I have sure seen worse days, Dorry.

Tell Sprint hello for me. Sorry you are missing him.

Froz,

I have to thank you so much for your post. I am struggling with the exact same feelings of not being loved as you. I have been thinking that maybe my wife cannot love, that her feeling are so shallow since I do not see love all the time. I was just starting to think that maybe it was me and not her or everyone else that I have feelings for. You have opened my eyes to a new possiblity that makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

I will say hi - he is coming online soon at the motel...so you can say hi too when you see him sign on!

Exagilent,

I'm so glad anything I shared might have helped you. It's very lonely feeling misunderstood or unloved. It's a shame to me that it was something I was creating myself, however innocent it may have been. It was a behavior that has been harmful to me and those who have tried to love me.

I hope you can also read BR's responses and apply them to yourself. I'm still racking my brain over some of the questions. It's difficult stuff to analyze objectively.

First book assignment. HNHN. I have had it for a while and read most of it... but I am starting over. Life was fairly conflicted when I was reading it before and I think now that new ideas and open minds are in, with LBs being out, my mind would have a better perspective on the info in it.

I was reading the chapter on Domestic Support last night and it was enlightening to me about MY OWN needs. Which is interesting to me because I was just assuming it would help me meet Slushy's needs.

Anyway... first book. It is a short one, so maybe I can get it done soon.

Ha ha...Slushy. That's very funny, Mr. Funnyman. Can I quote you on that???? I know how you love to be quoted!



Is that your way of communicating to me that you'd like me to actually clean house and do laundry??? I will do it this weekend. I've been busy from vacation. Sorry about that.

no silly. I am not trying to be 'subtle' like Mr. Walker.

I am really thinking outside the box on this one... you know... trying to learn the "ways of the world" or whatever...

NOW GET TO WORK!!!

(i'm dead now...)

Hi Froz ~


Well....it sounds to me like you may have learned some expectations about what love is and isn't from your experiences with your Mom.

I know that growing up with emotionally unavailable and very psychological and sometimes physically abusive parents made me a very lonely little girl. My parents did everything literally that they could to isolate me from other people.

I craved love but came to believe that love was for other people, lucky people, better more deserving people. I knew I wasn't loved, but that doesn't mean I knew really what it was because I didn't experience it for myself. So many of my preconceptions about love came from my childish love-starved imagination. I was a blind person guessing what a color might be like.

As an adult, I had spent so much time imagining and craving what I didn't have, that even the slightest deviation from what I imagined love was "supposed to be" threw me into anger, hurt and depression.

I developed a very intensely private inner life that no one knew about. Sharing my most private dreams and desires never happened with anyone. I learned from my parents that to be emotionally vulnerable was to be opened up to ridicule and assault for my feelings.

So....when I became old enough to obtain love for myself....an emotionally unavailable man became a safe haven for me. I was love-starved, needy, and desperate for what I imagined love was, and yet, not willing to open up completely to anyone. Lucky me, I didn't have to with an emotionally unavailable choice in partners. This is what I mean by "normal". We human beings don't tend to go out and pick people that make us uncomfortable. We pick what we know.


Perception is reality. For how long was Patriot trying to love you - and yet you didn't feel it? The reality is that you did not feel loved. Yes Patriot did love you, but what you felt is what you felt.

You did not feel loved by your mother, you felt abused. That is your reality. It is what it is.

Keep working at this,you will begin to rebuild confidence in yourself and your intuition. Some of this Patriot can help with by becoming sensitive to your needs and cheerfully meeting those needs.

I also want to point out - 15 hours of Quality Time is a bare minimum requirement to keep a good marriage steady. You both need to be spending alot more Quality Time than 15 hours a week while struggling to recover.

Patriot, if you are serious about recovery, and serious about loving your wife, you need to take some initiative here.

Hi,

I just wanted to stop in and say I've been lurking on this thread. Lightly lurking I might add - because I find it so meaningful that I can only stand so much enlightment.

Too much enlightment all at once can be blinding!!! Keep it up everyone - especially the humor!!

BR,

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me. Watching you reflect on your history enables me to better reflect on my own.



I know just what you mean. Perhaps the pattern in the relationships I've chosen has more to do with the emotional unavailability than the sexual dysfunction. Maybe the emotional unavailability is present as a result of some dysfunction, but it isn't what holds the primary interest for me.

