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!!!
And if you are willingly giving up all you are and all you were before for your relationship then you’re going to wind up in a long-term, enmeshed (probably miserable) relationship that you can’t leave because you have nothing else or your partner is going to leave you and you’ll have nothing. Terrific choice.
DO NOT GIVE UP WHAT MAKES YOU YOU FOR A RELATIONSHIP. Even if you think that your relationship is a haven and the happiest place on earth, it takes a well-balanced person to MAINTAIN a healthy relationship and many relationships that start out with good boundaries and “me time” can corrode into enmeshment and control whereas no one is allowed to breathe without the other’s permission. You buy into the “us against the world” “white picket fence” idea of cuddledom and the next thing you know people have moved on, people have stopped inviting you places and when you show up together to things that your friends thought you were coming alone to you barely avoid their eye rolls. You NEED time alone and you need to be okay with that as much as your partner does. It’s NECESSARY. If you’re more than willing to give up you for another person, reconsider. It’s not okay.
2. You can’t be too close or too far away. I had a very busy life when I was in a relationship with someone who grew increasingly unavailable. To this day I am suspicious that he was cheating on me, but the bottom line was that all my abandonment issues wound up front and center and his availability became too much for me. After 3 painful months, I ended it. It wasn’t easy but it was the right thing. He just refused to recognize my need for “us” time. He became all about his time for him time. There MUST be a balance. If there is not, there is going to be trouble.
3. You need to recognize that everyone has their own way of taking time for his or her self and your way and your partner’s way might not be similar.
I talked about Michael freaking out the first time I went away by myself. One reason was that he fishes and likes to be away by himself, on the lake, for 3-7 hours at at time. That’s his me time and he can take it every day. But he wants to come home and touch base when he’s done fishing. For me, I’d rather save it all up and take it in a chunk (a weekend or a week). I had no trouble with his fishing time, but he had trouble with my weekend/week time. I explained that this was my fishing time, time to regroup, unwind, away from everyone and everything. Michael came to nderstand that it’s the same thing in a different package. At first he didn’t get it…I had to explain and he had to sit with his discomfort the first few times I did it…but I didn’t give it up because he was uncomfortable…I would just keep going with it and if he wanted to make a big, hairy deal about it, then we would have issues. But he didn’t. I worked to get him to understand it and he worked to understand it. And all was well with the world.
4. If you can’t take time for you without a scene or tears of recrimination, this person and relationship has issues. If you go away and this person never misses you or cares if/when you come back, this person (and relationship) has issues. Sometimes moving away or trying to move closer brings issues into view that you don’t necessarily want to see. It’s not that the going away/coming back is wrong, it’s that the person is wrong.
The bottom line is that it’s very hard, in most relationships, to work out the me time versus the us time. It takes time and practice but it also takes two healthy people with agendas that the relationship work and work well for both people. It’s a matter of give and take and sometimes trying to work out this seemingly simple matter brings other issues to the forefront.
But the bottom line is that healthy people and healthy relationships manage to find the balance. Often it has to be talked about and worked out. It’s not a matter of it just happening, but if you time versus we time is a major issue, it’s time to examine the relationship.
On this particular point, the whole can never be greater than the sum of its parts. If you have abandonment issues and lots of insecurities, chances are that no one is going to satisfy you AND you’ve probably chosen someone who can’t anyway. If you are the type of person who doesn’t give 100 percent in a relationship, chances are you’re never going to work out the time thing. Chances are that if you are the type to become enmeshed in a relationship, you’re going to lose all your friends and interests anyway.
If you try to build a healthy, balanced life, you might come face to face with abandonment issues, codependency, insecurity and a broken chooser (meaning you’ve chosen yet another loser).
Then the time issue (togetherness versus being alone) has magnified an issue that needs work. Welcome the information and then work on whatever needs work.
But if you work on yourself and recognize the innate differences in men and women and how “time together” versus “time alone” works, it helps matters in the long run. But if your relationship has enormous issues and the time issue is just another symptom of a much larger problem, there isn’t much you’re going to be able to do.
