Being Available versus Playing a Game III

Kathy referenced this post in the comments. I’ve posted it twice before and each time it generated A LOT of conversation. So here it is again:

The original post: Being Available Versus Playing A Game (comments on this post are closed but feel free to comment on it here).

And the follow-up post is here:

The purpose of that post was not to address every situation but just the idea of building your own life, especially if you are a woman because women tend to give up more of their lives than men do. Of course I heard from a lot of men who have given up their own lives for a women. And women who were unavailable to find that their man didn’t really care if they were around or not.

First of all, keep the responses coming and secondly, here are a few after thoughts to that post:

1. Whether you are a man or a woman, gay or straight, young or old, you should not give everything up for someone else. Not good. Not healthy. You should have your own friends, your own interests and your own “me” time. The pursuer/pursued happens in most relationships to differing degrees and the man is not always the pursued. Sometimes the woman is the pursued and the man is suffocating or controlling. And it happens in same sex relationships so it’s certainly not a man/woman thing. No matter who you are or what your relationship configuration is, you should HAVE YOUR OWN LIFE!!!

7/3 Checkin

The last checkin is up to almost 200 comments so I’m starting a new one. As always, if you had posted in the last one and it wasn’t answered, feel free to post here.

Remember, the reply button is your friend. :)

It’s July 4th weekend: Happy birthday America!

How is everyone doing????

Guilt as we know it

I wrote this post 2 years ago and lately I’m hearing a lot about guilt. I don’t post about guilt as often as I should because it’s such a corrosive emotion. When we act out of guilt, we can do it in a healthy ways (as in make amends for something we did that we didn’t mean to do) or an unhealthy way (staying in a bad relationship because of your missteps).

---

Guilt is a freezing emotion and if it takes over your life, your emotional cells simply freeze to death. ~ Abigail Trafford

I had issues starting my relationship with my first husband. We had been friends, good friends. I was coming out of a horribly abusive relationship. I was young. I hadn’t been with anyone else.

But he was there and he wanted me. He wanted us to ride off into the sunset together. Our relationship had a bit of a puppy love quality to it. It seemed innocent while my previous relationship had been an unending horror show.

Keeping Your Street Clean

GPYP is about self-responsibility and keeping your side of the street clean. It’s about spending your time working on YOU and putting the focus on you. It’s not about game playing or one-upmanship. And No-Contact is no contact. If you follow an ex to an internet forum, especially this one, you are being disrespectful to your ex and disrespectful to the forum.

If you’re posting passive-aggressive messages with enough identifying information for your ex to know it’s you, it’s not fair. Stop it.

Facebook follies again

This is a great article that one of our erstwhile readers sent me. PLEASE do not let FB import your contacts etc. It can lead to very bad things. Heed the privacy controls. And hey, let’s be careful out there. (h/t HSBs)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31684082/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets

Intro/Recent Breakup (or not)

We have a lot of new readers. Please feel free to introduce yourself, talk about your breakup in this thread. If you’re a long-timer please feel free to share with the new folks! I’m sure that people fresh off a breakup want to know it gets better!

Use this thread to introduce yourself, talk about your breakup, talk about struggles or re-introduce yourself (if you’ve been here a long time). And let’s welcome each other. That’s what we’re here for! Let everyone know if you’re new or you’ve been here or you’re back or what…let’s get to know each other.

(and you long-timers who now only email me know who you are…roll out that welcome mat!!!) :)

On Wanting More

I thought I would re-run this as a follow-up to the red flags post. Take care of yourself everyone!

How can we tell someone to stop hurting us if we’re not sure it hurts? How can we identify it as inappropriate if that’s all we’ve ever lived with? To us, it’s normal. How can we know what we want if nobody ever told us it’s okay to want something? – Melody Beattie

When we suggest observation through journaling and listening to our own thought processes, it is to begin the long journey home to oneself. It is to get in touch with a self that may have been ignored, abused or inconsequential to people to whom we should have mattered.

Rope Burns

Rope Burns is unavailable right now. I’m rethinking public updates about Michael due to some disturbing emails I’ve received. If I put it back on-line I will let everyone know. I might go to a member only blog with it but you can only have about 35 people as members so I might just allow access to those who have been so kind as to visit and comment. Will update this when I make a decision about it.

