Unconditional Love and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

[downwhim]

One way could be to love the other person unconditionally from a distance.  To have some sense that you'll always be there for him/her in spirit only. 

Tim, this is a good way to look at it and reconcile those disparate truths. Loving someone and hoping for the best for them doesn't mean that we have to be involved in a relationship with them.

In fact, in the case of a pwBPD whose deepest core fears have been triggered by us, it's actually kinder of us to detach from them. That's unconditional love in action. Not to mention the most important thing, that it's healthier for us -- which is our unconditional love towards ourselves.

You can still love someone and let them go, it's about loving yourself more.

This.  

[quote author=jhkbuzz link=topic=241047.msg12562407#msg125

'Boundaries are vital. Yes, relationships are conditional -- we expect and deserve to be treated with respect, understanding, and acceptance, and when that isn't present in a relationship, we have every right to end that r/s. But that doesn't turn off the love. It may last forever, it may fade to indifference in time.

Love is a feeling, a connection... .it exists outside our intellectualizing and control. That's a big part of why we enter into and stay in toxic relationships. A lot of people with BPD exes have a great capacity for empathy, compassion, understanding, and love. We can't expect that to just switch off even though the r/s ends. '

I set up a boundary that I would leave when he started his abusive raging. Doesn't mean I didn't love him.

[fromheeltoheal]

... .I've developed a greater love for myself out of necessity, and I only love the her I see under all the crap, the one she can't be sustainably, so letting her go while loving myself more sits well with me.  I guess I love who she could be except for the crap, and that makes it so there is no longing.

How did you manage THAT? The double-mindedness is what most of us struggle with - "I don't want this chaos and pain in my life any longer" and "I love the 'her' I see under all the crap" - it's a constant battle between those two opposing impulses.  How did you solve the dichotomy?

Time.  I haven't seen or heard from her in over two years, and I won't, she lives a long way from me.  So it's been a process, a painful growth spurt, but I've grown so much in the last two years that I consider the relationship a gift now, it takes what it takes.  And one of the pieces was to develop genuine compassion for her, her life is a living hell, and letting her go with love leaves me at peace.  Borderlines want what everyone wants, and she got it from and with me in the beginning, before the disorder started winning and we both lost.  We can say that the behaviors are a choice, but she hasn't taken the harder path of facing the disorder head on and dealing with it yet, I hope she does and can find some lasting peace at some point.  That doesn't make them ok and she doesn't get to be in my life anymore, but it's easy to see why she does what she does now, even when it hurts her.  And some say there is no difference between a borderline and their disorder, but I say there is, who she is is the person she was before the disorder started and the development stopped, the rest is just adaptation.

I remember vividly how I felt at two months, six months, a year after I left her, I was in the middle of it then and it was very painful, I was lost, and I'm sharing now not to say look how b___in' I am, but to maybe give someone hope that these places are available to us as we heal and grow, something to look forward to.

[downwhim]

Thanks for giving us all hope. Two years... .whew! Can't wait to look back on this as just an experience that I have grown from and I feel nothing. Indifference is my goal.

[Penumbra66]

After my ex left me for the replacement, she told me that she believes our love to be unconditional. Those words exactly. She told me that she thought I would understand that she needed to live her "young life". And actually, because of the age difference between us, I expected us to break up at some point. But I also trusted her, adored her, and expected her to be honest about her needs. We had talked often about the age difference, and I insisted that she follow her own life plans, which included graduate school, and maybe moving to California afterwords. I told her that I would still love and care about her, and that if she were still interested down the road, we could think about things long term. We seem to connect on a lot of different levels, and our relationship was mostly good for most of the year and a half we dated. But the lying, cheating, the abandonment, the unbelievably cruel things she said to me before and after the break up were such a shock to me that even six months later I'm still struggling to figure out what the he11 happened. She was also an addict that had relapsed when she started hanging out with my replacement. I couldn't even imagine a relationship going downhill so quickly.

So I suppose in her mind, unconditional love is basically meant that she could do whatever she wanted, lie, cheat, become emotionally abusive before and after dumping me. She told me that she had never mentioned it before, but she considered me a father figure, which I suppose I was, as neither of her parents were really involved in her life. But who could accept that type of treatment? In her words: "a father would."

I would agree with others that unconditional love is not possible in a romantic relationship. How anyone could believe that horrible behavior needs to be accepted as part of "unconditional love" strikes me as absolutely insane. I fell so far down the rabbit hole in the last weeks of our relationship that I'm not sure if I'll ever get out. At least not completely. Her ideas, and the things that she said became increasingly crazy. Drugs? BPD? Both, probably.