The bottom line is work on yourself, build your life, don’t give up that life for someone else, but don’t be so selfish that you are not giving up anything for the relationship, and work on things as they come up.
Don’t give up your own life for someone else no matter who you are
and
don’t go so far away from your partner that they feel like they are very low on the list on the priorities.
A healthy life is a balanced life. It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman.
Build your life. Live it. Love it. And then share it. :)
Peace,
Susan
Yep, the original post that you can link to in this one is just what I was thinking of. I’m a self-proclaimed feminist, pretty assertive and definitely independent… and I also agree with the points you make in that post.
This is exactly the answer that I have been looking for, now I just have to decide how, and if I should approach the subject. I have been concerned about my oldest daughter, and looking for answers. She is 22, and is dating for the first time. She has been with her boyfriend almost a year now, and they see each other every single day, unless for some reason one of them has to be somewhere without the other one. She has been away at college, so I didn’t really know to what extent they saw each other, but now I see it every day. They then talk on the phone for another hour after the other one arrives home. They live 30 minutes apart. I have asked some people at work, and most say that it’s normal, and they’re in love. I still in my gut knew that it was too much. Her younger sisters have confronted her, but she just gets angry and it drives them apart. He seems like a very nice fella, but it’s just too much. I want to support her, but I don’t want her to lose herself, and yet I also don’t want to push her away from me either. I know too well how losing yourself makes you feel. It can be an incredible high at first, but then the bottom falls out. I may just end up giving her this article.
Thanks Susan
“A healthy life is a balanced life.” This is an excellent statement and one by which I live.
I was having a conversation with a dear male friend of mine the other night, mostly about the recent ex bananahead and then about a pattern my chooser seems to attract. I told my friend that I seem to attract men who are judgemental and controlling. The very things that men find attractive about me seem to be the very things that cause the relationships to die out.
I am a free spirit, very social, active in various organizations and I also have a business that I seasonaly run with a college friend doing taxes yearly from December through April for the past 6 years along with having a corporate position with a IT Security company. My life is full and busy and I like it that way. Networking and communicating are key in my life. I am the person people go to for a connection, information or just talk. My passion for people is all consuming.
With all of this said I tend to attract men who seem to love the fact that I have my own life, interest and ambition. Yet these are the very things that cause issues in my relationships…
Full Balanced Life Hugs,
CoCoa
I had this problem for a looooooooooong time. It’s more of the “unfinished business’ conundrum. THEIR unfinished business is to ultimately control and judge and get someone who will kowtow to that. You’re the challenge. Is there part of you that would have kowtow’d in the past? Because you might be in the developing stage and not quite past attracting these lunatics.
The other one I had was attracting lazy men who took my independence as their meal ticket or ticket to not actually show up to the relationship (oh, she’ll just go out with her friends, I don’t have to be there…).
And then there was the parade of men who had mother issues. Mom ran their lives and they were just enough of a mess where I would help them run their lives and then they would scream bloody murder that I was overbearing and they would bolt out the door. Giving me the chance to confront, once again, my abandonment issues. TAH-DAH!
I do think that kicking bananaheads to the curb and moving on is part of the “I’m getting well” spectrum. I remember being in this bananahead’s house one time and saying I wanted to go to Pompeii someday and said bananahead said he would too (he was a bit of a history nut) and the words, “Oh let’s go together” came out of my mouth followed by “I’ll pay…” WHAT? HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING? I had just gotten out of a relationship with a broke-ass bananahead. WHAT?
He took that as control and I wanted to hold something over his head and when we stopped seeing each other he mentioned that offer AS A BAD THING. And it was, really. He had not garnered any sort of standing in my life to even be in the conversation.
I quickly took any and all trips off the table in future relationships. I was still resentful over footing the bill for a weekend bed and breakfast in my last relationship where I paid for everything and he ordered Courvasier at dinner. Yes, I’m paying for EVERYTHING and I don’t drink and you have the gall, the nerve, the cojones to ORDER COURVASIER. It was kind of a good thing because it annoyed me for months and gave me something to focus on when he disappeared from my life (as in good riddance).
