Please can someone shed light on what is wrong with me?

[FreckledLeopard]

Guess this is the best place to post. I'm really at a loss and miserable and can't fathom what it is that's wrong with me that means I'm seemingly doomed when it comes to any kind of relationship.

From as early on as I can remember I've been attracted to, or pursued relationships with inappropriate people - be it married, emotionally unavailable, abusive in some way. I have never had a 'normal' attitude to relationships. The notion of 'boy meets girl' was alien to me. I am an only child and was at all-girls schools from 5 onwards so to me, boys were there for sex, not friendship, and were essentially another species to me. I was very precocious, read lots and wanted, from 13 onwards, to have as much life 'experience' as possible - as much sex with different people (felt like I needed to have a lot of numbers under my belt), smoking, drugs, self-harm, affairs.

Unsurprising I got pregnant at 18. DD's father wanted nothing to do with me or baby and has never met her. DD now almost 12.

Professionally and academically all has been fine. Always for A grades. Went to uni with DD. Am a lawyer. But my personal life remains a total mess (as many threads on here attest to) - marriage, divorce, affairs etc.

I've had therapy and whilst it gave me some insight it doesn't explain why I am like this nor how I can change.

A lot obviously has to do with upbringing. My mother should never have had a child and was never in the slightest bit maternal. My father was hands off and never really involved in my upbringing. They'd been married 22 years and used no contraception then my mother became pregnant with me. Obviously a massive shock to them.

All my life my parents told me how odd I was - 'square peg in a round hole', 'difficult', 'horrible child' etc. My mother still tells DD how ghastly I was as a child and how wonderful DD is in comparison. I was precocious and argumentative but I'm not sure I was as awful as they made out - I was good at school, got straight As etc. Anyhow, their approach to parenting was to absolve themselves of any responsibility, never discipline me or have rules and then let me do whatever I wanted as a teenager. They would frequently go away for a week or so at a time and leave me home alone from when I was 13 onwards.

My father died a horrible death when I was 17. Watched him die from cancer over 6 months. Never talked about it with my mother.

Anyway, apologies for all this. Have had awful morning in terms of former lover and ex-husband bringing issues to fore. But I don't know what's wrong with me that makes all relationships with any significant other so fucked up. I may have had a weird upbringing but so have many others yet they are able to have good relationships and marriages. What is so wrong with me that I cannot do this?

I have a weird sense of self - in some ways I like being me yet in others I wish I was someone else entirely. I don't hate myself but have not accepted who I am. But surely I'm not the only one that has this unease, yet why can others who feel similarly still have good relationships?

I just feel so confused and like I'm the only one that has this issue.

How do you get on with people generally? Outside of a relationship, for example. Do you find it easy to make friends?

Fairly ok. I have friends that I've known for 25 years and others that I've been friends with through work etc. I get on fine with colleagues. I have a handful of 'close' friends - around 5, that I try and see regularly (though they are in different parts of country and not same circle of friends).

I think the usual wisdom is, you have to accept and love yourself, then others can love you (I don't mean parents, but partners - you were extremely unlucky with parents who didn't show love, and that's why it's so hard to accept yourself). Mind you, some people have loving parents and still struggle in relationships. I think your counselling wasn't great, a really talented counsellor or psychologist could help, at least you can afford it so worth a shot.

Also maybe by building up self-esteem with frienships or helping someone, though your work success should give you some self-esteem - but in terms of being liked as a person work is not always helpful!

My mother ... was never in the slightest bit maternal. My father was hands off and never really involved in my upbringing.

You have a dysfunctional attachment style. All children are hard-wired to adore their parents and see them as having god-like wisdom. Since the people you worshipped kept a distance from you, emotionally at least, the child you were internalised this as the ideal model for what love should be. Simultaneously, another bit of hard-wiring means the child you were "knew" what a close and safe attachment should feel like. As this didn't match up with your absorbed experience, you tried to blend the two forces into a theory that seemed (to a child) workable as a definition of love and relationships.

It's very usual for people who had this kind of attachment formation to seek love relationships with unavailable partners. What you get is a passable copy of the tensions in your childhood relationships with your parents. Another way of painting this is: you seek relationships like the ones you had with your parents (particularly the opposite-sex parent) and keep trying to get a different outcome, almost as if you want the present difficulty to repair the past. Both approaches are true. I found I needed to properly understand why I was doing it (the 'replays') so, for me, it was necessary to really examine the underlying model I'd created as a child.

