hell I experienced for the last 6 years love.  What I felt (and perhaps what you all felt as well) is more closely represented by the way a child loves a new toy.  Some toys last longer than others but no one plays with the same toys forever.  Yes, we gave our partner great joy while we were their favorite toy.  We went everywhere together.  We snuggled up together at night.  They only played with us and shut out all the other toys.  They had never gotten a toy as special or as awesome as we were to them and they wanted to play with us all the time.  But they gave us attention and played with us only on their terms, only when they were in the mood.  

Then our paint starts to chip.  Our threads begin to unravel.  Our stuffing begins to fall out.  We aren't that same toy we were when they unwrapped us at Christmas.  They start to realize this and stop playing their favorite games with us.  :)o they try to put us back together?  :)o they help during our times of need when our threads start to unravel?  No.  But pretty soon, there's a new shiny package under the tree for them to unwrap and "love" all over again.  Then we are shelved, only to be revisited when they get bored or one of their new toys breaks.  Or we are donated and never seen or heard from again.  Hopefully the latter is where we end up so we go to someone that loves us just the way we are.

What they gave us was not love.  Those are not the characteristics of love.  Love is permanence.  Love is understanding.  Love is reciprocal.  Love does not need.  Love does not use.    Calling it love because they don't know any better doesn't mean that it's love.  It doesn't somehow make everything that's happened "o.k."    

Well said. Great explanation. So sad, but true.

I don't know if that is "correct"... .but it sure is exactly what I experienced from my end of things. The depth was only there on my end... .and at this point... .whatever was going on at her end... .I just don't care. That's his problem. :-)

I wish I didn't care. The impact on me is horrible. I'm healing, but afraid to go anywhere because I'm afraid to see them together. My problem, I know.
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Infared
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« Reply #67 on: December 06, 2014, 11:02:02 AM »

No.  Not love.  More like infatuation.  Sure, it's all they know but that rings very hollow.  Calling something that it's not just because of a disorder doesn't make whatever the hell I experienced for the last 6 years love.  What I felt (and perhaps what you all felt as well) is more closely represented by the way a child loves a new toy.  Some toys last longer than others but no one plays with the same toys forever.  Yes, we gave our partner great joy while we were their favorite toy.  We went everywhere together.  We snuggled up together at night.  They only played with us and shut out all the other toys.  They had never gotten a toy as special or as awesome as we were to them and they wanted to play with us all the time.  But they gave us attention and played with us only on their terms, only when they were in the mood.  

Then our paint starts to chip.  Our threads begin to unravel.  Our stuffing begins to fall out.  We aren't that same toy we were when they unwrapped us at Christmas.  They start to realize this and stop playing their favorite games with us.  :)o they try to put us back together?  :)o they help during our times of need when our threads start to unravel?  No.  But pretty soon, there's a new shiny package under the tree for them to unwrap and "love" all over again.  Then we are shelved, only to be revisited when they get bored or one of their new toys breaks.  Or we are donated and never seen or heard from again.  Hopefully the latter is where we end up so we go to someone that loves us just the way we are.

What they gave us was not love.  Those are not the characteristics of love.  Love is permanence.  Love is understanding.  Love is reciprocal.  Love does not need.  Love does not use.    Calling it love because they don't know any better doesn't mean that it's love.  It doesn't somehow make everything that's happened "o.k."    

Well said. Great explanation. So sad, but true.

I don't know if that is "correct"... .but it sure is exactly what I experienced from my end of things. The depth was only there on my end... .and at this point... .whatever was going on at her end... .I just don't care. That's his problem. :-)

I wish I didn't care. The impact on me is horrible. I'm healing, but afraid to go anywhere because I'm afraid to see them together. My problem, I know.

Well... .that is a human problem.  I dreaded to see mine... .It was 6 months out. I was not talking to her any more but she had told me that he didn't go to the beach... .so guess where I saw them. It was one of the worse days of my life... .but it was helpful to me to.  They sat somewhere that I would most likely pass them and they had planned in advance to act out in front of me.  Like 7th graders.

