by NML on February 8, 2010
Welcome back! Have you got my ebooks - The No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl? Also become a fan of Baggage Reclaim on Facebook, follow me onTwitter, and join the forum.
Ah, Valentine’s Day is approaching and much like Christmas, exes will be potentially creeping out of the woodworks. Maybe you’ve been broken up for a while, watched him waltz off with someone else and have been wondering, ‘Why her and not me?‘ Or maybe he’s not with someone else (or at least not that you know of but you’ve been feeling really bruised by the breakup. Maybe you cut contact with him because you couldn’t take the pain anymore but have been wondering if he’ll call and show remorse. Or maybe you cut contact and thought you were doing fine until he called or text you and you felt blindsided by the pull of your emotions. Whatever it is that’s happened, your mind has probably gone into overdrive.
What is thinking?
What does he want?
Surely if he’s calling/texting/asking me to take him back, he’s going to be a changed man?
Combined with the fact that you may be feeling a little vulnerable because you don’t like the idea of being alone on Valentine’s Day or you’re already weakening and contemplating whether to go back, you may be wondering whether you should give him a second chance.
This past weekend, I posted an excerpt from my ebook The No Contact Rule on ‘So what is he thinking when he makes contact or tries to get back together?’ and this seemed to strike a chord with readers because no matter what has happened up until this point, if you’re in the zone of contemplating giving him a second (or whatever number it is) chance, you’re not over him yet (or don’t think you are) and are hopeful that he has changed. So what do you do?
As I’ve said many times before, no matter what, you need to have boundaries, values, and act with love, care, trust, and respect, not just to them, but to yourself, and this should be reciprocated. You also need to be real and not get lost in illusions. If you’re going to see potential, it’s got to rooted very firmly in his most consistent behaviour – when we’re contemplating taking someone back, we exaggerate the whole glass is half full mentality and even if he has only been great for 10% of the time, that’s what we’ll focus on.
When we break up, we break up for a reason. Unless the reason no longer exists, you will find yourself revisiting the very issues that caused you to break up once the cosy, rosy glow has worn off.
Now whatever those reasons are, when you consider whether you should give them another chance, he needs to understand what the issues were and what caused the pain in your relationship.
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by NML on February 6, 2010
In another excerpt from my ebook The No Contact Rule, I highlight the age old activity of wondering what he’s thinking. Between adding more meaning to his behaviour and judging things based on your own actions or on those of ‘normal’ people, it’s easy to expend a lot of mental energy and particularly when you’re already in NC, it’s important to try and get some perspective so you don’t get drawn into the madness of inconsistency…
Part of the process of NC is that as part of the natural progression of your grieving and healing, you’ll feel inclined to wonder what the hell he was thinking when he approached you to get back together or persistently attempted to make contact with you after you cut him off.
Whatever you think he’s thinking, you probably need to divide that by ten…at least….
You will likely try to imagine what you would or wouldn’t do and then be confused by his actions because when you rationalise and compare his behaviour with your own or with others, to you it defies logic that someone would say or do things that they don’t mean. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. People are not always honest and sometimes, people believe they are being honest…at the time…but they’re distanced from reality and they don’t think about the wider implications of their actions.
If you’re involved with someone who keeps hounding you to get back together only to disappoint you all over again, or who won’t leave you alone when you cut him off and then disappears or even gets nasty on you once you make contact, you’re with someone who reacts to their own fears and panic and says and does what he thinks will likely achieve him getting whatever he wants. If this means that he shuts you up, buys some more time, or very simply, finds himself back in the driving seat controlling the flow of things, then so be it.
He won’t be concerned about the casualties en route.
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by NML on February 4, 2010
Over the past week or so, I can’t seem to escape the title of this new book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough written by Lori Gottlieb, a New York based author who is basically saying that women who continue the pursuit of ‘Mr Right’ are setting themselves up for loneliness. I haven’t read the book (yet – it’s out here in the UK next month) but it sounds like she’s talking from personal experience as she’s a single, 40 year old mum who declined to settle with ‘acceptable but unspiring’ guys who now that the cold, hard reality is hitting, seem quite attractive. She wrote an article last year about how women should stop looking for Prince Charming and basically get real which seemed to be greeted with a storm of controversy.
I’m not really sure what is so controversial about it – I and many other Baggage Reclaim readers are testament to the fact that the jig is up – Prince Charming is a fallacy and when we go looking for the fireworks, excitement, the cosy, rosy happy ending, what we end up with is Mr Unavailable’s and assclowns galore.
Lots of women attach themselves to dubious men and try to love and change them into Prince Charming – for some it’s trying to turn a frog into a prince, and for others…it’s trying to get them from cockroach, to frog, to prince.
It’s the desire for the ‘happy ending’ that lets so many of us try to extract relationships from assclowns and Mr Unavailable’s. We hope our tale will be different. We want to be the exception.
It’s not about ’settling’ though or even Mr Good Enough – it’s about getting real, but not in some negative ‘I must downgrade myself and be with the first semi-decent guy that shows me a flicker of interest and a ring’ but in a positive, ‘I’m going to reassess my expectations of a guy and relationships so I am attracted to someone who I feel good with, shares my values, and who I can forge a future with’.
