Dear Korrasamus:
I don’t believe in fate, predestination and therefore I don’t believe in things meant to be or not meant to be.

You wrote about your friend meeting the guy: “he said that he knew I was the girl for him but he was so confused and needed more time but was afraid of losing me to someone else” Did you notice the contradiction in what he told her according to her remembrance? He said he KNEW you were the girl for him and he is CONFUSED. Which one is it? Know (means certainty) or confused (uncertaintly)?

What I think is that he is probably honest and so are you and that sometimes he KNOWS you are the girl for him and at other times he doubts it so therefore he is confused. Maybe when he is afraid, he knows you are the girl for him because he needs your comfort when he is anxious… Maybe when he feels more secure, he does not feel the need for your comforting presence and does not feel confident that he wants you as his mate. Maybe he expects to feel ONE WAY all the time and is confused that he feels two different ways at different times.

There is more i could read into your post. What do you think so far about what i wrote and does it bring new thoughts to you?

Take care:
anita

Hi korrasamus,

Wow, people make their lives so complicated! If you guys want to be together one day ~ be together now! You don’t have to get married. Just enjoy each other’s company. He doesn’t have to “struggle” or “grieve”. You don’t have to be “strong” or “confident”. I mean, when would he or you be ready then? Next year? Five years? Ten years? Throw out your “shoulds” and be together NOW!

Caveat: Sometimes when people say, “I’m not ready for a relationship” they really mean “I don’t want a relationship ~ with YOU!” Make sure that’s not what was going on. If so then throw my above advice out the window.

Blessings,

Inky

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Inky.

Korra, I am in a very similar situation to yours currently, and hope to offer you some advice that I wish had been given me a year ago.

After dating for 5 years my ex and I ‘took a break’ so that we could both work on ourselves and our careers. During this time we both agreed that it would be OK to date other people. The break-up was extremely painful for both of us and after a short period of no contact, we began speaking every week or so as friends. While we both had problems (me fear of commitment and abandonment; him fear of abandonment and anxiety), he had also not chosen a career path and was moving from job to job with no real direction or sense of fulfillment (we are in our late twenties). I thought that giving him space would allow him to ‘grow up’ and find what he needed and it would give me the space to work on my issues as well. Essentially, instead of doing that, he just found someone else and is now in a serious relationship with her. Although he agreed to the break-up at the time, he now says that by my stepping out of his life at that time I was unsupportive of him during an extremely trying time.

It has been about 9 months now and we rarely talk because he does not want his relationship with me to interfere with his current relationship. I fear I have lost him forever.

I wish I had realized that we could have worked through our respective issues together. That he would in no way stifle my career but would enrich my life (which is more important than any job). That the issues and fears that we both had would be most obvious and therefore easiest to deal with INSIDE of a relationship (since fears of commitment and abandonment surface most often when in a relationship). I also feel that my generation (I am in my late twenties) is obsessed with the foolish idea that each person in a relationship needs to be independent, completely self aware and un-needy in a relationship. You cant be in a healthy relationship if you aren’t a perfectly happy, well-rounded person on your own, right? SO WRONG! Our brains are biologically wired for connection. Social isolation will literally make us lose our minds. There is nothing wrong with needing someone in your life to be happy. There is nothing wrong with being scared shitless of commitment – the potential for being hurt is huge. There is also nothing wrong with figuring out who you are and what you want together.

I have also realized there is no such thing as a ‘healthy relationship’ (please read anything by John Gottman for more on this), there is only what works between 2 people. If you were mostly happy together, if this period of relationship doubt is just a bump in the road and not a pattern, then I see no reason to not be together.

I also do not believe in the saying ‘If it’s meant to be, it will be’. It actually pisses me off. For me, that phrase represents giving up on a relationship and being arrogant enough to believe that the universe has some ultimate plan for your life. There is no plan, but there are consequences for your actions – if you choose not to be with someone, chances are you will lose them. I know, because I did.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Christy.

