[marina]

I'm an intelligent 30 year old, I have just taken a large step in my career. I have a 6 year old boy and I own my own home. I just cant find a decent man!! Is it me? I go on loads of dates and nearly always come back with someones phone number from a night out, but I just cant seem to find anyone thats 'right'. I've been on my own now (this time!) for 2 and a half years and to be honest, I am quite happy doing my own thing most of the time, but I do get really lonely at times. When I meet someone, they always seem to open up something in me and I feel insecure. Then I think they dont really like me, are using me or just wont make me happy and finish with them. My friends say its cos I pick the wrong sort, but I feel it is something I do...this situation is eating away at my self-esteem and I know I havent given you much to go on, but you may be able to give me some general advice on how to cope with the disappointments. I feel like a 14 year old sometimes when it comes to relationships!

Feeling Hopeless!

[marina]

I just wanted to give you a little more background to go on and reading through some of the other columns I touched upon jealousy. I have experienced jealousy issues with boyfriends which is one reason I finish things so soon. I got jealous with the last boyfriend after a week as he had a number of female friends and invited them along when we went out in a group on our fourth date. I became jealous and left early and decided I didnt want to see him again. I have one friend who says I was a little hasty and another who says I was absolutely right. I feel I do have unconscious issues affecting my ability to have happy relationships in the present. My father had affairs throughout his marriage and left my Mum when I was thirteen. My Mother reacted very badly to this and started drinking, she also didnt spare us the gory details of her disappointing marriage. About six months later my Father moved in with another lady from our local church and ten months later committed suicide stating that he had made wrong decisions in during his life. I could not tell you what exactly was in his mind at the time and it has taken a long time to get over his death. I dont know for sure if I have fully, but I dont cry everyday anymore and since I had my little boy I have something far more positive to focus on. But I still wonder if all those events are standing in my way. I feel angry at my Father and my Mother and feel they tried dumping their mistakes on me and my brother. How can I tell if these are the real issues affecting my current single status?

[Benjamin Fry]

Anything that repeats itself in relationships is about you and not the men. Thatís just a logical reasoned conclusion from the fact that you are the one constant factor in these relationships. Yes, it could be coincidence, but it seems clear from your second post that you know otherwise.

You seem to have answered your first post with your second one better than I could have hoped to do. You have suffered a great tragedy in your life. Your prototype for relationships is one of separation and death. As an adult, you find that relationships ìopen up something in you and you feel insecureî. I would suggest that they open up the spectres of death and abandonment. Not wanting to deal with these heavy issues, you will find anyway to avoid them. this means finding reasons to end the relationships before they start.

Thereís always a good reason to end a relationship. Every man has his flaws. If you are going to give up on men without even talking through what concerns you then you will be able to go through the rest of your life saying you want a man, but never having one. On the other hand if you stick with a relationship, then you may have to continue the grieving process for your nuclear family and your father.

You shouldnít minimise what happened to you. It is about as rough a deal as you could get from the point of view of setting you up psychologically for healthy relationships. My mother died very young so I can assure you that if you are to allow yourself a long-term partner it will be at the expense of some hard inner work.

Thereís one crumb of comfort I can offer you and it is this: that which we most fear has already happened. For you, each time you begin to deepen in a relationship, particularly at your age when long term commitment is a headline issues, you will be coming face to face with tragedy. However, the tragedy has already happened. The future is still possible, but only if you face it with courage about the past.

You show this courage admirably in your second post. You also show an innate insight into your own issues. You might really enjoy the opportunity to talk this through with a therapist or counsellor. I suspect that you would make rapid progress on an inner level and this could relieve the pressure on the outer symptom of the sticky relationships.

[Benjamin Fry]

Thank you for that eloquent, touching and honest contribution. You certainly seem to be well equipped emotionally and intellectually to help yourself to recover.

I think you are attracting the ìrightî people to resolve your past traumas. Thatís what we all do. Trouble is they are the ìwrongî people to create a Mills & Boon story line with. You see this clearly in the connections that you make with suicidal people.

Yours is a very clear example illustrating the simplicity and yet all pervasive depth of what I explain in my book and try to make relevant through this forum. You had a very sudden and extreme trauma relating to the man in your life. This is then played out through men that you know. This replaying of the circumstances that so wounded you actually provided the opportunities you need to emote. Itís not the life you want, but the life your emotions need.

So, if you want a ìbetterî life, get stuck into the emotional work on a voluntary basis rather than waiting for the next good-looking suicidal stranger to bounce you into a breakdown. If you get into the real psychotherapy then perhaps your unconscious mind will give you a break with the relationship workshops that you have been enduring. I always recommend mixing therapy with a bit of non-verbal healing, such as yoga or meditation, just to keep a balance and shift the energy in different ways.

Congratulations on your sobriety and your brave enduring attitude. I am sure that if you are prepared to take conscious steps back into the past, then your unconscious need for dysfunctional relationships will ease a little. It will be a long hard slog, but it should be worthwhile and definitely good for your son.

