It's not them. It's our wrong conception of love.

[goateeki]

Background: Diagnosed ex wife with a horrible childhood and early adulthood that involved maternal abandonment, rape and abortion; I ended a 19 year marriage, and we have two children, a boy age 8 and a girl 11.  About two years out. Involved with a woman who is older than me, and it could not be easier or happier. We do not surf the edges in this relationship, either. We talk about what's real and important and we help and support each other.

Even now, though, I can remember what the early years of our relationship were like. I can hear a song and I am back in 1995 with a young woman who was at times pleasant and seemed to care for me. I know that I treated her like gold.  I can remember how happy I was, and how I looked forward to the children we would one day have and how we would all be together in our home. Very little of this developed into reality.   

On this site we spend a lot of time focused on the pwBPD and what's going on inside them, etc.  We try to understand it as if we will reach some kind of realization that would make everything right. 

It's never going to be right, though, because we nons have made a very basic mistake (and this isn't about faulting anyone).  We've made a mistake about what love is.  I think that we believe that because we are, or were, in a relationship that invited us to act lovingly that what we were involved in was a loving relationship.  We were not.

The difference in the quality of my present relationship (we've been together for a year) is so great that I've almost felt pushed to reexamine my life. I have felt that I could not reconcile what I believed was love with what I now experience each day in my present relationship.  There is something a little disturbing in this. I remember being utterly happy with my life with my wife (now ex wife) for a period of time when the realities of her behavior should not have elicited that feeling in me.   

I'm also reconciled to the fact that there is a part of me that might always feel something like love for her, but I wonder if this is something imprinted on me the way combat flashbacks are imprinted on some Vietnam vets.  To me, this feels like love, but couldn't be love because it's not based on a reality that would elicit a feeling of love in a healthy person.

To clarify -- I was dating her when another of several personal tragedies befell her.  I wonder if relationships that begin on those circumstances are different from others.   

[hashtag_loyal]

Yes. For my dBPDxgf, "love" really meant "need", but for me, "love" just meant "pity". Not very healthy at all.

Very good points.

[goateeki]

Yes. For my dBPDxgf, "love" really meant "need", but for me, "love" just meant "pity". Not very healthy at all.

Need plus pity. The yin and yang of it.  I wonder why it took so long for us to realize this.

[C.Stein]

Yes. For my dBPDxgf, "love" really meant "need"

I would say for my ex "love" meant filling her needs ... the more completely I filled them the more she loved me.  This would explain how easy it was for her to "move on" like I never existed, she was never really in love with me.

I do feel I was in love with my ex, but was I in a loving relationship?  At times I would have to say yes, but at times NO!  Given we never lived together and our time together was rather restricted it is really hard to say what could have developed, be it good or bad.  If I am honest with myself it might have gone both ways, but I am more inclined to believe that if I didn't serve on her hand and foot it would have been more bad than good.

[hashtag_loyal]

she was never really in love with me.

Yes, that's one way to look at it. Or... .You could say that she loved you in the only way she was capable of.

I admit I don't know you or your relationship with your ex. Your perspective is undoubtedly shaped by your own experiences. But for my ex, while I fault her for the lying and cheating, I choose not to fault her for being unable to fully understand that which was missing from her entire life.

[C.Stein]

she was never really in love with me.

Yes, that's one way to look at it. Or... .You could say that she loved you in the only way she was capable of.

I have no doubt she loved me in her own way, we did share a very deep emotional bond at one point. That said I think it was more about loving the idea of me, she was never IN love with ME as a person.  I think I played a role and my role was to help her feel better about herself and to fill the emptiness inside her.  When I stopped acting my part she found a new actor that would.

[beachtalks]

Thank you for sharing these beautiful insights.  I can tell you are very happy in your new relationship by the love you have towards everything, including going back and nurturing your old self that was eventually so hurt, and I appreciate this 

I think it's a beautiful thing!

I do think, however, that you were wise when you mentioned the inclination for people leaving these BPD relationships to look back at one point and have this "aha!" moment which enables them to let go and move on.  And I don't  think this is all together realistic.  Pascal once said "The heart has its own reasons of which reason knows nothing."  I love this! I love this because love is about giving more than receiving, and you never know what's going to really pull at your strings.  Love is not a formula to be figured out.  It's perhaps the greatest mystery of life, apart from death.  I hope nobody ever feels that someone didn't deserve their love.  If we were all in good heart-shape, we would be able to show love to anyone.  We should never punish or blame ourselves for loving another person. 

[Learning_curve74]

Everybody seems to have their own definitions of love and expresses it in different ways. Personally, I still love my ex gf, but there is no way we'll get back together in a romantic relationship! I realized after we broke up the last time that she was NEVER a suitable choice as my life partner.

As I said, I still care deeply for her and love her. That doesn't mean we have to have a relationship of any kind. Some people you just have to love from a distance.

[oceanblue]

There are many different forms of love.  I deeply love my children, I can say I have a handful of friends I love, members of my family.  In each of these relationships though, I have different expectations on being loved back.  For example, I don't expect my children to love me back in a way that is adult - I expect them to love me as children.

I loved my BPD ex.  Although I think as time went on I dropped my expectations on him showing me love back.  There were times he was very loving.  There were times, sometimes a few months, of what I would call normalcy but they were always interrupted by days and months of dysregulation.  In the end I think we had a mother/child or caretaker/patient relationship where I loved him and I do think he loved me back in his own way but, like a child, he wasn't mature enough to express love in a mature way.

I don't think there is anything wrong with you loving someone who is basically disabled as long as you realize you can't get your needs met in that type of situation.  I think it actually means you have a loving and kind heart and are a very giving, generous and kind individual.

What we nons sometimes miss is that we have needs and, like everyone else, our needs should be met too.  That doesn't happen reliably in a BPD relationship.

So, I would say I have tremendous capacity to love but I am still learning how to receive love back.  In some ways, the gift of the BPD relationship is that I learned what I can change about myself that can help me make better choices in a partner.

[hopealways]

Also for my BPDx love meant me fulfilling her needs. But it never lasted that long.