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My brutally honest journey as a man (now finding self love)

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  • April 21, 2020 at 2:15 pm #350942
    siickkunt
    Participant

    First of all a quick disclaimer: I’m going to be very blunt in this post and it might offend some of you. Hopefully some non-judgemental people can connect with me.

    –

    I am a male in my mid 20’s. I’ve struggled with self love my whole life, probably like many others here.

    My journey took me from being a shy, anxious, overly nice kid, to being an emotionless sex obsessed player, and now I’m full circle, trying to find self love for my real self.

    Background:

    Growing up I was a sensitive and shy kid – ever since I became conscious of myself around the age of 6, I remember having low self esteem.

    Don’t know what it stemmed from exactly, but I think my father definitely left some wounds in me.

    He was quite aggressive with my older sister, I would often hear him yell at her. He had unreasonable expectations about her grades in school. I saw him hit her once. I was not involved in the scuffles because I was 4 years old, but just being on the side lines was traumatizing enough. I remember feeling sorry for her and not being able to do anything about it. I also remember being scared of showing that I felt sorry for her because I thought getting involved might get me into trouble.

    He would also yell at me if I would act out, cry, or get angry. This caused me to disown many of my emotions.

    This pushed me into my head a lot, overthinking and analyzing situations without saying much. I learned to be quiet and shy and to think before I act or speak. It became my survival mechanism to keep the peace. It turned me into the overanalysing, sensitive people-pleaser I am today because we were always on thin ice with my father. I also grew up with a constant low level anxiety, still feeling anxious about many normal social situations.

    There was a lot of loving peaceful memories, and generally I had a good childhood compared to many others. But there was a lot of dense, bad energy in the household at times and he was easily triggered into anger throughout my youth.

    The same high expectations were put on me when I started school. I struggled living up to them and felt like I can’t make my dad happy. He was doing the best he could, he probably grew up in a similar house hold. My mother on the other hand showed me lots of unconditional love and made me feel safe.

     

    My attachment problem:

    I grew up having mediocre social skills, always felt a bit disconnected from other kids in school but I wasn’t a social outcast and hanged with the popular kids.

    I had no understanding of attraction growing up. I would occasionally attract some girls but none that I was interested in. I remember hopelessly crushing on a girl in class when I was 7 years old and being heartbroken because she didn’t feel the same. I obsessed over her for many years in school.

    In my teen years, this pattern repeated itself a few more times. The trend was the same: I would obsessively fall in love, and the girl was never into me.

    I had no concept of what attraction was – my method was to be overly nice and shower the girl with compliments and hope for the best. They would never feel the same, and I would end up being obsessed with the girl, unable to get over her. This continued into my teens. Looking back I think it’s some type of attachment trauma.

    I fell in love a few times, where I got heartbroken every single time. Every crush would last at least a year or two, and this went on until I was 14.

    How I became a player

    I reached a turning point because I got fed up with having my heart broken. It led me to Google stuff like “how to attract your crush”. The advice I stumbled on at the time was the generic “girls like douchebags” and “don’t be too emotional” type of advice. This developed as I was learning more about attraction, but I never got to the root of my problem, I just learned to cover it up better.

    Over time I slowly started disowning my sensitive side. Instead of addressing my emotions and obsessive crushes, I just learned to bottle it up. This was happening because I was getting some success even though the advice was very surface level.

    I had started my journey of improving my social skills and attracting girls.

    I learned a lot and started hooking up with a lot of girls. Still, I would meet a girl who I felt was special every once in a while, and I would crush on her which brought out my needy sides again, but that girl would never feel the same about me.

    I gave up on finding love and I instead focused on just getting laid and having as much fun as possible. By the time I was in my 20’s, I had slept with well over 60 girls.

    My relationship brought my suppressed problems to the surface

    Sleeping with lots of girls had given me what I thought at the time was self esteem. I realize now of course, that it was not core self esteem and the confidence was only based on external validation I was getting from sex.

    With my new confident facade, I met an amazing girl a year ago who I fell in love with. She also fell in love with me and I fell in love with her. The lesson I had learnt was that I needed to have this facade at all costs, especially if I met a girl who I would fall in love with. And this time it worked because I never let that needy side come out.

    The first 8 months were the best, we didn’t have a single bad experience and we were in our love bubble. At this point in my life, I had forgotten that I even had the attachment problems, but they resurfaced after many years because I disowned and covered them instead of truely adressing them. I wasn’t aware that I had a facade either.

    I felt my self esteem slowly fading because I wasn’t out meeting new girls and lots of getting validation anymore. And over time, it’s almost like she slowly penetrated through the many many facades, and the closer we got to each other, that little insecure kid slowly started to surface more. She reached my core after a full year, and my traumas started bubbling to the surface. Since she was my main way of getting validation, I was not able to set healthy boundaries. Even when I did set boundaries, she would not respect them. It was getting abusive and I needed to get out, but I literally couldn’t leave because I was so attached to her. I was letting her abuse me because my self esteem was relying on her and she could sense that.

    Facing the real problem

    Now the facade has dropped and I feel like that insecure 10 year old kid again who didn’t love himself. I’ve come full circle. I’m very thankful I am going through this – I finally get to adress this problem which I was running away from for so long. Hopefully I can grow and bring my improved self into my next relationship after having dealt with it.

