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, I am a 34 year old woman who loves too much. I have realized this after reading Robin Norwood's book and everything there completely defines me. I have a history of getting involved with inappropriate and emotionally unavailable men and my latest episode has taken so much out of me that I know now I have to either recover or it will kill me. I have been in an affair with an emotionally immature married man for over a year. He was my university professor and I remember when I first saw him he was nothing special and I was not at all attracted to him. Over time however I started to notice some markers that always do it for me, he appeared sad, unhappy, unloved and like he needed something nice in his life and of course I was ready to jump to the challenge. I started obsessing about him and developed a scheme on how to seduce him which worked perfectly. We got involved and my obsessions grew, I was convinced that I could love him as no one else has before, love him so much that he would leave his wife and be with me and we would be happy ever after. To some extent this has worked as at first he would never contemplate that and in the recent months we have been talking about our future and he said he was more or less decided to leave his wife because he loved me and wanted to be with me. That was of course music to my ears but it never quite happened. Every time it got close to the action, he would withdraw and not talk to me for some time which sent me into spirals of complete despair and depression. Everything I do or feel is dependent on what he does or says. When things are good I feel great, when things are uncertain I feel devastated. Im always hanging around for the crumbs of his attention, for times when he is not with the family etc. Everything I do or say is designed to in some form manipulate him into doing what I want and make him into the man I want him to be(which he is not). I have believed that all my unhappiness is temporary and it would all be erased once he left his wife and we would be free to be happy together. I have contemplated leaving him but the thought terrifies me, I tried a couple of times but changed my mind on the next day because I could not face the emptiness and despair I felt knowing he was gone. He dumped me on a couple of occasions too but also came back soon after. I know what I need to do is to relinquish the need to control and try to find enjoyment in my own life and let him be who he is and do what he wants but how do I do that? I feel I have nothing to enjoy, I am broke, i am constantly working and I do not have any friends or people who I could come for support to. I need to point out that I am a highly intelligent woman working as a scientist, but my emotional maturity is that of a child. I dont want to face the ugly feelings I have inside me, ones of low self worth, self hatred, not being good enough, not worthy of love, a failure, so instead I seek comfort in outsourcing the feelings to this rollercoaster relationship. Everything he says, every little thing can trigger me and send me spiralling down and sometimes I manage not to act out and sometimes I do not, and we engage in a completely pointless exchange that never leads anywhere. Please, any advice on how to proceed, how to find some love for self, some enjoyment in my life where there isnt any at the moment, would be appreciated. Thank you
What this all comes down to is: why is it that you felt the need to save this man and get involved in the first place? Why are you attracted to unhappy men who are not able to love?
As I have learned in my own case loving a sociopathic guy who was constantly suicidal who I thought I could 'love' into wellness, a lot of times these relationships are a distraction from the emptiness in our own lives. A lot of the reason we feel empty is because we were raised in dysfunctional families, and never learned how to be happy or get the most out of life on our own. Many of us were 'surrogate parents', filling in for an unstable parent and never learned how to be cared for.
What you are in now is an addictive relationship and I have been there 100%. I relate to everything about having your life revolve around him. That was me with my ex. It's a nightmare. The thing is, no matter how much you give him, he will never leave his wife. He has the best of both worlds right now. And importantly: you cannot fix another person by 'loving' them. They have to make the choice themselves. And by distracting him in this relationship, all you are doing is preventing him from seeking the help he really needs: therapy.
After leaving my suicidal ex, all he did was move on to another woman a few months later. All my effort at loving him and fixing him was just a waste and he basically used me. It was a huge blow to me, one I have never recovered from and I dated him....7 years ago. It took me years to get over the emotional pain.
I know you care about him but if you truly love him you need to let him go. Most importantly, what about you? You sound so lonely. What you need is to get into therapy ASAP and start reading self-help books. I highly recommend checking out a 12-step group, particularly codependents anonymous. There you will find people just like you who try to 'save' others. I have been attending for over 2 years and it has helped me enormously. It is not for everyone but worth checking out. The number one thing you need is to start creating a support network from various sources asap. Coming here is a great start. This is a great site and full of knowledgeable women who are all in various stages of recovery. Recovery for the true WWLTM is really a lifelong journey but we are all getting better one step at a time.
Big hugs x
Welcome.