All my life my parents told me how odd I was - 'square peg in a round hole', 'difficult', 'horrible child' etc.
I wanted to have as much life 'experience' as possible - as much sex with different people (felt like I needed to have a lot of numbers under my belt), smoking, drugs, self-harm, affairs.
I have a weird sense of self - in some ways I like being me yet in others I wish I was someone else entirely.

You were a good little coper, Freckled. Your parents gave you this definition of yourself as an awkward, problematic misfit. I'm sorry your parents did such a horrid thing to you :(

Just as you did with your conflicting love models, you blended the identity your parents gave you with more positive ones - a school achiever, sociable, good friend - and came up with the bright and sparky, rebellious misfit persona you describe. Again, this is normal for young people dealing with a set of mixed messages like yours. You can see it's still unresolved, as you're not sure whether you like yourself or which parts you don't like.

I'd suggest reading the OP of the Stately Homes thread on this board, and following up on the books and websites recommended there. Having already done some therapy, you might already be strong enough to work through John Bradshaw's "Homecoming".

Wishing you all the best with it :)

5 close friends and some friendships for over 25 years suggests you are great at friend relationships, that's fab!

Your certainly not the only one to be living with an uncomfortable sense of self, there's me too, and endless others I'm sure. Wouldn't it be odd if you had grown up with great self esteem after all that in your past? More counselling, maybe a new counsellor?

I'm not suggesting you have an actual diagnosable problem, but I have found the advice on Mind's website for Borderline Personality Disorder useful. The teenage behaviour you describe would fit with this. Obviously though, you are fine in your work and frienships, hold on to that xx

If you can make friends and keep friends then there is nothing fundamentally wrong with your ability to form attachments. A good relationship is very like a sound friendship... just with a few extras. Your difficulties could be something as simple, therefore, as an unrealistic expectation of what a man should or could add to your life. You said originally that 'boys were there for sex, not friendship' and I think that's something to work on. 'De-romanticise' men, if you like. Take them off the pedestal.

OP, having a couple-relationship is not compulsory. Maybe you simply don't want one. I have never been very keen on them and by my late 20s had worked out that they were not for me and therefore I wasn't going to engage in them. I have casual flings from time to time and that suits me perfectly well.

It is a myth, and quite a harmful one, that there is something 'wrong' with a woman who does not engage in longterm couple-relationships. The insistence that women want and need and should prioritize a monogamous relationship with a man comes from Men's need to own a woman for domestic service and breeding purposes. So maybe you just need to ignore the propaganda and enjoy the life you have.

I'm so bloody grateful for this site. Thank you all for comments.

So - as regards BPD - yes, was diagnosed at 20 after everything went totally tits up after DD was born. Got into relationship with married woman I met at bf support group, self harm went into overdrive, various suicide attempts etc. Sorted myself out at 22, haven't self harmed since or displayed any of the more extreme BDP behaviours. Plus I'm so wary of having that as a label - I wish I could erase the whole period - I'm so ashamed of what I did.

Solid - I really do appreciate your input. You were great on thread I started about my issues with my poly lover having another girlfriend. But have had two poly relationships now and they've not made me happy. I really want to be 'normal' - husband, kids, mortgage. But nothing I do leads to that in any way and the brief marriage I had was miserable. But I feel a failure for not having an on-going successful relationship with one person.

That's where I feel conflicted - I know I'm not good at compromise, am selfish and like my own space and freedom. Having DD is wonderful and I'm utterly prepared to be flexible and compromise with her. But it's like she and I are a team. It doesn't work like that with any significant 'other'.

The thing I don't understand is how other people with dysfunctional upbringings or BPD still manage to have a 'normal' life and successful long-term relationships but I can't. Which is why I wonder what is wrong with me.

I feel so conflicted being me. I'm proud of my achievements (academic, career, DD) and am almost proud of my quirkiness and unconventional outlook on life. But then wish so much I could be someone entirely different - a soccer-mom type or the kind of woman who married a senator. Refined, groomed, discreet, poised.

I'm 31 next month and it seems the older I get the further away I am from being content. Last time I was truly, hand on heart content and happy with myself I was 12. How do I get over this. I wish I could think and feel less.

FreckledLeopard, I don't know whereabouts you live (and am not asking for nosy reasons) but I wonder if the people you mix with are mostly fairly conventional? Perhaps not if you socialise with poly people in an organised way ie belong to poly groups (can't remember if you do or if you just happened to encounter some poly people). When I look around at my friends, there are several longterm singles, some poly people, some serial monogamists, some gay/bi people and one or two transpeople. so I am quite comfortable in a non-'normal' world, surrounded by people who generally 'get' me. In a general way, people who have unusual hobbies or interests often tend to be non-'normal' or at least much more accepting of diversity in lifestyle. What sort of things do you like doing, or care about? Are there any hobby groups nearby for whatever it is? Having an interest, a real consuming interest, other than romantic/sexual relationships and the pursuit of them, is excellent for mental health on the whole.