Dear Christy:
Thank you for the above comment about my perspective being fascinating- it pleased me to read this. I read your story above just now. I very much agree with you. It is a scientific fact that “Our brains are biologically wired for connection” as you put it. Absolutely. Since your ex boyfriend, you wrote, had a fear of abandonment and anxiety, no wonder he soon connected with another woman. Babies, children… and adults need social connection with at least one other person (and sometimes a pet insead) to SOOTHE their anxiety. The separation from him, no wonder, increased his anxiety and motivated him to find another connection. You are correct, you learned from the experience, problems of interpersonal relaionship need to be worked on in the context of an interpersonal relationship.

I also agree with you about “if it was meant to be”- you wrote: “There is no plan, but there are consequences for your actions.” Absolutely. There is no plan. I wonder how you are feeling currenly about your ex boyfriend and how did or do you find the courage to look at things AS THEY ARE. How rare it is, isn’t it… people, including myself, seeing what they want to see, what is convenient at the moment to see (the trees, not the forest as I mentioned in my post)… I think you captured a forest in your post!

anita

Dear Korrasumus:
I am not as clearly thinking as at the time I offered you my input above, but I will try to offer you something helpful. I will try: what i am getting from reading your posts, what i am feelings is that you grew up (or “grew in”) alone and lonely. You reached out for your parent/s love and she/ he ignored you, rejected you… and now you reach out to this guy and when you had the week with him it felt so good, didn’t it? That feeling of CONNECTION, of loving and BEING LOVED… isn’t it the most wonderful thing in the world? I mean, isn’t it like dying of thirst and finally drinking lots of cold water (or whatever your favorite cold drink is)? Oh, do we want more of it… do we crave it- since childhood we crave it. We crave it because we didn’t get it then and because no matter our age, we need it. We are all needy of connection, of love- it is a biological need, nothing unique to you, not a matter of choice (can’t help it) and nothing to be ashamed of.

So here is this guy you are writing about and it becomes so much about him, isn’t it- when all along it is about you. It becomes: what does HE feel now? What will HE feel tomorrow? Will he choose me? Will fate choose us? Will we live happily ever after?

It is called External Locus of Control- when your well being is depended, in your mind, in someone else’s choices, or in fate’s choice, something external to you (therefore External L.O.C., the term in the previous line). For as long as your focus is him or fate or the statistics of what is likely to happen- you are avoiding the GREATEST and only reliable source of information- yourself.

Relying on yourself for information leads to Internal Locus of Control kind of life.
How do you, how do I rely on myself? If your therapist is a good, effective therapist he/ she should be able to teach you the SKILLS required to connect – to re-connect to yourself, to come back to the part of you that you dissociated from so to endure the childhood anxiety of being alone. That fear is intense. what you needed then was the SOOTHING connection with a parent. You didn’t get it and fear becomes intense, overwhelming.

Without soothing connection, we can’t deal with fear, so we dissociate, deny our feelings, our fear, our (normal) neediness, even feel ashamed of all these… And now, with this guy- and the guy before him- the soothing connection is intoxicating but the healing needed is far from being a happy/ intoxicating experience. It is a difficult long process. It can be worked on outside of a romantic relationship but within a relationship with a good therapist.

What do you think so far about what I wrote? If it is meaningful to you, tell me how is the thrapy going? Does your therapist give you homework? is it a cognitive behavior therapy? Did the therapist mention or teach you Mindfulness? Go over interpersonal skills??? What has been going on in your therapy?

Take care:
anita

Dear Korrasamus:
You asked: “My problem and thing I want to resolve, now that I am aware of what my issues are, is what do I do now? How do I not be this way any longer?”

From my ongoing process of healing, my answer is (I use the pronoun “you” meaning “I” projected, hopefully accurately enough to you):
Healing is going to take a long, long time. What you are aware of now, you will become, over time, aware of on deeper levels than now. You can not rush it. I was impatient. Unfortunately you need to be… sometimes excruciatingly patient.
What you are aware of now you can forget tomorrow- as you have repeatedly when you shift your focus from you to him. It takes returning your focus again and again. It takes learning new skills (mindfulness, “radical acceptance,” correcting thoughts- Cognitive Therapy tool:learning types of distorted thinking, identifying yours and correcting those thoughts). It takes self empathy. It takes ever increasing insight.

