It's Not Love , It's Addiction

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

I finally realized my relationship toward my BPD wife is addiction. I always called it love as probably most of you do, but it really wasn't. Addiction is an attachment to something unhealthy for us that we just can't give up. Like the way people struggle with quitting cigarettes or alcohol. And a major barrier to doing so is denial. I focused so much on my BPD wife's problems, I ignore my own reality - I am an addict. What was I addicted to: the idealization I needed to hear, the wild sex, and the drama of the splitting and involvement. I kept being knocked down but coming back for another "fix" of that good stuff. That good stuff was of course bad for my ego, bad for my sense of stability and bad for my own mental health.

Here is what love is: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

Is this what we get from a person with BPD? NO. NO. NO. We get impatience, unkindness, controlling behavior, temper tantrums, anger and rage, accusations of our supposed bad behavior, nasty name calling, jealousy, cheating, mocking, belittling, lies, threats, untrustworthiness and NO HOPE. It eventually always fails.

So when I discovered I was just a plain addict, I asked myself how to beat it. Stop being in denial, call it what it is, be willing to give it up cold turkey and go NC. It made it easier for me to let go once I realized it was not love but a harmful addiction. Real love can hurt - but not every week!

[RippedTorn]

I finally realized my relationship toward my BPD wife is addiction. I always called it love as probably most of you do, but it really wasn't. Addiction is an attachment to something unhealthy for us that we just can't give up. Like the way people struggle with quitting cigarettes or alcohol. And a major barrier to doing so is denial. I focused so much on my BPD wife's problems, I ignore my own reality - I am an addict. What was I addicted to: the idealization I needed to hear, the wild sex, and the drama of the splitting and involvement. I kept being knocked down but coming back for another "fix" of that good stuff. That good stuff was of course bad for my ego, bad for my sense of stability and bad for my own mental health.

Here is what love is: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

Is this what we get from a person with BPD? NO. NO. NO. We get impatience, unkindness, controlling behavior, temper tantrums, anger and rage, accusations of our supposed bad behavior, nasty name calling, jealousy, cheating, mocking, belittling, lies, threats, untrustworthiness and NO HOPE. It eventually always fails.

So when I discovered I was just a plain addict, I asked myself how to beat it. Stop being in denial, call it what it is, be willing to give it up cold turkey and go NC. It made it easier for me to let go once I realized it was not love but a harmful addiction. Real love can hurt - but not every week!

[helpinghimorme]

True, it is addiction and not love.  It is sad to think I stayed in a relationship for 11 years with someone who did not love me.  It hurts even more to know that I didn't realize that I didn't love him.

[I_am_Stacey]

Thank you... .Yes that is what it is: plain addiction. And the answers we hold ourselfs. Stay strong! I'm in withdrawl myself right now and it's hard as I see him every day (we work together). I know I have tot do it. I deserve more: real love not this crazy sh**.         

[Mutt]

Hi RippedTorn,

I don't like to put a label on love. I partly agree with your statement, I felt like I couldn't get off the habitual emotional rollercoaster, I didn't understand the dynamics.

I speak for myself when I say this, I didn't make a wise at the onset of the r/s, I knew that I was rushing into things too quickly and found that once that I found who my ex wife was, we didn't share the same values, we weren't suitable for each other.

I stayed in the r/s because I got her pregnant, out of obligation, the feelings that I had for her were genuine feelings of love, I feel like she loved me in her way but if I step back and look at the whole picture, I had / have a hard time with r/s's because of my FOO, I got hooked on the idealization because I have low self esteem. The break-up was really hard but the self reflection was worth it because she gave life long answers about myself and areas that I can work on for self improvement.