I don't think my friends or social group are especially mixed. Long-term friends my age are now mostly married and having babies. The poly people I've met is through chance. I've just moved from London to Bristol and hence only know work colleagues, parents from school and people I've said hello to at a Zumba class.

Hobbies or interests...I like Bikram yoga but can't find a class that fits in with work/school schedule . I don't know really - I've was working stupid hours in the City before moving here so barely had time to do anything. I don't know that I have any other particular interest as such.

I also have an outward veneer of conservative, middle class-ness which in some ways is at odds with me but then again is more how I wish I was maybe. Which probably doesn't help me expand my social circle.

I have a headache, have been in tears on and off all day and now have a load of work to do. Need someone to give me a kick up the arse.

Sounds like you need someone to give you a hug, not a kick.

I'm odd too. You sound really interesting and just the sort of person who I'd like to be friends with. xx Is

I always pined to be like the lovely middle-class young women around me. There's a sort of sureness about them that, I believe, makes things easier and gives them more-than-average space to enjoy their lives. They marry genuinely nice, loving & reliable men. Things go well for them. I think of them, collectively, as "Sarah", which doesn't mean anything about the name; just that several of my lovely middle-class friends were called Sarah

Hardly anybody understands what I mean by this. I give the impression of being just the same: it's not an act; it's a welcome legacy from my school. But the underlying stability isn't there. It never will be, no matter how well I heal my inner child. In place of that I've got some good stuff, like a sharp & kooky wit and the human insight that goes with it. And I still pass as a "Sarah" when I want to. It opens doors sometimes.

Thing is, it's not fakery. None of it is. I'm as authentic as anyone else. The various parts and facets of 'me' are more disparate, perhaps, than "Sarah", but this is because I had personality-disordered parents who couldn't give me an integrated sense of identity like hers (not having those themselves.) Nobody's fault, really, but my problem nonetheless. The course of my therapy has been, and is, to embrace all my facets and understand myself as an integrated, if fancy-cut, whole.

I haven't got BPD. I do empathise, though. With BPD you can learn to love the person (or people) you are. You can choose to remain a little scattered, without getting lost among the parts, and learn when to lie low and when to sparkle. You can, if you choose, take it further and pursue integration, in which case your therapy would look a bit like mine. BPD is responsive to therapy. You don't have to aim for "Sarah-ness" - indeed, it probably isn't possible - but, like all humans, you can aim to love your self in your entirety, and constructively.

I'm pretty sure this post will seem as if I've missed your point, Freckled, at least partially. No worries. I'm putting ideas into that interesting head of yours; you'll let us know if you want to think more about any of them later :)

I do so much want to sort myself out. Ironically, last time I was accepting and content was when I was a boarder from age 11-12. And I really think had I continued boarding (for various reasons that didn't happen) I would have been happy, content and confident in the way that so many people I was at school with are. As a boarder I had a sense of family and other boarders were like siblings. I lost that at 12 and have never had contentment since.

My mother now has dementia and it's down to me to sort everything out. I can't raise my childhood issues with her - she has always said the same thing about me when I've raided them in the past. That apparently, I was so awful as a child that she had to walk away, as otherwise she'd have killed me. I don't really understand her rationale - especially since I have never felt like that with DD and feel so strongly that being a parent is about loving your child and setting boundaries and actually parenting - not refusing to take on any responsibility. I honestly don't know what was do awful about me as a child other than being bright/precocious and maybe opinionated and bossy. How can a two year old be do dreadful that a parent walks away from any discipline and claims to have been unable to cope?

I'm rambling now...hopefully will sleep soon and try and forget this horrible day

As a boarder I had a sense of family and other boarders were like siblings. I lost that at 12 and have never had contentment since.

Oh, that's so sad. I feel for you.

People who grew up without that sense of emotional security often feel like there's a gap inside of them - does that resonate at all with you?

Said "hole" can be filled ... by oneself, not external things or people. It should have been filled by parental love & support, but now it's up to ourselves. It takes gentleness, lots of it. Have you ever looked at Schema therapy? It works with the narratives you've built up around your life.