It sounds like reading this book was a life-changing experience for you--you saw a lot of yourself in the book, and I can see it, as well. First, the girl who developes an affair with a married man who, when he decides he is going to stay with his wife after all, she tries to drive off a cliff. The second story yours reminds me of is the man who has a wild and passionate affair with another woman who is always begging him to leave his wife, but when he does finally leave his wife for her the passion she had for him for so long dies. So I think that's what you're referring to when you say that this is a very deep problem with you that not even a surface "victory" would fix. As well, you recognize that this all stems to trying to replay and resolve your childhood experience of having an emotionally unavailable father. Because of this you thirst for affirmation from people who are are incapable of giving it, but if they actually DID change and give you what you wanted, they would lose their appeal because you've never been able to get past that space in your life, or truly accept that your father simply wasn't capable of loving unconditionally.
It's hard to move on beyond that dynamic, what happens in childhood informs our greatest desires. It's a plus that you have reached out, though, and admitted to yourself that you have a problem. It's hard work getting past this and like the book says, we have to make recovery our #1 goal.
Yes, it's amazing how beautiful, brilliant women fall for men who are incapable of giving anyone emotional fealty, because he's giving his wife nothing at all except for lies and future pain. It's not like he has the best of both worlds; he's destroying two women. You might have set out to seduce him, but he had a choice. Obviously he is not thinking of how this is affecting both you and his wife.
I had an online affair with a married man when I was married, this was about 13 years ago. On my part, I was ready to leave my marriage because it was an unhappy one--my husband was addicted to porn. But this dude who I was having the affair with? he had no intention of leaving his wife.
After I ended the affair (I felt guilty that I had broken the the sisterhood rule of treating all women like sisters), one of the things I researched on my own was why some women feel compelled to chase after married men, because it is a unique compulsion. I found myself attracted to several married men after I'd broken off things with "my" married guy. I relate it back to trying to get affection from someone who's literally not able to give you what you need. It's almost like we are trying to get the poison out by putting more poison into our lives.
I understand the obsessive urges. Obsession can lead to good things--but it can also create a lot of mental clutter.
You've made a number of key mental-decluttering moves in deciding which aspect of your life you need to address, but it also sounds like you feel it would kill you to let this guy go, so you're thinking of ways where you could work on yourself, make yourself strong, and then have the courage to leave. Not sure if this is going to work for you because of the extreme nature of this. Remember the girl who was driven to desperation in the book. You are worth more than that, in the same way that she was worth more, too.
What I will say is that you need to keep your recovery your number 1 priority. Here's sending you strong, affirming thoughts.
Artgrrl
I really understand what you are saying about this affair being an escape for you, a way to contemplate leaving your current relationship. I experienced the same thing in my mind. Contemplating leaving my marriage was overwhelming for me, but when I used the mental escape of an affair I was able to see myself out of the relationship and being able to survive.
Here's the ticker though: with women it tends to be different than men in terms of having an affair with another married person. Statistically, men who had extramarital affairs reported a fairly high level of satisfaction with their marriage (though this is not what they would tell the person they are having the affair with, naturally). For the women, however, they reported a high level of emotional DISSATISFACTION in their marriage; they felt that the marriage was pretty much over anyway and that this was their way out.
Another book I read about extramarital affairs stated that if two people who are having an affair with each other and are not intending to leave their marriage, then the affair is a "successful" one, meaning that their bread is buttered on both sides. They have the security of the marriage and the illicit "thrill" of the affair. Of course if they are found out by their partners it will get messy, but for some this adds to the thrill. Please note that I am not condoning this paradigm, it was what I found out when I was researching this for my own knowledge base because I had to know what was going on in my situation.
In my own experience, my marriage was a lost cause in the sense that my husband was totally addicted to the porn idea and sex was yuck because of it, he wanted to do stuff they were doing on the porn movies which, as we know, is usually not as thrilling for the woman as the guy. When he found out I'd been having internet affairs he went nuts, tried everything he could do to save the marriage (I actually felt really bad because he was totally devastated) but the knowledge of the fact I'd had the affairs was too much for him and he eventually took his sex addiction to the streets. I got out before I got AIDS, thankfully.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could rationally look at a relationship that's not working, and say: "Life is short: this is not bringing me happiness; I need to move on". But no, we fear the pain of regret, we fear the unknown. We hang on to those crystals of bliss that are the good times, and they seem even more shiny because of the shit we go through in the bad times. An affair can seem to give us clarity, to know that there's life beyond the vicious cycle we are in, but it's much like the substance abuse coping mechanisms. A paradox, I know.
I think you realize quite clearly that Mr Professor (who are notorious for having affairs with their students/underlings) is not the right person for you just the way he is, and that you have a decision to make as to whether or not you love him just the way he is or the vision of what he could be. If you are a person who likes to help people reach their full potential, then a job in career advising or contributing on a support forum is your best bet lol. It doesn't work on the personal level, though a forum is a great outlet!