Hello Irene,

I’m sorry for the pain you’re going through. I know it hurts a lot.

The pain is one thing, the narration for that pain is another. The reality is that a relationship ended and that he is now with someone else. That is what we know. However, any explanations that you start to give yourself may or may not correspond with reality. Right now you see it from the perspective that he was with you with four years and now he has replaced you with someone else so fast afterwards. Another perspective would be that he was with you for four years and he can’t stand the pain of separation either and wanted a rebound as soon as possible. There’s your side of the story, his side of the story and then there’s the truth.

In any case, the problem with your approach is that you are looking at it from the perspective of being this poor victim who’s somehow completely unloveable and so you reach out, from this stance, to other people and ask them to validate your perspective. That is essentially what you are doing by asking other people to tell you two things that are good about you. What if they don’t want to play this game with you? What if they don’t want to feed the self-pity? Of course there are good things about you, you wouldn’t have been in a four year relationship and had a 11 year friendship if that was not the case. Come on. Drop the self-pity narration and focus on healing yourself. It does hurt when you separate from another person and so you need to take time to tend to yourself and love yourself.

Instead of asking other people to join you in misery, why not ask them to join you in healing? Go for a walk in a garden together, cook together, etc. Fill your senses with the sights and sounds of life. Or do those things by yourself. Just get out of your head and into the world!

Hi Irene,

You kind of answered yourself the question why it is a game of self-pity in the next paragraph 🙂 Deep down, and rationally thinking, you know that you have good features. More than just two. So to ask for those things is to ask for validation and attention to the idea that you wouldn’t have any, and that’s not something people really like to do. And rightly so.

Look at this for examples of what I’m talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

Regardless of how the other person answers your question, they know that they are stepping into something that’s difficult to get out of and that’s why people don’t want to step into it in the first place.

You need to get out of that place as well and into living your life. Yes, life is painful as well, but it’s not that bad when you’re not stuck in the misery for a prolonged period. Getting unstuck is really your choice. That is both good news and bad news. The good news is that you have all the power in the world to get out of it, and you don’t have to rely on other people to pull you out. The bad news is that it’s hard work and requires a lot of humility when honestly facing your own part in everything. It is much easier to take the route of “oh poor unloveable me” than to stand up and say “yes, I’ve made mistakes as well”.

Your mind is just clouded at the moment, and you can’t see that you are actually loved ad infinitum. You’ve invested in believing that you’re not, but you’ll need to cut your losses and change the route!

P.S. Obviously, as Ruminant is pointing out, if your whole aura is Victim-y, Pity Me, then, yes, that would be a huge turn off to anyone.

I totally get what you’re saying. It depends on the friendship, too. Maybe I’m lucky, but I see girlfriends (and there are different types) as being chicks you can have fun with, let your hair down with. I can see after a breakup this easy exchange:

“Girlfriennnnnd, OMG, I can’t believe he took up with that s#$k wh$%^ already!!”

“Don’t worry about it Grrrl!”

“Am I so terrible??” *drags on smoke*

“Not at all!!” *passes a beer*

*shyly* “Tell me 2 nice things about me??”

“Grrrrrlllll, I can tell you 100!!” *passes chocolate*

“Thx, Girl Friend!”

*Convo. moves onto other things*

• This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by Inky.

I told one of my friends, “Don’t qualify a compliment.” (compliment plus “but”)

It worked!

Next time she hurts your feelings, can just say “I can’t believe you said that” and let her sit with it for a while. Then when she contacts you again you can say, “Are we going to have a repeat of your (her latest quote that made you feel bad) fiasco?” Now she knows that you can’t be put down so easily, that you’ll call her on it, and she is not in some perceived power position.

The friendship will crumble after that or she may start treating you with respect.

But honestly? I would spend my energy enjoying the company of non-toxic friends!