UPDATE: Rope Burns is off-line right now and I haven’t made it subscription yet. I received an email from Beth and hit delete instead of reply…Beth, please email me. thanks.

Someone from Canada sent me a ribbon in U.S. mail to give to Michael and I can’t read the return address. Could you email me please? I want to let you know I’ve given it to him and read him your letter. Thank you all.

Red Flags. What did you miss?

I’ve read a bunch of comments such as “I ignored the fact that”

…she had a history of suicide attempts

…he had no friends

…she just got out of a 7 year relationship with an abusive alcoholic.

…he never called when he said he would.

…we slept together right away and moved in a few weeks later.

etc etc etc.

What did you miss?

On Stepping Out of the Dance

I haven’t posted this story in a while. I tell it almost every time I am asked to speak somewhere (and ALWAYS if it’s a women’s group) and tell it in a lot of seminars but it was too long for the book (I really wanted it in the book), and I haven’t told it on the blog in a while. Hope you get something out of it.

---

When my ex and I first separated, he would take the kids for “visitation” and go to his grandmother’s and call me up. Although he was supposed to be visiting with the children, he would call me almost the minute he got them back to his grandmother’s house.

He would tell me everything that was wrong with me and how horrible a wife and mother I was…how he abused me and cheated on me because it was my fault, I was so wretched. If I tried to argue or hangup he would tell me that if I did, I would never see the kids again.

More on Choices of Partners

We’ve been talking about who we choose and how we choose when we choose. We’ve talked of “broken choosers” and how we continue to pick the same person, a wolf in bananahead clothing, over and over again. And we’ve wondered HOW OR WHY OR WHAT is wrong and how do I fix it.

Book(s)

For those of you new to the site, I have a new site “Should I Leave?” which we’re talking about issues that keep you in bad relationships when you want to leave. Even if you’ve left, please feel free to check in there and leave feedback on what kept you stuck for a long time.

GPYP and Twitter

I’m on twitter as susangpyp.

If you tweet 140 character question on relationships/breakups, I’ll tweet 140 character answer. tag is #gpyp

(if you’re new to Twitter, put the question and add #gpyp at the end so I can find…thanks!!)

Attraction and Water Seeks Its Own Level

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – Carl Jung

It is a spiritual principal that we will continue to encounter others who will embody the opportunity for us to learn our most pressing lesson. When we learn to overcome the problem in ourselves, our ‘teachers’ fade away. – Robin Norwood

Recently, some of our posters are either dabbling with new bananaheads or ex-bananaheads and taking on all the issues as their own problem…what is wrong with THEM and how the bananahead might be “right” or “okay.” It doesn’t work that way. A dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship requires TWO unhealthy people, perhaps differing levels of unhealthy but no relationship ending is one person’s fault. If you’re convinced its you and “if only” you change, things will be okay, that is another form of denial and control.

You THINK you can control the outcome because the ball is totally in your court. You can’t and it’s not. To say “It’s all me, it’s been all me and if only I change, things will be okay…” might sound like martyrdom and it is to some degree, but it’s also denial and control. In other words, you’re believing your own bs in an attempt to control the relationship and the future. You think you have power you don’t have. It’s just another form of self-dishonesty. It’s another excuse for not letting go that which needs to be let go.

Newsflash: ITS NOT GOING TO WORK.

I have said, over and over again that the key truth to relationships is that water seeks its own level. If we want to know what is missing in us, what is lacking in us, what unfinished business we have, what our inner struggles are, we need not look further than the person we are involved with.

6/27 Checkin

If you had posted in the last one and it wasn’t answered, feel free to post here.

How is everyone doing????

GPYP Guide to Self-Confidence

GPYP’s Short and Sweet Guide to Self-confidence:

I ran this post about 2 weeks after I started the blog and the “long version” is in the book, but I thought I’d repost the Cliff Notes ™ version here today.

Infidelity (sigh) Again

I haven’t been in the blog business ALL THAT LONG yet I’ve run this post on infidelity whenever a high profile person cheats. In other words: A LOT!

Here’s the Should I Leave post for anyone still there (or who wants to share why they stayed) and for everyone else, here’s the rerun we call the Sanford edition:

---

I’ve written a few posts on infidelity in the past, most recently when Eliot Spitzer resigned as governor of New York (where I live).

