Baggage Reclaim » Being The Other Woman

Set You Free: They’re Still The Same. Even If They Change, It Doesn’t Matter – You’ve Changed Too (Or You’re Going To)

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:11:40 +0000

Last Thursday, I turned thirty four and I couldn’t help but remember that on my 28th birthday I was grappling with the realisation that was ill again (I found a lump in my neck that morning) and that I’d overheard the Mr Unavailable who gave me my epiphany shortly after, Dot Dot Dot Man (name for finishing his texts with three ambiguous full stops), correcting the waiter that recognised us from previous visits and saying we were “Um..er..friends”.

While talking with a few friends and us all reflecting on how much has changed over the past six years, it suddenly occurred to me:

There was a time when all of us were banking on three-legged horses. Some of us had lists, some us were pining for exes, one of us kept flogging that donkey till it collapses for a decade out of fear that he’d marry the next woman, one of us believed that she’d never love again, and I know I certainly believed that I was having an extended run of ‘bad luck’ with the dating pool. Here’s the thing:

We’ve all moved on. Most of us have settled down, some of us have become single but here’s the most interesting thing:

None of the guys that we were involved with have ‘changed’. They’re exactly the same.

Most of the guys are either not in relationships or are having similar types of relationship – that guy never did marry the ‘next woman’ who has taken over the reins from my friend. A few of them have settled down but the truth is, with the beauty of hindsight we recognise we weren’t the ones for them to settle with. Even if they have changed, it wouldn’t matter and to be honest, good for them. We’ve changed too.

Seriously. Being over your ex is definitely about being indifferent or at least not being invested in them either positively or negatively but I also recognise that much as I don’t own the right to any of my ex’s better selves, they don’t own the right to my better self.

This reminds me of my post on fear means it’s not happening yet – when we’re afraid of them leaving and becoming Catch of the Century, they’re often not even Catch of the Day in the present.

When I think of myself and the many readers who have or are plugging away at trying to get someone to change, I imagine us with a horse trying to drag it to the water and it jerking up and pulling back, digging its hooves in.

But here’s the funny thing – When they hold onto you while messing up your life and bringing nothing new to the table, it’s for similar reasons. They’re afraid you might get snapped up by someone else if you stop giving them the time of day and not only will they not have you as an option, but they may realise they made a mistake.

I know many readers are afraid that after trying to get someone to change and make them the exception to the rule, the moment their back is turned, they’re going to be a better person in a better relationship. This then plays into our fear that maybe it was us.

The truth is, the best thing that you can do post breakup is to accept that it’s over and grieve the loss of the relationship. The reason why you feel bad or even have regrets after letting go of a relationship that wasn’t working (you wanted different things or there were code amber and red behaviours made the you both incompatible), is because during the time that’s elapsed since the relationship ended, you’ve:

- Been in a holding pattern over your ‘relationship airport’ trying to get your ‘slot’ back which has left you ‘stuck’.

- Continued being with ‘them’, just in a different package.

- Have made choices and been involved in situations that in retrospect have detracted from you or kept you stuck.

The feelings that result on hearing about their latest relationship or them getting married etc arise from feeling like their lives have progressed while yours hasn’t. If they didn’t treat you that well or you don’t consider them to be a particularly nice person, it can feel like a kick in the teeth.

And truth be told, it does seem like those who cause us hurt seem to ‘land on their feet’ and ‘come up smelling of roses’ while often leaving us to pick up the pieces and knee deep in the doo doo from our involvement with them. To add insult to injury, they also tend to give themselves license to dip in and out of our lives.

While out dancing on Saturday night (check me!), I heard ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ by The Supremes and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. My friend and I belted out every word – we knew it because we’d lived it. However I realise that even if they are throwing a crumb or a bone or the promise of a loaf to keep us hanging on, ultimately it’s us hanging on.

We hang on to the idea of who we thought they were or who we believed they might become.

I’m free because I didn’t wait for him (or anyone else) to set me free and I can assure you with 100% certainty that if I’d relied on the good conscience of one of my lingering exes to set me free, I’d still be floundering around in an unavailable pool.

So I’m going to say to you, what I would have said to me six plus years ago:

Stop the madness. This isn’t what ‘love’ feels or looks like. They’re just not that special and you’re not that desperate. Love involves a lot of ‘doing’ and without actions that reflect the love, it’s like being cloaked in hot air. Even if they do move on to someone else, this is not how you want love – trying to use an emotional battering ram to squeeze effort out of them that others do willingly.

It’s not you! Really! You haven’t got that kind of power to make someone change their personality or emotional style for a relationship. But if you do insist on doing stuff like dating a man that fell out of ten year relationship two months before meeting you, a man who can’t commit is what you’ll get, just like when you got involved with the guy with a girlfriend…

You’re just not that ‘special’ either – you’re worthy of love without having to feel like you’re extra special or finally ‘level’ because you made it come from a reluctant or bankrupt source.

Instead of worrying about what they might be and do – start worrying about who you are and what you may become if you continue. If you don’t put 100% into you and you keep banking on your three-legged horses, you have to own your choices. Someone can dangle a string, you don’t have to hold it, especially when they have repeatedly shown that they cannot come up with the goods.

You’re better than being a sideline piece or are an afterthought that gets slotted into their oh so hectic life. You’re also better than being with someone who actually leaves you feeling bad about yourself.

Love cannot take root, grow and flourish where there’s little no self-love and boundaries as a foundation. Take the focus off them and bring it back to you. When you finally decide to fight for yourself and leave the prison of your fears, habits, and beliefs, you’ll discover that the door wasn’t locked, and you always had the power to leave and fight for something better.

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.

“There’s no such thing as an honest cheat” and other thoughts on cheating

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:17:52 +0000

Recently what with all of this super injunction malarkey and what seems to be a constant revelations plus many readers seem to be mortgaged up to the hilt in secret relationships playing second fiddle, there’s been a lot of talk about cheating. Based on my own personal experience and observations over the years of writing Baggage Reclaim, I wanted to share some thoughts on the subject:

1. It’s important to remember what cheating actually involves – being dishonest in order to gain an advantage, avoiding something undesirable by luck or skill, to engage in deception and trickery, and to be fraudulent.

It involves lies, omission, manipulation, and for ongoing affairs, an element of being a confidence trickster. The advantage – two relationships and much of the trappings that come with each without being committed to either. Avoiding – commitment, intimacy, responsibility – basically everything to do with an available relationship. Which brings me neatly to…

2. There’s no such thing as an honest cheat.

Really. Stop thinking that it’s the situation or ‘love’ that’s made them dishonest and that under ordinary circumstances they’re a saint. They’re not being 100% honest with you and just lying to their partner. Bad enough they bullshit you but don’t bullshit yourself. They’re dishonest…even when they shag you well and make promises they have no genuine intention of delivering on. Cheaters lie to themselves – it’s how they can keep going.

3. Just because someone’s married/in a relationship doesn’t mean that they’re capable of commitment.

If you’re treating the cheater like they’ve been ‘pre-approved’ and ‘vetted’ via their status, you’re only proving you know shag all about what commitment actually involves and that you like ‘titles’. Cheating = uncommitted = emotionally unavailable.

4. If they don’t have to work very hard to ‘convince’ you into an affair, you can be pretty damn sure that they won’t have to work too hard to convince you to ‘wait’, even with no genuine intention of leaving.

Half heartedly saying “Oh we shouldn’t do this!” or “But you’re married!” when you’re in the process of taking their clothes off or making yourself ‘available’ for a chat and giving them a shoulder to whinge on is already communicating you’re up for it. Many people dodge Cheaters every day – they just say NO to Cheating Crack.

5. There doesn’t have to be anything ‘wrong’ with the relationship or the other person for them to cheat.

Some cheat because it’s almost too good and they rebel against the relationship and play hooky. The only reason why you would think like this is because you’re likely inclined to believe that when your relationships don’t work out, it’s down to you.

6. Some rebel against the relationship/the commitment/the ‘safeness’ to feel less vulnerable and increase control.

If there’s problems or they have unexpressed anger, for example to their current or past partner or parent, cheating is like rebelling and punishment letting them feel in control. If underneath they have low self-esteem and are married to/involved with what they know is a great person that loves them, they’ll be scared of living up to those expectations and will undermine that image of them to lessen the vulnerability. They may privately feel disrespect that they get that love, being irrationally angry with you (if you’re the ‘main partner’) for not seeing that they’re not worthwhile and as a result giving themselves license to cheat because of your ‘stupidity’. In turn, while they’ll initially feel better in the affair, they’ll then lose respect for the Other Woman/Guy wanting them too.

7. Some cheater’s enjoy the risk and believing they’re outwitting everyone.

I mean come on now – only the most deluded of people would shag around left, right, and centre, send sextexts, rude pictures etc and actually believe that they’re not going to get caught.