I did get to Pompeii eventually. On my honeymoon. With Michael. Who had footed the entire bill. I somehow learned and we had a storybook time. It was grand and glorious and the stuff that dreams are made of.
The guys who are going to turn the tables on you regarding your independence usually show signs of that in the beginning. Train your eyes and ears to listen/look for it and keep doing your own inventory to see if these bananaheads fall into a pattern.
In the initial post where I wrote about the independence thing, it talks about the balance. You can’t leave a man at 25% percent and they can’t leave you at 25%. It’s a hat trick sometimes.
Before Michael was sick we did discuss (ad nauseum sometimes) the “proper” amount of time he had to spend at a family gathering. He’s a) not very social and b) has ADHD which makes him antsy. But he also had an obligation to be at the grandkids’ birthday parties (or whatever) and an hour was not a “good enough time.” And yes he did have to wear a tuxedo to the wedding as the father of the groom. Okay, you can change when we get back to the father of the bride’s house (guess who is the only one wearing jeans in the family pictures?). And sometimes I let him bring his fishing poles to wherever we were going in case there was a stream or lake nearby.
At the same time he did the same for me about going out to eat. Michael wanted me to go out to eat every single night and most times I did not want to and the amount of times he’d eat out was ridiculous. We negotiated how often I had to suit up and go to a restaurant. (some people would say oh this is a REAL problem, but there’s only so many times you can say no to the person you love….they start to look wounded and you feel guilty).
Now I would go to the parties alone and he’d go out to eat alone. Most likely each of us would drag the kids. But we recognized that you cannot take advantage of your partner’s independence. You have to make “us” time. And you also have to recognize what your partner is doing for YOU when that partner is doing it. We did say thank you a lot.
It’s not always easy when two people with full lives and separate interests but if your agenda is to work it out and not use the independence as an out for you or a mallet to beat them over the head with, it works. I don’t think we ever had an argument over these things, it was more negotiation than anything. We both knew that we’d meet in the middle.
Hidden agendas are still hidden agendas. If you’re not going to work at a relationship or work anything out with someone, being independent is not going to help or hurt the matter except that you’ll have way more to go back to when the relationship ends.
Susan,
I have a question that pertains to this — with “water seeks its own level,” does this apply to the very early stages? Because if, for example, I go out with a guy once or twice, realize he’s a loser and then bail, I don’t think this would mean our unfinished business sparked the initial attraction. Let me know if you disagree though.
Reason I ask is that to me, MOST people in the world don’t deal with their issues and have a whole bunch to bring over to new relationships. I think it has more to do with averages and being kind of a numbers game.
If, hypothetically, three guys I meet and get serious with end up being alcoholics, then yeah, that definitely deals with unresolved past issues. But if three alcoholics ask me out and I deflect their advances once I learn of this, then it seems different.
Maybe that there’s something in me that they detect wants to help them, but once I realize it and all its latent dysfunction, I am able to squash it?
Just curious how far “Water seeks its own level” goes.
No it doesn’t. Sometimes when you are getting better, you have to date to really figure out where your level is. Not that that is the reason to be dating….but I found myself on many a first or second date and thinking, “who am I kidding? I’m not dysfunctional enough for this guy.” Many times I wound up in dating situations because I was truly ambivalent about dating and men. When you’re “there” there is no level really. You’re never going to go deep enough to have dysfunction saying hello. Just about anyone will do for a date or two and then they won’t do at all.
The only thing that guys in my last year of dating had in common was that I didn’t really like any of them. I kept dating one because I liked his dog. Another because I liked his best friends (a couple).
My dates were a reflection that my level was bored to tears and I wasn’t really into the idea of men or dating. I was doing it for something to do…and my choices showed it.
Thanks Susan, that makes perfect sense. I laughed at “I kept dating one because I liked his dog” — I’ve dated guys for equally silly reasons in the past.
