So you’ve worked with therapists before, but that doesn’t really detailed what your relationship with yourself as is. You might have worked hard on your mental health, trying to accept yourself as is, but it still seems that you wish to change things about yourself? As you tend to think that you can change what doesn’t serve you in life? Does that mean letting go of the toxic messages that was ingrained into you or changing your personality? But I don’t think you ‘should’ have to do anything. Everything is a choice and you have the choice to do what is reasonable for you.

My relationship to myself is one that is ever evolving. It hasn’t always been the best. I haven’t had a whole lot of people support me, be on my side, or show me how to really love myself, so I had to learn and I am still learning. I have come really far, but things still crop up because I, like most, am a work in progress. And no, I know there is no “should” necessary in that, but if I keep running into problems in my life because of something that stems from my issue(s), I work hard to fix it. So it isn’t about changing my personality so much as working to fix the ingrained messages and beliefs that make connecting to myself or others more difficult.

Now, regarding your relationship, what kind of people are you letting into your life? No idea if you live in an area teeming with a huge population that you can meet a lot of people, and making friends is difficult. But what kind of people are you letting take up your time and attention? I don’t write this to shame/blame you, but I am curious as to why you’ve tolerated your ex projecting his insecurities onto you. From your narrative, he has done it multiple times. You’ve realized it wasn’t about you, of course, but you still stayed with him. You’d made the choice to stay with him. Why?

I live in a small suburb but have access to larger cities. Covid 19 makes getting out and making new people harder. Introversion does, too. But it’s not impossible. I think that if I made a special, all out push for an extended period of time, I could cultivate some more friendships. As for what I’ve tolerated, I tend to think it’s because I do know that I’m an imperfect work in progress who would like forgiveness and understanding. And he’s great I’m enough ways for these to not be total deal breakers. But when these things come up and I feel like I’m fighting on my own or that we can’t be on the same side or that these instances are more than momentary lapses to be learned from, I can and do walk away. Sometimes it might take me longer than average person though, honestly. But I do wonder if it’s deeper than that and if I’m allowing myself to be taken advantage of/hurt/abused sometimes out of trying to be tolerant, patient, or understanding. A hard thing to face, but definitely a possibility. But I’ve also cut a lot of people out of my life who were otherwise draining, selfish, or incompatible. I try to take a little time to truly figure out the difference. If he is unable to see anything past his own nose, ego, and needs, then no this won’t work. The imbalance will be too great.

I don’t know if the previous guy before this did the same thing, but him calling you names is shaming and gas-lighting you. You wanted to discuss his hurtful actions and he tried to shift the blame to ‘you’ being a “psychopath” therefore he wouldn’t have to take total responsibility for sleeping with someone else. You still wanted to speak with him after that.

Yes, as for the gaslighting you’re right. I knew it and felt it and let him know about himself as a result. But I did miss talking to him and reached out for very brief interactions later, never to any real satisfaction. Maybe just to get it out of my system, because I knew I didn’t want to restart a relationship with him, even when he tried. Not a great choice, but I did what I did. It’s like, we cared about each other at one point, I need to ease myself off of this relationship and see that it actually isn’t what I thought and isn’t worth the headache.

Hence, why I am an advocate of writing down the toxic things people said or did to you so that you can revisit another day when you’re calm and rational. The note serve as evidence that such a thing did happened and that you weren’t imagining it just because you wonder if them calling you ‘crazy’ has any validity to it.

I will start using this tactic.

You can’t change people, but you can choose to tolerate their actions. But why did you choose to tolerate them not taking responsibility for their actions and their emotions? You’ve tolerated them pushing the responsibilities onto you. From the guy who called you a psychopath while he chose to sleep with someone else to the guy who needed external validations from people while accusing you of looking down at him.

I hear you, GL. He called me a psychopath and I asked what he was even basing that on. He had no response and changed the subject, so I knew for sure that he was just saying it to be an ass. I think that stemmed from my own insecurities about depression and anxiety and wondering, “am I ok? Do people see something about me that I’m missing?” But with that mindset, it’s so easy to let other people dictate ourselves to us. But that was a thought that came and went quickly in that scenario. I see that I do let people (usually guys) mistreat me and I let them off the hook. Self-esteem? Come in, self-esteem, do you read me? I will say that in the moment of the guy accusing me of looking down at him, I got peeved for a moment, told him I thought no such thing, walked away, and realized he was projecting how he felt about having vertigo as a byproduct of health conditions that he has. He doesn’t share the issues with people and felt vulnerable that I’d seen it. After walking away, I came back, looked at his face, and just hugged him. He started to cry. He felt vulnerable in an unbearable way initially and then leaned into feeling vulnerable in a good way. I do wish he were able to access those feelings himself without first laying blame, and maybe I AM too tolerant of other people’s childhood traumas and subsequent coping mechanisms (or lack thereof). But again, I have my own stuff and try not to immediately shut people out because of them. We progress and grow in stages. If they seem like they are able to shift and grow, why throw them out? I need to see a little more (again, maybe too much) before I do that and I have done that.

