Women who Love too Much Community Group
WHEN BEING IN LOVE, MEANS BEING IN PAIN... This group is to help women through the journey of realizing they can love themselves. To help realize that they are capable of having a happy, healthy, whole relationship and break the cycle of abuse and heartache from loving emotionally unavailable men.
Hi Daddy,
Sorry I keep missing you... I'm sure we'll get to chat at some point soon.
But on to serious stuff. I don't know if Mom told you but I asked her to get a copy of the book that really sparked a lot of recognition in me and prompted me to start looking at my life differently so that maybe I could have her support on trying to recover from this pattern / addiction I have. But it occurred to me that Mom may not be the best person for the job. If we're honest I think you and I have more in common and I'm not sure Mom will be ready or able to recognize herself when she reads it. I remember so well that day when C and I and were visiting and I came up to your house alone ended up crying to you about what was happening. the way you listened and supported me that day was something that i've never forgotten.
the mornings are the hardest for me. i wake up thinking obsessively about everything (literally EVERYTHING) that's happened to bring me to this moment in my life. i spend a lot of time talking myself out of reaching out to C in some way. but i know he's just a means of avoiding thinking about things that are far more painful than the fact that that relationship is over.
here's what i'm thinking... Would you get a copy of Women Who Love Too Much and read it please? It will be uncomfortable for you I'm sure but if you can read it and accept that it does in fact reflect my experience and reality I'd like to be able to talk to you about the things I am dealing with. I think it might help root out the problem at it's core. If you can't then please let's not talk about it at all. i don't have the energy to try to convince you or make you accept that this is my experience.
There are things I've wanted to ask you for a while now. I kept thinking I'd find the right time, but I think that time is now. This is not going to be fun for either of us... Just a warning. Why didn't you ever want a divorce? Why did you want to stay with Mom? I never saw any evidence of love in our home, only stubbornness and anger and an unwillingness to accept defeat. I've wished so many times in my adult life that you two had just gotten divorced the first time. I feel like it would have set a better example. Mom and I share the same disease of struggling to love ourselves (maybe you do too.) Can you tell me why you love her? Why you wanted to stay?
I'm not going to send this. I can see myself asking you to save me. Asking you to tell me that there's some fairy tale love between you two that I was just never allowed to see. But that's just another fantasy. The reality is your both deeply broken people and you've clung to each other out of fear and pigheadedness and obligation. You stayed together for comfort not love. I honestly don't know if I believe anything else exists.
And now the pendulum swings from fantasy to nightmare and I reduce everything to it's worst possible reality. C always hated the way I was always thinking the worst. How do I learn to live in reality when I have no idea what love really looks like? Where do we get our examples when we've had no examples in life?
Sorry I keep missing you... I'm sure we'll get to chat at some point soon.
But on to serious stuff. I don't know if Mom told you but I asked her to get a copy of the book that really sparked a lot of recognition in me and prompted me to start looking at my life differently so that maybe I could have her support on trying to recover from this pattern / addiction I have. But it occurred to me that Mom may not be the best person for the job. If we're honest I think you and I have more in common and I'm not sure Mom will be ready or able to recognize herself when she reads it. I remember so well that day when C and I and were visiting and I came up to your house alone ended up crying to you about what was happening. the way you listened and supported me that day was something that i've never forgotten.
the mornings are the hardest for me. i wake up thinking obsessively about everything (literally EVERYTHING) that's happened to bring me to this moment in my life. i spend a lot of time talking myself out of reaching out to C in some way. but i know he's just a means of avoiding thinking about things that are far more painful than the fact that that relationship is over.
here's what i'm thinking... Would you get a copy of Women Who Love Too Much and read it please? It will be uncomfortable for you I'm sure but if you can read it and accept that it does in fact reflect my experience and reality I'd like to be able to talk to you about the things I am dealing with. I think it might help root out the problem at it's core. If you can't then please let's not talk about it at all. i don't have the energy to try to convince you or make you accept that this is my experience.
There are things I've wanted to ask you for a while now. I kept thinking I'd find the right time, but I think that time is now. This is not going to be fun for either of us... Just a warning. Why didn't you ever want a divorce? Why did you want to stay with Mom? I never saw any evidence of love in our home, only stubbornness and anger and an unwillingness to accept defeat. I've wished so many times in my adult life that you two had just gotten divorced the first time. I feel like it would have set a better example. Mom and I share the same disease of struggling to love ourselves (maybe you do too.) Can you tell me why you love her? Why you wanted to stay?
