Reframing things in your head

[Pistachiovillian]

I've read a few threads where people have suggested this-and I have actually managed to do it myself in various ways in the past. E.G I was bullied horribly at a job, and left after being off sick-I 'reframed' this as there were lots of things about that job that didn't suit me, including the hours, even without the bullying so I was able to change it into a positive after some mulling over and pontificating.

One thread recently, man had left her for a younger woman just after the baby was born, a few posters advised her to reframe it as 'she got rid of the scumbag and decided to raise her baby alone without a useless Father'.
Another one a while ago, poster had stood up to her bully of a Father but was very shaken, posters told her to reframe it as 'finally having got rid of the awful bully, a positive step'.

I have been strung along by someone or at least that's what I feel like. For almost four years we've seen one another every two weeks, more if one of us was on AL sometimes or away together but usually just every other weekend from Fri to Sun afternoon. The plan was to move in together, but it never happened.
I feel really down about it and as if I have wasted that time. There were other issues too but I genuinely thought they were all related to us being apart and that they'd not be a problem once we lived together. She was meant to move in with me and a few weeks ago she admitted that she never would. We've now split up. She doesn't seem the least bit bothered.

I keep having doubts and moments where I just feel so alone-I had them throughout the relationship too. Sometimes I feel like I really, very much dislike her for all she put me through-then I get annoyed with myself and wonder why I put up with it-I guess I felt that it would have a happy ending so I kept on with it. And I did love when she visited me, although sometimes it felt like 'playing house' almost as she'd just leave, no matter what and I'd feel like I was just back to being single almost.

I don't know how to sort this out in my head. I think over the last few months I felt myself dis-attaching because my whole lifestyle was single, other than of course I didn't look at anyone else. I just saw her every other weekend, like almost a social event rather than an ongoing relationship.

I don't feel like I am in love with her any longer-but I just feel so duped and like those years were wasted, and like she lied to me totally about her intentions and the person who she was.

I am naturally a 'relationship' sort of person and I feel I have been alone for so long. Before I began seeing her I was single for three years and before that I lived with my ex, I took counselling and did a lot of work on myself before dating this one and I feel it has all been undone now.

I can't access counselling, I truly cannot afford it at the moment. I also am getting NHS counselling for a different issue altogether (and to be honest, I am not getting anything from it) and my work have an EAP but they won't offer me anything either, I have a feeling that that will be a suggestion.
Is there a different way I can look at this?
She's made me more independent I suppose, but I was already, just I feel she's maybe made me not rely on someone even when supposedly in a relationship. But that's probably not a good thing.

My therapist often asks, of an apparently negative pattern of behaviour or a situation, 'What was the benefit for you?' It's often a very counter-intuitive way of looking at something, but I actually find it useful to acknowledge that everything I have ever done is a decision, and that every relationship/situation etc I entered into or allowed to continue, had something in it that benefited me.

It might be helpful for you to think about why you allowed this relationship, which you say yourself had issues, go on as long as it did. What was in it for you, (leaving aside the idea that you would one day live together)?

For instance, it's not the same, but I had a friendship for a couple of years with someone who appears to have dropped me entirely now circumstances mean we are no longer in one another's paths. I thought of him as a genuinely close friend, and confided in him, and I'm hurt at being consigned to the past so totally after we'd spent some of every weekend together with our children for the best part of three years. Talking to my therapist, I realised the extent to which he met an unmet need in me during that time, and also that his tendency to blow hot and cold even during the friendship was a familiar pattern to me from my childhood, so it felt familiar.

It does help to reframe it that I engaged in this situation for my own reasons, too, rather than being the innocent victim of some kind of user.

OP, are you the same poster who lives in a village and has a friend who never buys you a drink in the pub, but comes to your house for free beer every weekend, whose wife you've never met in eight years of friendship and living in the same village, and who tried to to cheat you out of hobby materials?

This is helpful, thank you.

I had a relationship 'sort of' similar to my last one, when I was young (19/20) where he'd see me twice a week to go out and get drunk (and have sex) but that's all he wanted me for. I let it continue hoping that he'd eventually want more. When I ended it, he hit the roof and wanted to marry me and all of the rest of it but I had no feelings for him by that point. This one has felt similar. Like constant abandonment.
I had a 'hot and cold' (mostly cold) Father who had been brilliant when I was very little but then became very angry toward me once I grew up a bit. I am going to further think about how to work on that. I do note that I let this happen, I let her mistreat me (not just in aspects of stringing me along but other things) and maybe I just think maybe this person (like I did with my Dad) will eventually be nice to me again. It feels pathetic-but I have to remember that as humans, are brains just are not very evolved for society really.

I am glad you're doing well and have realised what has been occurring for you.

I think someone asked me this on my last thread! No! But I really want to read that thread now so I can see why people think it was me 😅and if it would be relevant!

I just searched and this is you, under the same username --
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5162556-friends-behaviour-has-annoyed-me-i-want-to-tell-him-it-has-because-i-want-to-be-congruent-but-i-dont-know-how-what-would-you-do?postsby=Pistachiovillian

Respectfully, why would you pretend it wasn't?

Because I do not see the relevance. I don't need to talk about that issue, but this one?

And I knew I'd posted about my friend but I had changed a few details, for obvious reasons. That issue is resolved now.

So namechange, don't include details that make your situation familiar to anyone who has read your past threads, and don't insult people who have gone to some trouble to offer helpful advice by lying to them.

Your other thread seems to me to be highly relevant to this one, but I'm out.

I should have name changed you're right, but my head is very fuddled at the moment.

Thank you for your useful response, it has helped (and I had thought about that too, to see myself as a participant). I guess also, it was so bizarre that it was unbelievable in some ways, that she thought it was so acceptable and 'normal' to live a 'relationship' in that sense. I kept thinking something had to happen.

These are issues I will address.