When Gov. Spitzer did his thing, the infidelity experts were out in full force. They are all out again regarding John Edwards waxing not so eloquently on the “PROBLEM.” Saying fairly stupid things minute after minute. And there is a bit of discussion on one of the blog posts about it as well.

I cannot believe the statistics that a large portion of married people are cheating. I find that difficult to believe. Back in March, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, said that if a husband strays the wife is not doing something right, is not doing “her part.” She said, “I would challenge the wife to find out what kind of wife she’s being,” she said. “Is she being supportive and approving and loving? Is she being sexually intimate and affectionate? Is she making him feel like he’s her man? If she’s not doing that, then she’s contributing to his wrong choice.” Do you hear that Elizabeth Edwards? Are you busy tending to your cancer and your children? Well, THAT’S why Johnny strayed. Simple.

WRONG. This is blaming someone else for your behavior. It also leaves open the question of “enough”….she could think she is being all those things but a cheater will rationalize it’s not “enough” for him. Making statements like this just gives cheaters excuses. And there is NO excuse for cheating. Male or female. No excuse for cheating.

Mail. We Get Mail on Red Flags

I actually get a lot of email about this now that a lot of GPYP readers are in subsequent relationships(subsequent meaning the ones after the bananahead that brought you to GPYP). I just received this today but it sounds like so many other notes I’ve received and have contemplated doing a base post about. The others were longer and full of more details so I picked this one because it’s short and sweet but feel free to post your post-bananahead relationship trials and tribulations here. Chime right in.

Dear Susan:

I have just been dumped by someone who I had a brief but quite intense relationship with. I have been working on myself for a long time and following the GPYP site for about 18 months and I thought that I had stopped attracting the wrong men. I thought this guy was fantastic and was finding the relationship really easy and was totally blindsided when he dumped me saying he did not think we had a long term future (by email, having disappeared on me for 2 days after our first minor emotional disagreement). However, now looking back there were some red flags that I missed including being very available (6 texts at a time) and then subtly withdrawing by changing arrangements at the last minute.

NC Chips, Successes, Issues, Problems. SHARE!

It’s that time of the month again! NC is truly the key to moving on. It’s a big, important topic which is why it’s the first chapter in the book.

But long before the book came out we gave NC chips for staying NC for various lengths of time (as they do in 12-step programs). We also talk about issues and struggles for those not NC a long time. We have 24 hour chips which means for this 24 hours you will commit to NC!
Come get your chips!!!

NC Chips

24 hours: white
30 days: yellow
60 days: green
90 days: blue
6 months: purple
9 months: red
1 year or more: GOLD

Pick up your chip! Tell us what chip you get and how you did it. Share your NC power of example! Talk about how long you’ve been NC and what it’s been like for you.

I would also suggest, in the way of being good to you, to BUY yourself an actual chip, a real chip and keep it on your dresser/bureau or some other prominent place as a reminder of how WELL you are doing. Standard poker chips are fine but the gold ones can be a nice round gold piece from a jewelry store or buy a chain with a nice round gold pendant. If you’ve been a NC you definitely deserve something nice. Make your symbol REAL and not just virtual!

If you’re struggling with NC, talk about your biggest challenges to NC and what is standing in your way and if you need help/support.

What are your challenges? What are your issues?

Life After The Alcoholic Relationship

Today I was an in-studio guest on The Doctor Show on Sirius/XM talking about the book. It was a great experience. One of the callers asked about trying to leave an alcoholic/addictive relationship. She said they get to the same impasse over and over again. I wrote a short base post on Should I Leave and hope that people who know anyone in this type of relationship can weigh in (or have the person weigh in). But here, because this is about breakups, I’m going to talk about life after being in an alcoholic/addict relationship (I use the words alcoholic and addict interchangeably).

Every relationship that involves one person with a drinking/drug/gambling/eating etc etc problem also involves at least one codependent. Usually two. And when people come here from that type of relationship I say read Codependent No More, go to an Al-Anon meeting (or 2 or 10) or a Codependents Anonymous meeting (or 2 or 10). And usually they don’t listen. Its as if “No, I’m bleeding to death and those places might have Band-aids ™ but I’d rather just show up here and complain every day.”