Early in the year, I almost dated a guy I had no interest in for a little bit longer, simply because he had a friend with a pug and said I could come over and play with it (I love pugs!) but I decided against it. Tempting though ;)
Susan,
Our lives have been so much alike, I have paid for vacations, dinners and gifts. My independence has been such an attraction to many men but most of them have taken my kindness as a weakness and something they end up taking for granted or find intimidating.
What really becomes a problem is when they begin to expect me pay for thing like the latest bananahead, he had something called the reach test. He would be on a date and when the check comes he would leave it there to see if his date would reach for it to pay. He told me this after the first time I paid for dinner. Looking back he told me he had issues surrounding money and did I find out….
I have changed the way I deal with men due to my independence and it has made it so much easier to just go back to “DOING ME” when a relationship does not work out. I will never give up the things that I enjoy just to fit into some relationship requirement/standard box to made some weak azz man feel good. My mom who has always been very independent and outgoing taught me to be that way at a very young age and now that I am in my 40’s I don’t plan to change to comply with some bananahead and their BS.
After the latest bananahead showed his banana brained BS I have gone back to my regularly scheduled life and have not missed a beat, mom said “Don’t let any grass grow under your feet” and I don’t I just keep it MOVING….The last one made it very easy to DO!!!
I hope you had a great 4th Susan I read your plans and I am happy you had a chance to get out for a bit. You are awesome for all your strength you possess. What an inspiration you are to so many!!!!!
Hugs,
CoCoa45
Money is a weird thing. I know my single son is very generous but he likes when a woman will offer on the 3rd or 4th date to get the tip or at the movies, the refreshments. For the majority of the time he will pay but he likes an offer to split the bill or pick up the tip or buy the refreshments now and again when he’s seeing someone (more than one or two dates).
Michael would never hear of it, which after being with the cheap and the broke, I simply loved. Very modern when it came to independence and defined roles (cooking/cleaning), he is very old fashioned in believing the woman never pays and you are there for your family as the husband/father.
Other men would tell him he was “spoiling it” for them being always the one to pay and the one to run and pick up and drop off. He didn’t get angry about too many things but he, as the father of two daughters, got angry about that. He said that too many men used feminism as an excuse to be lazy and stupid without ever really granting women equal rights. He said a man would think that feminism meant he could sponge off a woman and never be gallant. Still act like a frat boy but say things like, “Well you want to be equal, pay your way…” He said feminism was used by too many men as an excuse to be irresponsible.
It made him CRAZY when he would get on a bus or train and women, especially old or pregnant, would be standing and young men would be sitting. He would TELL guys to give up their seats. He’s fairly small in stature (5′6 in shoes :)) and he would tap a big, strapping young man on the shoulder and point to an older woman or a pregnant woman and motion for them to get up. And the guy ALWAYS did. No one ever argued.
He believed that all young people (male and female) should but he really thought men should. He thought that too many men took “equal rights” to mean what extra stuff THEY got to TAKE (seats on the bus/train, dutch dating) but never gave one thought to what they needed to GIVE to help women obtain equality.
And he had a real issue with younger men being soft and useless. My sons, thankfully, learned to be men from watching him and they are neither soft nor useless. :)
Michael’s lecture off….but he had a point…and if a man said “Well she should pay because she wants to be equal….” he would turn several shades of purple.
I agree money is a weird thing. And feminism means different things to different people.
As dating woman, equality is no longer about gender and I have some problems around roles and what I think as I am used/trained to relate in gender terms. Its kind of weird as my female lovers has been more “macho”/traditional “male” than my ex husband, in the meaning paying for dates, picking me up etc. But also concerning family life.division of labor and how to raise kids. This is a challenge for me as I still dont know how to think in terms of feiminism when dating another woman.