It's so very difficult to look objectively at that. As I look back, I can see that there may be a pattern, but I wasn't aware that these men were unavailable to me emotionally until much, much later in the relationship. How did I end up with them in the first place? I can see perhaps why I maintained the relationship - maybe I was re-enacting the relationship with my mother and obtaining their love and acceptance would somehow be filling that need for me that I craved, not having received it as a child.

Unlike you, though, I began to isolate myself because I felt so different from everyone in my family. In a lot of ways, I was different. Instead of being regarded as special because of my individuality, I was shamed and ridiculed for it. I sat on the sidelines as I observed my siblings receiving my mother's praise and attention. I wanted it so badly. I never understood why she could give it to them, but not to me. I always figured it was because I wasn't her "real" child and they were.

When I became pregnant with my daughter at 17, I feared that my parents wouldn't love her either, being that she wasn't their "real" grandchild. I completely expected it. Instead, she was and always has been their darling, even above subsequent, biological grandchildren. It only confirmed for me that it wasn't necessarily my birth circumstances, it was personal. I must be unlovable.

I always dreamed that one day I would find my birth mother, and there would be the one person who would really understand, accept, and love me. I did find her, and it was hardly the case. She completely rejected me. Again...unlovable.




I can completely identify with this.



With this also. Receiving these things has been the ENTIRE focus of my life and the basis for EVERYTHING I do...almost like an obsession.

I have definitely never been afraid to open up, though. In fact, I don't know that I could have been more open in my adult relationships. I don't know why.

I understand what you mean about perception/reality. I would very much like for my perception AND my reality to be different.

CSue,

Thanks for interjecting your "review". I am gaining so much from this conversation that I almost feel selfish. I was afraid that it was a deviation from Marriage Building and may be uninteresting and inapplicable to the general population. I'm so glad to know that it is enlightening for someone else.

As far as the humor...It seems I have some very silly friends.

I have made some friends here who are so valuable to me, and there are so many here who have made such in impact in my life. I find it kind of funny that they are all people I haven't ever really met. Maybe someday, that won't be the case.

Slushy

(a joke from Idiotville - someone said I was beginning to thaw and should change my name)

CSue,

Forgot to add that I think I may know the unknown author you quote in your sig.

I believe it was Patriot who originally said "The actions you speak are louder than your words".

I think NCWalker said it sometime later...I guess he didn't know he was quoting Patriot again.

Emotional unavailability, in my experience (and I am not a professional), is usually a symptom of some other underlying dysfunction. Emotional unavailablity is a coping mechanism, often learned in childhood, and if not replaced in adulthood by healthier coping mechanisms and boundaries, becomes a way of life.


This is exactly my question to you. I had the same question asked to me by my sponsor. I didn't know for a very long time. Eventually, I came to understand that my need for love was so overwhelming, my self-respect was so underwhelming, that I either ignored red-flags, or did not know the red flags were red.

The bottom line is however, that I was attracted to what I knew. What I knew, even though I was not aware of it, was the cunning, baffling disease of alcoholism.


Well...I don't know.

I think self-will is part of the problem here ~ and interestingly enough is the source of much of your anger.

I was attracted to my alcoholic husband because he was what I knew.

I stayed because I was determined to have my way. I refused to acknowledge what he was (denial), and did everything in my power to force him to being who I wanted him to be.

In otherwords, I kept going back to the hardware store, trying to obtain bread and milk. Rather than acknowledge the reality of the fact that the store was a hardware store, I kept going inside and beating up the clerk with my demands that he provide me with bread and milk, even though he had only hammers and nails to offer! And of course, when offered hammers and nails, I became incredibly ANGRY. If the clerk would just listen to me and do it MY WAY....everything would be just dandy and I could be happy.

Much of my anger came from my feelings of rejection and frustration when other people did not go along with my rigid ideas about how things should be.

I never recognized that the problem might have been with my preconceived notions about how things 'should be' and my obsessive need to control everything around me in an attempt to make things into how I thought they 'should be'.

If I could just get every one and everything around me to fall into line, then I could get what I needed and the world would be right.

I set myself up for failure with these behaviors.


Just a thought...maybe, just maybe, it wasn't about you. Sometimes, in dysfunctional families, one person becomes the focus (if we could just fix Billy, he's such a troublemaker, this family could be happy). It is a mechanism used for denial and to avoid looking deeper into what is probably a family issue.


Again, maybe it wasn't about you. Maybe it was about your mother's shortcomings that left her unable or unwilling to love you. Children do tend to make their parent's failings to be about themselves....do you think maybe thats what you did?


