Love

Can you learn love?

What I mean is that I never loved anyone, not even as a child.

I copied the way my brother behaved and I thought this would make me be loved and also make me love other people but I just never felt it.

I don't even know if I'm missing out on it or not.

Never at all? Not even once?

I would say I fell in love once. It was a bit over the top but the love died at one point. Our relationship was short-lived but quite intense. Looking back she was probably BDP or something along those lines.

Why do you wish to learn it Miss Manners?

Well that's a good question.

It's probably too late for me to learn it now because I'm used to getting along without it but I think that if I'd have felt it for my family when I was younger then things might have been easier.

Like my brother for instance; he was bay abused by his mother but he loved her still and you could tell he did so he stuck around but I wasn't physically abused half as bad and I felt no love so it was easy for me to walk away and not look back.

I don't know. Its swings and roundabouts I suppose.

I believe I’ve loved certain people that I am close to, it just never lasts long term in romantic relationships and I tend to want to be left alone more than the desire to be in an intimate relationship although I can’t help the feeling that I am missing out on a lot that people in relationships seem to take for granted. I want it then when I get it I don’t want it. Then I don’t have it and I want it again. -Play That on a loop-

Edit: I believe atleast in my case that the empty feeling or hollow feeling that many describe is loneliness or lack of connection that is basically essential to human mental health.

Yeah I get what you're saying. I can't have success in a romantic relationship because I only like the sex whilst it's new and then I get bored of the actual person. I have no feelings for them apart from what they may give me. In the past it been for a place to stay or money, alcohol, drugs etc. Once that supply dries up then there's nothing left for me and I'm not in a position to give anything back. Not because I'm selfish but just because I've got nothing to give back on an emotional level.

I can't honestly say that I feel empty though. I've heard people talk of this emptiness and I just can't relate to that either.

Do you think it could be an underlying fear of rejection? Like once you think a connection might be happening you sub-consciously reject them so they never get the chance to reject you?

It could be. If it is it goes way back to something that I can't even remember.

Manners73 wrote:Can you learn love?

What I mean is that I never loved anyone, not even as a child.

I copied the way my brother behaved and I thought this would make me be loved and also make me love other people but I just never felt it.

Thats a cool but complicated question. I think that love has a few requirements pwPD dont usually meet. One of them is being anchored in the depressive position, aka realizing the other person is actually seperate from you and realizing their actually a person, not [idealized] fragments or split halves. In addition I think it requires a pretty stable sense of self and internal world. Another is - i think - that you need to have somehow incorporated love as a schema or as a function, especially for yourself; and that it - if it does - naturally develops in line with other developments inside of you, like the aforementioned cognitive abilities.
In my own experience I realized realtively early actually that what I called love was a mixture out of idealizing, projecting parts of myself and unmet needs onto others. I cant say if this is repairable, but if it is then learning to love - just like learning to feel I suppose - cant be the first goal, as theres a lot of groundwork to be prepared beforehand.

I don't even know if I'm missing out on it or not.

Pretty normal if youve never experienced it. But even figuring out if its worth the hassle might require a internal stability that isnt present. Like with the therapist really, one day you say you want somebody to talk to, then you say you dont. Stabilizing that is hard and I think the reason why so few people on here over the years have actually tried it lies in the same problem, namely being unable to imagine what they would be working towards - and keep that image fixed.

Akuma wrote:Thats a cool but complicated question. I think that love has a few requirements pwPD dont usually meet. One of them is being anchored in the depressive position, aka realizing the other person is actually seperate from you and realizing their actually a person, not [idealized] fragments or split halves. In addition I think it requires a pretty stable sense of self and internal world.

I’ve read this dynamic and I’m trying to completely understand it. Do you think the person with the PD is aware of this dynamic, do they actually see the other person as an extension of themselves and idealized parts of themselves or is it more of an unconscious thing similar to projecting where you may hate another person for showing the same traits that you actually hate in yourself but are unaware that is why you don’t like them?