Dear Cynthia, I hope you will be able to spell some light on my story.
I am a 28 year old female - beautiful, intelligent, ambitious. I have been having relationship problems with men. I have been married at an early age and got divorced three years after, because I felt trapped in the marriage. I have been single for 5 years and keep following the same relationship patterns. I either attract guys, create intense connection and sparkle and once it gets to something more serious, I run away, or I get into flings which hurt me because I want a companionship, not just short term physical connection. I know how to create a powerful connection between me and a man but I don't commit in the end. I back off. I am so tired of this and need help because all I want is to build a happy relationship with someone special and be happy together. I seem to have so many fears and insecurities that I keep behaving really badly with guys and push them away. The behaviour of a hurt person. But I cannot say that I have been hurt that much by men. I always seem to be a step ahead of it. Please help me to figure out what my problem is. Someone suggested I might have a personality disorder - I really hope that this is not the case. It would be good to know in any case. Thank you for your kind help in advance.
Without knowing more about your history, I can only guess at what is going on for you. I can tell you that when people have patterns in relationships, they are usually re-creating a scenario that is emotionally similar to one that happened when they were children. We all do this in order to try to resolve something that didn't get resolved in our first important relationships--usually with our parents, but it could be a sibling, other parental figure, or even peers. Our intention is to find a similar situation and then work to make it turn out the way we want, rather than the way it did when we were children. So if we had unloving parents, we find unloving relationships and try to make our partner become loving. Or if we had abandoning parents, we choose abandoning partners and try to get them to be consistently close. If we were sexually assaulted as children, we may flirt and get attention for our sexual appeal, with the hope that we will be loved for ourselves, not for our desirability.
I agree with you that your pattern sounds like one that originated with hurt early in your life. Do you know what that hurt was? Do my example make you think of anything that happened to you as a child? It might have been hurt from your Dad, but it could also been hurt from your Mom, or someone else.
When you can see what is going on, and heal the hurt, you will be able to move on from this pattern, and develop the relationship you want.
Dear Cynthia, thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it.
I had a rather happy childhood in terms of my background. However, I always had issues with my parents, I always felt in pain even though they think and it looks like there is nothing wrong in the family. So it is very difficult for me to understand what is it that hurt me so much, to figure out the roots of this problem. Nothing major (sex assaults, bad parents, men cheating, betrayals, physical abuse) happened to me.
I guess more work in therapy should be done in order to understand or could it be that I just haven't found a special person I want to share myself fully with?
Since you said you "have so many fears and insecurities that I keep behaving really badly with guys and push them away. The behaviour of a hurt person," it sounds like there's more going on than your just not finding the right guy. I only know what you tell, me, so I'm just taking your word for it. If you're in therapy, the answers to your questions should come through your exploration with your therapist. I know it can be very confusing to understand adult patterns when your childhood doesn't seem connected to the patterns. It may be that you just haven't dug deeply enough, and what started the pattern is something fairly subtle, or maybe what caused the pattern is about your relationship with siblings, peers, or even an adult trauma. Let us know what you figure out!
Cynthia
Last Edited by Cynthia on Jun 19, 2013 9:55 PM
