Hi there Gracie,

Well you’ll never know if you don’t try. If you’re currently in a relationship, leaving it to improve yourself will most likely be a challenge for you. For people, when usually faced with a challenge, it’s fight or flight.
If you’re currently in a relationship and want to leave and improve yourself, there will be two things that can happen
1. Your partner will be understanding and support you in your pursuit of self improvement or
2. Your partner will want to hold on to you and not let go because they NEED you. (With this, you’ll be looking right in a mirror image of yourself aka like attracts like).
But if you’re single or have faced the challenge of leaving a relationship, congratulations you’re halfway there. While single you need to occupy your mind with thoughts such as “What can I do today to better myself?” or “What activities/skills do I have to enjoy today.”
Use your wandering mind and be curious about what you can do. Ever watch sports on TV and wonder what it would be like to play tennis or golf. Go and buy/borrow some used equipment and try it out for yourself. Ever take your car for on oil change and wonder what each part under the hood is/does, find a book at your library or online and read about it.
There are other things you can do such as learn how to fish, design/decorating, arts/crafts, volunteer, etc.
Afterwards once you have found something and along with work/ and or school, etc. you’ll be busy and having fun that a relationship will be something you no longer rely on to keep you happy.
Take Care
Thank You

Co-Dependency: In its broadest definition, a codependent is someone who cannot function from their innate self and whose thinking and behavior is instead organized around another person, or even a process, or substance. One of the distinctions is that healthy empathy and caregiving is motivated by conscious choice; whereas for codependents, their actions are compulsive, and they usually aren’t able to weigh in the consequences of them or their own needs that they’re sacrificing. Codependency has been referred to as the disease of a lost self. Codependent relationships are marked by intimacy problems, dependency, control (including caretaking) denial, dysfunctional communication and boundaries, and high reactivity.

Commonly cited symptoms of codependency are:
intense and unstable interpersonal relationships,
inability to tolerate being alone, accompanied by frantic efforts to avoid being alone,
chronic feelings of boredom and emptiness,
subordinating one’s own needs to those of the person with whom one is involved,
overwhelming desire for acceptance and affection,
external referencing,
dishonesty and denial, and
low self-worth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency

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Gracie.

While you want to be that woman who is strong, confident, and independent even if she doesn’t have a man in her life, at this moment you are not that person. What I am hearing from the brief post you made above is essentially you don’t like yourself very much. I say this as it is apparent to me that you find your sense of self-identity and self-worth ONLY in a relationship with another, and without this relationship you’re stuck… with yourself, and it seems you don’t like that very much.

But now is a great opportunity for your to start to discover who you are REALLY. Too often when we enmesh ourselves with others (identity, worthiness, life goals, etc.) and essentially lose connection to who we are. Working in addiction, I’ve seen too many people struggle with establishing a self-identity, life goals, and meaning and purpose in their lives with out drugs or alcohol in the picture, as much of their lives were dependent/enmeshed in addiction. I continually hear the question: “who am I now”?

Without taking the time and space to engage in self-exploration, we’ll never truly “Know Thy Self”, and thus will always be dependent on external entities (people, roles, social media/messages) to give us our sense of self-identity, and consequently self-worth. So take this time to be alone with yourself, to get to know yourself, to get more comfortable with yourself, and most important start to love yourself for who you are… REALLY.

Weston

Hello Gracie,

What i’ve noticed is that a person who has no idea of self and low self-esteem will feel secure and safe until the other partner begins to pull away especially since you mentioned you are willing to give anything to make the other person happy. It’s important to mention here that a physical relationship does not mean intimacy or compatibility or security. Just because you are physically doing well, doesn’t mean it’s a “secure” relationship. Eventually that will fade and one person will say enough. It’s okay to let your mind wander. I think it’s okay to be in a relationship if that’s what you want and enjoy, but it can’t be the center of your world and where your sense of safety and security comes from. What will happen if the relationship ends? Being single and working on yourself (goals, dreams, physical and mental/emotional growth) will help to become more strong, independent, and confident on your own. I hope what I said does not offend you, but these are all things i’ve learned from my experience.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by Annie.

Dear Gracie:

I like it that you are intending to take time away from having relationships with men so to find out more about yourself. from the additional posts you wrote, it seems to me like it is a wise choice. the safety and security you feel with a man, especially in physical contact with a man, satisfies that fear, dread, discomfort of the child- Gracie in you, the child alone with her fear. Without a father and I suppose without enough attention otherwise…?

That fear of being alone for a child is quite overwhelming. Isn’t it why your mind wanders and wanders- because you are trying that way to not feel that fear of being alone, the fear left over from your childhood?

I hope that you do connect with others (here is one form of connecting)- be it a woman, a group of people in person- someone you cannot be physically intimate with) in your self discovery process. I do not see it as possible to figure out things all by yourself. Connection with others is a must- connect and being alone- the combination, not one OR the other,

Only preferrably not with men alone because the temptation may be too great.

What do you think of what I wrote to you here?

anita

Dear Gracie:

Isn’t it that the tendency to fall in love easily, “falling in love with the thought of being in a relationship” as you put it, isn’t that falling in love like getting a break from that fear? A welcome break. Isn’t it that for a short time you get the feeling that you are not alone, after all. That euphoria, that floating-on-a-cloud feeling, isn’t it intoxicating? No wonder there is that tendency.

The baby, the child cannot be alone because as a child you couldn’t feed yourself, you couldn’t pick yourself up from the crib- you needed someone to take care of you. This need is in your genes: you were born with it. You form a strong attachment to the caretaker/s in your life. You need him/ her and when separated from him/ her, when rejected, abandoned- you feel great fear of being alone, not being able to take care of yourself. When that happened when you were a child, truly dependent, that fear stays in you, in your neurons as you grow into an adult that physically can take care of herself. That fear calms down temporarily when you are in a relationship, at the beginning, at times throughout it, when you are physically held. Ah… the relief.

How do you face and overcome the fear? With some fear- you will have to live with, as a poem I like reads: “Evryone has to find a way to live with fear.” Some of it can become less intense over time through insight, understanding of your past, of nature (how it is natural for people and most animals to be attached to a parent and fear separation and abandonment), mindfulness: paying attention to when and how the fear gets triggered in your present time, by calming yourself as you do through meditation (disengaging the fear neurological pathways by focusing on your breath, or on sounds etc.), by exercising, by CONNECTING to helpful others (notice the adjective HELPFUL others). It is a process that requires lots of patience, sometimes psychotherapy (a form of connection, hopefully to a HELPFUL, good enough therapist, not anyone will do).

The How To is an individual process that you need to experience. Nobody can convince you of anything but your emotions. Learning what the true message, the valid message of emotions you have- is key.

Does my answer … answers your question in any way?

anita

Dear Gracie:

Who doesn’t want to feel euphoria? I understand your pull toward a relationship so to experience that floating-in-a-cloud feeling. Wonder, is it not similar to injecting heroin? Or the pull to eat MORE of that dessert? And isn’t this pull the reason millions are addicted to heroin and many more millions are obese as I type this? And so many more millions are addicted to gambling, sex, relationships… and so much more, anything for that feeling…

And when you do heal, if you do heal enough, that process you are doing, the process that is going to be so very long, is often going to be painful, uncomfortable and once in a while you will feel calm and rarely euphoric. How do these feelings compare to the euphoria? Not much. Problem is in between the euphoric times there is so much misery.

Without the misery in between the clouds, suspended in the air and about to fall, there would be no incentive for anyone to heal. Euphoria for life? how do you argue against that?

What do you think Gracie?

anita