Dear Natalie:

I believe it will be easier for you to “fix (yourself) first” (your aim, last words of your post) when not in a relationship with him. When interacting with him you get triggered a lot and react automatically, isn’t it so? Not necessarily because he did something wrong but because old issues within you get triggered, activated. This triggering is in the way of you making the changes you need and want to make for the better.

You wrote: “Can you help me figure out why I am the way I am and what I should do to change?”

I believe that the ways you behave that are disagreeable to you are the result of past unfavorable experiences that you had, most of those experiences occurred in your childhood. During those “formative years” of childhood, many connections, or neuropathways are made in our brains. And many of them, as a result of unfortunate life experiences, are such that lead us to dysfunction, to behaviors that don’t serve us.

For example, you making yourself  “out to be the victim… and need constant validation” probably indicates your childhood real life experience of not having been validated. You making yourself out to be a victim may be your way of trying to get attention and validation and your anger may very well be about not having gotten that validation as a child.

Those neuropathways in our brain stay with us throughout adulthood because we don’t … shed our brain, the nerve cells and the connections in it do not get replaced. We shed our skin cells but not our brain cells.

It is possible to interrupt those neuropathways, and so, to change ourselves with work and time.

anita

Dearest Natalie,

It is great that you are thinking for yourself. Very few people manage to bring themselves into the picture when speaking about a lover. As you have mentioned, theoretically, you should discover and love yourself fully first before focusing on another person.

The thing is, life is never that idealistic. Follow your heart. You know what is best for yourself and I’m sure that will be the correct decision to make. Nothing will ever end up perfect, but the worst thing to do is to regret not doing anything at all.

You have a powerful personality. You are definitely not toxic, and give yourself some time to weigh the decisions out.

I am no different, I am a fool who is in love with a dense idiot and it is jeopardizing my internal equilibrium as well. It is all part and parcel of life.

With love,

Junna

Relationships are the crucible in which we discovered ourselves. Meaning we will create, usually unconsciously, confrontations so that me might heal them. When the relationship is a safe place for our “ghosts” to play, we grow, if we remain unaware of our “ghosts” at play the relationship will become an unsafe place to work though our healing.

Sometimes it takes the pain of a relationship to get us to a point where we become conscious our issues

I Recommend the books by David Richo as a guide

When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships by David Richo

Psychotherapist David Richo explores how we replay the past in our present-day relationships—and how we can free ourselves from this destructive pattern. We all have a tendency to transfer potent feelings, needs, expectations, and beliefs from childhood or from former relationships onto the people in our daily lives, whether they are our intimate partners, friends, or acquaintances. When the Past Is Present  helps us to become more aware of the ways we slip into the past so that we can identify our emotional baggage and take steps to unpack it and put it where it belongs