8. But don’t get things twisted and believe that the ‘risk’ a cheat takes is indicative of how deep their feelings run for you and how they can’t resist you.

Remember they’re cheating, so they’re managing the risk through deception at both ends and they often think they’re charming enough that should they get caught, they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. If you’re who they’re cheating with, they think they can keep you in your place and if you’re who they’re cheating on, they think they can talk you around. Just call yourself ‘putty’.

9. You’ll notice that when a cheat says they’re going to leave, they’re never in a position to do it immediately.

They’ll say they need more time, the right moment, and to get some stuff organised. They’re stalling. if they really had to leave, the affair would never have started in the first place.

10. You’ll also notice that when you tell them that it’s over, they never say “Oh OK then!”

They’ll convince you to hold on, up the ante on pursuing you and Future Faking, or they’ll back off a bit and then try to slink back in when they think you’ve calmed down.

11. Be careful when you hear the magic words “You know where I am if you ever want to start up again.”

They think you’re the type of person that keeps going back to the relationship crime scene. That and they’re also telling you that an affair is all that’s on offer.

12. Even though they take the piss and risk their main relationship, they’re very image conscious and so will often be more worried about their peers finding out than they would their partner.

They likely think they can talk them around but they’d like to keep their public image intact. Don’t believe me? This is why super injunctions exist. I’ve heard from readers who have been threatened by the Cheater, or they’ve gone around trying to talk around their colleagues/friends/family.

13. The Cheater that slags off their partner will slag you off too.

Nobody gets ‘driven’ to cheat and ‘driven’ to be a disrespectful twit.

14. If you’re who they have an affair with, you have a pretty good window into how they manage problems and intimacy – by shagging around and having an affair.

There are many ways to solve problems in relationships – cheating isn’t one of them. If you’re who they’re cheating with, keep in mind that if you experience issues, you’re g

15. If you stay with a cheater, they privately and sometimes openly lose respect for you. Even though they may be like in a dog in a manger trying to stop you from being with someone else so that you remain an option, most cheaters will have your cards marked because people who know their value don’t tie themselves up with someone that’s unavailable and cheating.

16. Cheaters are scared of leaving their relationship and of letting go of the affair for fear of making a mistake.

They want some guarantees, so they do neither, not realising that this is still a mistake although in their mind it’s not as great a mistake as the others that they’re avoiding. The deception is their way of minimising the opportunity for the mistake which gives them the best of both worlds.

Cheaters being as lazy as they are decide even if it’s subconsciously that if the Other Woman/Guy is that great, they’ll leave and if their main partner is so fabulous, they’ll stop. As usual they dodge responsibility.

17. Sometimes people cheat as an exit strategy.

They either hope they’ll get caught and if they don’t, they ‘allow’ the guilt to overwhelm them so that it gives them the excuse to end things in a big dramatic confession – sabotage! And lazy!

18. Cheaters put the Other Woman/Guy on layaway.

On paper they possibly recognise that you’re a great person so by getting involved with you (and probably blowing smoke up your arse with some Future Faking and Fast Forwarding), they take you off the market and put you behind the ‘counter’ with an option to buy, which they may never exercise. Unlike TK Maxx, affairs often have no time limit, so you can languish away on the shelf while they go about their merry way, sometimes throwing a few crumbs in to top up the layaway. You catch my drift…

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.

Why You’re Nobody’s ‘Option’

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:18:09 +0000

It’s Friday night here in the UK and I’m pretty sure, as happens every weekend, that some of you will be waiting for that ‘certain someone’ to call/text/email about the possibility of making arrangements. Some of you by the time you read this will have ended up making last minute plans and have been on tenterhooks all week watching your phone etc for ‘The Big Invite’ and some of you will end up sorely disappointed either because you don’t hear from them or because when you do, it’s at some obscene hour or they behave like a twit.

Here’s the thing: When you wait around for someone to ask you out and you put yourself on layaway so that you can be available should they see fit to ‘make contact’ and dignify you with their presence, you inadvertently communicate that not only do they not have to value your time or even you as a person, but that you’re an option. An option I might add, that could do with filling up their life with better pastimes than being lastminutedate.com. or Dial-a-Lay.

The weekend thing is just one example of many where you communicate that you’re OK with being an option. Here’s a few more:

No matter how many times they reject you or the relationship, you’re up for another sequel – A Nightmare on Relationship Street #135

You say you’ll ‘wait’ even when they tell you not to.

They say they don’t want to commit and want to keep things casual and you play the ‘long game’ so that if they spontaneously combust into being available, you’ll be ready to ‘step in’.

They’re dating/sleeping with others and even though it makes you feel like crap, you stick around.

You sit at the round table in their harem, fawning over them and competing for their attention.

They say “You know where I am if you change your mind” after you told them to take a run and jump because they’re attached/otherwise unavailable/a dipstick.

You play The Good Girl/Guy and suckerdart yourself to them as Friend of the Year post breakup so they can recognise your greatness, validate you, and hopefully see the error of their ways – they think “Hmmm, looks like they’re OK with being tapped up for a shag from time to time”.

They can call you up at any time of night and sextext with you or arrange to hook up.

No matter how much time has passed and no matter how flimsy or bad the history, they can come back. Don’t believe me? Just ask many of the people who get caught out by the Returning Childhood ‘Sweetheart’.

You’re hanging around waiting for them to break up with their new partner so you can pick up where you left off.

You let your ex call you up for an ego stroke or to bitch about their current relationship. They think “Hmmm…well at least I know that if things don’t work out, I’ve got X to fall back on”.

They show or tell you that they’re not over their ex or ready for a relationship and you keep pumping up your emotional airbag and buffering them.

You communicate “I know you think you can do better but when you discover that you can’t, I’ll be right here waiting for you”.

They tell you that they’re married/have a partner after they’ve been acting like they’re single and you don’t so much as flinch – they then know that you’re likely up for playing the third wheel.

You keep hanging around trying to convince them that they should be with you and demanding that they love you.

You’re still talking to them and making room for them in your life no matter how poorly they’ve treated you.

When you allow yourself to be an ‘option’, you hang around letting them use you up with a possibility of being ‘chosen’ while often committing yourself to the idea that they’re your only option.

You’re giving them freedom and the right to ‘choose’ you while curtailing your own freedom and diminishing your self-esteem and your boundaries in the process which removes your power and creates a greatly imbalanced ‘relationship’. Instead of being in an equitable, mutual partnering, you hand over all of your power and then lay down and let a doormat sprout from you.

Being an option gives other people the option of directing your life, even if they don’t want to.

In business, options exist to provide the right to buy or sell something within a specified timeframe at a set price. In relationships where people make ‘deals’ but often don’t have deal breakers , if you’re allowing yourself to be an ‘option’, it’s like putting a deal on the table even though the person has backed out, isn’t interested, or is not an appropriate relationship partner to make a mutually fulfilling relationship deal with.

You’re giving them the choice of keeping you in their back pocket for a rainy day emotional airbag to fallback on for an ego stroke, shag or a shoulder to lean on.

You’re also communicating that you’re OK with being a choice – there are other options – which allows them to keep their options open. But more worryingly, when you allow yourself to be an option, you communicate that they don’t have to choose, they don’t have to value you and they are free to reject you and pick up again when they feel like it.

Being an option means you’re uncommitted and they’re uncommitted.

It also means that you’re prevented from having the choice to be available for an available relationship because being someone’s option shuts you off to other opportunities. Don’t believe me? If you’ve ever tried to date while being an option for someone, you’ll have struggled to be emotionally present and correct because you’re unavailable and into the person you’ve optioned yourself to.

You’ll never be able to move on with your life, feel a sense of personal contentment and forge a happier, mutually fulfilling relationship with someone that values you, if you’re option for someone else that doesn’t or only values you for what they can get out of you on their terms.

You’re not someone they can call up last minute and squeeze into their oh so hectic life. You’re someone to be made plans with and to co-pilot a relationship and a future with. They’re either in, or they’re out – don’t give them the option to flit between or dip their pinky toe in.

Never allow someone to reject you (directly or indirectly) more than twice.

I’d say once, but I’m all too aware how people are obsessed with second chances. But three times and beyond – it’s time to get off the relationship crack.

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.

Having Their Cake and Eating It Too: Why It’s Best Not To Give Out The Cake In The First Place

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:13:57 +0000

I’ll admit that I’ve rarely taken relationship advice from my mother as if I had listened to what has often been outdated, claptrap that she no doubt listened to herself, I’d be married to or divorced from a Mr Unavailable, working as an accountant and wondering “What’s wrong with me?”. However sometimes, she’s inadvertently delivered some real gems that are usually sarcastically right on.