[marina]

Thank you for your reply.

I do yoga although havent for a while and have come a long way emotionally already, so I feel very positive that I can create a happy future.

These 'right' people I have attracted have forced me to release painful emotions and look at life slightly differently.

The good thing about that is when I have cried out this pain, it is gone and I feel lighter and it cant harm me anymore. It is like walking through a minefield sometimes, and I never know when someones going to set something off in me!! I allow myself plenty of space though to remain in touch with myself and do try to 'process' traumas as they rise to the surface.

When you suggest meditation and looking into the past, what sort of things should I meditate on?

[crystal]

I think the best forms of meditation are the simplest ones. The idea is to quiet the mind - not to dredge up difficult ideas and work them over. Working over difficult ideas is a challenging therapy thing. It's useful and can be necessary but it's not good meditation.

Meditation is meant to be pleasant, harmonious and relaxing.

Try concentrating on breathing slowly and deeply and consider how essential breathing is to life. Breathe in and out smoothly and see it as a beautiful process that sustains you. Listen to your breathing - you will find the sound calming.

You can meditate by selecting a simple and pleasant idea ('peace', for instance) and concentrating on it. Your mind will wander off the subject naturally. Whenever you mind wanders, catch it and say to yourself 'I'll come back to that if I need to but, for now, I'm just thinking about Peace'. Keep this up for as long as possible until it starts to feel uncomfortable and then stop.

10-20 minutes is ideal (but I can never do more than about 8).

There are books on different forms of meditation. Find a book that describes a range of different methods and ideas and try each one that appeals to you out in turn. No need to make a big deal out of it - you can do it when travelling if you want (maybe not if you are driving though! )

[Benjamin Fry]

Iíd suggest meditation simply as a readily available way to nurture yourself and give you inner strength, peace and courage. In that way it can be a great accompaniment to the hard work of psychotherapy, which is where you would specifically look into the past. I think that the one should probably be done separately from the other, although Iím sure an experienced meditation teacher might advise you differently.

There are some nice products from Gaiam on yoga and meditation which you may enjoy. Have a look in the review section of my website if it interests you.

[marina]

Well sometime on, and my original post seems just as relevant today as when I wrote it. I am still attracting situations in my lovelife to relive my past traumas. I just wonder when the traumas will be processed. I tried the counselling which I found the first session really useful and was completely unsure of the second (guided imagery).

I have started to see someone from the past more regularly now again and within a very short space of time these loss and abandonment issues have surfaced again. They just seem so difficult to deal with and I cant help pushing him away. Its not that I am rejecting the person, but rather the feelings that start to surface when I start to open up. It can be really difficult to distinguish the present from the past emotionally. Then I paint a really black picture of my partner in my head and reject him - This black picture is like an emalgumation of my Father, and all the men that have wronged me in the past. When I am with this particular person, he seems to bring back so many memories and this can cause problems even though he didn't create the original trauma.

How can I stop this happening. Even with the counselling this pattern hasn't stopped and now I am going to lose someone I was actually letting into my heart and I dont think he'd understand how deep these issues are. Also I am finding it difficult getting to know the real him rather than a heap of my own projections.

[Benjamin Fry]

I think that you are not giving yourself enough credit. What I see you talking about here is night and day from your first post in the forum. Ok, you may be experiencing life in much the same way, but your awareness of it has been radically improved. What you are not noticing is that this awareness in itself changes the way that you are experiencing life.

You now know that your ambitions in the present for a happy relationship are undermined by your trauma from the past. Presumably therefore you can see how impossible this was to cope with before you realised this connection. Now that you have this awareness it gives you the possibility of being able to separate the one from the other. Of course you are still going to suffer. You are going to hurt. You are going to be confused. And you are going to take it out on the man. But you might be able to argue about it less because you understand it better.

Something you will have to get used to is that these feelings will take a long time to disperse. By being in a relationship you are actually speeding up that process. You have noticed how a relationship triggers the feelings. Thatís partly what it is for. Your only task now is to separate how you feel from how you treat your man. Thatís the nub of it and an extraordinarily hard skill to master.

You canít stop the feelings. And you shouldnít want to. What you do need to stop is reacting to those feelings by needing to get rid of the man. Let him stay and let yourself feel. That is the path to a final resolution. It is also about the hardest thing you could try to do.

A good practical step is to open up about all of this to your man. You need to be able to say to him stuff like: ìI feel so much pain right now that I want to push you a million miles away. I know this pain comes from my past, but it feels like it comes from you. I want you to stay, but if you do Iím going to be behaving as if you make me miserable. Itís not your fault and if we stick with it, Iíll get better.î

The conclusion of my book is ìDonít change your life to change your feelings and donít change your feelings to change your life.î Presumably this injunction is now making sense to you, and you are also aware of why we hardly ever heed that advice. Staying with your feelings and not altering the reality that is stimulating them is the razor-edged path of the emotional master. Like any discipline, the better you get at it, the harder the exams become.