[RippedTorn]

Mutt
I am sure acting like it was lost love. But I think what I loved was an imaginary person - the good part of her which could only last about 5 days. She went into splitting mode at least once a week and over such silly triggers. Even when I tried to modulate those, she would find new ones. She even gave me a list and not doing those made no difference. So I have no regrets about leaving. It was shortening my life with the stress and strife. But to say that it was love would be to admit that love is no more than infatuation, sex and my fantasy dream about what this relationship should be. I tend to be attracted to loners who have very few or no friends. They will need me (my own problem). This is the second wife with BPD but I did not recognize it because I did not understand what was wrong with the first wife. It is not totally surprising that people with BPD have no close friends - they drive them away just as she did with me. I found a book where she had kept notes about her last husband. The explanations were identical - he was not there for her, she was last on the list, everybody was more important, she admitted wanting him to suffer and she detailed the anger tantrums. She said he hurt me so I want him to be uncomfortable and hurt. Is this a loving person? Can this be explained by mental illness or is this just an angry, nasty, self-centered individual. How can you maintain a loving relationship with someone with this attitude. Our marriage was no different. So I am not convinced it was love. And if that is love, heaven help us.

[Mutt]

Ok. I'll just use my ex as an example, she's not a benchmark for BPD. Everyone that suffers from illness is a different person, with different personality traits, varying severity, varying co-morbidity and the person is not defined by their mental illness, it's a part of them but not who they are. That being said.

If I step back and look at the whole picture, my ex wife had good qualities, bad qualities and qualities that were in between. She could be caring and she showed compassion, especially with helping others that were less fortunate. She wants to be close to people but due to a core criterion of the disorder, intimacy triggers her. She gets close to people and systematically pushes people that she loves away, self destructs and destroys her r/s's. It has to hurt to get close to many people and you end up destroying the r/s, it's dysfunctional. She splits the people that she cares about the most.

For me, I'm only speaking for myself, the cracks were starting show after the initial idealization phase ( where I was god like to her ) the initial image that she had in her head about how I was completely perfect, started to slowly shift, she was starting to see imperfections. There were many high and low's in the r/s, the highest and lowest that I've experienced anyways, thus shifted rapidly sometimes ir sometimes, the periods that were lowest seemed to hang around longer than the good periods. I'll give her credit, that not all of the experiences that we had were polarized, we had calmer periods too were she wasn't triggered.

I think the question to ask yourself is, did you expect her to be something or someone that she simply cannot be?

My ex wife is who she is, she has normal personality traits intertwined with abnormal ones, these neural pathways may of stemmed from her environment, trauma or maybe it was genetics, I was suspect that she comes from a line of borderline women in her family, I wanted her to be something that she cannot be because she suffers from social impairments. I felt very disappointed and angry, but I had to let go of ideal that in my mind and accept that she suffers from mental illness, I had to radically accept her for who she is, not what I wanted her to be.

[RippedTorn]

Mutt
I agree. We have to accept them for who they are and not what we want them to be. I note that you speak of her as your ex so one of you called it quits. In my case, I finally did but I would not have been surprised if she would have left or cheated eventually. She did that even with her first husband, the father of her children. You mention that she splits when she gets close. That was what I did not understand. When we were first dating, she had some periods where she would become mute and go into a shell. I began to understand that she was insecure. No problem I thought. I can prove I will be faithful and so made continuing commitments - dating only her, getting engaged then asking her to marry. The more commitment, the more splitting and the angrier she became. Instead of feeling reassured, she was more upset and increased the tantrums. Did she love me? I will never know. She had periods of caring and compassion mixed in with the abuse. But when I look at it from my vantage point I have to ask Why did I stay when the abuse started? Why did I hold onto her with increasing commitment? Why was I willing to keep coming back even after physically leaving? Nothing explains it except addiction. I was believing she would eventually stop. I was afraid to be alone. I convinced myself that I could not be happy without her. I had created a fantasy about our relationship and that was hard to give up. When I hit bottom, I finally accepted that what I thought was good for me was really bad. It was destroying me emotionally and physically. So I miss her but I do not miss the Eggshells, the verbal beatings, and the insanity. Just going to take time to put it behind me and really appreciate my freedom instead of feeling the loss.