One such occasion was when I admitted I was seeing the guy with a girlfriend. Spookily she was almost an identikit version of the mother to Savannah in the book and film Waiting To Exhale, who thought the cheater was a “good man” and when I lamented the fact that he hadn’t left and how he was taking advantage of my good self, she flippantly said “Well if you had the opportunity to have your cake and eat it too, you’d eat it wouldn’t you?”

I’ll freely admit that I had myself down as a woman that was being taken advantage of and being ‘forced’ to put up with rinky dink behaviour out of ‘love’. I’d even convinced myself that it was the extraordinary circumstances of our ‘love’ that had him having to make a radical departure from what I liked to believe was his ordinarily honest self. But when my mother said those words, I smarted in embarrassment because there was something I couldn’t escape:

Yes, he was certainly hoovering up the cake like there was no tomorrow and even luxuriating in it like a pig in sh*t, but any cake he was eating was cake I was freely giving out. I was the cake, or at least my lack of boundaries and self-love were.

Would I eat the cake if it was being offered? I’d like to think not although as someone who used to say I’d never be involved with a cheat, it’s safe to say you don’t know what you’ll actually do when you have poor boundaries and self-esteem and get an ‘opportunity’ to feel deprioritised and then seek validation.

The truth is that just because ‘cake’ is offered, it doesn’t mean that the person has to avail of it. I could pass a home with the front door left open and I wouldn’t suddenly turn into a criminal and let myself in. Someone can act without enough self-respect and I wouldn’t think “Hmmm, let me see how many ways that I can exploit this opportunity.”

And there’s an important lesson in there: When you’re handing out cake left, right and centre and subsequently beating yourself up over it, it’s easy to go down the route of believing that it’s something in you that caused them to avail of it, when actually, they’re only doing what they’re predisposed to do anyway. You haven’t got that kind of power.

I’ve heard from readers who have literally been throwing themselves at someone who is flat out saying NO, backing off and even cutting contact – that’s someone who is saying “Er…thanks no thanks.” They’re uncomfortable, for whatever reasons that might be.

I’ve also heard from some that have been offering the cake and the other party isn’t taking as much as they’d like them to (although they’re still taking it) and throwing out excuses and half-hearted protests because they’re only half heartedly interested or happy to pass time with you. If you keep offering the cake in this circumstance you end up like a telemarketer that thinks they can keep rebuffing objections.

However, while it is wrong for someone to avail of the cake that arises when you have self-esteem issues, little or no boundaries, and unhealthy love habits, the responsibility ultimately does lie with you to not be providing the cake in the first place, or at least having the good sense to snatch it off the menu, or slim down the rations (create consequences).

You can go up, down, round it, whatever, and put all the focus on them in the world but people can’t eat cake that they don’t get given. The only circumstances where that’s different is if they steal the cake but that’s very different to actively participating in the name of ‘love’.

Yes you might have only been intending to give them half a slice or half a cake and they ended up stuffing in way more, but this was always a risky move, especially when you didn’t rein yourself in. Often we think that if we give out the relationship cake freely that at some point it will be ‘enough’, they’ll be sated and full, and in turn, we’ll be enough.

Instead, we get left hungry especially because people that gobble up your cake will often offer you back some crumbs in return. Cake doesn’t get matched with cake.

If they find they can keep going back to the all-you-can-eat-relationship buffet, they will until a sign goes up on the ‘establishment’ declaring it closed down or there’s been a change of menu. If you don’t like what they’re taking, it means you don’t like what you’re giving.

Don’t set yourself up to fail by giving out cake that ultimately causes you to feel devalued. Start as you mean to go on because there’s no point letting it all hang out and then trying to close the door after the horse has bolted. The tone has already been set. The type of person that will gorge themselves is the type that chances their arm by pushing the boundaries and taking big risks to see what they can get away with. If the risk pays off, they’re quids in. If it doesn’t, they’ll either seek cake elsewhere or try for a smaller piece…

It would be better when they attempt to take more cake than they should (if any at all), that they get met with your proverbial hand obstructing them – boundaries.

You’re never going to feel confident about yourself and your value if you keep waiting for others to do what you can’t even do for yourself. Don’t wait for others to ‘do the right thing’ – put the cake away. You’re good enough without having to give out all the unnecessary and rather damaging ‘extras’.

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop. Image credit: Danny McL on Flickr – Pig I Shit on Hackney City Farm

When You Believe You Can’t Leave, Funny Enough, You Don’t Leave

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:45:31 +0000

Over ten years ago, I found myself involved with someone very aggressive, mostly verbal, and then on one occasion, after I spoke for ‘too long’ with a friend, it was physical aggression. In the apartment he yelled and in turn, I played a role I’d learned long before, and yelled back, even knocking stuff off the coffee table. He continued to come up in my face and yell at me and when I reminded him of some recent lies of his, he stomped off to the bathroom. I followed and asked him to come out as I stood in the doorway and then staring right at me, he slammed the door at me, walloping my wrist. I fled and ended up walking the streets in a daze in the middle of the night and eventually went back. He told me it was my fault.

It felt like some weird confirmation of everything I’d suspected about relationships and myself up to that point.

The following day we attended a function we’d previously agreed to where he acted like nothing had happened as I winced my way around the place, and for another couple of weeks, you’d almost believe things were normal. Three weeks and some more lies and verbal abuse, and I was out. Scared, but out.

A few years later, I was doing something else I’d sworn I’d never ever do – I was involved with the guy who had a girlfriend. At first I believed there must be something wrong with her if he was straying, then I thought there must be something wrong with me if he was staying. Eighteen months and I hit some serious lows. I didn’t believe I was capable of leaving. So I’d leave and go back. The mind f*ckery was unbelievable. I talked a lot about ‘love’ ‘emotions’ ‘connection’ and kept saying how nobody could understand my situation.

But of course, I did leave. Eventually.

So here’s what I know based even on just those two experiences:

When I believed that I couldn’t leave, I didn’t leave. Nobody who believes they can’t leave, leaves. Or if they do, they go back. This is simply because we find reasons to legitimise that position. If we didn’t, we’d realise we can leave which would put us in the position of leaving. I’d learned that you stay so I closed off options.

It’s that narcissist within all of us that believes our situation is wholly unique or that nobody can understand or it can only be understood if you’ve experienced exactly that. I’m not the first person to be physically/emotionally hurt by someone and sadly, I won’t be the last.

When I believed that I could leave or that I could anything else, I did leave and did those ‘anything else’. Saying I could leave, albeit with a wobbly voice, terrified mind, and shaky body, meant I found umpteen things that showed I could. Other people in far more horrendous situations leave, so why couldn’t I?

I have friends, family, acquaintances, readers that have left after 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 years and beyond. When they consistently started thinking that they could leave instead of shutting down the thoughts or feeling resigned to being a victim, they all left. In fact, I have a reader whose ex nearly killed her and left her for dead on a road, held her prisoner after she got out of hospital and she escaped. She told me all she knew was she had to get out and she found a way.

Before you commit to saying you can’t do something, make sure that you’ve answered the question of what is so fundamentally unique about your situation that it’s impossible to do so? Don’t say it’s love – that’s the bullshit excuse we tell ourselves. What’s the real reason?

Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you will take yourself down the path that fits either one.

I can and I could so I will.

You can and you could so you will.

When it’s negative, it’s: I can’t, and I wouldn’t, so I won’t.

I used many reasons and excuses back then – my logic was based on my beliefs and my wounded self-esteem – I over-intellectualised my situation in the context of how I looked at things.

My old logic doesn’t make sense now because I’ve changed and I looked at those relationships in the context of what I knew even outside of me. There were three things that pierced through my thought process:

I knew that abusing someone is fundamentally unacceptable. It’s not something I wanted in my own life. Even if I had annoyed him, I didn’t deserve that treatment. He was this way with others too – why did I need the validation of converting an assclown?

I recognised that being in so much pain wasn’t love, it was pain and if I wanted it to stop, I had to remove myself from the pain source and differentiate between pain and love.

I don’t believe in being with someone else’s partner. The answer wasn’t to persist in bulldozing him to leave her to get back to my values. The answer was to admit my mistake and get back to living by my values.

I read a comment that told me how it’s so easy to intellectualise a bad situation and that what she reads “does not make me human to it. There’s a difference between understanding and knowing why, to actually having the strength to do anything about it.”

Actually, what makes us all human to a situation, especially our own situation is us. When people ask me what the biggest barrier to No Contact or leaving a relationship is, it’s us. If we detach ourselves from the reality of a situation/normalise it and look for reasons to deny, excuse, or minimise things that have happened or to legitimise our beliefs about why we can’t go, NC/leaving fails.

We act like something doesn’t apply to us because to accept that it does pierces holes in our ‘staying strategy’.