I’m all for accepting people as they are, but that doesn’t mean tolerating toxic behavior. Hence, why the question of what is your relationship with yourself that you would tolerate these behaviors? Do you feel that you don’t deserve better or that as good as it gets?

I think I’ve addressed this at other points in this post, so I won’t be repetitive, but you do raise a good point. I am tolerant to a fault, but I don’t stay in a situation forever and live with my fate. I grapple with it, I try to understand what else might be going on, I try not to take it personally. I am good about expressing myself and not backing down in a fight. Some would say I’m scrappy, have cojones, or that I can even be too tough about somethings. But I do have a tendency to bend too much in my romantic relationships. When I reach my limit, though, I do break up, divorce, or otherwise walk away. But again, I take longer to do so than many. Do I feel that it’s as good as it gets? No, I wouldn’t necessarily say that, but where I feel codependency creeping in is still feeling attached to that person and not wanting to give up on them and let them go if I don’t feel ready. This all sounds so contradictory.

So you feel emotions intensely, but do you act on them the moment you feel it because you seem to think it’s not a good thing. Your emotions may be strong, but you are the one giving them meaning. You can honestly just feel then move on with life. Why would you wish to detach from them at times?

When I say detach from them, I do mean to feel them/notice them without clinging to them/giving them meaning and acting on them, not to just ignore them or shove them down. I was unclear there.

You don’t like relationships ending, okay. But life does not promise forever. Regardless of how much you care about someone, when a relationship has run its course, then the best you can do is wish the other well. Goodbyes are said all the time, what with the earth becoming a global economy. You can fly and live anywhere as long as you have the means. Emotions are fleeting and people do grow out of their relationships. Nothing is guaranteed in life. So where does your mistrust come from? That when people said they ‘liked’ you, that it was false because they eventually bid you farewell? Or does it come from your insecurity that you’re not worth the effort to cultivate a relationship with? But what do you think you deserve?

My mistrust is more like a reserve or apprehension about making new friends because things are often so fleeting. Along with my innate personality being a tad more reserved and introverted, I come from a big military background, so investing in others isn’t my strong suit. I keep trying and things don’t often work out. There can sometimes be a slight desperation in that: meeting people you click with and then all of a sudden, you’ve unclicked. It’s still jarring. But it does explain how it can perhaps be offputting to some people when I’m trying to make friends. Being either reserved/standoffish or slightly too eager doesn’t exactly bode well for new girlfriends. I can see that. I think that as far as what I deserve and should cultivate, it just keeps coming back to me and having no big expectations from anyone. Living in the moment, primarily to make myself happy and fulfilled so that I’m what I need to be for my daughter and my goals.

Thanks again, GL

Anita, thanks for your reply. I appreciate it.

1. As you make practical choices in life, including whether to end this relationship or not- choose what will minimize your stress level, which I think should be your highest priority, for your own well being and for your daughter “who is having some serious growing pains with the divorce, Covid-19, and a frequently stressed out mom“.

You are very right about this. Prioritizing my peace should always be at the top of my list.

2. You mentioned your lack of social support: “a frequently stressed out mom who has no other family or friends around.. I don’t have anyone else to confide in about this”- if you find my input helpful, keep posting here and I will be glad to read from you and reply every time you post.

I appreciate that.

– the first man, it was not effective to give him a long, or very long list of your questions and concerns, fears and doubts. There was an assumption on your part that he is able and willing to process all that information and come up with a plan of action that will take care of your long list of issues with him and otherwise. I very much doubt that he was that capable. Even if he was a capable psychotherapist, he would have been way less capable in the context of a personal relationship. You gave him too much credit, giving him that list and attempting to discuss it.