[marina]

Thank you for your reply. I am hoping I have not pushed this guy away for good now. I realise that I have held him responsible for my feelings for too long now. It is not logical that someone who I don't know that well could cause me so much pain. I can sometimes separate my pain from present triggers now, but it is difficult not to lash out at the person who set them off!! It still doesn't help when I want us to be having light hearted fun, getting to know each other. I don't want him to get to know a hurt and abandoned child - which I am on the inside sometimes. I don't want to share misery with him, I want us to find happiness. He has just spent a year with a very depressed girl who was crying every day and hit him and was abusive, I don't want to be like her (and am not). I want to deal with my pain which has nothing to do with him, and share the good times. This is what he wants too. Nevertheless he does share his pain with me, but doesnt seem to be able to handle mine - not very fair, but I don't want to dump my problems on him anyway.

I feel really resentful that my present difficulties-when I should be having fun-all stem from my parents problems which they dumped on me - and I took on as my own. Why should I lose someone I care about because they didn't take responsbility for their actions. I am determined to see this through, but I guess if I have lost him already then I will have learned a valuable lesson. Hopefully soon I can start acting out of love and not pain.

[marina]

Well he does forgive me and in reality, I was not that bad. The arguement has let me release a lot of pain including masses of guilt too. - It is not rational that I feel so much guilt and remorse over events that are actually quite trivial although screaming and shouting is not the way I want to behave. Therefore I think this has triggered deep-seated guilt - not sure where from and not my guilt really, just what I took on from a dysfunctional family. Its like the irresponsible parents I had didn't take responsibility for their actions and the hurt and pain they caused and they threw this ball of blame, guilt and shame around and I happened to catch it. Not very fair again, but I think I have been carrying it around in me and whether it is mine or not, I took it as if it is mine and now have to release it. Then I will hopefully stop feeling responsible for everything around me. It has been a really difficult to feel this as it seemed to permeate every pore, but I hope this is actually making me better!!!

[marina]

This boyfriend is ambivalent and hot and cold, putting me down one minute and saying how much he fancies me the next. This is not a loving relationship and is emotionally abusive. He is not prepared to talk through things and would rather just blame others. I took on all his guilt and I had done nothing wrong. He is making me suffer for things that I have not even done. He rejects me for minor trivial things such as giving him a 'dirty look'. The only part of myself that adheres to this situation is the sick part of me that feels unworthy of love and respect. But there is a very healthy side to me that realises that I AM worthy of love and respect, I have feelings which should be acknowledged and respected. I dont need to be abused be it physically or emotionally to have to realise these things. I rejected this guy in the past for hurting me and not treating me right and I am rejecting him again for the same reasons. There is nothing wrong with me for rejecting him. Yes I am rejecting the pain he gives me too. No I don't want to be in pain. If this was a loving relationship, I would still have to deal with pain in life but I would feel supported not ostracized for being human and experiencing pain. Nobody needs to increase suffering to feel better. Yes examine the reasons as to why you accept someone elses bad behaviour, why you let others hurt you (Is it what you are used to, is it what you grew up with etc) and realise that all humans have a basic need to be loved and respected and take that as a RIGHT. If there are parts of ourselves that are wrong then we can acknowledge our own errors and forgive ourselves. If we have done nothing wrong then we do not need to take other peoples guilt and shame. I am worthy of love and I dont need someone to be abusive towards me to put my past into perspective. Infact I allowed this person back into my life because I was fed up with dealing with this heavy emotional stuff and wanted happiness. Unfortunately he has so much to deal with himself. He had an abusive upbringing, raised by his stepdad and stepmum - he doesnt know his real parents. His stepmum was violent towards him. He doesn't play by the rules in life morally but expects others to. He says we are friends one minute then doesn't want me to mention any ex-boyfriends the next. He is emotionally shallow, I explain I don't have sex with my friends and if we are friends I wont continue to have sex with him. The feelings I have for him are much deeper than with friends. I want to care for him and spend time with him and sometimes I think I love him. I feel happy when he is around, then this. At the same time he has his faults. He wont find a job and has no money and that makes me feel used, because I have had a difficult year and have no money myself at the moment and am a single parent yet I am buying the food and wine and paying for petrol. He has no car and lives an hour away from me which means I have to drive to collect him and drop him off. This makes everything feel one-sided especially when he then says we are just friends. I wouldnt do that for a friend, only someone I really want to be with. But I guess I need to accept that he is the way he is. He projects all this bad stuff onto me which isn't true - like calling me controlling because I tell him how to do something or dont give him a lift home when I need to pick up my son first. He is completely unreasonable and cant see it. I have my faults and he makes me feel insecure which may make me worry he is going to leave but then if he has no commitment he can just leave any time he wants....trouble is he expects me to drive him!! - home that is.

How can all this misery be helping me? He plays with my mind and emotions and leaves me feeling kicked and bruised inside with his insults...despite my difficult upbringing my Father wasn't like that. How is making me feel so low that I want to end my own life help? Not that I would as I have a son, but the thought crosses my mind. I have been here before and just want someone to accept me the way I am.