Sometimes it’s easier to say you have no strength because you can focus on the other person and what you think they’re doing to stop you from having strength. The strength however comes from you – you all have it, you’re just not always tapping into it. Unless they’re keeping you prisoner or have threatened you, often what stops us from walking is a fear of what they might do or what we will have to do and be without them.

Sometimes, it’s literally as simple as putting one foot in front of the other and walking or not answering a call. Then you keep walking and you keep not taking the call.

I hadn’t always known whether I had the strength to leave a relationship but I realised you never know your own strength till you use it. Opting out is a strength trigger. It might not be Popeye levels but it’s often more than what you think it is and that in itself is a start and gives you something to build on.

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.

When You’re Afraid of Abandonment But You Also Choose People That Are Not Likely To Stay

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:39:51 +0000

When I was a little girl, I learned to become afraid of being abandoned because unbeknownst to my father, I perceived him and my parents not being together and him not visiting me when I spent a month in hospital as abandonment. When I started having relationships in adulthood, after the initial honeymoon period, I became scared that they were going to leave or assumed, when I experienced conflict with them that they would. Coupled with the fact that underneath my seemingly confident exterior I didn’t really like or love myself all that much, it also meant that I was convinced that they would discover my ‘flaws’ that would give them the reason they needed to abandon me. When I thought they were ‘too into me’, I’d act difficult – it was safer.

As it was, I invariably had relationships with people who offered the least likely prospect of commitment and were likely to bring out those feelings of abandonment in me anyway.

The strange thing: Until I realised that I had a penchant for Mr Unavailables and discovered my own emotional unavailability and contradictory behaviour that was counterproductive to forging a healthy, committed relationship, I didn’t consciously think I had abandonment issues.

I’ve explained in Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl and many times on this blog how we consciously and subconsciously choose people that reflect what we believe about love, relationships, and ourselves. When we have negative beliefs, which are things that we believe to be true (even if they’re not actually true), we act in accordance with those beliefs and end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that ends up confirming the very things that we believe.

When you are afraid of being abandoned, it is about being afraid of letting someone get close enough to you that if they weren’t around, it would hurt. It’s also about the fear of the consequences of conflict because you will be afraid that it (conflict) will result in you realising your fear of abandonment.

Even though you’re afraid of being abandoned and afraid of getting close enough to someone that it will hurt, you will still go out and forge relationships. You will then seek validation which is confirmation that something is true. On one hand you hope to challenge your beliefs and get confirmation that you’re a loveable person worthy of not being abandoned, but on the other hand, you will inadvertently seek confirmation that the beliefs you hold about being abandoned are actually true, otherwise you’d have no legitimate reason to keep believing the negative beliefs.

If you’re afraid of taking the risk, you’ll limit the opportunity to take the risk and rely on the ‘safe bet’.

By creating limited relationships with people that have a limited capacity, by that same token you limit the experience and in turn limit the pain that you’re trying to avoid or at best keep to a minimum.

It’s like ‘limited hurt’ – you’re not ‘stretching yourself and taking a risk and are instead opting for the ‘safe bet’. For instance, even though I ended up in a hell of a lot of pain, when I was the ‘Other Woman’ it still seemed ‘safer’ to take a punt on the fantasy of us being together but at the same time deep down knowing that it was futile and that it would never be, so not fully risking myself like I would have to with someone who was actually available. In fact, the ‘safe bet’ becomes ‘safe rejection’ as you expect it anyway!

The self-fulfilling prophecy is about predicting what you believe is likely to happen. If at the heart of it you have negative beliefs, you’ll predict in line with those beliefs and act in line with them so that what you predict becomes a reality.

This means that you are prepared for the eventual pain and loss that will no doubt ensue by choosing partners that tick the boxes for your beliefs and relationship pattern.

When you ‘act up’ or keep questioning whether they’re going to leave, it’s like sabotaging your relationship to bring about the prophecy of doom – they eventually end up leaving unless they’re extremely patient and you recognise this and embrace them and deal with your own issues.

When you believe what you believe, especially the more hidden beliefs working overtime underneath, you’d be amazed at what you will do to keep believing – it’s familiar and comfortable pain.

The pain I was in was very painful but because it was working with my beliefs, it was oddly familiar and comfortable, albeit the uncomfortable comfortable.

If you have a limited relationship with someone, especially any relationship that has a lot of illusions in it, they can’t ‘leave leave’ because there isn’t a real relationship to leave and there’s no real commitment. A lot of the pain that ensues is actually about how when they leave (or we feel like they are or are going to) that any illusions that we had about them have to leave and we resist stepping into reality.

If you are limited in your capacity to love and choosing limited experiences and limited people to make a limited contribution with, you’re never getting that close that it will hurt to the fullest extent of your fears because you never really believed they were going to stay anyway. If you never really believed someone would stay or that you could hold onto them, you wouldn’t give yourself to the fullest anyway even if you convinced yourself you were.

Unless you address your fear of abandonment, you will either live in fear that they’re going to leave killing the relationship with insecurity anyway, choose people that are likely to leave and end up acting in sync with the drama with it ending in them leaving, or sabotage relationships that don’t look like they’re going to meet your prophecy.

Food for thought. Are you afraid of being abandoned? Have you chosen partners that offer the least likely prospect for commitment as a ‘safe bet’? Your thoughts?

Your thoughts?

Want to tackle your beliefs and get happier? Have you downloaded your free copy of Get Out of Stuck? Find out more details.. You can also check out the rest of my ebooks including Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl , the No Contact Rule and more in my bookshop..

Is He Different With Her? Why Did He Choose Her Instead of Me?: When You’re Not The One (or they move on to a fresh victim)

Natalie (NML) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:34:19 +0000

Back in November ’08, I wrote about He’s With Someone Else! Why her and not me?, a question that’s reverberating around a lot of women’s minds as I type this, and then last week I read this great post Why did he marry her and not me? (You’re not the one) over at Naked With Socks On. The author states,“Well, I’m here to tell you the truth. The answer is extremely simple: you were not the one for him. Point blank.”

He also admits that a guy does know when you’re not the one for him and that “The problem is we don’t always realize it.” There’s a lot of thinking in the ‘now’ and not wanting to “rock the boat” by thinking about the future, but there’s also the very real admission that sometimes a woman is a “stopgap” and that love takes different forms, just not not always a permanent one.

I know women and men who are with someone for a really long time, the relationship doesn’t pan out, and then in two shakes of a lambs tail, their ex is professing undoing love or doing the ultimate slap in the face of getting married or even quickly having children. They think ‘I wanted to get married! I wanted to have children! What the hell is so different with him/her?’.

I have a very close friend who was with someone for a very long time that kept stalling the hands of change. “If he knows he can’t come up with the goods, why has he eaten up my good years when I could’ve been with someone else who wanted what I want?” I always ask ‘If you’re with someone who you know cannot give you want you want and is wasting your time, why stay?’ Because it seems easier to stay and try and make him change – the quest for return on investment.

On the flipside, even if the relationship isn’t a very long relationship, what I also come across a lot is this situation:

Woman meets guy and he seems to be everything she wants either because she has illusions, or because he hypes himself up, his actions don’t match his words, and talks about things that he may very well believe at the time but he quickly forgets or he overestimates the level of his interest .

After a while, it becomes evident that all is not what it seems. And so the blowing hot and cold, the tension, the flip flapping, the lengthy conversations, discussions, arguments, ultimatums and ‘defining the relationship’ talks ensue, as well as making up to break up, placing too much value on the sex and yada, yada, yada, yada.

She wonders where she’s gone wrong. She wonders if there is something flawed about her. She tries to show him how much she loves him and stem any rejection she feels by pursuing him for validation and attention. She tries to get him to change. She thinks it’s just a matter of time. The relationship’s mostly fleeting highs and a lot of lows. Eventually, despite all her efforts, it comes to its inevitable end.

She says to herself that he’s an assclown (he may well be), that he doesn’t want commitment, and he’s no good for any woman, but drives herself batty obsessing about why things didn’t work out. Then in two shakes of a lambs tail, she hears that he’s shagging the woman in the office or that after just three months of dating some woman, he’s moved in, when he could barely bring himself to leave a toothbrush in her place.

Naturally, particularly when you have expended a lot of energy, emotional or otherwise, you’ll feel pretty damn outraged if you’re in this situation.

What’s so different now? Why her and not me? Is he different with her? What’s wrong with me?

There are all sorts of reasons why relationships don’t work out although they pretty much fall into two camps: potentially right for each but behaving in ways that are counterproductive to the success of the relationship making you eventually incompatible, or you’re wrong for each other and fundamentally incompatible.

