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 everyone,
I feel blessed that I found this book. It has helped to ID some of my emotional DNA from my past and why I respond to men the way I do. My mother was an alcoholic. My dad and mom separated before I can recall, but I know their was abuse in our home when both of my parents were drinking. My mom relied on me for her emotional support. I took her burdens. I was blamed for her sadness and praised for her happiness. My entire world rotated around how she was feeling and that changed from hour to hour. It was so volatile that I was just struggling as a child to figure it out and figure out ways to keep her happy. I took full responsiblility for that and not until I was 30 (40 now), did I learn to honor boundaries to protect myself. By eight years old, I was an adult. I am called an old soul and I focus much of my energy on figuring people out, trying to save them, help them, teach them about what is holding them back, support them, but when it comes to taking care of myself, I can't. I freak out. I get anxiety, I can't be idle. I am not happy without a human project. I defer my energy outward and the minute I am alone, with self, I usually medicate with food because it is too hard to be with self.
I also did not have a strong relationship with my father. He didn't respect women as equals and I felt invisible. I always tried to be a tomboy and to be less of a girl in the rare occassion we spent time together. I didn't feel accepted for me. I felt invaluable.
I want to love myself, but I suck so bad at it. I go in mean cycles...over and over and over again. I am only feeling good if my ego is in control. When my humble heart takes over, I feel like a stupid child that is so needy. It embarasses me. I am a successful adult, healthy, attractive, active and I put on an amazing act, but I am just a scared overburdened child inside that needs to be constantly reminded of her value.
I am four months out of a relationship and I spent probably 80% of my time ruminating about what happened in the relationship and during the break-up. I was with someone for two years. We were really amazing companions, but I always felt like our emotional chemistry was off. It was hard to get close to him. We had a hard time communicating because I am a total empath, sensitive, but very emotionally open and articulate. I know how I feel and usually why. He was not this way and lacked empathy when I brought up concerns. He got defensive. When this started to happen or he brought things up to me, I tended to mirror his responses to me. I was defensive, negative, and withdrew.
Because of our communciation and the lack of closeness I felt, I never really gave 100% emotioanlly to the relationship...or so my ego thought. We did everything together and I thought I was going to change him. I thought he would open up to me if I just illustrated to him, over and over again, that he was closed off and sheltering his heart and that I selfishly wanted to be let in. I always want to be let in. If I am not the center of a man's world, I struggle. If he is not dependent on me or praising my emotional depth, I am anxious, if he is not validating me, I am empty.
So, this is getting long, but I want to ask honestly what others feel when they read the book? I am having a hard time accepting my break-up because, again, I blame myself for everything and I initiated it. There are other things that were not right about us being together, but all I can focus on after reading the book is how I pushed him, focused my entire life and soul on the relationship, tried to change him, didn't let him be him, manipulated him emotionally, criticized him instead of accepting him, was so caught up in my expectations of who he should be and how he should operate his heart that I missed out and was blind to him trying to show me...these are all things I now have in my self hate/blame inventory (after reading the book) that have made things worse. I feel so shitty about myself and broken and flawed. I realize I do have a problem and my responses to our situations were of obsession with resolve and such intense focus on what he was going right/wrong all the time that I lost sight of the big picture. I don't like who I was.
So, knowing this about what happened, how do I not feel worse, blame myself fully, and get to a place of acceptance when I feel I caused this...my disease, damaged, needy heart caused this and that is why I am feeling alone right now.
It's more complicated that this, but this is what lives inside my heart right now and I want to hear if others were suffering or are suffering from self blame and lower self esteem when "seeing" themselves in the book and how they shifted that thinking?
Also, I would love to talk it out with someone about accepting where I am at...what my current reality is and trusting that I got out of the relationship for a good reason...many of them and I am only hating on myself right now because I feel alone and again, I am stuck with just ME and that is a very uncomfortable place.
Thank you so much for listening
Your entry was extremely articulate and descriptive. It sounds like understanding human nature and what makes people tick is a gift of yours. How you responded to your parents' dysfunction shows that you have a gift of reading emotions and responding to them--that you unconsciously have been able, to a great extent, control outcomes simply by soothing people who have less control over their emotions (perhaps selfishly so on their part---though possibly because they simply don't have the ability to do so) than you do. This gift of yours has weighed heavily on you because you also feel an enormous responsibility to take care of people and situations around you. There's an invisible "fixit" list in your mind. You're a superhero addressing the world's problems.