It was unbelievable that two "adults" would actually behave this way... .just so disrespectful. It let me know what this person was actually capable of...    I just didn't know.  It allows me to maintain absolute NC... .so in that regard that horrible day has protected me from any more direct interaction with her.

Here is the thing.  Just concentrate how you behave if it ever happens. Not them. Act like an adult... .because the only person that you are going to walk away with is you. Then you can at least like you for the person that you are and how you behave.  ... .
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Elpis
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« Reply #68 on: December 06, 2014, 12:04:47 PM »

I'm just gonna quote some of the article by Oceanheart I referenced which seems to back up the experience of many of us:

Excerpt
What’s it like to love when you have borderline personality disorder?

... .I don’t know, but only because when I was not yet recovering from BPD as I am now, I couldn’t love. Not because I wasn’t capable of it (after all we people with BPD are still people) but because it wasn’t really love. It certainly felt like love to me – the only way I knew love to feel: desperate, overwhelming, consuming, and ultimately destructive. Love was like Hiroshima. It truly was a feeling of searing heat.



It was that way from the beginning of a relationship, and it was certainly that way at the end of one, and there was always an end because no healthy, normal human interaction could survive that kind of intensity. But at the beginning there was always positive passion, which understandibly made the non-BPD patner feel so exquisitely wanted. At the end of it, the passion was as strong as the start, but regardless of who ended the relationship, it was wholly negative.



People with BPD are intense by nature: one of the disorder’s basic structures is mood lability. But the force of our love – and our hate, though never indifference – comes from something altogether different: from the deep emptiness inside us, where no warmth seems to reach. It’s an absense of a sense of self, a sense of being a good person, and comes from a lack (or perceived lack) of getting our primary needs met when we were children, for whatever reason: abuse, neglect, trauma, difficult innate temperaments, invalidation, loss of a caretaker, harsh environment, whatever it may be.

Love, for an adult, unrecovered BP, is still about getting those driving, unfulfilled needs met. It’s about finding THE person to love us unconditionally who will never leave us and who will make our lives bearable, who will give us a reason to live and give us back ourselves. Ultimately, that’s why it can’t be love, because romantic love is between two people who can experience emotional intimacy and who see each other as partners and as ends in themselves. The unrecovered person with BPD is not capable of that kind of selflessness and sharing: the partner remains an object to a BP, whether the BP is conscious of it or not: the partner is the “cure” for our lonliness, a source to feed our neediness, not a person in and of themselves.

[/b]

It's such a painful truth, that at the end of the day we are more of an object than a partner.

Like you said, Pingo, there's not a reciprocal trust. I on the other hand trusted my uBPDh too long, believing that someone who says they love me more than anyone else wouldn't keep purposely injuring my soul, but then I had to realize that at least he wasn't choosing NOT to. He could hold his sh!t together for work, but he didn't see a reason or a need to hold it together for me.

There was so much I just plain did not understand and could not see. In a reciprocal relationship we each build the other up. When one person is what the whole relationship is about, it isn't a healthy "love" we have. At some level I did quit trusting him to consider my feelings at all, it was so random when he might do so. Heck, my sister died and he couldn't even manage to just hold me and comfort me.

I'm in the camp of those who are the ones who left because it got unbearable, so he very much still wants me back. Does it sound awful to say I hope he does find someone else? That way he'll leave me alone. Not that I want to run across them if he does find somebody... .   I can't even quite imagine what that feels like to those of you who have had that experience... .
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Pingo
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« Reply #69 on: December 06, 2014, 12:10:11 PM »

I'm in the camp of those who are the ones who left because it got unbearable, so he very much still wants me back. Does it sound awful to say I hope he does find someone else? That way he'll leave me alone. Not that I want to run across them if he does find somebody... .   I can't even quite imagine what that feels like to those of you who have had that experience... .

