Hi David,

I read Anita’s reply and thought it was insightful. Anita picked up a few quotes from your previous posts that got me thinking (I’m a very new user so not sure where to find your previous one, also I only registered because I wanted a way to reach out to you).

So here’s what my thoughts are:

– Seems like your family were or are (?) “extremely abusive… emotional, physical, psychological”. I wonder what your childhood taught you about how to relate to others and to yourself? It sounds like you’ve had a rough time growing up in a difficult environment where you might not have had the opportunity to learn that you are perfect the way you are, that there are strengths that are unique to you and that you are loved. Harsh childhoods can often help us grow into adults that think we are not good enough. I wonder if you have this feeling about yourself, and bring this to relationships. If you do, you’re definitely not alone. I’m thinking that this might be something you have thought about because emotional, physical and psychological abuse has a way of making us feel like there’s something wrong, or that what we do is not good enough. In can make adult relationships tricky because we can find it hard to set boundaries and think about what we will and won’t stand for.

– You have worked at jobs that have not satisfied you or you disliked Our work can sometimes be an extension of ourselves and what we want for ourselves, it’s when our ants and dreams align with our careers/jobs that I think we can truly feel quite happy and at peace because there’s a type of congruence to our lives and what we think about ourselves and how we spend our time. I wonder why you have stayed in certain jobs and if you have ever stayed in relationships where you also weren’t satisfied. Obviously I don’t want to make assumptions here – there could be the simple fact of needing to earn some money and staying in a job because of that…but, if there’s some other reason maybe it could be connected to patterns in relationships too?

–  “addiction problems galore, mainly love addiction” This makes me think that there is some sort of numbing, that the addiction is not perhaps enjoyable but something that you might feel sucked in to. I think ‘love addiction’ is a contradiction in terms, because love for me is freedom, open and light whereas addiction is constricting, closed and a bit of a drain.

– that you were rejected many times by potential romantic partners, that you’ve been in “therapy (different therapists) for countless years”, and still, you “have not found a stable good relationship” This one really got me thinking. I wonder if the pattern in relationships have played out in your interaction with therapists. It sounds like being in therapy with different people for a number of years looks a bit like shaky ground, that you are in search of something and not finding it. Your words on not being able to find a stable relationship got me thinking about what you might be (unwittingly) doing to create this feeling for yourself. Maybe you are staying with another person far longer than you really want to or leaving too soon? I don’t know, just struck me that both examples of instability reflect relational patterns.

– ‘I feel like my personality and character do not match up/ in synch with how I look, and girls in particular have brushed me off just based on that alone”

“Is changing my appearance the only way to achieve another’s appreciation/ romantic love..?”

I think that maybe you do, maybe you don’t. The question I think that is more important here is how can you learn to love yourself more than you are? How do you cultivate a truly stable relationship with yourself (which is a pretty tough thing to do – I’m still working on it!). If you love yourself first, really completely and exude this in your life, it will be probably easier to find someone and create a stable relationship. If also in loving yourself more you want to be healthier, maybe this will also show up in your appearance. I personally think that our appearance is quite important but more important is what we carry inside of ourselves.

Best of luck David 🙂