The thing is, most guys know if you’re not the one for them. There are some men who are so distanced from themselves and reality that they don’t know their bums from their elbows, but generally speaking, a guy knows when he no longer considers you to be the one for him, he just won’t share that information with you. They fear conflict if they do tell you plus sometimes they do say they’re not as into it and it stimulates your interest further as you try to prove yourself to him. Some just don’t want to endanger the possibility of a shag, an ego stroke, and a shoulder to lean on, and they like having you there to ‘fallback’ on.

At some point he felt enough to pursue you/express interest. He then felt enough to have sex, enough to let it build into a relationship, enough to say he loved you (or maybe he didn’t say it…), enough to say he saw a future, but in the end, not enough to actually make it a reality.

Whilst your mind’s racing ahead looking for signs of commitment and indications that you have a shared future, some guys just want to be in the now. They don’t want to think ahead, and when they do, their chests tighten, or they get panicky, and start acting like jackasses by picking fights or just plain ‘ole disappearing so that you’re not getting any ideas about a future.

Relationships require a leap of faith and quite frankly, when a guy doesn’t see a future with you, or isn’t prepared to try, he’s not willing to take a leap of faith and put in the effort, the emotion, and the commitment.

However…plenty of men will coast, put in just enough effort (or may even get away with throwing in crumbs) and still enjoy the fringe benefits of a relationship with someone who believes that they’re going somewhere.

He’s either waiting until he’s got somewhere else to go, or afraid to commit to an outcome which will involve him removing you as an option. Some men don’t like being alone either.

And, I want to say at this point out of fairness to men, women do it too. Women coast in relationships all the time because they don’t want to be alone, they’d rather be with someone than no-one, and they think that things could change in time.

The guy that stays even though he is inclined to believe you’re not the one and he doesn’t see a future, sometimes has an element of hoping that something will change. In some respects, men and women aren’t all that different.

As I wrote about earlier this year, relationships serve to teach us about ourselves and when we find ourselves in the same relationship, it’s because it’s like you’ll keep getting the same lesson thrown at you until you learn it.

You also get the relationship that’s ‘right’ for you at the time and where you are emotionally and mentally, for instance with your beliefs. It’s a pain and can cause you pain, but we get involved with people who reflect what we believe about love, relationships and ourselves.

There is also the harsher side of the coin where the reality is that sometimes things change. That means someone can believe that they love you in September and not feel it by December. It’s cruel.

It also means that when someone moves on, if they’ve ended up experiencing their own epiphany about themselves or what they want, they may step into a different mindset which may suddenly find them ready to take a leap.

But…a lot of why someone who you thought you loved and wanted resisted whatever was on offer and didn’t come through, is because you were that ‘stopgap’ or as I also refer to it, an ‘option’.

They were always looking over your shoulder to a future without you or keeping their options open for something better that might come along. In some instances, you’re a rebound to a previous relationship and you inadvertently help them grieve that loss…and then when they’re ‘better’ they see you as someone who nursed them through the pain but they don’t ‘see’ you in ‘that way’. They may even think that if you’d had a greater self-respect, you wouldn’t be with them.

This is why I consistently say to readers that you must get real with yourself, have an honest conversation, and work on you and adapt your love habits so that you choose better partners.

If you involve yourself with assclowns and Mr Unavailables, expending energy on separated or divorced men that want the fringe benefits of a relationship without the commitment whilst flip flapping around in indecision, or the married guys that are never going to leave but keep you in limbo, the men that live with their mothers and have no desire to cut the apron strings, men that sleep around, men that pursue their ex, men who are allergic to the truth and commitment, men who don’t know what they want, think, or feel from one end of the day to the next, and are consistent at not matching their words with actions, you will be treated like an option. Period.

The more you accept, the greater the bad message they receive, the more time you waste being someone’s option or stopgap.

You have to believe in you more than you believe in the power of the illusions and know when to fold on a bad investment. You also need to be honest with yourself and recognise that some of these men aren’t trying to be caught and that when you’re with these guys, you’re not that happy anyway.

Is he different with her? Who knows. Just like when you change how you are, you change the relationship you’re in, you can’t really legislate for what is going on in someone else’s relationship. Asking why someone who didn’t treat you with love, care, trust, and respect, is now with someone else, is like wondering why they didn’t stick around to kick you some more.

One thing I do know, is that much like when I’ve talked about the ‘reset button’ in relationships, for the habitually dubious men of this world, each new relationship is like a fresh start, with a fresh boatload of optimism and an all new persona, but if they run true to form, they soon slip into old habits.

If they’re not dubious and it’s a case of love don’t live here anymore, it’s painful and difficult and you have to grieve the relationship because from the moment that someone no longer wants a relationship and moves on, it’s a major red flag that something is very wrong and they don’t value the relationship that you’ve had any longer. Grieving the relationship and accepting that it’s over will let you move on because they have moved on. Not everyone moves on at the same pace and to continue to expend energy analysing what they’re doing now, will only cause you to waste your time.

The fact that you want a relationship with someone doesn’t mean that they have to continue wanting it too.

Sometimes you’re just not right for each other. You may have been right ‘once’ but you’re not anymore. Let them go so you can open your heart to someone else.

Your thoughts?

My ebook The No Contact Rule is now available to buy and provides a dedicated guide to getting over someone by cutting contact and injecting some boundaries into your life so that you can move on to a happier you. For a no holds barred guide to emotionally unavailable men, including separated guys that flip flap in indecision, and the women that love them, you can also get Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl. For personal advice or analysis of your relationship/situation, check out my consultation service.

Is He Going to Leave His Wife/Girlfriend For Me? Part Two

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:37:57 +0000

Yesterday in part one, I explained why wondering or questioning whether a man is going to leave his wife or girlfriend for you can put you in a precarious position because it means that the way that the ‘affair’ is playing out is not giving you enough confidence to believe that he will leave her and be with you. This is especially the case if you have to keep wondering and keep asking – it suggests that whatever is being said and happening is not enough. It suggests he’s not leaving…

Last week I wrote about Lovenomics: Managing your desire to be the exception, which was about how we choose to get caught up in illusions and believe that our relationships are being governed by exceptions and anomalies because we desperately want to be believe that our situation is different; that we are exceptions to the rule. There is no greater example of this than in the cheating situation.

Now I want to say – It is not the case that men never leave their wives or girlfriends to be with the ‘Other Woman’ but they are the exception, not the rule.

There are a few key assumptions that I believe women who go into ‘relationships’ with the cheater work off that I talk about extensively in my ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl and these fuel the question and desire for him to leave:

1) If a man is prepared to risk his existing relationship in order to be with you, he must be crazy about you.

A lot of cheaters get off on taking risks and playing truant on their relationships. They don’t like the normality that comes with the steadiness of a relationship or the wants, needs, and expectations that arise from it, so they seek their thrills elsewhere. Sometimes you’re like something they’ve just got to have but they haven’t really thought past winning you over to the bit where you expect them to follow through on their ardent pursuit – read my post about what you can learn about cheating and cheaters from the Tiger Woods saga.

2) If a man has got married or has a girlfriend it shows that he’s capable of commitment which in turn makes him a good catch.

The fact that someone will cheat shows their lack of commitment plus this is a blind assumption based on another assumption, that all people get into relationships for the right reasons and are committed.

3) The reason why he can’t let go of you is because he finds you irresistible.

Men who genuinely want to be with you and who have real trust, care, love, and respect, don’t try to resist you in the wider sense. They sort their lives out to be with you properly, sooner, rather than later.

4) You’re only taking on the ‘other woman’ role as a temporary position with the goal of being the main woman.

This is basically like giving someone a ‘try before you buy’ option. You’re in the position of trying to prove yourself in the hope that one day, you’ll create the impetus for him to leave. Unfortunately the guy who will cheat on an ongoing basis and tie you up in a litany of whines and excuses about his ‘situation’, interprets the fact that you’ll be with him in spite of his other relationship, suggests that you have little or no boundaries and that you’ll be there anyway. He basically assumes he can ‘handle’ the situation should you create conflict.

5) If a man cheats it’s because there is something wrong with the relationship and/or his wife or girlfriend.

Some people actually cheat because things are going ‘too’ well and they need to rebel. If someone doesn’t want to be committed, they will behave as they like, irrespective of whether they were with the Most Perfect Person on Earth.

6) They’re only deceiving the wife/girlfriend whilst being honest with you.

Both of you have to be lied to, to maintain the deception.

7) The ‘other woman’ gives the cheater what he’s missing from his ‘main’ relationship.

Snatched moments and compartmentalised time is not the same as being in a full time, committed out in the open relationship with all of the attendant reality and pressures that come with it. There’s a reason why the saying ‘best of both worlds’ exists!

Some relationship with this man is better than no relationship at all.

This is like saying that crumbs is better than nothing because you’ve managed down your expectations into nothing and have got trapped by your own feelings.