I can relate a lot to this subject. After my divorce in the mid-90s, I became so independent there was no room in my life for a man like Michael. One of my ex-husband’s “narratives” was that he had money until I came along. Say what? I was so not high-maintenance, but it fit perfectly with the messages about money and being a financial burden that I had grown up with. So in that marriage and subsequent relationships, I was trying to win some old struggles and choosing people like my parents with whom I couldn’t ever win. I didn’t win until I decided to step out of that dance completely. By my last icky breakup, I had HAD it. I was having no more of the first dates where I paid for stuff, much less playing the role of financial advisor or provider in a relationship or feeling like I was a pain to spend money on. I didn’t care if it was un-feminist of me. I had been footing the bill, or too much of it, for long enough and I really *needed* to go the other way. My now hubby is so refreshingly different. He’s somewhere on the continuum close to Michael on this one. He honors my independence and feminism in general, but does not use that as an excuse to be lazy, cheap or crass. He gets that feminism to me is a social justice issue, and that it doesn’t preclude him from being a gentleman and a provider. These are things he *wants and chooses* to be, his way of giving to me and the relationship. I now believe feminism has little or nothing to do with it. Even if it comes out of our joint account, he always pays when we are out, even at the grocery store. If we are out and about in my car and he sees that it’s about time to fill up the tank, he will drive to a gas station, get out and fill it up for me. He opens doors for me. He joined me on part of my last trip and we did a lot of walking–if I started out on the sidewalk close to the street, he would casually switch places with me so he was closer to the traffic. He often holds my hand. He does the heavy lifting. He fixes anything and everything that breaks around the house and I never have to ask him to. He has skills in this area that I don’t have and he enjoys it. (I have other skills and I step up and use them to help him/us out.) I did all of these things for myself for the better part of 11 years, so I know I can or who to call if I don’t. But now I also know how to relax and let someone reliable and trustworthy help me. I finally get that the right partner will step in and step up and feel satisfied and happy to do so with no strings attached and I AM WORTHY OF THIS. (For me, that was they key, the important shift.) When I tell the hubby that he spoils me he says “Good. Then I know I’m doing my job.” And he really means it. He never uses that as an excuse to stop doing these things or as an agenda to get something out of it. He just appreciates the ways in which I lovingly and voluntarily spoil him, too.
Kathy I think I asked this before, but once again…does your husband have a brother? LOL! I love guys that fix things…I cant think of a more masculine thing to do – especially cars….something about that look …little bit of grease on them is so sexy!
Phoenix–you’re funny :) He does have a brother but they are kind of opposites. The brother is a business executive, an obsessive golfer and not handy at all. Married (20 years). No kids. Not your (or my) type at all! LOL
I also think feminism or equality has nothing to do with these things (that a man pays, opens doors, holds your coat for you in the restaurant etc).
I loved it when I noticed how on the busses in Istanbul, people would ALWAYS get up and leave their seats for older ones/ pregnant women etc.
There is a postcard with a joking (?) sentence on it. A woman says “If I pay the restaurant bill, at least I do not have to laugh about his jokes.”
Never got this joke. I think that’s feminism gotten completely wrong.
I love the old-fashioned things, and my independence as well. They are not contradicting each other.
Nice way to put that, GR. They really don’t contradict each other. :-)
I absolutely agree. I always get up for an older person or pregnant women. I don’t think they contradict each other either. I did ask Michael not to hold the car door me early on because I’m impatient. I want you to get in and start the car…and I don’t want to wait for you to come around to my side to get out.
I always let myself out of the car, too. But 9 times out of 10, he opens it for me to get in. I’m not tired of it yet. Making up for all those years without a real man, perhaps. :)
I disagree as wanting to keep old traditional gender roles and wanting to promote equality is contradictory to me. As I consider leaving seats to elderly people and pregnant woman a totally different issue, an issue that has nothing to do with feminism.
Maybe we are facing cultural differences as I do believe some of thoose things are colored of culture. I live in Scandinavia, and up here in the north we try do do it our way Like woman, and men have the right, according to our laws, to keep their jobs and take time off to stay at home with their babies. And so it happens. As an effect things start to change, like ideas of what it means to be a man. And a woman A mom. A dad. Its liberating for everyone I think. To have a choice.
Hi Rhea,
I live in Western Europe also :-) I think we are talking of different things here. To me, equality is about equal rights, about not having a disadvantage because of gender etc. (or because of any other characteristic, that is).
