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.
Despite still having the daily battles in my head between acknowledging that the impossible dream is nothing more than an old unhealthy coping mechanism, an attempt to reenact old injustice and win the unwinnable, and yet still pining for the impossible dream, I've made it to day 25 with no contact with my kryptonite, the guy a block away.
Here's a question that hit me on the drive to work today. After an exchange with my dad this week, I realized his responses to my explanations of what it's like facing this were the same, word for word, as the responses I got from the guy. "Your fixation on the past is affecting your future." "You have so much going for you, move on,..." Etc.
I should know better than to try to get validation from the same limited parent whose limitations enabled the horrific emotional childhood abuse by my crazy borderline mother (and frequently carried out by my dad, because it was the only way he knew how to manage her tirades to prove his loyalty to her by meeting her demands to sacrifice me). But I still slip into trying. The same way I tried to explain to the guy when he did the same thing last fall...evicting me from his life with great cruelty and betrayal when threatened by his borderline babymama to prove his loyalty to her by attacking me or else lose his daughter.
I tried to explain to my dad that it was being told as a kid that nothing was wrong, that I'm ungrateful for all my gifts, that there's no reason I can't get over the past and not let it affect my future, rather than acknowledging that some horrible things have affected me in ways I can't control (PTSD, nightmares, being so stuck reenacting the injustice with a mirror image guy who is just as incapable of providing validation of the trauma), that is part of the reason I'm so stuck. He wrote back, "don't let your fixation on the past affect your future...you are smart kind and pretty and you don't have a bad back like me," essentially more of the very things I just told him are keeping me stuck. More minimizing, blaming me for being stuck. I know he is trying to be helpful. But all I can feel is shamed all over again by the minimization. It's exhausting...getting screwed on the front end by abusive limited parents, trying everything I can to recover, heal, take responsibility to move on, then having to explain why I'm still struggling and being told to move on. It just keeps adding insult to injury to be told that I should do what I'm trying so hard to do and can't do.
So, it struck me as kind of funny. I'm sticking with the no contact rule to not expose myself to more hurtful responses from the guy, to change my actions so I can eventually change my thoughts and feelings. But how can you get away from the same messages that are still coming from the parent who created this need to reenact the injustice in the first place?
Here's a question that hit me on the drive to work today. After an exchange with my dad this week, I realized his responses to my explanations of what it's like facing this were the same, word for word, as the responses I got from the guy. "Your fixation on the past is affecting your future." "You have so much going for you, move on,..." Etc.
I should know better than to try to get validation from the same limited parent whose limitations enabled the horrific emotional childhood abuse by my crazy borderline mother (and frequently carried out by my dad, because it was the only way he knew how to manage her tirades to prove his loyalty to her by meeting her demands to sacrifice me). But I still slip into trying. The same way I tried to explain to the guy when he did the same thing last fall...evicting me from his life with great cruelty and betrayal when threatened by his borderline babymama to prove his loyalty to her by attacking me or else lose his daughter.
I tried to explain to my dad that it was being told as a kid that nothing was wrong, that I'm ungrateful for all my gifts, that there's no reason I can't get over the past and not let it affect my future, rather than acknowledging that some horrible things have affected me in ways I can't control (PTSD, nightmares, being so stuck reenacting the injustice with a mirror image guy who is just as incapable of providing validation of the trauma), that is part of the reason I'm so stuck. He wrote back, "don't let your fixation on the past affect your future...you are smart kind and pretty and you don't have a bad back like me," essentially more of the very things I just told him are keeping me stuck. More minimizing, blaming me for being stuck. I know he is trying to be helpful. But all I can feel is shamed all over again by the minimization. It's exhausting...getting screwed on the front end by abusive limited parents, trying everything I can to recover, heal, take responsibility to move on, then having to explain why I'm still struggling and being told to move on. It just keeps adding insult to injury to be told that I should do what I'm trying so hard to do and can't do.
So, it struck me as kind of funny. I'm sticking with the no contact rule to not expose myself to more hurtful responses from the guy, to change my actions so I can eventually change my thoughts and feelings. But how can you get away from the same messages that are still coming from the parent who created this need to reenact the injustice in the first place?
For me, I realize that it is not only love relationships I have saught out that tend to mirror my childhood relationships but platonic friends, as well. I tend to be attracted to challenges, it's as if I get this measure of control over myself by being able to change them. Recently I got rid of close to 70 Facebook friends and made note to myself to not seek out people of my past with whom I felt our relationship modeled that of my pattern. It was like a massive relationship de-cluttering, which interestingly enough has mirrored my decluttering project I've been doing around my house in the past 6 months.
I live thousands of miles away from my family so this helps the process of minimizing contact with them; my parents, while I love them, have parented me in a way that has caused me to seek out the type of relationships that I did. I have minimum contact with them, and try not to enter into conflict with them. More recently I resigned myself to realizing that I cannot change them (they have very conservative values which have always ran counter to my own).
I think we struggle with trying to change the world and fight other people's battles for them. We do this while neglecting our OWN battles and advocating for ourselves.
As for the people who are doing injustice to us, we can't change them, we can only avoid them and fill our lives with people who are positive.
I think the only way you're going to get any peace is to accept them for who they are, warts and all, and accept that they might never "get it." I hope that doesn't sound like I'm talking down to you or anything. I totally know what you're going through because I have similar issues with my (one remaining) parent. It's helped me to lower my expectations, understand that I need validation that she can't give and start seeking that validation elsewhere.
In my opinion, our original abusers, no matter how much we tell them, really will never GET what they did. They did what they did because they thought it was ok on some level. Period.
It may sound extreme, but to save my sanity, I have completely disowned my biological mother. After years of making excuses for her, trying to make her understand that what she did was wrong, trying to understand her point of view, she makes it clear often that she has NO IDEA that she even did anything wrong to me. I'm done banging my head against the wall. I'm free and I do not miss her whatsoever.
I suggest rethinking your boundaries or how much time you spend with your parents, your dad in particular. These people cannot give you what you need.