Dear lostcloud:

You asked for reassurance that you are best off single than using your time with this man- well, you got my assurance  that you are better off single- you made a long list of items to support it being better for you to not be in a relationship with him.

If you don’t like to be single, maybe you can find a man who is willing and capable to have an honest, exclusive, loving relationship with (one) woman?

anita

Hi lostcloud,

The supermarket incident baffles me. You catch him there with another girl, he brings her home with him anyway, and the next day apologizes to you for doing this. How is this not a deal breaker for you?  He has zero respect for you, can’t you see that?

Aren’t you tired of the suspicions, doubts, anxiety, and never feeling good enough?

Unfortunately you’ve earned a large negative return on your 4-year crappy investment. This means your costs have greatly exceeded your gains. Don’t waste another minute thinking about this guy. Cut your losses now.

B

Dear lostcloud:

“I know you all think I’m an idiot”- I don’t. Intelligent people do idiotic things, I have done idiotic things for decades, unfortunately. The reason we do idiotic things is that we are primarily motivated by emotions, not by logic, just like other animals from which we evolved.

When we are not aware of our emotions, we aren’t able to use logic so to make wise choices. For example, you “never felt neglected as a child”, you wrote. But maybe you did feel neglected as a child, but you don’t remember, you buried that feeling so that you are not aware of it. Children do that.

And it is so very common that a child is not neglected as far as food, clothes, shelter and other material things, but the child is neglected by let’s say, the parent is focused on other people, not paying attention to the child, not noticing the child is scared or sad.

I have a comment regarding what you wrote here: “I guess I have to  believe in karma… it seems unfair. He has continued his life, no pain”-

-when I read your original post yesterday, one of my first thoughts was: what is wrong with this man, he must be suffering. I think that the karma you wish he suffers in the future already happened (not that his suffering justifies his behavior, or that you could have helped him).

He is 38 and he doesn’t know what he is doing. He puts all this energy for nothing, “pursues me for months”, pursues other women… compelled to pursue women, lies, promises to be a “changed man”, breaks his promises, never satisfied with the woman he is with, not with you, not with the current woman in his life, messaging you recently that “he wasn’t sure”, still on POF … doesn’t read to me like an emotionally healthy man having fun. Reads more like a man in pain trying to distract himself from his pain.

You wrote regarding his mother that he “thought she was mother Theresa”- do you know anything about why he thought that and about his experience as a child with his mother and father?

anita

Dear lostcloud:

You are welcome.

Regarding your childhood/ your parents, you wrote: “It could be small things rather than one big event of neglect or abuse”- I agree, except that for a young child a small thing is a big thing. It is only retroactively that we say things were “small things”.

“I feel guilty even saying that as my mum and dad are both lovely and as an adult have been so supportive”- don’t worry, they will not know that you are looking at those “small things”, or considering those, if you do. If they don’t know, no harm is done to them. The reason for you looking into your childhood is to make your life better, and it is a good aim, to improve your own emotional health and function better and better in life.

Regarding your ex boyfriend, you wrote that his mother “excused his behavior. She would say he was a ‘silly boy’ for cheating etc.”- I wonder if you ever considered that she did not excuse his behavior but encouraged it, that is, approved of it?

It is likely that he cared about his mother’s approval of him and tried to please her. After all she was the person in the family “who wore the trousers” and a child wants to please the parent who is in power. It is not likely that he didn’t care about her approval (“he didn’t seem to care he was disappointing her”).

“He was clearly the ‘apple of her eye'”- and he wanted to stay the apple of her eye by continuing to behave in the ways that pleased her. She reprimanded him but she didn’t mean what she said when she reprimanded him. “They are an ‘all talk no action’ kind of family”, you wrote. Maybe the talk is indeed just talk. He knew his behavior pleased her regardless of what she said.

I suppose how she said what she said was more convincing than what she said.

anita

Dear lostcloud:

I suppose the possibility I brought up regarding what motivates him was not correct. Looking for another then.. you wrote that his mother wore the trousers in the family and “His dad was a figure in the background- present but with no real influence over him or his brother”-

-maybe he empathized with his father and was angry at his mother for demasculating his father, for taking center stage and pushing his father to the background. So he did purposefully do what he could do to help out his father, sending a message to his father: see, she doesn’t control me! I don’t do what she wants me to do! And you can too can stop allowing her to control you!

It is amazing to see how children adopt behaviors that look despicable but those very behaviors are born out of love. In this case, if I am correct this time, it is his love for his father that motivates him to be the cheat that he is.

If this possibility is correct, how sad it is that he is stuck in a behavior that harms him long term and brings misery to the women involved as well as to the children he may have in the future.

You wrote about his current girlfriend (one of a few girlfriends perhaps), “She has dismissed me and seems ‘smug’ with her ‘prize'”- soon enough, sadly, she will see herself the quotation marks in the sentence you wrote, she will find out the prize is a “prize”.

Likely she already knows.

Where are you going from here?

anita

lostcloud,

Good for you on using this experience to learn and do it differently next time.  I believe that it is more important to learn why you acted and thought the way you did than the other person.  This way you can be more mindful next time.

Mark

Dear lostcloud:

You asked earlier: “has no-one ever had a situation where you gave someone a second chance (or in his case many more) or felt drawn back to the very thing that burns you?”

-yes, I have. I was drawn back to the very person that repeatedly burned me because I didn’t see that person correctly. I will explain myself as I refer to you and your story here:

In your most recent post you wrote about Dan: “maybe he is just selfish, greedy and lacks empathy/ emotion to really ‘connect’ with anyone on anything more than a surface level”-

It this is how you saw him when you first met him, you wouldn’t have been drawn to him. If this is how you saw him at any time throughout the relationship you would no longer be drawn to him. And if you saw him that way now, you wouldn’t still be drawn to him (“I still feel sad to let go”, original post).

In traditional cartoons and many movies, there are good character and bad characters. The bad character is always bad, therefore the good character is not confused and stays away or fights the bad character.

In real life every bad person used to be a good little boy or girl, and that good boy or girl is still there- you get to see glimpses of that boy, moments of seeing that boy loving, eager to please, tells his truth as it is and you fall in love with that boy. This is what draws us to a bad person (in addition to the physical/ sexual attraction to the man that he is).

This is what is confusing about bad  people, that is, people who repeatedly lie to us, betray us, and harm us. Sometimes we get to see in them the good child inside them, locked in.

Understanding this concept helps when evaluating a person as good for us, or bad for us and it helps when aiming at no longer being drawn to a person who is bad for us.

One other thing, you wrote: “You can look at some of the most beautiful women in the world.. who I am sure are decent human beings“- better not assume, at least not regarding people you do meet in person, that they are decent. Learn and evaluate a person before you are sure he or she is a decent human being.

anita