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Trying to focus inward

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  • #181887
    Melanie
    Participant

    Hello everyone,

    After reading this forum several times, I thought it was high time that I post something that has been on my mind this past year, perhaps in the hopes of getting some clarity. I have had a year full of ups and downs and self-realization. Last year, my ex and I broke up. Although Im 28, this was my first real relationship. It was very intense, passionate, tender and loving. However, he had to leave back home to France and we tried to do long distance for a while until we sorted our heads and figured a way to be. To be honest, looking back, our problem was that we never really talked about our expectations. Anyway, after he came to visit me here in Germany and I met his parents, I felt as though everything was going well. I had become extremely needy in the relationship since I was going through a hard time where I was unemployed, in a new country and city with no friends. He was also going through hard times and was going to start a very intense training course. I feel as though we both let our anxieties get the best to us and when I proposed to move to him in France he freaked and said “don’t you think thats a bit ridiculous?” which made me wonder where the hell he thought the relationship was going. So we broke up, but then I suggested to him to maybe think about it. Instead he immediately said NO. We spent the next month still flirting, I had to fly to Germany (I had a ticket) and when I saw him you could just tell there was still so much love between us but not enough to try and be with me long distance.

    Fast forward to this entire year where I went back and forth from wanting to be back with him to moving on completely. I have gone on many dates but can’t seem to get past many limiting beliefs I have of myself, my past relationship etc. In April, I went to visit a bff in Germany and casually messaged him to see if he would be willing to meet up. Frankly it was quite heartbreaking because he seemed so cold and aloof. I realized I had to move on, but I have seriously been struggling. I guess what hurts the most is that he never ever tried to contact me first, even though he is/was loving and polite always. I saw a couple months that he is with a new lady and it tore me apart.

    I guess what I am asking is how can I move past this feeling that I want to be with him? I have a deep-seated fear of abandonment since most of the guys I dated in my early twenties left me for somebody else or chose someone else before me (whom they are still with). Now I feel as though Im still here, single, lonely, unwanted and he moved on and following the same pattern of the men from my past, reaffirming what I already believe. I have been working on myself and realizing that I can open myself to a love like that again, but some parts still hurt and shame me. I am ashamed I can’t move on. I am hurt that he could move on. I feel as though he never really loved me. I feel as though I will never find anyone else. I’m not sure really where to start. Again, Im usually on my good days lately where I see so much joy and infinitely good possibilities but I still have some limiting beliefs. What should I do?

    Thanks!

    Mel

    #181911
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Mel:

    I would like to understand better, therefore  I ask:

    you wrote that you have “many limiting beliefs” of yourself. Can you list them?

    anita

    #181915
    Melanie
    Participant

    Hi Anita, thanks for the quick reply.

    I think my biggest one is that I am not good enough. I constantly go back to not feeling good enough to keep someone. The fact that my ex is with someone else (although completely natural and rational) just triggers all these past romantic experiences and I guess its hard for me not to wonder what is wrong with me? I simply feel as though most guys although they are initially attracted to me will eventually see me and want to move on with someone better. I’m trying not to compare myself to his new gf but its hard. She simply seems so much cooler. I guess what I really want to free myself from is this belief that I am not good enough to find someone that I love and who loves me back and won’t leave me.

    #181923
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear  Mel:

    What is the origin of this core belief, that you are not good enough, that you are less worthy than others? Do you remember feeling this way as a child?

    anita

    #181949
    Peter
    Participant

    Is it possible that you aren’t really missing this guy “who you feel never really loved you” but instead miss the person you felt you were when you were in relationship? Missing the imagined future that you imagined and felt possible while you were with him.

    To move forward its important to become conscious of what it is we are really morning the loss of. Taking time to mourn a loss is an important part of the process however one needs to be very clear on what they are mourning.

    Your post indicates that you know why the relationship wasn’t going to work (possible that it wasn’t related to love at all just the stuff of life)

    We tend to repeat and recreate our past, however that is not because we are unworthy or gluten for punishment, (though some are) but because our authentic Self wants us to heal the past. I know it sounds strange but changing perspective on why the past keeps repeating can be a doorway out. Your authentic Self knows you are worthy, lovable, and deserving. You are worthy, lovable and deserving. It’s the ego small s self that fears its not worthy or deserving.  Create some space, change perspective and you will change the story your telling yourself. You may discover that it was the story that was driving your emotions and current experience. A story filled with unhelpful labeling and judgments.

