sounds like you need to start focusing on yourself. you sound like me a few years ago. i was very co-dependent and scared shitless of being alone. i used to wonder the same thing, "why cant someone, just ONE PERSON, love me, the way i love them?"

then one day i woke up and realized. that person had been there all along. ME.

i love me. i'm my own best friend. i'm the one person that i know for a fact will never leave me.

may sound dumb or cliche but it's true. when you can find the love in ourself that you have been looking for, the need to have it from other people gets less and less, and that leaves you open to finding real love.. the kind that you actually deserve.

At some point we all come to learn that not everyone gets their fairytale ending.... in fact, very few do. That's one of the crappiest parts of growing up, I think, but we all have to go through it.

You've gotta learn to live for yourself, and that's easier said than done. Throw yourself into work. Pamper yourself. Don't look toward the future if it upsets you, take it minute by minute, day by day.

I hear you. I really do. My situation is different. I am just married (to myself) appearently, since my H has emotionally left the relationship, we just share house like roomates Otherwise I have similar exp. I think the roots of this is deep down in the childhood.

Well here is my theory in a nutshell....
If you as a single person exist in an unhappy, confusing personal hell, no relationship will ever work.
We, as women, can not expect a man to
- save us
- make us feel happy (as oppose to miserable when we were single)
- full fill our need for a friend, partner, lover, father, mother, counselor
all in one person. I honestly think it is unrealistic doe one man to fulfill this role.

I also feel like the only people I loved in my life who have not failed me are my children and my sister, but My life is actually very very happy, it is the men I choose to welcome in to it that cause me problems.
So really, the problem is with my choices, not the men. Maybe you are in the same boat - you choose men who are not good for you, because you are more preoccupied with longing for love, than testing out the water.
I feel like I'm kind of the same...but I learned my lesson and things will be different from now on.
Good luck!

a guy that drinks too much really misses a lot. it numbs him and he can't figure out how to have a good time without it. they are pretty hopeless until they get rid of the booze. you should probably trade him in for a boyfriend who doesn't need to drink to have a good time.

I have been through all this before too and STILL going through it. all the advice everyone has said, is what I've been told to also. I am still having a hard time. My Long distance relationship has just ended.. after 2 years. We met every 3 months for 2 years, and he promised me the moon and the stars. We were making plans for me to move in the spring. Once again I am going through everything I did when my x left and I went through 6 years of hurt.

What they are saying about learning to be alone and like ourselves is also true. I am still trying to do that also. I also don't seem to make the right choices. I know how you feel completlly. I am 51 and I don't want to keep going through this what years I have left. but I know change is so hard. The first time I've been alone..living alone with know one around to talk to everyday etc.. was 2 years ago and I am still struggling.

Don't let this be you. You look far to young to end up with a life like I have and still having. I also fall deep in love, and everything you wrote is like I wrote it. SO I do know how you feel. I am seeking counseling, and it works for the day, but when I go back home alone.. it's out the window. I keep trying to repeat everything she says to me in my head. She is a great lady,.

So my advice is to try to do whatever one says. Day by day. We have the right to grief, but I know we can't do it forever. that is also what keeps us from moving forward. I know easier said than done though.
stay strong and keep talking to the positive friends. True friends.

Have you tried Alanon?

Just a suggestion.

i was married to a raging alcoholic and it has taken me years to recover from that. It affected me in ways I cannot even describe in words, but through Alanon, I learned a new way of living.

Wishing you the best in healing!

Thank you all so much. I try and focus on work and yoga and things that I do for myself to make me happy, but underneath there is still a deep longing for someone to reciprocate the love I so want to be able trust and give to another. I just feel like I've been trying to hide my full potential for fear of rejection. I've gone to therapy which has helped and am currently off of all psychiatric medicine which is where I need to be so maybe all this pain is coming from all the pain I've tried so hard to conceal or deny for my entire life. Thank you all again, really struggling today.

No it was not the alcohol, it was him. Not all people who drink become violent.

I am sorry that you do not feel like you deserve better.

I hope you do not mind me saying so, but you need to do a lot of internal work reason being that people in your life are representative of people in your past. Unfortunately, your biological parents gave you up for adoption. Something you live with for the rest of your life.

