Honestly, I just don't get it. Well, I DO, but I'm still stymied by people who stay with someone who doesn't meet their needs.
Okay, a lotta people (far to many, in fact) haven't learned how to have a nourishing, friendly, supportive relationship bond with Themselves, so they'll hang on for dear life, to somebody who distracts em from their self-abuse (the critical, shaming, blaming thought patterns too many indulge in, when they have a little time on their hands).
This type of interaction with The Self makes these people feel DESPERATE for someone to change their mind about themselves. "Please, oh please LOVE me," is their endless. pitiful mantra~ and yet the way they speak to and treat themselves, has nothing whatsoever to do with feeling DESERVING OR WORTHY of being loved!
Incidentally, this is WHY people with BPD traits push you away, the better you love em! No matter what they tell you about how marvelous they are or what they THINK they deserve, the minute you're all-in with a Borderline, they've gotta drop you on your head. It simply doesn't MATCH their negative self-view, and they think you're stupid or crazy, for feeling that deeply about em.
It seems odd that so many people wring their hands and tear their hair out, just to get the love they NEED from someone incapable of giving it.
Ah, but there's a basis to this rather insane behavior.
If you could not get the kind of mirroring, warmth, responsiveness and adoration you needed as an infant and thereafter, you grew up with a deep sense of longing to have the love you felt for Mother, reciprocated. You accepted this painful inner yearning, as what "love" was supposed to feel like, so if someone you meet in adulthood doesn't trigger this familiar archaic pain in you, ya can't recognize it as "true love."
You've seen me write ad-nauseum about this stuff, and if you've read my BOOK, these concepts should have integrated by now~ but if they haven't, if you're still needing the instability of a bond with someone incapable of loving you (or anyone), because that's what feels exciting and invigorating to ya, I feel sorry for you.
Why? Because beyond a shadow of a doubt, it means you cannot accept genuine love or good treatment from anyone (even your therapist), and you're doomed to circle the drain on this issue indefinitely, while bitching and moaning about not being able to find "a healthy relationship."
The upshot?? You don't HAVE one, because you can't HANDLE one.