As I said earlier, some men do leave their wives/girlfriends to be with the ‘other woman’ but it is the exception, not the norm. The reality is that:

You both need to be on the same page.

Two people who have found themselves crazy about each other in spite of the fact that one of them has some unfinished business to attend to, will get their situation sorted. They take a leap of faith and proverbially move heaven and earth to be with other. They accept that of course there will be some pain and hurt but that they want to be honest with integrity which is better than staying and cheating and pretending they have integrity.

More often than not, no matter what is being said, the actions in the relationship show that the ‘Other Woman’ and the cheater are not on the same page because she’s trying to take things to the next level whilst he’s trying to maintain the status quo.

Why create more drama when you can have the best of both worlds and not be committed to either person?

If he is not being honest with you either and you’re regularly finding out that he’s been telling you porkies via the dripfeed manoeuvre, how can you trust this person to act in your interests and to do as says that he will?

The longer that the deception goes on for is the less likely that he’s going to leave.

Even if he does eventually leave, it’s often the case that he’s not all that he’s cracked up to be, transferring a wealth of problems in your direction. Or….he goes to someone else, something I come across far too often.

So where does that leave you?

For many of you, you’ll be in limbo land. No matter what you suspect is the likely outcome, you’ll opt to stick with the situation and take a massive gamble. You’ll hope to be the exception and hope that fate, the alignment of the planets, fortune cookies etc deal you a favourable outcome.

Even if you have a goal in mind, at some point, you’ll totally normalise the situation and what was originally upsetting and unacceptable becomes your new normality with your managed down expectations because you won’t see a way out.

For those of you still asking him:

1) Make sure that when you have any discussions that they are definitive rather than being wishy washy. A lot of the women I hear from don’t ask direct questions (they think they do though) because they are afraid of hearing bad news or pushing him too far. He needs to be pushed. Better you know where you stand now than find yourself still doing the same thing and having the same conversations in the years to come – read my post on Women Who Talk & Think Too Much syndrome.

2) Be careful of setting deadlines. In fact, you should only set a deadline if he has said that he intends on leaving. I appreciate that you want to get the ball rolling but do not set deadlines that you are not going to follow through on. I am telling you from experience and no matter how much you yell and scream, if you’re still with them afterwards, you look silly and he knows he doesn’t have to leave. Make the deadline realistic but not so long that it loses any meaning. Make sure you gain agreement, be clear on the terms, and be even clearer that it’s over if he doesn’t follow through. 3-6 months is optimum – the shorter the time, the better.

3) If you’ve been asking a lot, stop asking and be a woman of action. If you genuinely don’t want to share this man, don’t share him, and he’ll see that there are consequences and that if he wants to be with you, he has to man up. You are doing yourself a big favour in the long run.

The best thing that you can do is believe in yourself – tell him to come back when he’s free to be with you. That may be never, but it’s better than waiting forever.

If being with someone who is attached is against your core values and forces you to make a rapid departure from who you are, sidelining yourself and living on the fringes and in secret from friends and family, opt out now. If loving him means that you can’t love yourself, choose you.

4) Remember that if their marriage/relationship is not working and they say it as over anyway, they are leaving for that reason, not just because of you. It’s important to remember this because should they leave, the worst types will keep throwing it at you that they only left because you told them to or do the whole ‘I left her for you so you should be grateful’ type thing, or even worse ‘You know how you met me! Why are you surprised that I’m sleeping with X, Y, and Z?’. Some people need a catalyst to leave and can’t end relationships on the basis of it not working – they need to have someone to go to. Tell them you’re be there when they leave and give them space to sort themselves out.

Remember: That fear that many ‘other women’ have that if they leave he’ll think they don’t care or find someone else is misplaced. If you’re worried that he’ll replace you with someone else to cheat with, it suggests he’s worth leaving…

This relationship cannot be just on his terms. Just like he expects you trust in him, he’ll have to trust that you’ll be there when he’s got his sh*t sorted out.
5) Make sure you know what you want before you go down this road.

Sometimes you want them to leave because you want to ‘win’ – then you discover it’s a booby prize…

If you’re OK with being with someone who has a wife/girlfriend, and particularly if it’s not the first time, you need to address your own issues with emotional unavailability and second best syndrome:

“…believing that there is somebody better than you or assuming relationship roles that place you in a starting position below one so that you have to fight your way to pole position. At some point in your life, you’ve decided that you come a poor second around those whom you seek love and validation from.” Source – my ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl

Likewise though, it’s also important to be honest with yourself because some people are more comfortable being a mistress than others. If you’re going to complain but stay anyway, I’d stop having the redundant discussions.

One thing I do know is don’t be blind to the situation and make her ‘real’ – someone else who believes in him or what they have with feelings. Any assumptions you can make about her (particularly in an ongoing situation), you can effectively make them about yourself because you are both with someone who is being duplicitous which means you’re both dining off illusions.

Is he going to leave his wife/girlfriend for you? If he hasn’t told you he will and isn’t already making it happen and keeping you in the loop, I wouldn’t go holding your breath. Either way, be careful what you wish for.

Your thoughts?

Back in part two

For a no holds barred guide to emotionally unavailable men and the women that love them, my ebook Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl gives detailed insight into the complicated dynamics of being the other woman. My ebook The No Contact Rule is now available to buy and provides a dedicated guide to getting over someone by cutting contact and injecting some boundaries into your life so that you can move on to a happier you. For personal advice or analysis of your relationship/situation, check out my consultation service

Is He Going To Leave His Wife/Girlfriend For Me? Part One

Natalie (NML) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:40:46 +0000

Right now, there are thousands of ‘ladies in waiting’ in relationships; women who are willing, waiting, and hoping that the guy they’re with, will leave their girlfriend or wife. ‘Is he going to leave her for me?’;'When is he going to leave her?’ and ‘Why hasn’t he left her yet?’ are just some of the questions that come flooding in via email, especially since I wrote a post ages ago about how to cope with being the other woman (also see the original), with many hoping their relationship is the exception.

It’s tough; you want to know that the pain and effort of effectively playing second fiddle, hanging on the sidelines, and having to operate on marginalised terms in your relationship with a married or attached man, is worth it. I should know…I spent about 18 months being the other woman to a guy with a girlfriend several years ago. I asked those questions frequently and many more.

For the many women who find themselves involved with an attached man (read: the cheater), even though they start out feeling that they can handle things and can be ‘patient’ or may not even want anything more, as time progresses, feelings progress, and so does the desire for the ultimate validation in this situation – to have a man leave another woman to be with you. In fact, I’d argue that part of the ‘feelings’ that arise in this situation, do so because playing second best screws with your self-esteem – BIG time – and so sometimes, you want them, not really because you want them but because you want to be validated in and feel the ‘love’ that comes from getting a man through exceptional circumstances.

I remember seeing myself as a smart, independent career girl who was just out of relationship (broken off engagement) and yet, it took a few short months before I was pressing the repeat button on the never-ending discussing and questioning of exactly when he was going to leave her and getting confirmation that it was indeed me he loved. Of course he’d say he loved me, but he didn’t do the necessaries to make that ‘real’ in my eyes.

And let’s not forget that some of the women who find themselves with the cheater, didn’t actually know that there was a third party until they had been involved for a period of time. Somehow (it normally has to be dragged out of them after ‘evidence’ comes to light) they make the discovery and then often, no matter how mad they are, they feel like they’ve come so far down the road, they want to get a ‘return on their emotional investment’ – the struggle in this scenario is reconciling the reality of the fact that he’s involved with someone else with the image of the man they thought they knew.

But there is a problem with 1) wondering if he’s going to leave ‘her’ for you and 2) having to ask.

I appreciate that life throws some curve balls and you don’t know when you might meet the person who you genuinely feel like there could be something pretty big with, and that sometimes when it happens, that person is involved with someone else.

However (and it is a big however), people who genuinely love, care, trust, and respect you and want to be with you in a committed way, are not going to engage in an ongoing deception.

If you have to wonder or ask if someone is going to leave someone else for you, it says the following:

Whatever you both have going on between the two of you, he has not given you enough (or even any) security and assurance that you and him are going to have a bonafide relationship.

When you’re wondering if they’re going to leave, it suggests that it’s an affair that is unlikely to transcend being an affair.

Difficult to hear but unfortunately true. If you’re wondering and asking in the first few weeks to even a few (brief) months it’s one thing, but when the wondering and discussing continues for many months or even years, it suggests that you’ve been ‘typecast’ like actresses can be – he only sees you in the ‘Other Woman’ role, not the lead role… The problem is that the type of guy that will cheat on an ongoing basis and not give you the heads up that he’s not planning on making things legit with you anytime soon, isn’t honest with you because he likes you there as an option and doesn’t want to endanger it.