I'm not going to send this. I can see myself asking you to save me. Asking you to tell me that there's some fairy tale love between you two that I was just never allowed to see. But that's just another fantasy. The reality is your both deeply broken people and you've clung to each other out of fear and pigheadedness and obligation. You stayed together for comfort not love. I honestly don't know if I believe anything else exists.
And now the pendulum swings from fantasy to nightmare and I reduce everything to it's worst possible reality. C always hated the way I was always thinking the worst. How do I learn to live in reality when I have no idea what love really looks like? Where do we get our examples when we've had no examples in life?
That is a powerful email. It is full of questions, answers, and pain. The awareness of who we are, who are parents are can be a humbling yet painful process. Do you think your father even has the awareness to answer those questions truthfully? I am guilty of thinking the worse as well and my ex boyfriend hated it also. My parents never wanted to deal in "my truth" either. I would accuse them of refusing the see reality or to validate my experiences. While that may be true it really is not that important to me anymore. I asked myself the other day why do I believe so strongly in the painful aspects of life while glossing over the evidence that there is good in life as well.
Brene Brown teaches that those who liv wholehearted know how to lean into the moments of joy therefore making moments of pain bearable. It is so easy to believe that we need something from others that they refuse to give us. The truth may be that what we need is accessible if only we change the direction of our lens. Realizing that my parents did not have it to give was freeing but what was even more freeing is the realization and experience that I could get what I needed. The first time I was able to make myself feel better without someone having to change was mind blowing. The process for me now is easier but there are moments when I struggle to surrender what I believe others should do.
I cant tell you whether you send the email or not. But I will ask you this. If your father does not respond in the way that you want or need are you in a place where you can accept that without creating more pain for yourself. Can you allow him and your mother to be as they are without any need from you that they change?
My father does have a lot of self awareness. But even if he has the answers to these questions, and even if he's able to talk to me honestly about it (which are both definite Ifs) I'm not sure the answers will help me. The best I can hope for is some fairy tale of love that existed beneath the surface that i somehow never glimpsed in 18 years of vicious fights, verbal abuse, hostility and resentment. The worst is that the only thing that kept them together was fear, habit and laziness. Would either of those options actually be of use to me? I think it's more valuable for me to validate my own perception, trust my own experience and accept that my parents are just two broken people who did the best they could (and for the record, they could have been much worse), I would like to talk to my dad about all this one day - but not in an email. as you said ". It is so easy to believe that we need something from others that they refuse to give us. The truth may be that what we need is accessible if only we change the direction of our lens." i was off to a rocky start this morning and needed somewhere to release this. thank you for being there :)
I had to come to grips with that this week with my own family--
They are all from a pretty Conservative background. I've always been the person in our family to first go against the grain, first when I married someone of a darker skin colour, then when I left our religion, and finally when I became an outspoken advocate of LGBTQ equality. I think that this last action of mine has been a final straw in coming between my family members and myself--and last week on facebook I made public mention of how it saddened me that my family just didn't "get it" about LGBTQ equality.
My reason in posting this? my daughter is bisexual and I am totally supportive of this but they have no idea. She has told me and her friends but I refuse to "out" her to an unreceptive audiance who could say extremely hurtful things to her. As a teenager, her image of her identity is fragile and I want her experiences to be positive ones. So I have been trying to change them into trying to make them see the ethical aspect of what discrimination means, but it has made nary a dent in their consciousness. I realized that I couldn't change them-- if they are going to be unaccepting of LGBTQ identity that is their choice. My choice is to simply move on and leave them be.
I think this is such a difficult thing, to recognize the faults and mistakes of others and to love them so much and to desire to have the ideal relationship with these people, whether it is our parents or our siblings or cousins or friends or lover that we try our hardest to make them see what we see, but "their eyes cannot see and their ears cannot hear". It is useless.
And so I believe the journey out of darkness, though necessary, can be a painful one. It takes incredible strength. We have to remember that much of the reason we are dealing with the conflict in our lives that we deal with is that have have been reluctant to leave behind negative relationships; we hoard them until we can barely move or think.
Sending you lightness of spirit and love,
Artgrrl