That has nothing to do with a man paying the bill, opening the door or holding your coat. Classical feminism in the “revolutionary” sense has a tragic aspect to it, as it denies the beauty of some differences in nature (ie, there ARE gender-related differences, even brain-science says that), which is a good thing. Equality, to me, does not mean there are no differences. It is about having equal rights (for instance for women to not be underpaid compared to men etc).
In the last few years, feminism (in its radical form) has become less popular for a reason. It’s because it is GOOD that there is a male nature and a female nature, and I think women do not do do themselves a favor by trying to become like men.
It’s nice to have diversity.
I think for me equality and feminism has personal and a political levels. On the personal level for me, it about much more than romantic relationsships. Like female networking, helping each other out professionally, taking place in daily life, having a life of ones own, friends of one own etc. In my romantic relationsships I was attracted to warm, tough emancipated men. With issues. As in water seeks its level. Matching my issues.
I did not pay for the man, But neither did he pay for me. It was a split, each of us, paid for ourselfes. A kind of extreme 50/50 arrangement. TodayI think its nice to be treated. Or with kathys words, I am worth it. And the “I am worth it” is a nice mantra to have , in lfie, be worthy of a good life.
I identify completely with this post and the first one.
To me It has always been incredibly frightening getting into a relationship. Mostly because I don’t know how to set boundaries, stop and let go if things go completely the way they shouldn’t (abuse, lies, cheating, etc.), and also because I’ve always been completely enmeshed in my exes lives, and wanted to spend every minute being reassured of their interest in me and the relationship. And this goes for most of the people in my life.
It’s taken me a lot of strength and tears from my part to realize that the way I’ve been living with others is just completely wrong and accept that even though (and this goes away a little bit from the subject) I was raised with abusive parents, alcoholism, sexual abuse, etc., I simply do not have to live that way, because it’s just not normal and I don’t want any of it.
Been single for about two months after a very short, complicated and difficult relationship in which I overspent time and money, and definitely lost perspective of what’s really important to me at least, love and respect. (feeling like I was completely alone overseas didn’t help either). The difference now is that I saw everything repeating itself all over again and was able to pinpoint my mistakes and ended it.
I’m going to CODA and ACA, which has been a little bit overwhelming, to say the least, going on trips throughout Europe on my own, starting to set boundaries with my friends, if they’re not willing to respect them, they’ll start falling one by one (which will definitely make me feel alone, but new “right” ones will come).
Another thing I’m doing is accepting the fact that I’m alone and that spending time with myself, taking care of myself, doing the things I want, and accepting that who and what I am is enough for me.
Right now It’s a little bit scary, but I hope I will always have the strength to stay on track with my life whether I’m with someone or not and find balance in it.
And one more thing, I read this site all the time and It has been amazingly helpful.
Straight from the heart, thank you.
This is and was a big problem in my relationship. I have always had an issue of what people think and especially always wanting my ex to reassure me. I moved to texas and had no family and only a few friends. Mike and i spent all of our time together except when i would come home to NJ which was 5 times a year for a week or sometimes 3 and if i had work stuff to do. But my issue came when he wanted to do something alone because i was always scared that he wanted to be apart from me so he could drink more than i liked him to. I had no problem if he went places with his mom or to church but anything with his brothers or fishing trips or bachelor parties i flipped out about because the fear of his drinking. i didn’t even want to give him the chance to hang himself, that is how bad it became. so when he said he doesn’t feel like himself anymore it’s because i tryed to change who he was and in my head it was for the better but i know now that reason is still not acceptable. but he never made me feel like he didn’t want to hang out with me because he never wanted to hurt my feelings. but i think it all got to him and he was doing what he wanted when i would leave town and i think he started wanting that more and not feel guilty of wanting me to go away. i need lots of work and can’t wait to start doing it with my therapist. I would like to think that if his drinking was never an issue that i would not have been this way but that is not something i will ever get to know, not with him anyway.
He is an alcoholic. You are a codependent. His drinking of course was an issue.
