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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

What is wrong with me?

10 replies

melbie · 08/03/2013 10:33

I feel like when I am single I am strong, happy and independent. As soon as I go anywhere near a relationship I am needy, clingy, horrible and look for constant reassurance. I have had one normal sort of relationship where I managed to knock that on the head fairly quickly and I felt relaxed and comfortable and my own person and we got on very well but I have destroyed several other relationships with my insecurity.

I know WHY it is- I am pretty certain it is due to my relationship with my father and also some slightly dodgy relationships where I have had reason to be insecure which made it much worse but it is becoming pathological. I don't know how to make it better. At the rate I am going I can't imagine having another normal functioning relationship with a man and I don't know what to do. I don't want to be on my own forever. I feel I have it sorted when I am single then it rears its ugly head again when I get involved.

Has anyone had a similar issue and managed to get past it?

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Incrediblemee · 08/03/2013 10:44

Can highly recommend following book, have it myself on kindle and at 46 still do this.
Loving him without losing you, Beverly Engel
It's all about women disappearing in relationships and the book offers strategies to pull yourself out. Good luck, xx

melbie · 08/03/2013 10:50

Thanks incredible I will look that one up. I am feeling pretty despondent just now about it all and need to do something about it sharpish or I am doomed to this forever!

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LemonPeculiarJones · 08/03/2013 10:54

But you had relationships in which your insecurity was warranted. And have had a great relationship where it wasn't a problem at all.

Perhaps the issue is your choice of men, rather than you mucking up your relationships with your blanket insecurity? Maybe you are attracted to replaying (and trying to solve) the emotional dynamic you had with your dad?

scaevola · 08/03/2013 10:58

Perhaps you're not quite as sorted when you are single as you think.

Are there common themes about the men you have had relationships with? Are they emotionally unavailable for some reason, and are you fully available to them? It's quite possible that the issues with your father lead you to hold back from true commitment (because of the risk that brings of opening up and being hurt) and that you are either unconsciously choosing men who match your unavailability or they are good men who realise you are holding back and so withdraw themselves and end relationships to seek someone who will commit.

A good counsellor might help you explore these areas, either to help you through them, or show that what I've theorised isn't the case for you at all.

melbie · 08/03/2013 22:23

Thank you- they are really helpful thoughts. I always think of myself as available and keen to commit to a relationship but maybe my behaviour suggest otherwise. I am going to go and speak to my GP about counselling. I am just so so sad that I have yet again let my issues destroy my relationship with the man I loved and who was my best friend. I can't do this again. I would rather be on my own than have the guilt of what I have done overwhelm me

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BertieBotts · 08/03/2013 22:26

Freedom programme perhaps? That focuses on changing your relationship patterns which keep repeating.

Either that or some kind of specific counselling which focuses on recovering from abuse (even if you don't consider yourself to have suffered abuse, it sounds like a similar pattern if formed in childhood and repeated in multiple relationships.)

badinage · 09/03/2013 03:06

When you say you've had dodgy relationships where you've had reason to be insecure, do you mean you've been the OW?

The relationship with your father made me think this, because so many of the OW I've met in RL, including friends of mine, had dysfunctional relationships with their fathers.

If your most recent relationship with the man you say you loved and who was your best friend, was actually an affair with an attached man then I doubt your insecurities had anything to do with the relationship floundering, or that you should feel any guilt towards him. Getting into a relationship with someone whose attachment is divided will always engender insecurity. How could it not?

melbie · 09/03/2013 23:14

Wow spot on badinage with the last relationship. The others were definitely not but he was. I know it was wrong and awful. I screwed up several people's lives. And by the end all I could feel was that I was second best and that this man who said he adored me and loved me and was my best friend still didn't want to be with me and maybe he would have been if I had not become so awful. I know it sounds so selfish. I want to be able to right that wrong I did and I can't. I feel like I have such a screwed up view of reality in my head. And men in the past I honestly can't say. I don't know if they just were not that into me or if my behaviour ruined it all.