I haven't experienced the difficulties or complexities you describe, but i relate to your feeling of liking yet not accepting myself strongly. also the descriptions of yourself in childhood (i was characterised as 'weird' and 'strange' by my family, and precocious as well). I have what seems to be a relatively successful partnership but have never felt like a grown up, like i'm doing it 'right'.

one thing i learned this year was that it is possible not only to accept but to VALUE the part of myself i used to hate and consider a liaibility. I have tremendous anger that seems to have a life of its own has frightened me all my life and i thought i had to learn to jettison it to be 'normal'. this year i learned that my own personal 'hulk' can actually be a force for good, that being sensitive to injustices and fighting against them has a value in life, has indeed helped me and others this year, and i should listen to that side of myself (as well as trying to learn slightly more helpful ways of expressing it). it's quite a revelation and i think paradoxically has helped me be less angry.

i don't know if that helps but maybe can give you some hope.

That's brilliant, oma :)

how are you feeling today, Freckled?

Feeling better than yesterday though woke up at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep for ages.

How do I embrace my quirkiness? Sometimes I feel proud of my non-conformity but then again it's almost like a role I've adopted and now can't shake off. Being outlandish and controversial is what I've done for twenty or so years and I don't know how to change that.

I honestly don't know what was do awful about me as a child other than being bright/precocious and maybe opinionated and bossy. How can a two year old be do dreadful that a parent walks away from any discipline and claims to have been unable to cope?

This is so sad. It sounds like your counselling hasn't helped you to see that none of this is your fault but entirely to do with your mother.

Can you see that her feelings about you as a child are a reflection of her character not yours? She truly wasn't a good mother. But rather than try and address her feelings by trying to get help to be a better parent she chose to blame you instead. Even if she had truly believed those things about you wouldn't if have been better not to tell you that? In what possible way is that good parenting?

My counsellor told me that it's important for children's development to grow up with parents who demonstrate three As: affection, acceptance and affirmation. It sounds like your parents didn't give you any of those so it was hard for you to gain a sense of who you were, especially as what you were being told about yourself was so negative.

But you sound strong as you haven't passed your terrible parenting on to your child. You are fundamentally a good person therefore with strong values.

Would you consider more therapy? Maybe psychotherapy?

I want to do more therapy and have heard recommendations about the Hoffman process, in terms of its intensive focus and relatively short-term duration. Main issue at the moment is lack of money, though possibly later in the year it may be possible.

When I had counselling before, my counsellor talked about the 'good enough' mother - i.e. if a parent parented in a 'good enough' way then they were doing their best. I do think my parents did do their best in some ways - educationally they sent me to good schools. Problem was that my mother never wanted children, didn't like children and was totally at a loss when I arrived.

Perhaps I will have a look at the stately homes thread....

Your mother probably did the best that she was able to do, but I don't think it sounds like she was anywhere near a 'good enough' mother.

I wish you well, Freckled. I can't offer you much in the way of helpful advice (except that your mother was crap and that is NOT and NEVER WAS your fault). Except look for interest groups - history, sport, politics, arts... I'm a Morris dancer as well as being involved with the BDSM scene, and (to a small extent) LARPers. I've been lucky in finding various'weird' groups and friends, so I tend to look at mundanes 'normal' people and think 'I'm glad I'm not like you. I'd hate to be like you. My life is better and much more interesting than yours could ever be.'

Yes, sure, that's nasty and unkind and waa, waa, waa, but the point is, I like my life. And I'm happy for them to like theirs. I just don't want it and I doubt they want mine.

SGB, reading your last post has made me take a deep breath and ask something I've been meaning to for a while.

I love your posting style and your wise words and your fierce commitment to respect for all lifestyle choices - but if we met IRL would you be as dismissive of monogamous married me as you sound on the boards?

It's just words like 'mundane' and 'norm' make it sound like the only choice you don't respect is mine, which is a little bit sad (only.a little, not keeping me awake or anything) because as I say, I always find your pov interesting.

Sorry for hijack, but been at back of my mind to ask.

And FWIW, you sound great, op. I think the advice on valuing yourself is a great place to start.

Freckled I did read your op and think BPD ( which someone up thread was confusing with dissociative identity disorder, totally different thing), your parents failed to parent you in a healthy and loving way, which means relationships for you have been harder.
Finding a good counsellor will help you untangle this, though for myself, I have SGB, decided that long term committed relationships are not my thing, something I have always known really, but now I gave the capability to walk away when someone tells me they want to be conventional!
If poly relationships make you unhappy though, there's no point kn carrying on flogging the dead horse and trying to make yourself fit into that mold.
But have you given serious thought and consideration to the fact, that nothing external to you will fill that hole, unless you first learn to fill it yourself. I now have a wide number of things that I prioritise over having relations (of any sort) of a romantic nature.
This is art, volunteering, learning, planning for my future. I feel so much more contented for doing so.
And the stately home threads are well worth a read too.