You have left out your relationship with your dad. Pregnancy at 17 is a pretty big red flag don'tcha think?


Again, hon, this sounds more like a personal problem on your parent's end. It just isn't about you.

Let me put it this way. It hurts me when my husband drinks. I hate what it does to him, I hate the barriers it puts between us, I fear his death, I fear the pain of his death on our children. My husband knows I feel this way. He continues to drink anyway. Old me would have assumed that this is because he does not love me. That if I were better, more lovable, he would quit drinking to stop my pain and fear. The new me however, knows that his drinking has nothing to do with me. I know that he has a disease that drives him to drink, and that his disease is far more powerful than me.

Your parents may not have been able to love you the way you needed and deserved it. There could be and probably are a multitude of reasons why they could not. None of those reasons were that you were unlovable.


And again, not about you. It was about HER and her own shortcomings that left her unable to love you. One possible scenario is that it had more to do with the fact that giving up her child for adoption was a horribly difficult, incredibly devastating event. She probably spent years of guilt and wondering if you were OK and if she did the right thing. Maybe she felt she should have kept you but was too weak or unable to stand up in the face of disapproval from family and society. And eventually she managed to put those feelings aside somehow. And there you came, bringing all that stuff back. And if you showed up, needy, desperate for her love because you had not been given the love you needed...you think maybe it made her feel terribly guilty, that her fears and guilt were true?

Rejecting you may have been her quickest way to feeling better. Terribly selfish, lacking in human compassion...but again, not about your "lovability".


Fear of not being lovable is a very powerful fear.

When we attempt to control things (force others to do and be what we want them to be), it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. By our attempts to gain what we crave (love), we become our fear (unlovable).

I was just going to let this go, because I am not sure you will "hear" what I am saying, but let me take a crack at it.


Did you really? I suspect that you may think you have, but this simply isn't the case.

Did you tell Patriot of your deep fear of being unlovable? Did you tell him that you were terrified that he would reject you too? Did you tell him that his actions made you feel rejected and unlovable? Did you tell him of the horrible pain and hurt you experienced by your parent's rejections? And did you tell him exactly what he needed to do to meet your emotional needs to feel loved without selfish demands and control through guilt and manipulation?

Or did you expect that if Patriot loved you, he would understand, and do XYZ, and in forming those expectations of him, and making judgements and assumptions about his motives (as I did with my husband's birthday gift) did you set him up for failure?

You are also carrying baggage from 2 failed relationships....and I have to wonder Froz, did you make those men's problems about you too? This is your pattern. Did you tell Patriot that you feared that you were not good enough for marriage and that you were terrified that another failure would only confirm your unlovable nature?

Were you open and honest - or were you controlling and manipulative in an attempt to force what you needed from Patriot, and in doing so, drive him away?

One further question for you to think about....

Given that you believe, due to other people's actions, that you are unlovable...

Do you think that you feeling "less than" deserving resulted in your lowering the standards bar when choosing men?

I guess I was just saying that even though emotional unavailability is a common denominator for underlying dysfunction, perhaps it was the unavailability that
was the attraction for me, rather than the underlying dysfunction.



I don't know the answer. It's so hard to be objective, though I'm really trying very hard.

I definitely saw red flags in my first marriage. He was abusive before we were married. But, I was 19. It was the typical "co-dependent" behavior of thinking I could change him, etc...allowing myself to be controlled and manipulated because I was so naive that I believed that he wouldn't react so strongly if he didn't love me. I definitely learned from that mistake.

In my second marriage, I did see red flags. I knew that he was emotionally unavailable before I married him. In hindsight, as I said before, I see red flags that there was some sexual dysfunction but no indication that he was that
sick. I feel so responsible for that. This morning after I read your response, I was thinking that if only I hadn't been so screwed up, I could have saved my daughter from so much pain. I feel really bad that I haven't been a better
mother, and that so many of my decisions have impacted both of my children's lives in such a negative way.



Quite funny that you say this. Right after my second divorce one of my friends asked me why I kept going to the Vanilla Ice Cream store requesting chocolate. She told me that they only had vanilla to offer me.

I really thought Patriot was my chocolate. This time I thought I was really paying attention. If there were any red flags, I don't know them. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 (you can use that quote if you'd like, NCWalker). So now I
can spot an abuser a mile away. I know the red flags of a child molester. I can spot those a mile away, too. But, I don't know how to recognize Patriot's red flags.




