I always only ever experience indifference or obsession and extreme and infantile idealization/adoration.

I can read about BPD and personality disorders all I want, go to therapy for years, learn BDT to regulate my emotions and and practice radical acceptance, etc. but the one thing I’m beginning to suspect I will never be able to do learn how to truly love, at least not mature, healthy love. I *know* that I’m idealizing and projecting all of these infantile longings and fantasies onto someone, that they aren’t as absolutely perfect as they seem to be, that I’m not seeing or loving the “real” them, but I feel like I just can’t see them as they are or take them off the pedestal no matter how much I want to. I can change my behavior and my actions and I can regulate my emotions, but no amount of insight or therapy can stop the defenses. They are so ingrained. There is nothing beneath them. It’s hard to explain to someone without a personality disorder. 

If I’m being honest, I am pretty sure that I won’t ever really be able to love anyone, at least not in the mature, healthy adult way that everyone holds up as the gold standard and really the only acceptable way to love and be in a relationship. I can’t seem to get past toddlerhood mentally. I don’t know why but I think I just have to accept it. I would do anything to be able to love, normally, but I think it’s time to just focus on other things rather than romantic love or to only date other personality disordered people (and of course never have children).