Please help, I am a mess

[CammyWasOnce]

Hello and thank to anyone who manages to read this. I need a bit of help with my life because I have come to a place of feeling desperate for love and acceptance and I need some help finding the old Cammy and becoming normal again.

I’m mid thirties and I have a beautiful child, my own business (two actually),plenty of friends and a loving family. I have always been a popular and happy person and have led a brilliant life and achieved many things. I am quite attractive and get asked out by men a lot but I think my sense of self worth is completely lacking.

My XH was an exceptionally kind, loving man, devoted stepfather. I saw him as my absolute best friend, soulmate and saw us about as happily married (or maybe that phrase is an understatement!). One day he turned around just as we were getting into bed and told me that he hadn’t loved me for years but had just been staying for my sake, and was leaving me.......like he was saying he needed a dentist appointment he was so cold and detached.

When I got upset, he became very angry and unrecognisable as if I disgusted him. He spat his words at me and started telling me how awful I was and all the things about me he hated. None of those were things he had ever mentioned before, and worse some were thing she had told me he loved about me so I felt just so confused I didn't really feel liek any of it was real.

After he left he was just completely cold to me, no goodbye hug, no tears from him or any sense of compassion. He acted like he was celebrating. I asked him why he told me constantly how much he loved me and what a wonderful wife if that was al not true and he just got more angry if I asked questions.

I was so confused and completely shocked I found myself begging him and promising to change and that I would do or be whatever he wnated if he would please not do this. I wish I had told him to f**k off, but I felt absolutely desperate and in no way fought back on any level.

After he moved out, he took away all financial support and I did not fight back at all. I had just started my second business and I ended up really penniless for a while and it was so hard with DS and everything. He did not want to ever see my DS again (he had raised him from a baby) so I just had so much to deal with on so many levels.

Worse than that I suppose, while I was so devastated and barely able to live, he went around on a PR campaign and told mutual friends and his family lots of lies about why he had done it. He went and cried to THEM to say how unhappy he had been, how hard he had tried and how I had refused to compromise an inch. Like me, everyone thought he was a wonderful person, so i was scapegoated at a time I had no strength to fight back. He made it look like we had a bad marriage and I found lots of support I needed most evaporated quickly.

I was on tranquilisers for a while, and in therapy for two years and I did manage to cope but being honest all I really feel is a sense of disbelief. I hardly remember him now, can't picture him and feel like there is a 8 year gap in my memory.

This happened 2.5 years ago and I am now divorced. I grew my new business, got me and DS out own place to live. My real problem is that I seem to be a bit unhinged when it comes to men.

Before this happened to me, I was very good at picking men, was very confident and had equal and happy relationships. If a man was mean to me or showed any characteristics or behavior I found unappealing, I walked away.

Nowadays I am finding myself basically being unhinged when it comes to men. that manifests in all sorts of diferrent ways. For example:

1. Dumping them for no reason if things are going well
2. Testing hem constantly by pushing them away to see what they will do
3. Stalking them to check if they are being truthful.
4. Thinking I am in relationships or in love with people I barely know
5. Forming attraction to men beneath me, who I don't even respect
6. Putting up with horrible treatment, which I react to by grovelling and begging making me a prime target for abusers and idiots.

This morning the one I am dating texted me to say I looked like a whore on my FB profile pic. this is the sort of man I am hanging around with, and yet I am a very attractive, educated woman who USED to have a backbone.

I don't know who I have become.

I have lost track of what I want and what I deserve and I have no idea what a ice man is anymore or how to tell the diferrence.

Worst out of anything is that these obsessions with each man I date take over my life...and when they behave badly or something happens I can't think about work, and don't see my friends.

I did take 18 months on my own after this and it didn't help. I have heaps of counselling. Read all the books, all the websites and am in a support group for abandoned spouses. I have done all the things I am supposed to do and I know "time" is meant to heal me but I feel like it's not.

I feel just as confused and lost and worthless as I did 2.5 years ago and I KNOW until I no longer feel this way I can't have a normal relationship, and I very much miss loving and being loved and would love to be able to get control of this and date with some self respect.

The best way to describe it is that I pick the first one who pays me any attention and then I become desperate.

Please help me.

Please NEVER ever tell a man you will change to accommodate him and do what makes him happy...

That way madness lies.

You know, life is really quite good on your own without a fuckwit in your life

In fact it is VERY GOOD!

guilty part of the work I have done over the last couple of years is to deal with his loss. Which I have done well at. I am aware that I loved him very much, but much of the wonderful relationship we shared was created by us in the act of giving and sharing that love to one another and I have absolutely no doubt that he was not perfect and that I have the capability to love someone else as much (if not more).

In fact, he was the first man I ever lived with, and he was definitely flawed in many ways and if I am objective some of the men I have met since I have actually thought quite a lot of had I been ready or capable.

I know I've made a lot of progress with the grief and letting go and all that. It;s really just that sense of being worthless that is causing the problem. If I can find a way to think "I am a catch, I am worthy of being loved, he was a twat" then my problems would be solved.

I'd no longer feel the need to do any of this crazy stuff.

Cammy I see your point about loving someone else, but you don't ever seem to get a look in through anything you've said so far.