I'm not sure I understand what you mean by self-will.



Of course I see now that's what I did. In my mid-20's, I think I began to recognize that on an intellectual level. But, believing it on an emotional level is something entirely different. I try to remind myself of that, but as you said - there are no coincidences. Surely, since so many people were saying the same thing - they couldn't all be wrong. At least I think that's what I told myself.




I'm not sure what you mean by this. How did I leave out my relationship with my dad? Yes, pregnancy at 17 would be a red flag that some sort of problem exists.




Yes, I know. What you say makes sense.




Most definitely this is precisely what happened. She told me she felt guilty. I was so willing to forget about all of it. Instead, she only reinforced my feelings of rejection by actually rejecting me as an adult. I never understood that. Her decision as a teenager (she was 19) was understandable and could be explained (she was young, etc...). But, when I called her on the phone as an adult and she openly rejected me because she felt guilty, how is that supposed to relieve her feelings of guilt? What you say about it being the quickest way to relieve those feelings makes sense. It's such a shame, though. I wish she would have been strong enough to face those feelings instead of hurting me. I really do.



Perhaps this has been my cycle of behavior all along - the reinforcement of those beliefs. What a weird way to be.

If I haven't told you, thank you for being my "virtual therpist". It helps me tremendously to be able to bounce this stuff off of someone who can be more objective. Thank you for taking the time. I really do appreciate it.

I will definitely try to hear you. I'm glad you took a risk and threw it out there, anyway.


I really do think I have been open.


In no uncertain terms.



Yes.




Yes.



Yes.




Yes, on this one...though "yes" isn't exactly the right answer. I will say that if I'd known how, I might have. I didn't know how. I was just trying to get my needs met any way I could. I didn't see how destructive to both of us this behavior actually was.



Ummmm, no need to wonder...I can settle it here and now. Yes, I did. You are correct. It is my pattern.



I think I did. Maybe he would say differently...I don't know.



Maybe I did do that. I don't know what to think about this one, because the first thing that comes to mind is that this is all my fault. It makes me afraid that it was something I did that made this happen.

Yes. In all my relationships prior to this one. I remember actually talking to someone (thinking I had it all figured out this time) and telling them that this time I was emotionally healthy enough to attract someone who was also emotionally healthy; someone who was not even close to lowering my standards. I still can't figure this relationship out. I really thought this time was different. I felt very good about myself that I had such a good relationship. I knew the other relationships weren't good. I really believed this one was, and I was proud that I had made such progress.

What does this mean???? I'm having a bit of a rough day, so my emotions (and lack of estrogen still) might be playing into this somewhat. But, does this mean that to avoid my pattern, I should have walked away from this relationship on D-Day? Isn't my pattern to stay in an unhealthy relationship regardless of how badly someone treats me? Aren't I doing the very same thing I should be trying to avoid by staying???

(((((Froz)))))

I can't respond tonight and probably cant until Monday. I'm headed to bed for an early start on our trip back to NJ. Today was our last day of vacation! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

But one thing I think needs to be said.

Froz, you are not nearly as powerful as you think you are. (Step 1, Powerlessness, remember?) We are simply talking about the patterns of your decisions, and what might be behind them so you can start on a path of personal recovery and healing. We are NOT assigning blame or passing judgement!!!!! (hmmm, there goes your little pattern again of making it about you - stop this now)

Slow waaaay down here, you are jumping to conclusions that involve you beating yourself up and taking responsibility for things you just didn't have power over.

And I am not for even a split second, suggesting that you should have dumped Patriot on D-day.

I am not suggesting for even a second, that Patriot is in the class of the alcoholic abuser or the sex molestor.

What is different this time?

Patriot is as far as we know, committed to recovering his marriage to you, and becoming a better man. He is willing to look at his faults and take responsiblity for them.

Now, take a break from all this thinking for a bit. Any time you find yourself starting to beat yourself up for even a second, do something else. Choose to turn your mind away from it.

Froz ~ you will not truely be able to receive love until you are able to love yourself. What you are doing to yourself right now is not kind or loving.

Thank you for opening my eyes. I believe we hear only what we want. I have a problem with that too. I need to hear H in a different language, his language. (WH)
I hope to enlighten him as you did me. We are on our way to recovery and I pray every day for the lost love. I just do not see that it is already there. The hurt is still too hard to let go of.
But what a great step you have made. I hope to make it to that step for myself (loving myself again).
Tons of Prayers Your Way!