"You know it's love when all u want is that person to be happy even if u are not part of it."
I've been there, haven't You?? The burden of an emotionally impaired partner is so frustrating, draining and heartbreaking, you get to the point where because of your level of care for them, you're willing to sacrifice getting Your needs met over Theirs.
This seems altruistic, does it not? I mean, how else can we think about this stance, as anything other than extraordinarily generous on our part?? Well, in my humble view, it's the inevitable default many resort to, when involved with someone who has BPD.
Once you accept the very real fact that a Borderline has NEVER been happy and has no capacity to accommodate feelings of happiness, maybe you can finally let yourself off the hook for not having been able to help em achieve it.
When we desperately love a Borderline, we feel deeply invested in seeing them joyful, because their nearly constant dissatisfaction, depression and utter joylessness is a wet blanket that robs US of any degree of lightness and enjoyment we might experience in our day to day. We so very much want to SHARE our pleasure with him or her, but it's impossible.
When we at long last come to a place of acceptance about our inability to alter their mood and outlook, we must also accept that We have failed to "fix" that unfixable situation, but we hold out hope for them, that SOMEBODY, SOMEDAY, can!
The fixer, rescuer, caregiver personality typically grew up with a mother who was incapable of being responsive to their emotional needs for closeness, warmth, affection and positive mirroring. Often, she was a Borderline Waif who was always dissatisfied and depressed.
A child of a mother like this will do virtually ANYTHING to share with her his own enthusiasm and lightness (all natural children are joyful, until they've had to surrender their inner light), and when he can't alter her mood, he feels frustration and despair. IF he can succeed in making her smile, it's a magnificent victory for him. One, because he can finally feel like he matters to her and she's happy with HIM (having been born)~ and two, because he can finally derive some sense of worth!
This child adopts the ideation that HE is in charge of another's happiness. It's up to HIM to fix what's broken in another, if he experienced even a modicum of success in this regard, with a mother who was severely impaired.
This kid's childhood was effectively derailed by having to be Mother's therapist, comforting maternal object and surrogate husband, and her needs always superseded his. Thru this, he learned to put his own needs, desires and feelings aside, to be perfectly responsive to someone else's. Thus, the stage was set for his unending attraction to women (or men) with Borderline Personality Disorder (Waif) traits, because they reinforce his rescuing compulsions and re-cement his identity as someone mighty enough to fix whatever's broken.
My book, DO YOU LOVE TO BE NEEDED, OR NEED TO BE LOVED? was written for psychotherapists who grew up with sad, discontent and dissatisfied mothers~ and trust me, nearly all of em DID.