But it gets to the point where I don't know how much is me picking up on real reasons to be insecure and how much is my brain going out of control. I ned to change it. I look at all these people around me in relationships and I want it so much. I am successful in so many other ways but this makes me feel a failure which I know is crazy.

GP appointment next week to sort out counselling. I looked at the Freedom project stuff but the start bit made me feel like a fraud but the counselling I can do. I just have so little hope of ever changing me. I have read that Mr Unavailable book so many times and I know it is about me but I can't work out how to make the change. I feel like my self esteem has got so low I struggle to even see why people are friends with me just now. In a bit of a pit.

But thank you for taking the time to reply. I am going to order that book now and hope that I can make life better.

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badinage · 10/03/2013 02:03

Really? Blimey, I thought I might be chancing my arm there, but it just sounded so familiar bearing in mind a few friends' fucked-up relationships with their dads.

Look at this realistically though. This bloke you were involved with was selfish, that's all. Yes he might have said he loved you, but expecting a woman to play second fiddle really isn't love. Any more than he loved his wife/partner enough while he was seeing you. If he's got a chance to make that up to her now, I hope he takes it. And if he still doesn't love her enough I hope she sees it and boots him out.

But don't go thinking that you messed things up. For a lot of people having affairs, it's all about them and not the actions of the OW or their partners. So they choose what's best for them personally. Being scrupulously fair about this, sometimes having an affair makes someone realise how much they've got to lose especially if they get found out. And the OW/OM was just the bit-part player in that realisation. That's hard for that person to stomach, but although you were led to believe he was your best friend the truth is it probably isn't personal to you or anything you did or didn't do. You were there to fulful a role at a point in his life and his other relationship.

What would be more productive is to find out why you agreed to play this role, rather than dwelling on behaviours that you think made him choose his partner over you. With the friends I've mentioned, the hardest thing they've had to confront about themselves is their own selfishness. A lot of OW use the get-out-of-jail card of low self esteem and although that might be a part of it, it's never the entire reason. In friends' cases it was all sorts of things: selfishness, competiveness, low esteem about things like looks/weight, an over reliance on men and romance to complete them, a degree of gullibility with men they fancied, not enjoying their own company and developing self-reliance and in a few cases, difficult relationships with the first men in their lives: their fathers. It's only fair to say that a few non-friend OW I've met just didn't much like other women, but that doesn't really sound like you.

If you baulk at the word selfishness, think about what it would have said about you if he'd chosen you? Sure, you might have excused yourself because you were in love, but building a relationship on the back of someone else's pain is selfish isn't it?

Can you afford some therapy? With someone who'll challenge you and won't let you make excuses? Or do you have a really good woman friend who will be critical and honest while still loving you?

melbie · 10/03/2013 13:42

No selfish is entirely the right word. When I think about it logically I am glad he has not left and that his little girls will get what I did not get in a loving, constant, present father who sees them as the centre of his universe. I am just not great at the logic bit. But I am very aware that I was incredibly selfish to cause someone else pain for my brief happiness.

I don't think it was self esteem to start with. I think it was more the bit about feeling like a man/relationship would complete me and that I am somehow lacking without and he happened to be the one I came across and he was so adoring to start with and supportive and so loving. The self esteem drop seems to come later when I feel like it is all going wrong and I have messed up. And that was the case for all my relationships- not just this one.

I do have friends who give me straight talking. But I feel I have dumped this on them enough and they have been so patient. I will stick to a counsellor and try and work through it. I just feel like after my behaviour in this relationship and in ruining someone else's life so comprehensively I probably don't really deserve a happy relationship and my idea of trust is at a fairly low ebb. Maybe that can be regained. I did it once and found someone lovely and normal. It gives me some hope that I could do it again but it just feels like a long hill. And I feel so far from thinking about another relationship in some ways...

Thank you- you seem to have a lot of insight. I really appreciate it

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