That’s why I quit Facebook, except for Messenger where I still need to chat with others. I am also lonely and afraid of meant to be lonely for life. I am trying my best bit by bit to live a better life now.

Dear spring0108:

You want to love and be loved. To love, you put the man first. To be loved, should he put you first?

If he puts you first, do you let him and feel comfortable being first? And then… to love him, you put him first, and you are back to being second, is it taking turns?

I think that neither should be first or second, but equal. It is my understanding, at this point, that your practice of putting the man (or family member, or friend) first, and you second, is a problem. You may be so used to this dynamic, starting from childhood, that you don’t know any other way.

It may be that as a child, the price you had to pay to be loved was self denial, basically, you had to not love yourself, to give yourself no importance, so to receive any kind of love from a parent.

Does any of this ring true to you?

* Will be back in twelve hours or so.

anita

Dear spring0108:

First, a summary or highlights of your posts here:
“Something my heart has always been longing for is a loving, healthy relationship. One where I love and am loved in return.”

All three times that you loved a man, your love was not returned. You wrote that you are confused because you believe you are a good person, deserving of love, and you don’t understand why your are lonely, why a healthy, loving relationship hasn’t happened for you.

You elaborated on what it means, you being a good person: “I’m nice to others, go out of my way to help others, my full time job is (to) help others daily… ”

You wrote “that same ex who constantly put me down, takes this this new girlfriend on trips, nice dates…this was right after we broke up and he just got on with someone completely new and decided to actually treat her like a human being when to him I was trash.”

Your first relationship: the guy chose his ex over you. The second was best friend who saw you as a sister, not a girlfriend. The third was a four year relationship. He was nice at first, then chose his friend over you, yelled at you in front of everyone, threw a set of keys in your face on another incident, expressed his disapproved of your looks and behavior, called you “crazy, bipolar, depressed” But you stayed with him and eventually he broke it up with you.

You wrote: “I do tend to put the ones Love first. Especially family…but I guess in all honesty I kind of thought that’s a part of unconditional love…I’ve just always put everyone else’s happiness before my own.”

Second, my input: I believe you have the following misunderstandings:

1. Love is about making the loved one first while putting yourself second, or last.
2. Love is about being unconditional, that is, it is about tolerating mistreatment, disrespect, abuse.
3. A good person is one who puts others first, helps others, expects nothing in return.

The reason your ex boyfriend of 4 years treated his next girlfriend so much better is probably because she believed in NOT putting herself second to him. If you put yourself First (and both man and woman are first, no seconds), then you will be treated well. It is your insistence to be second that causes your misery in a relationship and otherwise, your loneliness.

You are not a saint; you are a human being. A non-human saint may be able to give, give, give with no expectations of return, and be content being Second. A human being does have expectations of return and is not content being second on the long run. This is why, in the last relationship, you probably were depressed and upset a lot of the time.

I hope you find a way, maybe with competent psychotherapy, to respect the human in you, put yourself first/ equal to the man (as well as first and equal with your family members); no longer offering yourself as sacrifice. Ignite that Self-Interest in you. It will serve you well.

To love AND be loved in return, you have to be fist.

anita

I have been in your shoes and can relate so much. It helps if you can establish clearer boundaries and communicate your needs and expectations in relationships more clearly. It may mean more guys leave sooner, but you leave yourself open and available to better relationships. You WANT to weed out the bad guys. Your last ex sounds like a terrible person and him not loving you is no loss. I’ve had abusive relationships and it’s so hard when you have low self-esteem to not blame yourself for the poor treatment, but hopefully with time you will realize that your life is much better without this man in it.

It sounds like you are attracted to emotionally unavailable men – it’s possible they remind you of male authority figures in your life (even if your dad, for example, was a fundamentally good man who provided for your family it doesn’t mean he was emotionally healthy and open).

I just experienced a breakup with what I thought was the first healthy relationship I’ve ever had (I’m 31) and I’m feeling similarly to you – just fear of going through this over and over again and inability to forgive myself for mistakes. But nothing will get better unless we take action to make it better. Continuing to suffer is a choice.