Dear Fiest:

Thank you for your kind words, you just brought a smile to my face.

I am looking at what you shared on this thread: you like being on your own, not in a relationship, feeling “legitimately happy, independent, fun”, but once you are in a relationship,  little by little, you get attached to the man and you lose yourself, that is, you lose your happy-independent-fun self (“little by little I get attached, lose myself and want more than they want”)

In your recent relationship, you were a normal human being, you wrote, but three months into it, you “turned into a co-dependent mess”.

“I get attached.. and want more than they want”- you want the man to need you, to love you completely, which is what you needed as a child from a parent, but didn’t get.

“(I) Want more than they want. Only I don’t ask for it, I continue to play aloof”- this is what a young child does when she/he doesn’t get her parent’s attention or when her parent is often not there… she detaches and acts aloof, as if she doesn’t care. It happens after all the child’s cries were unheard again and again. The child no longer cries, no longer asks, having given up.

“I was working on being true to myself.. working on maintaining myself in relationships”- you think that your true self is that “happy, independent, fun.. unattached”. You don’t know that the sad, dependent, needy and attached part of you is also your true self. Integrate the two selves,  and you will be healthily, authentically and truly.. you!

“But now that I’ve gotten back to my fun-loving, unattached ways, I realize that this is who I want to be.. I like myself when I’m independent and unattached”- no one likes to feel dependent when there is no  one to depend on. It feels scary (“my fight or flight gets kicked in.. I have no control over it”), and sad and angry (“occasional jealousy and passive aggressiveness”), and none of these feel good.

“I can see and love others as they truly are, not as I want them to be for me. In relationships I honestly can not detach to see people as individuals”- in relationships you see (once you feel attached) the man as a parent. Children don’t see their parents as individuals, they see their parents as they need them to  be. For example, a child having a mother who hits her badly, will see her mother as a loving mother, focusing on her mother feeding her in between beatings. A child closes her eyes best she can to who her parent is, and see her parent as who she needs her parent to be.

“I understand that feeling abandoned as a child, both physically and emotionally probably lends to my need for a guy that I like to need me. Anything less doesn’t feel like enough”-

– imagine you meet a man who does need you a whole lot: tell me, what is this man saying to  you, what is he doing for you?

anita