Is BPD love only "skin deep"

[Depression = 72% of members]

I am divorcing my uBPD wife.

We were married 2.5 years and don't have any children together (or otherwise)

I was having dinner with my friend and his wife.

His wife has suffered my ex wives BPD rage first hand.

His wife is also a clinical Psychiatrist with 25 years experience.

In trying to help me get out of the "FOG", the psychiatrist offered me this.

"It's not like she didn't love you, I'm not saying that. It's just that people like her, they're love is only skin deep"

I understand what she meant.

She was trying to not hurt my feelings (which she didn't) and offer perspective.

She was talking about the way BPD's "move on" so easily after a breakup.

Does anyone else see this? This ease of the BPD to move on?

Would you agree with the "skin deep" comment?

[cehlers55]

I am divorcing my uBPD wife.

We were married 2.5 years and don't have any children together (or otherwise)

I was having dinner with my friend and his wife.

His wife has suffered my ex wives BPD rage first hand.

His wife is also a clinical Psychiatrist with 25 years experience.

In trying to help me get out of the "FOG", the psychiatrist offered me this.

"It's not like she didn't love you, I'm not saying that. It's just that people like her, they're love is only skin deep"

I understand what she meant.

She was trying to not hurt my feelings (which she didn't) and offer perspective.

She was talking about the way BPD's "move on" so easily after a breakup.

Does anyone else see this? This ease of the BPD to move on?

Would you agree with the "skin deep" comment?

[Blimblam]

I struggled for a while with the "if she loved me then." Questions and to be honest I found framing it that way to be besides the point.

Once I reframed it as attachment within the context of patterns people are stuck in and the 5 w?'s my state of mental health improved dramatically. 

But to answer your question I don't think BPD love is skin deep. I do think BPD love is more akin to infatuation and is in many ways stuck at varying degrees of arrested development.

The love has a lot of qualities of how an infant loves their parent, how a team age girl loves her crush, and how a parent loves their child.  What is lacking is how am adult loves an adult. 

[icom]

Regarding love, I think that it’s important to recast that concept into adult terms: an involuntary interpersonal state that results from a sexually-induced motivation, and contingent on the perceived emotional reciprocation of the object of interest. 

BPD relationships are analogous to an alcoholic and his bottle. 

Whether you are a bottle of 2009 La Tache Grand Cru, or a bottle of red cooking plonk, they view the contents and pedigree indifferently; they are pursuing the intoxicant.

BPD in a nutshell:

What does an alcoholic do once the bottle runs dry?  What happens to the empty bottle?     

[mitchell16]

icom, very good point! i used to question wether mine reallyy loved me but as time went one I relized she had no concept of how to really love somone. It came to me once when she wrote me a letter. we ahd been discussing getting married and since we live in seperate states and Im getting clsoe to retirment. I told her I sell me home, retire and pay her hosue off and we would live in her home and I would support her and her career since I had my career finishing up and her was just getting started. after one of our breaks ups she wrote me a letter and In it she said why would I want to do that for her. It hit me like a ton of bricks. The answer was very simple for me, Cause I loved her. But to her she could never support anyone that away cause she has no real concept of love.

[OnceConfused]

The verb LOVE has so many meanings and over used in our vocabulary.

The best description of love that I have read is from "The five love languages" by gary chapman.

The first is the FALLING IN LOVE, where you feel the butterfly in your stomach, the strong desire to be with the other party. This often lasts about 2 years. we could call this LUST, the excitement of something new.  Everything is rosy, and our love is invincible. This is more about the I.

After this initial falling in love phase, if the r.s is to be lasting then we must have the EMOTIONAL LOVE as this is more about the YOU. The emotional love is all about the other person. How we can make the other person happy , via using their love languages , not ours. ALso to sustain this emotional love for life, each party must have 7 several characteristics or traits of love–kindness, patience, forgiveness, courtesy, humility, generosity, and honesty (Love as a way of life, by G Chapman).

Back to your question, I think BPD love is very much stuck in the FALLING IN LOVE stage or skin deep. Everything is about BPD. BPD cannot get beyond the I and into the YOU. That is why they cannot sustain a long lasting loving relationship.