When you ask the first time, you can call it clarification and validation that you’re both on the same page – call it a ‘defining the relationship’ conversation.

However, hopefully, if he’s a half decent sort, he’ll already have beat you to the punch to let you know that this is a temporary situation and that he’s handling his business. He might ask you to give him some time, but he won’t leave you hanging and swaying in the breeze. He’ll also make sure that you know what is going on and not have you playing stupid guessing games about what is happening. He might even say that he’ll go off, sort things out, and come back when he’s free to be with you. Don’t think I’m making this up – I’ve seen it happen a number of times.

When you ask repeatedly it’s because his actions do not match his words.

Basically he said he was going to leave in X timeframe but now it’s Y timeframe and he’s now claiming it’s going to be Z timeframe. The longer you stay, the more the timeframe keeps shifting. Or…he hasn’t really directly pinned himself to committing to actually leaving however he’s still there. This creates a mixed signal that gets misinterpreted – You’ll think he’s continuing to risk his current relationship because he doesn’t want it and he finds you irresistible when in fact he can’t resist the lure of having the best of both worlds especially when he recognises there is no genuine impetus to leave because you’ll still be there anyway.

When you have to ask repeatedly or wonder repeatedly if someone is going to leave their wife or girlfriend for you, it’s because you don’t know or you don’t trust that he is doing as he says he will.

Whilst in some instances, you can put this down to natural ‘nerves’ about this situation – let’s be real; you’re waiting on him to tell someone it’s over so that he can be with you so of course you can feel nervous. However, more often than not though, it’s not about nerves (that would suggest something is imminent); it’s about the fact that aside from the ambiguity of the whole situation, you’re getting wise to the fact that he’s not being honest with you and isn’t following through and committing to an outcome.

When you have to ask repeatedly or wonder repeatedly if someone is going to leave their wife or girlfriend for you, it’s because whatever has been said up to that point hasn’t answered the question.

This is no different to when people have repeated discussions including repeated DTR’s (defining the relationship talks) – if you have to keep asking, something is going very awry in the discussion and in the follow through. He might be saying ‘Yes’ but dodging being direct about when, or he may be saying ‘No’ but telling you that he’s crazy about you and can’t be without you.

This is a really compromising situation to be in the first place but you’ll feel all the more compromised when you’re put in the position of having to wonder if you’re ‘good enough’ for them to leave to be with you and the longer it continues, is the more you’re looking for that ‘magic moment’, fate, the alignment of the stars, a message in a fortune cookie, or whatever it is to make things happen and get him to leave her.

But be careful what you wish for because you may find yourself holding a poison chalice….

Back in part two

10 Things You Can Learn About Cheating from the Tiger Woods Saga

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:40:33 +0000

I’ve had a lot of emails asking me what I think of the whole Tiger Woods infidelity saga where aside from the drama of that midnight dash in the car, there’s been a bevvy of women creeping out of the money lined woodwork. Now, before I give you my broad thoughts on some lessons you can learn from this, I will start by saying that the aim of this post is not for me to speculate on the ins and outs of what has happened but to use the situation (much like when I wrote about Mr Unavailable aka John Mayer) to show you all the madness of being involved with someone who is gonna do what they’re gonna do anyway.

1. Cheats are image obsessed

A lot of people who cheat, you would never have guessed at their capacity for duplicity and often, it’s not because you’ve been making a lot of assumptions but they have carefully cultivated an image with those around them. The key to the ‘success’ of the cheater is to not be found out by those around them and have their ‘reputation’ damaged. In fact, they can often cope with being caught as long as no-one else finds out, often believing they can talk their way out of the situation and even attempting to silence those around them so they can keep up the facade.

Many wonder why someone gets married if they’re not the committing kind? Because it suits them to cheat but having the appearance of stability relieves some pressure. They may have a huge capacity for deceit but they’re also human and maybe they need a wife/girlfriend to help their career prospects, maybe their parents are at them to settle down, or maybe their publicist says that a wife helps the good boy family image. Whatever it is, appearing stable and ‘normal’ is important to their image.

2. Never assume that the woman who ‘gets’ him has won

So many readers wonder ‘Why her, and not me?’ and if you’ve ever lamented why your ex left you to go back to his wife/girlfriend or why he left to go back to the woman he cheated on you with, ask yourself if anyone else really wins with a cheat that hasn’t changed? Where is the comfort in knowing you ‘won’ albeit he’s still shagging around? The only person who’s in a win:win is the cheat. To every woman who has ‘lost’ her Mr Unavailable or assclown to someone else, one day you’ll realise you made a lucky escape.

3. Power can be a dangerous thing as you can become narcissistic and assume you’re invincible

I haven’t the remotest interest in golf but I know enough to respect Tiger’s sporting achievements although that’s as far as it goes. But he, like a lot of men who find themselves with a lot of power, doesn’t know where to draw the line and thinks he’s ‘getting away with it’. Powerful people who have run away with themselves believing the magnitude of their power and money makes them invincible and then find themselves being a cheat taking more risks, will actually enjoy the thrill and the knowledge that they appear to be outwitting everyone around them.

They’re playing traunt on the persona that everyone else knows and of course, playing hooky on the relationship.

Cheaters are passive aggressive – they let you think that they’re in a relationship with you, nodding their head, agreeing, and making the right noises, and then they sneakily go ahead and do exactly what they want to do.

4. Those who doth protest too much have more steps to fall down the ladder of pride

Who knows in Tiger’s case who is responsible for cultivating his lily white image because there are many PR wheels turning around him plus the press project things, however, much like those who doth protest too much about how nice they are, what a family person, good, generous, whatever, when you keep saying it or feel the need to keep putting it out there, when you take a fall of disgrace, you take a big one. With the guy that’s an out and proud assclown, even though he’s undoubtedly wrong, it’s not really that surprising when he cheats, but the ‘good ones’ are a mega surprise and will invite even more speculation and outrage.

5. A guy that wants to cheat will cheat

You can put all the sex on a plate that you want, cater to his every need, and attempt to never put a foot wrong but a guy that gets his thrills from being on the down low shagging around will soon get bored, even with the woman he believed was perfect for him and might even change his ways. Just ask Halle Berry…

They don’t need a reason to cheat – they just do it because they can and they believe they are bigger and cleverer than those around them. They’re reactive and just like when I talk about how Mr Unavailable’s are reactive and might like strawberry icecream at 12pm, hate it at 3pm, and then say it’s the most amazing thing at 6pm, the cheat is just riding with the feeling, living in the moment, and very out of sight, out of mind, lacking in empathy for the people they have the capacity to hurt the most.

6. The habitual cheater will actually keep doing it for as long as they can get away with it

Let me be real – if he hadn’t got caught, I doubt he would’ve turned up cap in hand making a confession. Whilst some get sloppy in the hope of getting caught so that they can end their main relationship and be ‘set free’ someone who’s cheating with a number of people is doing it for kicks. Should they be caught, the main relationship will temporarily seem attractive because with it being in danger of being lost, the fear of being out of control gets mistaken for the desire they experience with the chase. With the habitual cheaters, when they say they’re sorry, what they really mean is that they’re sorry they got found out.

7. Where there is one woman ready to be a booty call mistress, there are often others

Or at least women claiming to be the ‘others’…

If they can cheat, they can cheat on you. Never assume that you’re the only person he’s cheating with and that he’s just dishonest with his wife/girlfriend. To cheat, they have to lie to everyone around them. If you’ve ever thought that being one of several women is attractive just look at the prideless mess that is the women flocking around professing to be his mistresses. I would be embarrassed to admit that I was one in a long line!

As an aside, have you noticed they all look like variations of each other?!

8. When the cheat gets caught the illusions built up around them come down like a house of cards

The duplicity involved in being a cheat means that when they are caught, everything built around them comes crashing down, removing the very foundations you believed your relationship to be built upon. Everything gets called into question and this is what makes their behaviour so devastating because you’ve both been operating under different sets of circumstances – you think you’re together but they’ve been flying solo.

9. To be a cheat, you need to be a good liar and deceitful

No matter what story gets spun to you about why they’re cheating, don’t be fooled and trick yourself into believing that you’re involved with an honest cheat – there’s no such thing! They don’t just lie to you, they lie to themselves! Some people cheat and quickly realise that they’re not cut out for the stress of leading double lives. They’re still in the wrong, but they get out and attempt to sort out their trouble. Others realise that they have a great capacity for having their cake and eating it too, and come up with more and more ways to have cake. They don’t feel guilty – they do what works for them, saying and doing what they need, to get what they want. They let you think that there are possibilities where there no possibilities. Often they believe their little fantasies but in reality, they often know that unless something catastrophic happens, they’re not leaving their main relationship. With the guy who has mistresses dotted all over the place, that’s just someone getting their rocks off with cheap thrills.

