[pinksam]

Hey

i am a single mum and have been alone for 2 years now. I have had a few dates and stuff......nothing serious tho.

I have just met a wonderful single dad and we are great togethor. The kids get on great and we are madly in love.

The problem is, with our various restrictions, the times we get togethor are rare but always special. he tells me he loves me and is very attentive and loving and we are great togrthor. when we part it feels like my heart is being ripped out and sometimes we dont know when we will be able to see each other again. I get really upset when hes gone and miss him like mad. As time goes by i manage to convince myself that he doesnt care and doesnt want to be with me. Its making me feel ill and him feel pressured and i cant bear it. He says he needs some time as he has a lot of issues with work, home , ex etc to sort out and i accept that but cant help myself when the panic and paranoia set in.

How do i know he loves me, what do i do to keep him happy. If this doesnt work i will be destroyed.....please help!!

[Benjamin Fry]

Iím sorry it didnít work out. At least you have some objective confirmation that your anxieties were founded in reality. You werenít nuts.

If he doesnít want to be with you then he wasnít the right man. However much you may have enjoyed the fantasy of making him the right man or having the right future together, his actions show that you were finding something there that wasnít actually there.

Perhaps it is the fantasy of a less difficult future that has been destroyed and not actually yourself. It must have been a very lonely two years for you. Being a single mother is very difficult and perhaps you sensed that this liaison could ease that for both you and your children. However at least you have passed through one of the rites of passage for resurrecting your romantic life. After every major split there must be heartaches as you climb back on the dating wagon. It is inevitable and ubiquitous. Steeling yourself for these knocks is part of the process. In the cycle of hoping for some warmth and tenderness to ease the pain of your last separation which gives way to yet another separation you are learning to find the centre of the whole drama: your true self. The greatest relationship of all is the one with your own authentic self. From there you will find yourself attracted to and attractive to all the right people.

It will be no comfort to you at the moment, but this knock is an important step on the way to your next great relationship with someone who doesnít stress you out.

[dhowitzer]

Honey, he dumped you by e-mail. That is so wussy little fraidy cat. You certainly deserve better than that. Believe me, it'll be hard at first, but life goes on.

[Benjamin Fry]

Iím sorry that I wasnít able to offer you any comfort. I suspect that right now what you want is to have this man back and just make the pain go away. Perhaps all other ideas on how to find a happy future seem absurd to you. It is a unique pain when you are abandoned by someone that you feel you need and love. It strikes at the core of our ability to cope with life. This might explain why you feel that death is an appropriate alternative.

Iíd like to know if there was any loss in your childhood, or generally how close and supported you were by your parents, particularly in your very early years. It seems that there has been a pattern for you of heartache in relationships and often this can be a sign of someone striving unconsciously to resolve an earlier loss. If so this will also explain the bleakness of the despair that it generates. Perhaps also you can tell me a little about what happened to the relationship from which you have the child. If we can find a pattern that provides a window into understanding your life and emotional reaction to it, then it can often be a small crutch of comfort on which to lean in these difficult times. Writing is a great way to externalise pain and help you find a little relief. If youíd like to do so here, please do.

If your suicidal ideation is really strong then I would strongly urge you to contact either the health service or the Samatians.

[pinksam]

Benjamin

So sorry for sounding ungrateful.

Just read your last post and you showed more understanding than my own gp did when i asked her to refer me to a counsellor.
She gave me anti depressants and told me to come back in a fortnight!!!!

I think you may have hit on something. My parents split when i was 5 and my mum remarried. My stepdad is great and been a great dad to me for 26 years.

When me and my husband split up 5 years ago i got a bee in my bonnet about finding my real dad which i did. It turns out that he was all my mum had said. I traced him and he had a new life, new family etc. we met up and he was really remorseful and happy to see me and my daughter. after a while the novelty wore off he got bored and his new wife was puttin pressure on him to stop seein me so he did. I felt very hurt and rejected but just rationalised it by sayin"mum was right"

i got on with life and then he called me about 8 months ago to say my gran had died a nd would i come to the funeral. I agonised over it but i went and was introduced to all my couisins and aunts and uncles that i never knew. They embraced me and welcomed me and were really great. After that day he cut off all contact and i have heard nothing since.

.
I feel loss and a great deal of pain cos my daughters father has no part in her life due to his own choice and feel that i have failed her. She will go thru the same as me and that causes me to feel reaaly bad.

I have never really related this to my own relationships but the despair i am feeling right now at losing Mark is unbearable. i think i need to talk to a professional about this but help is not forthcoming. My GP is reluctant to refer me and gives me tablets to help me. I dont want tablets i want a life.

