"...I never found anyone to fulfill my needs...A lonely place to be..."
My current therapist told me that he thinks I'm a hell of a LOT of fun and that it's being wasted on a man who doesn't appreciate it. Kind of on the order of having a Ferrari that you never drive. I told him if he ever dumps his wife, I'm there for him. He said I could be his "Plan B"! Not too shabby since I'm only about 28 years older than he is!!
The consensus of opinion is that I've definitely put in more than my fair share of time and effort into trying to make my marriage work. I just don't trust my judgement, especially when it comes to putting myself first. I've been beaten down all my life without realizing that it was happening. My first therapist used to tell me that people were just treating me the way I had "taught" them to. He also used to tell me all the time that I was choosing to be a "victim". I guess I can sort of see now the point he was trying to get across, but at the time it wasn't helpful and actually had the opposite effect of what he was trying to achieve. Even though he was trying to open my eyes to what was going on, I perceived it as being criticism and felt like even my own therapist thought I was a failure.
In many, many ways I'm still like a naive child. I trust too much and I unquestioningly believe whatever I'm told by anyone I perceive to have any sort of "authority". And since I've never been "allowed" to have my own opinions, just about anyone who sounds confident in what they are saying seems like an "authority" to me. This is something I've only very recently begun to realize about myself. I honestly don't think to question things, and if someone questions MY actions, I immediately doubt myself and end up changing my opinion to match theirs. And yes, I would probably buy that swamp land in Florida as well as the Brooklyn Bridge….and if everyone else was jumping off a cliff, well, I would probably do that too, or feel guilty I didn’t!
It isn't a simple matter of "people pleasing," although I'm guilty of that too! I have just learned that it's safer all around to "go with the flow." I also tend to make the assumption that people feel the same way that I do about things. I put myself in their position and think they're feeling what I would feel. I try to always treat people the way I would LIKE to be treated (as opposed to how I AM being treated) and assume everyone else does the same thing, which is why I tend to get taken advantage of.
I'm phrasing this very poorly. I guess what it boils down to is that if I divorce my husband, I will be abandoning him. I will do just about ANYTHING to avoid being or even feeling abandoned, and I feel reluctant to do it to him. I've know for several years now that I have very serious abandonment issues, but I've only in the last few months started realizing that this is key to most, if not all, of my other issues. My extreme fear of being abandoned has been the motivating factor in many of the mistakes I have made in both parenting and in my marriage.
I have tried over the years to explain this to my husband, not as an excuse, but as an insight into the thought process behind some of my stupid decisions. He never understood my fear and thought I was being ridiculous and that I should be well past all that by now. While I know that getting out of my current situation and moving on to a new chapter in my life is essential to my recovery; it appears that in order to get past the pain of abandonment, I going to have to immerse myself in it. To me it seems like a classic case of the "cure" being worse than the "disease."
I’m terrified and I really don’t think I have the guts to face this, the greatest source of fear and pain in my life.
The consensus of opinion is that I've definitely put in more than my fair share of time and effort into trying to make my marriage work. I just don't trust my judgement, especially when it comes to putting myself first. I've been beaten down all my life without realizing that it was happening. My first therapist used to tell me that people were just treating me the way I had "taught" them to. He also used to tell me all the time that I was choosing to be a "victim". I guess I can sort of see now the point he was trying to get across, but at the time it wasn't helpful and actually had the opposite effect of what he was trying to achieve. Even though he was trying to open my eyes to what was going on, I perceived it as being criticism and felt like even my own therapist thought I was a failure.
In many, many ways I'm still like a naive child. I trust too much and I unquestioningly believe whatever I'm told by anyone I perceive to have any sort of "authority". And since I've never been "allowed" to have my own opinions, just about anyone who sounds confident in what they are saying seems like an "authority" to me. This is something I've only very recently begun to realize about myself. I honestly don't think to question things, and if someone questions MY actions, I immediately doubt myself and end up changing my opinion to match theirs. And yes, I would probably buy that swamp land in Florida as well as the Brooklyn Bridge….and if everyone else was jumping off a cliff, well, I would probably do that too, or feel guilty I didn’t!
It isn't a simple matter of "people pleasing," although I'm guilty of that too! I have just learned that it's safer all around to "go with the flow." I also tend to make the assumption that people feel the same way that I do about things. I put myself in their position and think they're feeling what I would feel. I try to always treat people the way I would LIKE to be treated (as opposed to how I AM being treated) and assume everyone else does the same thing, which is why I tend to get taken advantage of.
I'm phrasing this very poorly. I guess what it boils down to is that if I divorce my husband, I will be abandoning him. I will do just about ANYTHING to avoid being or even feeling abandoned, and I feel reluctant to do it to him. I've know for several years now that I have very serious abandonment issues, but I've only in the last few months started realizing that this is key to most, if not all, of my other issues. My extreme fear of being abandoned has been the motivating factor in many of the mistakes I have made in both parenting and in my marriage.
I have tried over the years to explain this to my husband, not as an excuse, but as an insight into the thought process behind some of my stupid decisions. He never understood my fear and thought I was being ridiculous and that I should be well past all that by now. While I know that getting out of my current situation and moving on to a new chapter in my life is essential to my recovery; it appears that in order to get past the pain of abandonment, I going to have to immerse myself in it. To me it seems like a classic case of the "cure" being worse than the "disease."
I’m terrified and I really don’t think I have the guts to face this, the greatest source of fear and pain in my life.
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