I feel the same way Elpis, mine had been seeing someone and left me alone for months but has resurfaced and started to harass me so I assume he's single again.  I also dread running into him alone or him with another woman but it does make my life easier in many ways if he's in another r/s.  He won't go long single, I used to tease him about how he had so many different gf's before me, never realising that it was a pattern of a mental disorder.
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Deeno02
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« Reply #70 on: December 06, 2014, 12:27:03 PM »

I'm just gonna quote some of the article by Oceanheart I referenced which seems to back up the experience of many of us:

Excerpt
What’s it like to love when you have borderline personality disorder?

... .I don’t know, but only because when I was not yet recovering from BPD as I am now, I couldn’t love. Not because I wasn’t capable of it (after all we people with BPD are still people) but because it wasn’t really love. It certainly felt like love to me – the only way I knew love to feel: desperate, overwhelming, consuming, and ultimately destructive. Love was like Hiroshima. It truly was a feeling of searing heat.



It was that way from the beginning of a relationship, and it was certainly that way at the end of one, and there was always an end because no healthy, normal human interaction could survive that kind of intensity. But at the beginning there was always positive passion, which understandibly made the non-BPD patner feel so exquisitely wanted. At the end of it, the passion was as strong as the start, but regardless of who ended the relationship, it was wholly negative.



People with BPD are intense by nature: one of the disorder’s basic structures is mood lability. But the force of our love – and our hate, though never indifference – comes from something altogether different: from the deep emptiness inside us, where no warmth seems to reach. It’s an absense of a sense of self, a sense of being a good person, and comes from a lack (or perceived lack) of getting our primary needs met when we were children, for whatever reason: abuse, neglect, trauma, difficult innate temperaments, invalidation, loss of a caretaker, harsh environment, whatever it may be.

Love, for an adult, unrecovered BP, is still about getting those driving, unfulfilled needs met. It’s about finding THE person to love us unconditionally who will never leave us and who will make our lives bearable, who will give us a reason to live and give us back ourselves. Ultimately, that’s why it can’t be love, because romantic love is between two people who can experience emotional intimacy and who see each other as partners and as ends in themselves. The unrecovered person with BPD is not capable of that kind of selflessness and sharing: the partner remains an object to a BP, whether the BP is conscious of it or not: the partner is the “cure” for our lonliness, a source to feed our neediness, not a person in and of themselves.

[/b]

It's such a painful truth, that at the end of the day we are more of an object than a partner.

Like you said, Pingo, there's not a reciprocal trust. I on the other hand trusted my uBPDh too long, believing that someone who says they love me more than anyone else wouldn't keep purposely injuring my soul, but then I had to realize that at least he wasn't choosing NOT to. He could hold his sh!t together for work, but he didn't see a reason or a need to hold it together for me.

There was so much I just plain did not understand and could not see. In a reciprocal relationship we each build the other up. When one person is what the whole relationship is about, it isn't a healthy "love" we have. At some level I did quit trusting him to consider my feelings at all, it was so random when he might do so. Heck, my sister died and he couldn't even manage to just hold me and comfort me.

I'm in the camp of those who are the ones who left because it got unbearable, so he very much still wants me back. Does it sound awful to say I hope he does find someone else? That way he'll leave me alone. Not that I want to run across them if he does find somebody... .   I can't even quite imagine what that feels like to those of you who have had that experience... .

Give, give, give, give as much as I could as i was able to. Maybe it wasnt enough, but its all i had to offer. My needs were not met at all. My PTSD from war was invalidated by her and i was accused of not wanting to spend time with her, didnt take her on vacation based off HER schedule, never bought her anything (?), etc. Kept from her friends, im so upset just writing this and i couldnt ever verbalize it to her because i would get torn apart by her. Im sure shes acting all lovey dovey with the new guy, but god, i hope she gets fu*ked over. ... .
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enlighten me
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« Reply #71 on: December 06, 2014, 01:01:08 PM »

It hurts deeno. Weve all been tgere. Twice for me now. Hopefully will never have to deal with anything like this again.