[Benjamin Fry]

You didnít sound ungrateful to me ñ merely deeply upset. I think that you are already making some excellent progress into understanding the origin of the despair that you currently feel. Let me see if I can put it into a clear context for you.

Your father left you when you were five. That is a very serious loss. You may tell yourself that he was adequately replaced but this is likely to be a cover story to pave over the pain of that loss. Even if you didnít really like your father, the connection between a father and a daughter is very strong on a primal level. At the age of five, all you would have understood is that the one man in your life didnít want you any more (regardless of the practical realities). This would have created a huge emotional burden, much of which would have been repressed by trauma. However, in the end, this trauma always wants to be resolved, and unconsciously we tend to try to find a way to help our system to reconnect with it. That is exactly what you have done and exactly why you feel so dreadful. You are unearthing the worst feelings of your life ñ feelings that were too overwhelming to bear when you were five.

The good news however is that the more you feel like this, the more trauma you will be resolving. If you resolve it all then you will no longer need broken relationships to help you to return to this pain. Then you may get what you refer to as ìa lifeî. So, hard as it is, try to welcome the pain and a path to moving forward.

Generally speaking we are pretty terrible and just letting our emotions flow through us. I think this is because we often donít understand where they come from (as perhaps is the case for you) and we are more afraid of what we donít understand than anything else. This is where our conscious mind lets us down. It holds us in an emotional prison of unresolved trauma. As a result the unconscious mind has to get up to all sorts of tricks to get us moving again.

In your life you have repeated the pattern of finding your father (or a father type figure) and then losing him again. Iíd like you to consider the possibility that this is actually something done for your benefit by your unconscious mind that knows that this may be the outcome and that you can use these adverse circumstances to heal. You might find it absurd that you could unconsciously know what is going to happen and use that information to do something that would help you emotionally, but then you did start this post hours before you were dumped by e-mail, and perhaps there is a reason.

The theory of this is explained much more coherently in the core-text download of my book which you can read for free. Look in ìall about my bookî on my website.

Meanwhile you are currently in a period of great difficulty but at the same time great opportunity. If you donít want this to happen again then you have to use it in the way that you unconsciously know you need it. You must try to stay with these feelings, relate them back to their source and thus experience some level of emotional catharsis. A great way to do this is to write about them. You could do that here if you liked. Try to focus on how you feel and what emotions you remember from the past. A story of your life with your dad and how you felt about him before he left could be quite revealing. If it brings up some very deep feelings of loss and anger then try to stay with them. Reading my core-text may help you to be more comfortable staying with these feelings since then your conscious mind might be more accepting of them. Counselling could really help you to work through these issues. Try the NHS helpline and see if they can point you to some resources for this.

It is hard for a GP to deal with these issues. They get only minutes to see you and treat you. If you donít want to take medication you are at liberty to say so. Drugs can help to stabilise a seriously distressed person so that they can start on this kind of emotional work. But on the other hand they can mask the emotions that are so desperately trying to get noticed. Itís a complex issue, but your first concern must be your immediate safety. Contact the Samaritans if you need to. Again they may be able to help you find some counselling in your area.

The bottom line is that losing Mark is just a catalyst for stimulating the deep feelings from your childhood that you left behind when you couldnít cope with them. You noticed this on some level when your marriage ended and acted quite wisely on it. You can help yourself by using that same instinct now. Obviously you donít welcome this challenge and you have my sympathy, but the first step to picking yourself up is to recognise that inside this terrible experience is a real opportunity to experience lasting change. If you take that opportunity then youíll look back on these days as the most valuable time of your life.

I hope this helps you to see why you might be so distraught at losing Mark. Iím tempted to agree with others that anyone who dumps you (and knows you are a single mother) by e-mail is not someone to lose sleep over. I suspect that it is what you avoided by being with him that is so important to you. Mark I think you can probably survive without. But your deeper self is something that it is vitally important to be reintroduced to.

[pinksam]

Hi Benjamin

How the heck can you see things in me that i havnt even seen in myself??!!

I think i am gradually admitting to myself , over a course of a few years that i am a deeply unhappy person . I often look at other people and couples and think to myself" why cant i have that. What is wrong with me. Why cant i be loved by a man" The awful truth of the matter is i dont think i ever ever been truly loved by a man. I give love freely in the relationships that i have had but never seem to get enough back and end up all panicky and bewildered.

My husband was a bully and a control freak and after our daughter was born he bacame worse as we were his possessions. When she was 2 and a half i had had enough and i threw him out. i took a lot of stick from his family for doing so but that was 5 years ago now. I had 1 x serious relationship simnce which ended 2 years ago when he dumped me at my works christmas party. i later found out that he had been cheating on me with a work colleague.