What do you need?

The description of your marriage sounded lovely truly it did, but it lacked depth from this prospective.

Everything seemed to revolve around the physical, hand holding breast fondling, love making hand holding, cuddling kissing etc.

I didn't or couldn't see the connection, he said you lit up a room when you walked in, I'm sure you do/did but it was starting to sound like a mills and boon novel. Where was the arguments if there were any what about? Why did you shy away from listing anything negative about him?

It sounds like you fulfilled his every whim and wish became his step ford wife if I'm honest. I'm left with the impression that without him or a man to bounce off of, you don't know who to be or who you are? Is this the reason maybe you don't like to be left alone with your thoughts lovely.

If I've over stepped the mark then I apologise and tell me if I'm talking shit, it is getting late

No, please do be honest, what you are saying is nothing my therapist did not point out. Ours was not a marriage with "ups and downs" because it was all "ups".

If are married to someone and they make you feel happy every day, and say they feel the same finding out it's not real is hard to accept.

I don't think I am one of those women who needs a man because I had long periods of being single before I met him actually and was very happy. I actually travelled the world for years, alone, single, with a great career (one that is quite an achievement) and felt wonderful and complete without a man.

It was more that he came along and it felt perfect.

No, we never had arguments really. If we had little ones it would always be me angry about something relatively small and he'd apologise and I'd forget it. He never got angry with me or did anything bad (although neither did I).

I know he was not the person I thought, not fully showing himself to me and I have read loads and loads on this type of man (Mr Nice Guy the book was illuminating).

It does make it easier to get a grasp on what maybe led to all this, to a false life and to how he was so diferrent to who I thought he was. I don't know ho he was is the truth.

This makes it hard to let anyone close to me. If I text my husband now to tell him any of this he doesn't even reply. It's so difficult that he just walked away without a glance.

I think I am a a breakthorugh tonight though, finally admitting all this to myself and feeling that strength glimmering through to do what I need to do.

I was thinking I would take some practical actions and book some therapy and swear myself off dating for six months or something and use that time to work through this on my own.

I feel miles better, so glad I wrote this down. Will sleep so much better tionight.

Just the responses here and writing this down has made me not text men anymore tonight and it's felt more constructive. I might just be ready to finally say goodbye to all of this and stop hanging on to it. I'm so tired of feeling this way I really am.

Hi Cammy just a thought, I think you've hit than nail on the head in your last post.

It's not you who doesn't know who they are, I have a sneaking suspicion it might be him. Someone who can live such a life of on the surface happiness and not let the mask slip, must have had years of practice. I can't imagine how much psychic mental energy that must have taken to stop the wheels from falling off.

He seems now like a figure to be pitied instead of hated, this wasn't on you op you accosted it because you've had years of happy marriage and contentment. For you it was real and why shouldn't it have been, he kept such a closed lid on his stuff, you had no idea he was really pandoras box.

If you spun this around and looked at him as the one with the floors, maybe you can think about cutting yourself some slack.
His unhappiness wasn't to do with you, my guess is he's been a silent basket case for years, and then one day he finally snapped unfortunately you were the one in the firing line

Hi Cammy just a thought, I think you've hit than nail on the head in your last post.

It's not you who doesn't know who they are, I have a sneaking suspicion it might be him. Someone who can live such a life of on the surface happiness and not let the mask slip, must have had years of practice. I can't imagine how much psychic mental energy that must have taken to stop the wheels from falling off.

He seems now like a figure to be pitied instead of hated, this wasn't on you op you accosted it because you've had years of happy marriage and contentment. For you it was real and why shouldn't it have been, he kept such a closed lid on his stuff, you had no idea he was really pandoras box.

If you spun this around and looked at him as the one with the floors, maybe you can think about cutting yourself some slack.
His unhappiness wasn't to do with you, my guess is he's been a silent basket case for years, and then one day he finally snapped unfortunately you were the one in the firing line

I'm glad there's been a shift in your thoughts patterns Cammy, gets some sleep I'm off to bed now myself

Take care of you

I don't think you can afford to 'pity' him tbh. In fact, you need to focus on you not him.

I agree that your account of your relationship doesn't sound real somehow. It sounds like a fantasy - real life is generally much more grubby and difficult. I was wondering about love addiction, perhaps you could google that? We're you loved and cherished as a child btw?

thanks *guilty for all of that xx

springy I just read up on love addiction and it's me to a tee.

As a child...hmm..loved and cherished in a way but my parents were a bit screwed up in the way they showed it. I think there was emotional incest (they treated me like I was the parent). But I always think I was loved.

I also think this stems from childhood. What was your relationship with your parents like?

They are good people but they were very young and volatile. Both very angry a lot of the time. A lot of arguing and dragging the kids in the middle to take sides or settle their differences. A lot of being quite scared, and trying to make them happy. Still a bit like that...both quite hard work. I didn't feel i could talk to them about my life or feelings or problems because they were only interested in their on really.

I would say my ex husband was the only person in my life I believed loved me no matter what...whether I was good or bad, ugly or pretty...unconditional.

Was the first time I lived in a house without screaming and arguments. I loved it!