I have addressed this before with you and you tend to ignore my comments. But if I were you and I wanted to get better, I would get Codependent No More and read it and reread it and check out a few CODA or Al-Anon meetings. They have great program in New Jersey.
But if you want to continue to blame yourself, there’s not much more I can say.
I bought it, read it (twice), looked for a therapist, 1st one did not click well, 2nd one i liked just started last week. She said we are going to use that book as our workbook, we will read it again together. Lets just say this breakup open the gates to A Messy City, with Many Messy Streets, that’s what needs to start being worked on My Side of the Street. Along with finding a job, decide what i want to do, and move out of my parents house. I will definately not say i have ignored your comments, Your comments have gotten me to make the gains i have already made thus far (getting your book & others, getting a therapist, moved out and away from the ex, 1600 miles away, went nc for 27 days never thought i would have made it even that long on the first shot, and other smaller tasks thanks to your comments. I am still just sorting through the mess of it all and just coming here to do it but certainly not Ignoring.
D-
Reading your comments it sounds like you started to take on the mother role rather than the girlfriend role, which isn’t any more attractive than the needy role. Especially when you say he might “drink more than you would like him too” and you would let him go to certain places and not others. That is what a mother does to a teenager. I’ve been there, you aren’t alone, and don’t beat yourself up over it, just focus on making better choices for yourself in the future. You need to find a man that you don’t need to change in anyway, that you accept just as he is.
In the beginning of my relationship with my ex and for a long time felt like we both had balance in our relationship. Then when he graduated college, and began his pre-med classes, while I was also working full-time and going to scholl full-time, we both sort of cut out ppl of our lives bc we were so busy and then we only saw e/o on the wkds bc he lives n hr away. I always thought this was a great thing bc we ALWAYS missed e/o like crazy, even up to the very end. But I noticed more and more that he has serious issues with having balance in his life. I would till catch up w/ friends when I found the time, but for him, he cut most of his friends out of his life at one pt. Even his parents made a comment to him (he lived at home), and said, “you used to go out all of the time, and now you never go out.” I was NEVER the cause of this, and I always worried that his family and friends prob thought I was holding him captive. I think w him, he was trying to focus on his studies, while his friends were still out busy getting wasted all of the time. I think towards the end of our relationsip he was just so sick of studyng and having to be so responsible, and I def think this played a large part in our break up at the time of the last fight. He wanted to go DRINK…have SEX with MULTIPLE women, and just be young (he is 23) and be that young kid again. Hey, thats great, he should do whatever makes him happy. But the least he couldv done is talked to me like human being instead of asking for “time apart” (aka breaking up w/ me) IN AN EMAIL. I’ve stopped waiting for an apology email. He is too immature, a narcissist, and isn’t capable of feeling empathy for others.
This and the original post really struck a chord with me. I know that I have been engulfing in relationships before and it is one of the things that contributed to my last break up. My last 3 boyfriends have dumped me saying ‘You need more of a commitment than I can give’ or ‘maybe women make a connection sooner than men’.
I had an alcoholic abandoning mother (when I was naughty as a child she used to tell me she didn’t love me anymore and I had to sing, dance, leave her notes, do EVERYTHING for her until she would finally say – ‘ok I love you again’), she died of cancer and my father (who I adored) met someone else within 6 months and totally abandoned the children, the family split apart and I ended up living on a friend’s floor. I now know that I have a massive fear of abandonment and either I am choosing men who can’t give me what I want and will abandon me or I am getting too attached and engulfing that it makes it happen.
I am still reeling from my last break up – and I have had real support on here so I am trying very hard. It basically triggered a massive relapse into depression and abandonment and I am back on anti depressants after 3 years. I am trying not to blame myself but my history means that when someone says they can’t love me I feel like it is my fault and rack my brains for what I did wrong and how I can do better. I am NC but the self torture is harder than anything he could say to me.