[Infared]

This is an interesting discussion. My therapist keeps telling me that I love my ex unconditionally. He says thats a good thing. I keep saying well I must not because I refused to be in that situation anymore. The therapist replied that I love him unconditionally but that doesn't mean I allow him to treat me poorly without consequence. I am trying to wrap my head around that idea. I do love my ex still. I do not accept his abuse. I never did. I called him on it regularly. That is one of the big reasons he would dysregulate, being called on his actions/choices. I guess I love him unconditionally but don't like his choices so I choose not to live with them. This concept makes my head ache. 

I love my FOO but I am distanced from them because their choices are hurtful to me. IT makes me sad that we don't have a better relationship but I accept that they are unable to see the harm they do so I have to protect myself. Maybe its the same with our SOs.

I am with you... .this confuses me and makes my head hurt, too.

It seems like mental manipulation so that no matter what anyone does we can just twist it all around and make it all turn out that I do unconditionally love that person no matter what choices I make?

Perhaps my mind is too small.

[BorisAcusio]

So do I with mine, but I've developed a greater love for myself out of necessity, and I only love the her I see under all the crap, the one she can't be sustainably, so letting her go while loving myself more sits well with me.  I guess I love who she could be except for the crap, and that makes it so there is no longing.

About potential:

This way, she can have all of you hold out hope that she's "getting better."  After all, she has obvious potential and everyone recognizes the potential. It is what binds everyone together in some sort of common purpose; in order to help her realize her potential. She uses this potential as a lure. This way she keeps her rewarding objects close while fending off the bad she feels (oh yes, she cast off her bad onto you like a net- and you're wearing it still) while she's still stealthily searching for new objects.

[antelope]

hmmmm... .

but here's the interesting, dare I say existential, question behind all of this:  who are they?  

it is once we REALLY found out who they REALLY are that we realized we had to leave!

we fell in love with the façade, the disguise, the 'potential' as some label it... .so technically, we fell in love with someone who doesn't exist... .yet or never will.

once we ripped the 'mask' off and discovered the truth of who they are, we realized that we could no longer maintain a relationship with the real them

I think that is the moment of true, permanent psychological detachment from a BPD relationship: fully realizing and accepting that the person you were with was essentially a stranger... .and what kind of concrete good or bad opinion can you really have for a stranger?

[Deeno02]

Ours wasnt anything. It wasnt reciprical and it wasnt love fully, completely. I thought I was all in, her, not so much. It is what it is and I will never get put in that position again... ever

[Infared]

hmmmm... .

but here's the interesting, dare I say existential, question behind all of this:  who are they?  

it is once we REALLY found out who they REALLY are that we realized we had to leave!

we fell in love with the façade, the disguise, the 'potential' as some label it... .so technically, we fell in love with someone who doesn't exist... .yet or never will.

once we ripped the 'mask' off and discovered the truth of who they are, we realized that we could no longer maintain a relationship with the real them

I think that is the moment of true, permanent psychological detachment from a BPD relationship: fully realizing and accepting that the person you were with was essentially a stranger... .and what kind of concrete good or bad opinion can you really have for a stranger?

Yes... .it's about brutal honesty about the other person, (very painful popping our fantasy!)

It's about acceptance of that reality.

... .AND (the hard part)... .being brutally honest with ourselves as to why we accepted and "jumped in" with that fake other... .when, for most of us, there were plenty of    'S that we chose to ignore.

I am with a lot of the commenters on the page: Unconditional love, if it is possible at all, exists with many parent and child relationships.

[fromheeltoheal]

So do I with mine, but I've developed a greater love for myself out of necessity, and I only love the her I see under all the crap, the one she can't be sustainably, so letting her go while loving myself more sits well with me.  I guess I love who she could be except for the crap, and that makes it so there is no longing.

About potential:

This way, she can have all of you hold out hope that she's "getting better."  After all, she has obvious potential and everyone recognizes the potential. It is what binds everyone together in some sort of common purpose; in order to help her realize her potential. She uses this potential as a lure. This way she keeps her rewarding objects close while fending off the bad she feels (oh yes, she cast off her bad onto you like a net- and you're wearing it still) while she's still stealthily searching for new objects.

Yes, and did you really buy that Boris?  My ex wasn't very good at manipulation, it became very transparent and she wasn't playing a 'poor me, help me' game, she was convinced all was swell and she was the queen.  The dealbreaker for me was her need to try and pull all the crap, when dropping it and being who she 'is' would have been more than enough.  And how much of that her was a her I projected on her and how much of it was real?  Some of both, probably.

[Tim300]

I think that is the moment of true, permanent psychological detachment from a BPD relationship: fully realizing and accepting that the person you were with was essentially a stranger... .and what kind of concrete good or bad opinion can you really have for a stranger?

Brilliant.  This is so true.