I personally believe that empathic qualities can be co-morbid with anxiety disorders, thus the ruminating and the self-blame when a relationship or an encounter turn sour. Empaths will take responsibility for everything. You write:
"There are other things that were not right about us being together, but all I can focus on after reading the book is how I pushed him, focused my entire life and soul on the relationship, tried to change him, didn't let him be him, manipulated him emotionally, criticized him instead of accepting him, was so caught up in my expectations of who he should be and how he should operate his heart that I missed out and was blind to him trying to show me...these are all things I now have in my self hate/blame inventory (after reading the book) that have made things worse. I feel so shitty about myself and broken and flawed. I realize I do have a problem and my responses to our situations were of obsession with resolve and such intense focus on what he was going right/wrong all the time that I lost sight of the big picture. I don't like who I was." Women who love too much normally pick partners who in one form or another require "change". They see the potential in someone, and have supreme confidence that they will be able to provide this person with the support they need to meet that potential. As well, women who love too much will get highly attached to people who aren't reciprocal in this regard, because--again--they feel social responsibility to fix flaws.
It sounds like you are putting much of the blame on yourself for the failure of this relationship; but did your partner indicate that he was willing to put work into saving it? Were you the only one trying? do you think that if you had not engaged in the "games" the book speaks of that it would have made a difference?
Years ago I was in a relationship with a man with what was formerly called Asperger's Syndrome. I had read the book, could see how I had tried to fix the relationship by controlling him and thought: I have all of this information on hand right now, why not see if i can apply it to the relationship. I did do that, and for a while it seemed like the relationship improved. Ultimately he had sex with an escort and we eventually broke-up, but that's a tale for another day....what I'm trying to say, though, is that while it's possible your relationship would still have been intact had you read the book earlier, it's also possible that because you initially went into this relationship with certain ways of relating to people that it would be difficult to change that pattern in the relationship....though obviously every situation is different.
If you were putting up with discomfort and acrimony for several years, then you probably decided to end the relationship for a good reason. I think that often time we self-berate our decisions when, as humans, we make the very best decisions based upon the information we have at the time and we need to trust that.
I'm currently in a relationship since reading Women Who Love Too Much. I got into it within a year and a half of reading the book, and this was about five and a half years ago. It was about half a year after being on this site. Within about two years of the relationship I realized that he's a bonafide narcissist. Honestly, the things I initially accepted in the relationship are definitely things I don't accept now, and it's been a relationship that's required hard work on my part. I think to a lesser degree he, too, has worked at it--(and I have to be very gentle with his easily bruised ego) he has tried. I think what's shifted in my thinking over the years is that I've really been trying to accept him for who he is, and when I feel anxious about a certain aspect of him I ask myself why I am being threatened by it. Is it because I find something really distasteful? is it that I feel he is neglecting me and paying attention to another lady whilst in my presence? is this making me feel anxious? How can I negotiate this feeling with him? for his part he acts insulted that I have DOUBTED his integrity. While this might seem like simply straight-up narcissistic behavior/gaslighting, I think that his conscious mind honestly feels like it is an effrontery to the image of his character. So we are gradually getting through this, where my criticisms--what I can't handle--are addressed. Though there is much I don't address because I have also been questioning myself more and more of why these characteristics of him bother me. Ultimately it will come down to how much of what bothers me can be tolerated? after all, dude should not have to change for me. I should get someone who needs no changing.
Being alone CAN be lonely, though it can also carry with it a shift where alone becomes peaceful. I started to experience this shortly before I became involved in my current relationship. The anxiety was much less. I think that in the past five years my awareness of where my emotional space in the relationship is has definitely expanded--I think that there has been a shift to thinking more of developing myself as opposed to changing him. At the very least I am aware when I am practicing co-dependant relationship in connection with him. I don't think that the end goal of this group should be to be a successful alone person, though sometimes it's a necessary thing (instead of falling for the wrong guy). I've found, too, enormous insight from listening to the women's experiences. I think in many ways the site has acted as a mirror with which to examine my own motivations and to be aware of what I'm probably doing myself.
Sending you positive, light energy.
Artgrrl