One step at a time. Patience. A few steps backward, regrouping, a step forward. No “from now on” solution. You identify what does not work and stop doing what is ineffective. You identify what does work and you practice what is effective. No progress without practice. You feel pain and learn to endure it without reacting to it the old, ineffective ways.

Books: well, i don’t know if you would like it- if it would fit you now. It depends on what you are ready for at this point, what will not overwhelm you, what will not turn you off. Lots of self help books try to include as many people in it as possible, using the word “may” a lot, as in you may feel this or that… it loses power for me. psych central website has some good info- recently unsuccessful getting there though. Some useless and even damaging info potentially… I tried to access some good articles i read there about what to expect in the first session/s of a good psychotherapy but failed to access. From what i remember and from experience, the psychotherapist should give you- after a few session, a PLAN including evaluation she made of you, objectives and a plan of how to achieve those objectives. Such a plan was given to me by my therapist. And he gave me homework every session. this was different from previous experiences where i saw a therapist, talked, felt better for having talked, but there was no game plan. It was just catharsis, feeling better after venting, with occasion empathy at best. Good psychotherapy includes venting and empathy but also PSYCHOEDUCATION, the teaching of SKILLS (A MUST!). It is a science, not just an intuitive art form. It is not magic- so choosing the right therapist is very important. Many therapists are at best providers of empathy while you vent. There is so much more some therapists are!!! I recommend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy combined with Mindfulness therapy.

Back to your question: “How do I not be this way any longer?”

Healing, you will be everything your child part has been all these years, loveable, needy of love, connection, scared, hurt. You will not stop being “that way”- what you will develop is a part of yourself that will do a way more effective job leading your life so you have more and more control over how you live and less and less fear.

I already wrote too much.

Take good care of yourself:
anita

Hi all,
I know I am late to this post but it is so relevant for what I am experiencing at this moment. Korra, Christy, Anita–all of your posts are so self-aware and give me hope. I hope the three of you see my message.

I, too, am needy and have abandonment issues. Having been told I have an “insecure/anxious” attachment style stemming from childhood, I am well aware of these behaviors and how they sabotage not only the relationships I am in, but also cloud my own judgment when it comes to needs. Like you, Korra, I felt weak or ashamed of my “needs” (to be contacted every day, etc.) in a relationship and tried to fix myself. But the insecurities manifested elsewhere.

For 18 months, off and on, I dated a man who had his heart broken twice. He smokes pot daily (not that I judge on people’s vices) and is very much into Mindfulness, but I feel like he uses it to his advantage. He acted in all the “right” ways that indicates a relationship (we met each others’ families, celebrated holidays together, saw each other every weekend) but he would never fully commit, saying he was not ready, or capable of giving me what I needed, was not sure if he loved me, was scared, didn’t want to say “boyfriend” because he thought he could get hurt.

We had a blow-out fight the weekend before last where I saw a side of him I never saw–he was screaming and throwing things around the apartment. I stood up for myself, saying he couldn’t talk to me that way and that he needed to relax. He left and came back and 6 a.m. When I was leaving around noon, I woke him and said we should address it. He said there is nothing to address-we are in an unhealthy place and you made me act like that last night.

I tried to reach out to him later that day–phone calls and texts–and got no reply. It is 10 days later and nothing. We are leaving on a trip tomorrow, and I know the heartache of sitting next to an empty seat on that plane will kill me (yes, I am still going).

The pain of no closure, of being dropped by a hot potato, by someone who cared about me is almost unbearable. I am trying to see my way out.

I started CBT 3 weeks ago (I was in talk therapy for many years but needed more, much like Anita, instead of just sitting around talking about feelings). I also try to meditate and read much on mindfulness and try to practice it–even though it reminds me of him a bit.

Also like you, Korra, I was in a happy place when he came into my life. Now the things I loved before I have zero interest in. I allowed this relationship to take me apart, brick by brick, but seeking happiness from another person. In that, I lost myself. And I am not sure how to return.

I turned 40 during this relationship, and I think a lot of the self-doubt and hopelessness I feel is accompanied by what I see as cultural views on an older woman–she is less valuable. I am trying to work through the self-loathing and hopelessness I feel in general, coupled with the completely harsh removal of this person from my life.