I feel you’re right about this too. I’d had a few literally sleepless nights. He was living in Asia and we’d had some long conversations in which I abandoned my needs for sleep in order to communicate with him, so by the time I decided to write out all those questions, concerns, and explanations, I wasn’t really thinking that clearly. No, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but deep down I knew I didn’t trust him anymore anyway. That list was just a way of trying to confirm something that didn’t need his confirmation. It made zero sense.

– the second man, like you implied, he is quite immature, but he reads like a good guy. You see him as worse than he is; again, giving him too much credit in a negative way. His easy going lifestyle/young age lifestyle may be a benefit to you, in comparison to being involved with a very mature, busy and very uptight man.

Yeah, he is a good guy. I think the only way in which I see him as worse than he is is with my having issues with his relationships with teenage girls. My own past raises my hackles when I see it, to an irrational point. I feel it to be something I need to really get used to and understand over time before I can truly trust that it’s solely innocent. I hate that it’s like that for me, but it’s true. It doesn’t just come from nowhere, but it is harmful in the context of a relationship. And again, I don’t judge him for his life. I comment on its simplicity as a boon to him and because I wish I had it. Mentioning it to him reads as judgment, but that is not what I feel about it. And you are right, I do not want to be with an uptight, busy, overly mature man. I like to be silly and spontaneous and have fun. I have enough on my plate and don’t need to add further seriousness to it. When I say he doesn’t leave the house and reads and paints, these are his words, too. Not a judgment.

– you are overly critical of the men, expecting some kind of impossible perfection from them. Not that any of the men was even close to any idea of perfection, but your expectations are unreasonable. You watch them too closely, looking for reasons to get suspicious and offended, not giving them the space to just be. You expect them to remember everything you told them at all times, be focused, and filter themselves accordingly, on an ongoing basis- an impossible task for a human (possible for a computerized robot).

I actually have a lot more flexibility in what I allow than I communicate here. But if literally one of your only issues with a partner was constant comments on other women’s looks or bodies and you mention it to him instead of sitting on it and silently stewing, why can’t that be a topic? I don’t tell anyone how to dress, be, etc. But if I start to feel uncomfortable or disrespected, it’s expecting too much to bring it up and want to have a conversation about it, one that ends with me saying, “Hey, that’s just how I feel. I cannot tell you how to be or what to do.” And when it came to sexual favors with the last guy, that was something he could have communicated to me. He asked me to maintain a long-distance relationship. We talked about almost everything. Maybe it was foolish of me to think that that would be a topic he would broach, but I did. I was trusting. I don’t even ask for constant filtering. I truly don’t. But I did want to address it because we also talk about a lot of topics and I wanted to understand his thought process in those moments. I find people attractive, but I don’t need to always call it out. It raises questions of, is there an underlying reason for this? Some people truly want you to feel insecure by doing that. If he had said, yeah join in, I think it’s blah blah blah, I’d have said sure! But he nixed that idea. I just try to make sense of things for myself. Is it annoying to others? Yeah, probably so. I know that not everything makes sense or needs to be analyzed.

Having this unrealistic human-behavior expectation would make a healthy and lasting relationship with any man, including one who is almost perfect- an impossibility.

I give and accept a lot. But I am also inquisitive and not always the most trusting of every single thing. Time and experience have shown me that I mustn’t trust without clarity or an explanation sometimes (see the above sexual favors response in which I trusted he was not straying because I thought we were more straightforward than that). But yes, I could probably stand to focus more on myself and making myself happy so that I am less focused on the behaviors of the people I’m seeing.

– reads to me that you are over-reactive at times, to put it mildly, earning yourself the term “psychopath” that the first man mentioned and the what the second man referred to as your violence (“he still tried to.. play up my ‘violence’”). A daily routine of aerobic exercise, like long, brisk daily walks, listening to guided meditations and practicing Mindfulness can help you to pause between feeling triggered and reacting/ over-reacting to the feeling.

I have to disagree with the psychopath reference here, Anita. That is a serious thing to lodge at someone that he was actually pretty mean to. What strikes me is that I am always meant to be more forgiving of these men but that same understanding is not always as readily welcome to me. I know that I am only responsible for myself, but they have accountability too. I’m drunk, I kick at a stool while seated, I don’t knock it down or go on a rampage, but feel like his touching my person was uncalled for. I’d gone on a five mile walk that day, but too much alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine with not enough food spell disaster for someone with a sensitive system. So yes, that is a combo that made me particularly “over-reactive.” And again, I was quite out of it, but he slapped my hand and broke a beer bottle in the street and I’m the one needing to take responsiblity for all of it? How? Again, accountability on both sides here.