Hi Amazon

Not sure exactly what you’re saying - whether you finished your relationships with the men in your life, or whether they left you. As that would make a difference to the relevance of my reply. But I’ll have a go anyway and hope that it’s useful.

Have to say I’m not single anymore, but that I was until 41 years old. And in all those 41 years (well ok minus the first 10 or so) my life seemed to revolve around trying to ‘get’ a boyfriend/relationship. The longest I managed was about two and a half years with a string of intermittent short term to very short term relationships before and after.

In my case it was that they always left me, ALWAYS. I think I’ve chosen to finish a relationship exactly once and even then my decision wasn’t exactly met with any resistance. It’s always been my fault of course :smile: because I was (still am) so needy and got totally dependent virtually from day one, never mind whether I actually liked the man or not. And break ups always destroyed me - I always experienced them as something profoundly bad and wrong with me and would go through bad periods of black terror until I could get myself out there and actively looking again. And no-one ever seemed to understand that - the usual ‘you’ll get over it’, ‘plenty more fish in the sea’ and the killer ‘oh you’re not so different everyone wants to be loved’ and I’d want to scream NO NOT LIKE THIS not in this self destroying totally pathetic utterly dependent really really needy way.

It was having yet one more (very short term relationship) go wrong that drove me into therapy in the first place - when I asked myself seriously ‘what is wrong with me that no-one can love me’ and found a great big huge long list of reasons why no-one could want and love me.

That was a lot of years ago lol. I still haven’t managed to cross any of the things off that list, but I’ve had enough self understanding over the years to realize that having a list like that is irrelevant anyway, because at the end of the day I didn’t (and don’t) love myself. But I’ve also realized that I can’t make me love myself in a vacuum - I can only do that in positive reflection from other people (the right therapist for instance). And sad to say, for me at least, it was only meeting and marrying my husband that allowed me to finally start believing that it could be possible to one day love myself (because he’s still around despite who I am, and that gives me a sneaking kind of sense that maybe I could be wrong about that big long list). I hope so anyway.

Lamplighter

I am just back from being out of town for a while and saw your post. I wanted to reply because my past relationships with men have caused me great angst and I think is a big issue for me in therapy.

I too had only 2 important relationships with men, but mine were more long term. The first one lasted 3 and a half years. It ended with me falling completely apart, and really never recovering. Thus the second relationship was never really truly intimate and committed, even though I was married to the man for >20 years!! That long term relationship ended in divorce. Something I didn't want and again put me over the edge. I am still trying to recover, even after 5 years.

As with so many other relationships in my life, I felt "abandoned". "not good enough", unable to love, and unable to be loved.


emogirl