Dear voicewriter:

This is what you wrote in this thread:

“So I am struggling with my breakup. I dated this man…A great guy, a good guy, wanted nothing more than to spend his life with me. I thought I did…I broke up with him four times… It didn’t matter what he did, I just couldn’t get back that feeling. So I ended it….now I feel lost and scared… I’m a complete wreck and anxiety-ridden. I wonder what is wrong with me???

… I don’t feel like I was angry… I was still in love, but it slowly dissipated. I don’t know why.

…I have fear that I possibly lost the best thing I ever had….I have fear of being stuck in a dull, loveless relationship, because that’s what it became.

…I lost a lot of respect for him because he allowed me to abuse him and didn’t stand up for himself…

I think I fell out of love with him, and was just unhappy and afraid to end it, so I think it manifested itself in me being nit-picky about trivial stuff.

…I wonder if I (didn’t) pulled away from him, when it was wonderful in the beginning, which helped create the dull, loveless relationship.

…what are you thinking about me, that I’m a horrible person? …second-guessing myself yet again.

… he…has a lot of empathy. He’s a beautiful and wonderful person… It (sex) wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t earth shattering either. … I’ve never had anyone love me like that my entire life, and can’t imagine that I ever will again, so I am mourning a huge loss.

But at the same time, it got to the point that I didn’t want to see him, and even when I did, I was not happy to be around him. He would have gone on like this forever, and I just couldn’t anymore.

… I keep asking myself, why wasn’t it enough for me? Why couldn’t I love him the way he loves me? Like what’s wrong with me?

…What hurts the most is that he has shut down. When I talked to him yesterday, I felt like I was talking to an alien. Never has he not wanted to talk to me. Never has he been cold as ice to me… And it’s all my fault.

… I think the issues I had were real issues that I just couldn’t get past, for whatever reason…So yes, I have to figure out what’s going on with me, whatever that might be. I’ve been in many relationships.. It’s not like I run away from relationships. I don’t… I am not afraid of love.

…What did you mean by I have no insight of any significance into this relationship?

…My father was manic-depressive, so I had a volatile family life. He was not very nice to my mother, very verbally abusive (and I married a verbally abusive man, no surprise). My mother was a sweet woman, but I had a lot of anger and resentfulness that (s)he put up with my father treating her the way he did. I guess I thought she was weak. I was not a very nice kid, kind of a brat. My father, when I was younger, wasn’t sick, and I wanted to always be with him, until he got sick, and then I hated him and wished my mother would leave him. She never did.

…I never thought about all this

…I never was in a relationship like this one, so I’m not sure there’s a pattern. Most of the men I’ve been with have been strong-willed, and I was the one who was the needy one. This one was completely different.”

My input this morning: It is YOUR JOB, your responsibility to yourself and to the people who care about you, who are in loving relationships with you, to get INSIGHT into your own mind, into your motivations: what makes you tic the way you do, the way you did in relationships past and in the one last. It is not my job. It is time for you to take on that job that is yours to take.

Here are two quotes for you:
“Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
– Confucius

“Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

anita

anita