Then Mark...............after a year and a half alone when i met him everything was right..........i felt something for the first time since, despite trying dating and stuff..........he turned me on my head and made metrust and love him. When he told me he loved me i turned away and wouldnt listen. he made me look into his eyes and listen to him and i believed him through and through. The e mail was a complete shock, even tho i had felt for a couple of days that he was a bit distant. How can 24 hours earlier he said he loved me and then he was gone. I dont get it......is a mans definition of love different to mine. His e mail tried to explain but basically siad" i love you but i am not rready to care for you as its too much responsibility right now" I never asked him for committment or naything, just to spend time with him and our kids and feel happy. I had it and now its gone!!!

as for my dad...............I dont remember very much abut him as a child. I remeber him and mum arguing and i have a very clear memory of me and my sister hiding under the table when they were havin a fight and playin with a plastic frog. Mum was terrified of frogs and we said we were gonna scare her into stopping shouting by throwing the frog at her. My suster cant remember this even tho she is a year older than me. I remember visiting him and sleeping in a big bed with him and my sister as a young child but then he disappeared.
He reappeared when i was about 11 and i saw him for a bit. He had a shop with his new wife and i would go on the bus with my little sister to see him on a saturday. He would work all day in the shop and pop in with sweets every now and agin leavin us sittin out back. i remember being very bored and his wife never spoke to us. These visits stopped but i dont know why.

After that i didnt see him again till about 4 years ago after my divorce when i tracked him down .He was pleased to see me but as i have said before the novelty wore off quickly.

I remember asking myself when i was a teenager.....why didnt he want me? What did we do wrong but my gran says that he did and it was my mum who stopped him making contact. Theres nothing stopping him now tho is there?

I have never really thought about how this translates to my relationships as i am an independant person who can look after myself. I dont need a father figure. i just need someone who can love ma and accept me and want to be with me.

The big problem is, loving someone makes me feel insecure and i think this is where i must be going wrong. I am constantly afraid of losing that person and this makes me appear clingy and needy i suppose. being cheated on by men also doesnt help because i have to really work on the trust issue!!

I always said mark wass too good for me as he was so great and so was our relationship. I know that it is my issues that have pushed him away and that hurts as i dont know how to change!

I dont want to be alone, i want to be loved and cared for but i always end up unconsciously pushing people away. I have so much to offer to a realtionship but always end up hurt

[pinksam]

Oh and another thing thats tormenting me to the point of despair...................is my daughter going to end up as messed up as me..................she has lost her dad among other things and has seen me hurt too many times.

What a leagcy for me to pass on to her...............how will she grow up normal and well adjusted and able to trust men if i am teaching her not too??

This drives me nuts!!

[Benjamin Fry]

The fact that you canít remember much about your father except for some clear memories of extreme events suggest to me that there was much to forget. It is this forgetting (or trauma) that your mind-body wants to release. Repeating this cycle of loss and despair helps it to do just that. But itís not much fun, is it?

Telling yourself that you are an independent person is a defence against an underlying neediness. This defence crumbles when you get into a relationship. Thus you go from independent to needy which can be a bit of a surprise for your partner.

Another part of this cycle is that you will attract and be attracted to people who can help you reach these buried emotions. Hence the difficulties with partners who prove that they can not be trusted, or leave you. Your husband doesnít seem to fit into that easily. You left him because he was controlling. I wonder if there was more to the story, or if this represents another layer of your experience. (Was you mother like that?)

You identify the nub of the problem when you remember your thoughts as a teenager. Why didnít your dad want you? You still wonder today, on some level. It is a terrible blow to your self-esteem and leaves you feeling un-wantable. Look again at the subject of this post.

The way out of this is to release your life in the present from the job of clearing up the emotions from your past. In order to do this you must take active, conscious steps to recovering your memories of your childhood and treating those emotional scars. Iíd recommend some counselling if you can get hold of it. Otherwise some self help books can help and journal writing is a great free technique. Whatever you do, it should be committed, regular, emotional and quite probably uncomfortable.

Then you can use relationships for companionship and support, instead of needed them to get back in touch with your lost feelings.

Re your daughter: you can't change what happens to her in life, but you can learnn to help her to have the space to process it. This means getting your own emotional demons under control and learning to facilitate that for her. Basically the more you help yourself, the more you'll be helping her too.

[pinksam]

Thanx ben

Do you know any sources for free counselling as i am a single mum and money is scarce

[Benjamin Fry]

It's a difficult issue. The NHS can refer you for counselling. MIND is a mental health charity that can help. UKCP and BAC are the umbrella organisations for therapists and counsellors and can refer you to private practices. But generally there is a huge gap for what is available for "normal" people that don't fall into the seriously mentally ill category.

You might find that some therapists will work for a reduced fee for those on limited incomes. The best thing is to find someone that you like and work out what you could do with them.