You need to take care of you.

I'm sorry for how you are feeling. Nobody wants to feel unwanted. But I just have to say this...just because you were adopted doesn't mean you weren't wanted by your birth parents. I kept my daughter, but at one point I was not so sure I would. I was and am a struggling mother and I was scared of ruining my child's life. To this day I feel like I may have ruined her life...she couldve had more opporitunity with another family.

hey, I understand how you feel. I fell in love with someone who was emotionally abusive towards me. Often times I have felt like he is the only thing I have and that I would have nothing if he was gone. I know he is the only person I ever truely loved. And I am scared to live without someone I love and to live without someone who I considered my best friend.

I believe we both deserve to have someone better in our lives though. I will try to think of some ideas to help both of us out.

I understand where you are coming from and I understand the rejection thing, big time. I am also a former alcoholic and I have a different opinion that most do about alcoholism than most people do.

First of all, we have all heard that alcoholism is a disease. I understand the clinical statement behind this but, I do not agree with the way alcoholism is presented to people/

I have never seen anyone go in a disease store and buy a half pint of measles or a case of whopping cough. Alcoholism is a chemical dependency, just like being an addict to heroin or Meth. is. Society separates alcohol and drugs but, to me, they are the same. I am also a former drug user too. Read my profile.

Alcoholism has many forms and causes. Alcoholism is an escapism. Sometimes it is caused by some traumatic event in childhood that surfaces later in life. Sometimes it is caused by some event that happened later in life. Sometimes it is an avenue of escape from the everyday pressures and stress of reality.

There are some alcoholics who drink and never become violent but, they are still dangerous. Drunk drivers kill more people a year that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq does. Wives and girl friends are beaten up, Domestic Disturbances and spousal abuse are the end results of alcoholism. I have never met a rational drunk yet. Alcohol blurs the think process, our co-ordination of body movements and our ability to react as we should, It is dangerous to the individual and also to all those who he/she meets or are around. Promises are made to God, to a higher power, to you and to anyone, when a person is under the influence or is coming down from the influence of alcohol but, the go right back to it again and again and again.

You must focus on you, as others have said. You must look at your life and decide what you want then, be very, very selective in what and who you choose. Many times., people get out of a relationship with an alcoholic and go right back in to another relationship with the same type person, again. This is, in a short form,. of insanity. 'Doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again and expecting a different result, is insanity. It does not and, will not work.

True love is a treasure. I went through rejection, physical abuse, stabbings, and a lot more in my first marriage. Love, to me is like a campfire, in order to keep it going, it must be gently cared for and, its coals kept brightly glowing". These are words from a poem I wrote entitled "What is this thing called love". Re-evaluate what you want in life, set goals that reflect what you want, then cautiously take the steps to attain what you want.

I am here, if you wish for me to comment further. I have learned that life is to be enjoyed, not just endured. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

It sounds like you're not looking for an equal partner with love and respect. It sounds like you're trying to fill a void within you. That void will almost always lead you to dead ends.

Learn to fill that void on your own, and watch the positive results life will bring. I've been where you are. xoxo.

my question to everyone is.. ( I feel like sunsets) everyone says move on, he isn't good for you, fill the voids, la la la,, but how does a person do it when that's all they think about is the one they love, and lost. I am a shy person who just doesn't go out and join things, how do you go out and be around people when you are so depressed that you are no fun to be around? I am also going through loosing my LDR and I dying inside. He is all I think about.

I feel like she does.. why don't they love us,when we are good to them.

I wanted to comment on that subject of being adopted. In my opinion the child needs to be loved. It does not really matter who is the source. The point is to be loved. Ofcourse it is natural to question why your bilological parents did not keep you, but what is more important is were you loved by someone? Anyone?

Biological parents can abandon the child in multiple ways. I wish I was given away to be loved bu someone else, instead of being rejected by my own parents all my childhood life.

I don't know why some people are not blessed by love and why the "love" some of are longing is not fulfilled by our spouses. All I know is that my both relationships have been sarcasim, emotional abuse, (fisrt one physical as well), and I don;t know if my expectations of having normal relationship where one feels cared and appreciated, has not been given to me. I might have done something terrible in my previous life having to suffer this. I don't know. Lots of questions without answers..