    “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality. -Seneca

    #181951
    Melanie
    Participant

    I guess it came from my parents, especially my mother, who always criticized my sister and I when we were children and compared us to other children our age. My sister also has this feeling of being less worthy but on her it manifests a bit differently. This break-up has really made me realize that I need to work on moving past this belief but its been a long road. Although I am much better than a year ago, I still struggle with the insecurity in the romantic sphere. This is even more true since I have felt that all of my romantic relations/flings etc have always ended because they “found someone better”. Now Im struggling with this not only because my ex was the one to end the relationship but all my fears of him finding someone “better” have come true. Whilst I feel as though I can’t move forward. Part of me wants to move on and part of me wants to be back with him.

    #181955
    Melanie
    Participant

    Thanks for your reply Peter,

    I have thought of that often. The thing is that sometimes I know that I think he never loved me but the truth was that he did love me very much so. You are absolutely right about what it is that I am mourning, I guess it goes back to missing the feelings of being loved by someone and understood. He really was one of the few people that I felt love/intimacy/vulnerability with and for me that is precisely what I am mourning.

    Thanks for both of your feedback. I have been working on my perspective lately and there are many more good days than bad, but sometimes (like today) I revert to this negative black and white thinking. Ultimately, sometimes I doubt whether I will be loved/love in this way again.

    #181957
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Mel:

    It is far from being easy to “work on moving past this belief”-

    Because the belief that you were less worthy than your peers was inflicted on you by your mother, this belief is the basis of many of your behaviors, such behaviors, I am guessing,  from currently wanting to get back with your ex and prove to him that you are not less worthy, to choosing and staying with men who disrespect you, to not talking to a man about your expectations about a relationship (because you are anxiously waiting for the … inevitable, being replaced by a more worthy peer).

    How do you think you can move past this belief?

    anita

    #181961
    Melanie
    Participant

    Oh wow. Thank you Anita. You managed to put into one sentence everything that I have come to realize this year but struggle to really grasp for long. I guess seeing it come from someone else really makes it sink in. It hurts but I need this reminder.

    Moving forward I am not so sure. I feel as though I have shut myself from moving forward with any man (even though Ive had many suitors). I have been doing meditation and working out and doing things that I enjoy, but I guess in the back of my mind I am afraid of getting into anything and revert to the same pattern. I’ve also been trying to break down my thoughts about my past relations and not see them as black and white. That was the case with my ex. He really didn’t do anything wrong and things did not work out because of the distance I am guessing. But I don’t know how to stop making myself a victim and apply the same victim mentality to this breakup. If that makes any sense?

    #181967
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Mel:

    You are welcome. Regarding the “victim mentality” you mentioned: as I wrote to you in my last post, this core belief, that you are less worthy than your peers, was inflicted upon you by your mother, and so you were definitely a victim. Without this infliction, your life would have been so much better and easier.

    It is important to see where indeed we were or are victims.

    What to do now, my suggestion: slowly examine and evaluate this core belief and correct it. Literally this means having new connections between neurons made in your brain, new neuropathways that will interfere with the old neuropathways. This process takes a lot of time. It may require the help of a quality psychotherapist.

    New thoughts, new experiences will bring about these new neuropathways, this is healing.

    Healing takes noticing how you behave, what you think, what you feel, and changing your thinking and behaving. This changing will feel distressful but over time calm will follow as you will function better, better for your own emotional well-being.

    Post anytime with your thoughts and feelings.

    anita

     

    #181971
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * didn’t get submitted correctly…

    #181975
    Peter
    Participant

    Nothing like the end of a relationship to make us re-evaluate our thinking, feeling and expectations of this thing we call love. Will you turn the experience against yourself or will you take a different path and choose growth?  If you are able follow through the dark wood I have no doubt that you will discover a deeper relationship to yourself and this thing we call Love. It is because love is both bitter and sweet, often in the same moment, that gives it its flavor.

    When my relationship ended I couldn’t understand what happed.  I wanted to believe she never really loved me. For a time, I need to believe that because I let her see me and it hurt so much to think that after seeing me she rejected me and rejecting me didn’t love me.

    The thing is we did love each other and that love was real. So, what happened.  The question that kept coming into my thoughts was ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ My eventual answer: everything and nothing. Everything because we very much and still do care about each other and wanted to see the other become and excel. Nothing because even though we loved each other we weren’t compatible for marriage type relationship and that was something she very much wanted. The Stuff of life kept getting in the way. Had we gotten married one of us growth, or both, would have stagnated. The Stuff of life, homes, location, jobs, family, goals all worked against us. Life demands growth and so sometimes LOVE requires that a relationship end. Sometimes it’s the end of a relationship that is needed to push someone into becoming. Sad but often the case in the bitter sweet that is Love.

    That said Relationships never end even if we don’t see the other person again. Its part of the bitter sweet. If we can get to a place where we can know (intuitively or mind) that the end was Love, That the All is LOVE, even when something didn’t work out as we hoped, any new beginning is possible.

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