If it is any comfort, I feel exactly the same, I have just spilt up with a nice guy I just met and can not hold down any relationship since I was 19 too, I am now 28, I have just joined this site. If you would like to chat that would be good...

Hola Chica, good to hear from you. I have been discussing this same subject with a friend. How now my awareness level is sky high, but my behavior has not changed as much as I would have liked.

My friend said to me: You have had 40+ years of developing these unhealthy behavior patterns and why do you think you are going to have over night changes?

My friend suggested that I attempt to do 90 12 step meetings in 90 days. Yikes!!! I know that as a single mother that would be almost impossible for you. But I may try to see if recovery and steps in my face every day for 90 days will help turn me around.

Progress not perfection, right?

Nice post. I have the same question. I have spent years researching my issues, and the past year and a half finally figuring them all out and understanding it all. But there is just SO MUCH damage done. Not just by the 3 abusive men I've been involved with, but a lot of damage from my childhood. How do I fix all this? How do I ever feel safe around a man? Is it possible to EVER trust another man. How do I establish a healthy intimate relationship? I don't know. I think this is gonna be a very very long and slow process, possibly over the course of the rest of our lives. I wish there was a magic reset button.

Agent, great questions I'm sure we all ask ourselves. I too had a very abusive childhood. My father died when I was 14 but we had lived with my mother and abusive stepdad since I was 5. My dad was amazing, adored me, my mother jealous of this was cold and distant to me. Always did and still does favor and dote on the boys while maintaining a pretty cold and abrupt relationship with me (until I stopped talking to them 2 years ago) Stepfather emotionally and physically abusive. Just a big, mean, crabby, overbearing, control freak who took discipline to a level that was probably prosecutable and my mother stood by and let him, rarely stepping in. I havent spoken with her in 2 years but before that she would bring up constantly, my whole life how close I was with my dad and how he ignored her and my brother. You know, like that was my fault? Once my dad died there was no safe or comfortable place. Not only did I have one hole to fill, I had 2. Made me feel very needy. I do think, for the first time in my life I have finally let that all go. Yeah I can see behaviors in the past that resemble that of a scared child but I'm just not her anymore. Practicing new healthy behaviors is uncomfortable and feels awkward but I've found the more you do it, the better you feel and the more easily it comes. Setting and maintaining healthy boundries with everyone in our lives does not come naturally, makes us feel odd but when reexamined it feels great. Like me telling my good friend who wants a relationship that I'm not ready. It was hard for me to tell him honestly how I felt because I was afraid he'd abandon me but it was how I felt, what I wanted and it did make me uncomfortable but I didnt lose sleep, apologize or exagerate my true feelings. It made me feel better 'at the end of the day.' I guess trusting ourselves, intuitions and feeling good enough is what we can give ourselves. Practicing habitual gratitude works for me. Life is going to keep repeating the same lesson until we take was we need from it, grow and move on. I still want to be the giving, loving person I have always been but without fear or an agenda.