It’s also saying ‘I will at the very least have some boundaries so that they know what I will and won’t accept….’
For many of you, you feel attracted to and ‘think’ you feel happy around someone who may not be worthy of your time. You may see more potential in them than exists and for others, you’re hoping that loving someone who disrespects you and only thinks of themselves, will experience the equivalent of a lobotomy and make you the exception.
We’re chasing illusions. When we’re not chasing it, we’re going out with someone and adding on our illusions, and as many readers have shared, the illusion doesn’t actually feel that good and can be a real pain in the bum. Some people can cope with illusions and pain better than others but for a lot of women, there comes a stark realisation that often we can feel alone even when we’re supposed to be with someone and that we’ve lost ourselves along the way.
We have to start entertaining the fact that the type of guy we are attracted to may not be appropriate for a ‘happy ending’.
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by NML on February 2, 2010
A few days ago, I gave you all an insight into how I bounced from relationship to relationship unwittingly playing ‘the opposites game’ – where you subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) home in on a trait(s) of your last partner that you believe to be part of the reason why the relationship didn’t work and then seek out someone with the opposing trait…and still find yourself running into a number of the same problems.
The fundamental reason why we play ‘the opposites game’ is simply because we don’t actually understand why the relationship ended.
It’s a hell of a lot easier to jump on the most annoying thing about them which is no doubt a part of the problem, but not all of the problem. As with a lot of things in relationships, it’s important to see the wood for the trees – yep, the big picture.
When we play ‘the opposites game’, we end up being so focused on avoiding the previous annoying thing that we may totally overlook or be blinded to other red flags that signal that this new relationship is not healthy for us either.
Just like when we stay in a relationship with someone and focus on their ‘good points’ as if focusing for instance on 10% goodness can totally obliterate what is 90% dubious or downright outrageous, focusing on ‘bad points’ and not understanding what fundamentally wasn’t working about the relationship will lead you to get involved with same guys, different package. The opposites game ends up being about avoidance because in focusing on specific things, we don’t look at wider reasons or even address our own issues.
When we carry beliefs about ourselves, love, and relationships, we choose people that reflect these things. If we have negative beliefs, we are drawn to and attract people who will end up confirming, not challenging those very things. Until we’re aware of what is contributing to our pattern, we’ll keep throwing ourselves back into oncoming traffic and wondering why we’re getting run down – relationships serve to teach us more about ourselves and effectively keep throwing the same lesson at us until we learn what we need to.
I’ve written in detail about common misunderstandings about what makes for great relationships, with many people focused and sometimes obsessed with type, compatibility, and common interests.
This means that when our relationships don’t work out, using the same wrong basis that we work off for type, compatibility, and common interests, we end up focusing on the wrong things about the person and the relationship, making it easy for us to keep falling into the same traps and making the same mistakes.
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by NML on January 30, 2010
Many moons ago, I went out with a guy who was about 9 years older than me. He chased me hard, I wasn’t interested, but after being burnt by another Mr Unavailable who had the looks, charm, flash car, and excitement (I was only 21…), suddenly, even though he didn’t ‘look’ like my ‘type’, it seemed silly not to be interested, especially as he was so different. Surely I couldn’t go wrong? After chasing me, wooing me, and making me out to be the centre of his universe, he slowly revealed his true self and was distinctly emotionally unavailable, quite manipulative, and a total mummy’s boy. In a lot of ways he was responsible, but I got the sense that he was always going to be running back to mummy’s apron strings…because he did. He totally obliterated my self-esteem between the blowing hot and cold, and sometimes ganging up and being disloyal with family and friends. One day I realised that I didn’t give a monkeys about trying to please him. I ran off on an adventure to the US for several months…
I vowed that the next time I was involved with someone that they’d be expressive. They’d tell me how they felt about me, wouldn’t just switch from hot to cold, and wouldn’t have ‘mother issues’. The next guy I went out with was around 10 years older, and told me how he felt about me all the time. So much so, it became apparent that he had serious jealousy issues and was possessive. He was also completely irresponsible, borrowing money, telling lies, very manipulative, and had anger and alcohol issues. He was so irrational, he’d tell lies, be caught out, get angry with me, eventually admit that he’d lied, and then tell me it was my fault that he lied and he did it for my own good. He was really intense and tried to play games like trying to make me jealous and then getting angry when I wouldn’t get jealous. He once drove like a maniac swerving the car all over Fort Lauderdale whilst he raged at me. It occurred to me that I clearly had issues being involved with him, but not so much issues that I’d stay….
So of course when that was all over (thankfully it didn’t last past 6 months), I decided I’d had enough of these ‘older guys. I’d gone home to Dublin and both of these exe’s were driving me crazy, the first one turning up every day, pestering me to get back together and telling me he’d changed. The crazy driver was calling at all sorts of crazy hours. My mum told me I should be thinking about my security – she didn’t mean my safety…, she meant the security of having a man. I barely slept for 5 weeks with the stress and then she took me to the doctors and I took sleep medication for a few days, got myself together, applied to transfer to university in London, and moved over almost 9 years ago (the anniversary is the 31st).
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