I have my own life – I have a successful career, loads of very close friends (who are my family now), my own home. I travel on my own (inspired by the site I had just done a holiday on my own to Italy when I met the last guy) and I don’t give these things up when I meet someone. But very subtly I start to put them first almost immediately and think by doing everything and being everything for them will make them love me. And, of course, it doesn’t. In the last relationship I paid for dinner all the time, cooked, picked him up. I feel so humiliated even writing it.
So.. finding things very tough but the availability/ attachment thing makes sense to me. I am going to use it as a way to protect myself in the future.
Currently feel like I am never going to get over this last guy or ever find the right person for me but am trying so hard. I am flying out to the States tomorrow for a childhood friend’s wedding so I am hoping that will give me perspective.
Thanks for listening
Hi,
What you wrote struck a real chord with me, especially putting the guy first in everything.
Keep doing the work, you’ll get where you want to go!
GeorgeinJune (or is it July now? :-)
How are you? It’s been a while since you last posted..
Oops, wrong thread, will repost in the Check In Thread.
I work out of town 4 days out of the week. In my last relationship, I particularly had a hard time trying to balance my “me time” and making sure I was spending enough time with him since I really only had the weekends to work with (when I was out on the road, it was all work pretty much). So from my perspective, it got exhausting at times. He was a great guy, but I often felt like I was in a cage.
Looking back, we both didn’t put the relationship as a priority. We were both too focused on our careers (and everything else that’s going on with our own lives) that we really weren’t ready for a relationship at this point.
He was not the only boyfriend who complained about me being away so much for work. Regardless, I don’t necessarily believe that my job prevents me from finding love. I have co-workers who are in loving relationships despite the fact that they are constantly traveling (logging in distances as far as 2000 miles away every week).
I think I’m just not at the right point where I can handle being in a relationship. It ALWAYS hurts to lose someone, but I feel the breakup was really the best thing for us. Maybe right now is a time for me to just be – clear my head, boost my self-esteem, and achieve personal goals without distractions.
This was an excellent read. My ex (just one week yesterday) had a big issue with “friends” and liked to spend all his time with me. I didn’t even recognize this as a big problem until close to the time I asked him to leave.
After the breakup, my girlfriend said she noticed the trend, how her invitations always turned into a “we” thing. Up until this relationship, I did subscribe to a “us against the world” model. I thought it was the “right” thing for a relationship. But I also see how that usually meant I gave up more of me than was probably healthy.
Right now, I can’t clearly identify the unresolved issue that led me down that path. If I had to guess now, I would point to the (sometimes fresh) wound of how judgmental my mother was about everything from the way I look/dress to perfection in my grades. That still plays out today in more adult issues, such as raising my boys and who I date.
I’ve long sinced believed that it’s important to maintain ones identity and have “me” time in a relationship and was received my many to be wrong or even committment phobic. The naysayers cited my mindset as selfish because they believed that to be in a relationship two had to become one. Fortunately for me, I’ve never bought into that concept and never will. I refuse to be the extension of anyone else.
I’ve shared this with friends; especially those I see going down this path to help them identify where some of the resentment or bitterness in their relationship is stemming from. In other instances, I saw it as a control mechanism being exacted on them by a controling partner. In extreme cases it was because they were so empty within themselves that they needed sustainment from their partner.
Of late, as I’ve gotten into dating, it’s something that I identify early on to the potential person so they know where my head is and what my deal breakers are. It’s serving me well as my “me” time is essential to my maintained well being and it’s not negotiable. I’ll yeild where necessary; however, I will not give up “me” to become “us” all the time.
I truly enjoy this blog!
This is very good food for thought! I haven’t been good at this in the past and hope that I can change that. My last relationship we spent almost every minute together, because we worked together and spent every night together. I had almost no friends in town (we all scattered after college) and when we split it was like my whole world was gone. I realize too that I was so untrusting of him that I didn’t want to leave him alone for a minute, God knows what other woman he would call/text/chat online with. Why did I want to stay in this relationship again? I was more jail warden than girlfriend, and now looking back it was so stressful. I love the life I’ve created in the last few months, it isn’t perfect or completely stress free, but it is light years beyond what I had before.