LOVE ADDICTION Community Group
This forum will help all who wish to recover and gain some tools to be able to cope and deal with the issues stemming from our emotional problems that are hurting our relationships on a day to day basis...The relationship with ourselves as well as others...The solution is here for the taking..
I wrote this in my journal today:
Yesterday's entry really hit on something big for me, and this morning I was musing on just why practicing acceptance makes me feel so serene. I think the answer is that I've been looking for acceptance all my life: acceptance in the eyes of others, acceptance in the approval and recognition that others give me. But the thing is, no matter how much of it I got, the charge I got from that acceptance was fleeting, and it was time to move on and try to get some more acceptance, either from the people I was with/knew, or, more likely, new people who I could dazzle or and feed my ego off of. The prettier the better, because I think that also meant that I was a "better" person. Did that mean that I treated women as an object? Oh, hell yes. No question about it, but the damned thing about it is that I've always been one of the staunchest opponents of "that kind of thinking". My guess is that it was because I recognized something of my own psychological processes at work there, just in a more overt form. The double-bind for me was that I really did relate to women better, I guess because I spent most of my formative years an only child raised by a woman, so it's always been a lot easier for me to make friends with women, but then take that woman's acceptance as a sign that I'm somehow special, building my identity around her, all the while feeling shame for doing that.
I wanted to expand on it here, with you guys, and see what you think about this. It was mentioned yesterday that we seek in others what we refuse to give ourselves, and I think that's the big thing for me. Whenever I create these "fantasy people", I'm looking for the acceptance and recognition that I didn't get as a child, and when I get a little hit of it I definitely get a high (I'm actually wrestling with this with a woman that I want to be friends with now - she's crossing a few boundaries and I'm having to push back a little bit). Have you found that just giving yourself this kind of acceptance and love has helped to push that rising tide of "intrigue" back?
Yesterday's entry really hit on something big for me, and this morning I was musing on just why practicing acceptance makes me feel so serene. I think the answer is that I've been looking for acceptance all my life: acceptance in the eyes of others, acceptance in the approval and recognition that others give me. But the thing is, no matter how much of it I got, the charge I got from that acceptance was fleeting, and it was time to move on and try to get some more acceptance, either from the people I was with/knew, or, more likely, new people who I could dazzle or and feed my ego off of. The prettier the better, because I think that also meant that I was a "better" person. Did that mean that I treated women as an object? Oh, hell yes. No question about it, but the damned thing about it is that I've always been one of the staunchest opponents of "that kind of thinking". My guess is that it was because I recognized something of my own psychological processes at work there, just in a more overt form. The double-bind for me was that I really did relate to women better, I guess because I spent most of my formative years an only child raised by a woman, so it's always been a lot easier for me to make friends with women, but then take that woman's acceptance as a sign that I'm somehow special, building my identity around her, all the while feeling shame for doing that.
I wanted to expand on it here, with you guys, and see what you think about this. It was mentioned yesterday that we seek in others what we refuse to give ourselves, and I think that's the big thing for me. Whenever I create these "fantasy people", I'm looking for the acceptance and recognition that I didn't get as a child, and when I get a little hit of it I definitely get a high (I'm actually wrestling with this with a woman that I want to be friends with now - she's crossing a few boundaries and I'm having to push back a little bit). Have you found that just giving yourself this kind of acceptance and love has helped to push that rising tide of "intrigue" back?
My perversion, if I may, was a little different from yours. My parents were a couple for whom there was no one else in the room. Also, the whole room tilted to my mother because of her mental illness. Beginning in my late teens, I began to feel the "intrigue" with respect to older married men. (Shame attack now.) Pulling their attention was like pulling my father's attention away from my mother, I guess, and onto me. Even though I never had any awareness of wanting my father's attention. This was an overpowering addiction for me. In fact, yet another "intrigue" stirring was an element in prompting the timing of my marriage. I had to run for my life! Fortunately, I don't work in an office anymore, another hotbed of such intrigues.
Anyway, I was abandoned as a child by my mother's illness. It was pointed out to me that the lack of attention and feelings of abandonment I suffer from now did not truly come from outside of me, but rather arose from the fact that I - I - was abandoning and failing to attend to myself, choosing my addiction and the outer "supply" instead.
So, again, excellent share, Jonathan. Let us love, accept, attend to, and not abandon ourselves today, and stop making idols of others.
I think in my house growing up my mother was the love addict and my father the love avoidant. I watched my mother clamor over my father as he slept in a chair. I watched her cry over him as he left her for another woman. And I learned well to hold both of their characteristics inside of me - the clamoring and the walking away. I see it in many of my past relationships. Primarily though, I pick up strays if you will. People who are unavailable to me.
The inner child conversations that NoOneLeft mentions have been very beneficial to me as well. Sometimes I journal to her, because writing is more natural to me than speaking. It is amazingly powerful. I've even had instances where I could feel something going on inside of me and followed a train of thought only to wind up seeing a picture of myself as a child in my mind and have to figure out what she is trying to tell me! It helps with that sense of "intrigue" you speak of. And it is in a sense giving yourself the acceptance you always wanted.
But I had been practicing these inner child dialogues for awhile...I might have to get back to them. You guys really encourage me.
everything that has been discussed thus far rings far too true for me.
the only thing i find that breaks the addict/avoidance cycle is when i give to me, what i want from others.....
and loving the inner child helps too.
it's so good to be here with others of "my tribe".
thanks for putting it out there!