Trust me though the more you do things for you a direct your anger and pain to self improvement the better you will feel. As I said before your best revenge is to do well and be happy. My exgf got more annoyed with her ex when he was doing well and happy than by anything petty and hurtful that he ever did.
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Elpis
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« Reply #72 on: December 06, 2014, 01:08:19 PM »

Deeno02--

I can only imagine how awful it was to have your wartime PTSD invalidated! I have some understanding of what PTSD is like from the standpoint of the complex ptsd I have from my childhood. I thought my uBPDh and I would understand each other because we came from difficult childhoods, but it turned out that he blamed my childhood trauma for his own frustration and raging because sometimes I was "in that place already." Hurtful to the extreme!

It took me time to come to the realization that everything was really about him, so it was about how he felt about my trauma or how he felt about my sadness at my sister dying, and not about how I felt about those things. It's such a different way of looking at things than most of us can understand, and it comes from their brokenness as a person. I'm trying (hard!) to look at my relationship from the standpoint of my uBPDh's brokenness, that it wasn't actually personal, they were just acting out of their own deeply held but faulty belief system.

I'd like him to have his own healing, just not with me! Laugh out loud (click to insert in post)

Those things have come with time--I think I've been grieving the loss of the relationship I thought I would have for at least 3 years even though I only left this past February... .And it still pisses me off from time to time when something comes up in my brain about what he disregarded about me. Or when I get a particularly mean text from him. And sometimes i'm just sad about the whole thing, and all the years I spent trying to do the impossible, which was have a reciprocal, loving relationship.

Blecch.
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Loveofhislife
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« Reply #73 on: December 06, 2014, 03:12:17 PM »

No.  Not love.  More like infatuation.  Sure, it's all they know but that rings very hollow.  Calling something that it's not just because of a disorder doesn't make whatever the hell I experienced for the last 6 years love.  What I felt (and perhaps what you all felt as well) is more closely represented by the way a child loves a new toy.  Some toys last longer than others but no one plays with the same toys forever.  Yes, we gave our partner great joy while we were their favorite toy.  We went everywhere together.  We snuggled up together at night.  They only played with us and shut out all the other toys.  They had never gotten a toy as special or as awesome as we were to them and they wanted to play with us all the time.  But they gave us attention and played with us only on their terms, only when they were in the mood. 

Then our paint starts to chip.  Our threads begin to unravel.  Our stuffing begins to fall out.  We aren't that same toy we were when they unwrapped us at Christmas.  They start to realize this and stop playing their favorite games with us.  Do they try to put us back together?  Do they help during our times of need when our threads start to unravel?  No.  But pretty soon, there's a new shiny package under the tree for them to unwrap and "love" all over again.  Then we are shelved, only to be revisited when they get bored or one of their new toys breaks.  Or we are donated and never seen or heard from again.  Hopefully the latter is where we end up so we go to someone that loves us just the way we are.

What they gave us was not love.  Those are not the characteristics of love.  Love is permanence.  Love is understanding.  Love is reciprocal.  Love does not need.  Love does not use.    Calling it love because they don't know any better doesn't mean that it's love.  It doesn't somehow make everything that's happened "o.k."   

Well said. Great explanation. So sad, but true.

Absolutely beautiful explanation, Billy Pilgrim. The question posed on this thread continues to haunt me. THANK GOODNESS, I never allowed "me" or my support network to be lost in my r/s with exbfBPD--and that was not for the lack of his trying. Ultimately, I believe that it was my toughness, coupled with my close friends and family, that made my exbfBPD move onto the next.  But ALL OF US believed he truly cared about me and loved me--it's why friends and family say they never brought their concerns about exbfBPD to my attention.  My daughters see it as he loved me the way a young child "loved" a parent.  In my case, I believe that's correct.  And it's extremely sad. :'(
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« Reply #74 on: December 06, 2014, 05:46:00 PM »

Great quotes from Oceanheart, very honest and revealing.

If the love is 'too hot', and yet not real, isn't the hate the same?

Makes me wonder, do pwBPD also see themselves as just an object?
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« Reply #75 on: December 06, 2014, 07:07:10 PM »

Staff only

This thread has reached it's post limit. The thread is a worthwhile topic. You are welcome with starting a new thread. Thank you.
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