    I know it’s a special journey, but can anyone relate to any part? Does anyone even know what this obssessive pattern is? How do I deal with it and adress it? How do I give myself validation and self love instead of giving away that power to others?

    Cheers.

    April 21, 2020 at 2:59 pm #350956
    Peter
    Participant

    As you said everyone journey is unique… well it should be – As in the Arthurian quest each Knight enters the woods where no one else has entered before.

    In the task of Individuation often involves coming to terms with our mother/father complexes. Often influenced by our relationships with our parents however the idea is to learn how create healthy boundaries with regards to how we nurture (mother archetype) and discipline (father archetype) ourselves. You might say take on the responsibly of parenting ourselves. Many people are uncomfortable with such exploring as ‘blaming’ ones parents how ever the task involves seeing ones parents as unique individuals who like all people  sometimes succeeded and failed. its not about blame but becoming conscious of the lessons learned and the sorting out what you wish to keep and what you need to work on. You appear to have started this process.

    Though I was never a ‘player’ I suspect there is much you learned about yourself through them. Perhaps the beginning of defining Love – What Loving and being loved might mean at a deeper level. You use the word crush interchangeable with the word love begging the question where the experiences of a crush a experience of love?  How deep did such experiences go?

    I would challenge you with the concept of ‘Self Love’. Many people use the words without defining what ‘Self Love’ might look like for them. Perhaps they have a vague imagining of loving oneself might feel like but nothing with regards to what it might look like. What would loving your self look like?  How would you know when you got their? If you did Love your self how would that influence your relating to others? What is the connection? Answering these questions and the questions they create will lead to a deeper relationship with the concept of Love.

    The statement Love your neighbor as your self  was not a command its a statement of fact. We can learn much about ourselves and how we Love ourselves in the ways in which we love others.

    We forget that the words we use are not the territory.  In your journey time and time again you will be ask to look past the words to what they point to.

     

    April 21, 2020 at 5:10 pm #350968
    siickkunt
    Participant

    Thanks a lot for your reply and for reading my post Peter. I used the term “player” for lack of a better term but I never saw myself as a player. I was always honest in my connections and never lied to a woman, I was always open about having multiple partners at the time. It sure did teach me a lot to go on that journey.

    where the experiences of a crush a experience of love?

    Great question, I guess I didn’t use these words consciously. When I think about it, a crush for me was a type of obsessive attachment which was not usually not mutual, while love is the act of loving? The experience of crush didn’t go that deep, it was always a type of need for validation, wanting to get it back from that person which I want to be validated by. The love however was mutual in my relationship before things went south. We broke up a few days ago by the way. She said she loved me but she wasn’t in love anymore.

    What would loving your self look like?  How would you know when you got their? If you did Love your self how would that influence your relating to others? What is the connection?

    I guess loving myself would be caring about myself enough to leave when the relationship got abusive. But I just stood there taking it, sometimes not even saying anything because of some fear that she might leave me if I did (sounds unreasonable but it’s how I often felt). I was always very careful that her needs were being met, but she wasn’t as careful of mine. Even when I verbally expressed my boundaries, she wouldn’t be careful to not cross them. I reinforced those boundaries, we had several fights about that where I put my foot down. She would respect them for a few days or weeks, but would eventually cross the same boundaries again. Also I would sometimes ignore my own needs because I thought it might hurt her feelings. Co-dependence at it’s finest.

    If I loved myself I would relate to others more like an equal I guess. Can you elaborate what you mean with the last question “what is the connection”?

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by siickkunt.
    • This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by siickkunt.
    April 21, 2020 at 5:19 pm #350974
    siickkunt
    Participant

    I also want to clarify that my relationship started off as loving, at which point it was very good. Then over time it started to feel like crushing and attachment. That’s the transition that I was talking about, and when that happened I felt like my “old self” was resurfacing.

    April 22, 2020 at 8:43 am #351068
    Peter
    Participant

    You appear to have done a lot of work trying to understand how your experiences have influenced your relationship to love and relationships. That’s a great place to start.

    I know that the terminology of individuation and the task of addressing the Father/Mother complex can be confusing.

    The goal as we examine our experiences is that we learn to parent ourselves in a positive way.  We learn how to nurture ourselves and discipline ourselves. This can feel to many to be a paradox of loving oneself unconditionally and conditionally (exactly the experience of growing up in a balanced up bringing.)   One learns to nurture ourselves and hold ourselves accountable and responsible – it is all Love. (unconditional/conditional love is the experience of loving and being loved.) This is how we learn  and learning better the call is to do better.  In this way we learn how to create healthy boundaries that are accepting  of ourselves as we are (unconditional) while working to do better (conditional/measured) . This creates the space for becoming and that IMO is a healthy self love.

    When we fail to do better, and we will, we don’t beat ourselves up (abusive self parenting)  but look at the experience honestly, learn what we can, take responsibility of what belongs to us, and move forward. Any labeling of oneself no longer necessary.

    The Paradox of Freedom is that it is not exercised in a unconditional allowing but exercised in the setting of healthy boundaries..  Balance between a  ‘freedom from’ and a ‘freedom to”. Like unconditional and conditional love these experiences are not opposites but intimately connected.

    Maybe that dons’t make sense, words tend to get in the way, that said I think your on the right path and which you  well in your journy

    April 22, 2020 at 3:22 pm #351136
    siickkunt
    Participant

    Thanks a lot, your answers gave me some new insights and I appreciate that.

    All the best.

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