10. Often the clue to our relationship behaviour lies in our past

There has been some talk of Tiger’s own late father cheating on his mother, something he seemingly deplored and yet clearly he hasn’t dealt with his issues or learned from these experiences as he’s ended up doing the very thing he’s supposed to hate. Interestingly he’s said that his mum was the boss of the household which certainly feeds into the idea of playing hooky and passive aggressively showing who’s really in charge, which is exactly what Tiger (and anyone else who cheats) has been doing to his wife. Many of us learn our relationship beliefs from our parents and obviously if they are negative, they can leave us with a nasty hangover that feeds into an ongoing pattern. Maybe he’s afraid of permanency? Maybe he’s afraid of being bored? Maybe he’s afraid of feeling owned, tied down, whatever. The cheater can really only address their behaviour and beliefs that feed into this deceptive relationship behaviour. Until then, they’re fooling everyone, including themselves. Often it takes major consequences to bring about change – maybe the recent embarrassment will be enough.

I’m sure a lot of you are wondering if Elin will stay or go. We have to remind ourselves that the relationships of famous people are different to ours with many factors and people and companies to take into account… I’m pretty sure that it’s quite difficult to stay with someone after being so deeply embarrassed by the publicity surrounding your husband’s transgressions and a non stop parade of revelations but in my line of work, I’ve come across women taking men back after doing some pretty horrendous things so I guess she’ll have to weigh up this situation and see if this suits her…or any illusions she may be under…

Your thoughts?

My ebook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl is my guide to understanding the dynamic between emotionally unavailable men and the women that love them, with a chapter detailing The Cheater and is available to buy and download.

For personal advice or analysis of your relationship/situation, check out my consultation service. Don’t forget, you can now use the forum and social network to chat with other readers. Follow Baggage Reclaim on Twitter too.

Reader Question: Is it normal to want revenge on my married assclown?

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:30:24 +0000

Megan asks “I always thought I was such an intelligent woman with an astounding amount of common sense, until reading Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl.

Is it normal to want revenge on “my” assclown?

I work with him, so we have contact all day long. I want to expose him somehow, some way. After putting “2 and 2″ together, I think (know) he’s cheating on me and his wife.

Sometimes I feel like I’m starting to go off the deep end and want to follow him or have one of my friends spy on him. If I could just know for a fact that he is shagging someone else besides me and his wife, I feel that it might finally get me to the “absolutely pissed off” stage I need to be at to push him out of my life. He’s quite the charmer and I am starving for attention so it’s always back and forth with him. Story is waaaaayyyyy too long to go into detail but right now I’m feeling extremely pathetic and want revenge. Any advice would be very much appreciated.”NML says: Well I think with these men, many of us have had moments or periods of fury where we want to make them pay but I wouldn’t recommend it. You’re going through the anger stage where you have seen him for what he is and no doubt seeing him at work only suffices to ignite it.

The things you’re thinking about doing, if you did them, would not only fail to make you feel any better but, were he to find out about anything you were doing, he would be able to justify his own behaviour and write you off as a psycho. Is this how you want to be regarded?

The things that you’re thinking about, whilst they may seem tempting and you may think that they will prove a point, they are only going to prove the wrong points.

He is already cheating…on his wife…and this in itself is one massive assclown black mark against him and should be enough in itself to dump him. If he has the capacity to cheat on his wife, he has the capacity to cheat on you, and actually, regardless of how you may see it, it’s only the wife he has any responsibility to.

If you suspect he is shagging around on you and his wife, then again, your next action isn’t to look for a way to exact revenge – you should be looking to get the hell out of this relationship. You have enough there to be angry on without you having to catch him in the act or hide on street corners in a wig and a mac keeping tabs on him. The fact that you’re even seriously thinking about doing these things is a sign that things have gone too far and that you need to step waaaay back and cut off contact and deal with your feelings and anger.

You may not think you’re at the anger stage but you are – you’re just playing it out in a different way and thinking about doing irrational things.

If you are starving for attention this in itself is a huge sign that you need to work on this attention seeking and learning to like and love yourself rather than being with a man that starves you of attention and shags you, shags his wife, and then shags someone else. He’s pathetic – don’t sink to his level.

My new book How to Lose an Assclown in 90 Days is due out soon but if you want to get ahead on understanding waste of space men, there is also my ebook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. Find out more and download.

He’s with someone else – Why her and not me?

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:27:37 +0000

There are variations of this common question being asked around this site. The common scenarios are:

You’ve broken up with him and now he’s dating someone else and they look so happy together.

He said he didn’t want to be in a relationship and now he’s flaunting his latest.

He said he wasn’t going to choose you over his wife/girlfriend and now he’s got a replacement Other Woman.

He said he didn’t want to get married and now he’s engaged or married.

He said he wouldn’t leave his wife and now he has…for a different girl.

How come he’s so happy with her? It must be my fault the relationship didn’t work.

Why her and not me? Why, why, why, why, WHY?

The fact that you’re asking this says that you still want him even though he’s demonstrated that he doesn’t see the value in you or being with you, that you’re obsessing about him and the relationship, and that you don’t want to move on because often when we ask these questions, they are with regard to men who probably aren’t worthy of our time.

Now, I’m not going to say that it’s not a question that doesn’t run through many a person’s mind but when it becomes damn near an obsession and it prevents you from letting go and focusing on yourself, something is very wrong.

If you are obsessing about the relationship, him, the who, what, why’s and when’s, the shoulda, woulda, couldas, and the can’t, won’t, don’ts, you are either in standstill or regressing into the past because obsessing is about looking for reasons to blame yourself and trying to reason out things that there aren’t necessarily answers for.

And here is the kicker:

Him choosing to do something after the relationship with you has ended is not about you; it’s about him.

You are putting yourself at the centre of his decision to be with someone else or his actions after you. In reality, that’s giving yourself too much credit for impact, and him too much credit for actually having that much connection to his thoughts!

It’s not about you. It’s about him.

It’s not about her because you are two different people and the likelihood is that if he was f*cked up when you were with him and he’s taken up with someone else, he hasn’t changed which means that there is something about the relationship with her that let’s him believe that he can continue being himself.

You also need to remember that with men who habitually mess women around, they ALWAYS blow hot at first which means that when you are losing your mind obsessing over him, he’s going through the same hot phase that he treated YOU to at the beginning. But eventually, lukewarm or downright cold kicks in.

Again because it is about him, just like when we kneejerk our way into dating and quickly start dating another guy or choose an opposite and end up with a ‘nice guy’ that we eventually admit bores us or we claim is ‘too nice’, men do exactly the same thing too because they have their own insecurities.

Especially when it comes to assclowns and habitually emotionally unavailable men, they need attention in the form of ego stroking, a convenient shag, and a smokescreen that let’s themselves believe that they are not the assclown that they actually are.

Some need to prove they’ve still got ‘it’, some are afraid to look in the mirror and see themselves for what they are, some are afraid of what it means to have another ‘failed’ relationship, and some just like having someone there.

A new woman that’s not wisened up to his him yet is fresh meat but eventually, when she expects too much or sees through him, he’ll be revealing his usual self.

What about men that leave you and meet someone else that they end up marrying/getting engaged to/ or essentially doing more than they did with you?

This is why I keep telling women to stop trying to raise men from the ground up and change them because the overwhelming likelihood is that it’s the NEXT woman that profits from your rennovation whilst you sit there in negative equity!

There is no ‘logic’ to why these men do what they do but one thing that is at the heart of it is that if you are a woman that accepts poor behaviour from a man because she thinks it shows how much she loves him and how willing she is to make the relationship work, you only get penalised for it because the types of men that behave in this manner and watch you accept it recognise that you can’t respect or love yourself enough if you put up with their behaviour. On some level they realise that if you want them, something can’t be right.

Often with the next woman, she won’t put up with the same crap so he tries much harder. That’s not to say that he won’t revert to himself at a different juncture but right now (and you know that most of these men don’t think too far ahead), she seems ‘different’.

It’s as simple as this. If you met an attached guy and stood by his side whilst he went home to his wife, he’d mark you down for it. If you met an attached guy who when he disclosed the fact that he was in a relationship, you told him to take a run and jump and kept telling him to go and to come back when he’s got his house in order, he’d actually have greater respect for you.

Not every woman puts up with poor behaviour from men. They recognise red flags, have clear boundaries and know when to opt out because they recognise that these men are no good. These are the ones that these foolish men will pursue and often lose their minds over. If you’re a Fallback Girl, they’ll slink back to you in between…

But ultimately, there is no absolute answer to the question of ‘Why her and not me?’ What I do know is that there is absolutely nothing to be gained by it and obsessing about it represents yet another avoidance tactic where instead of taking the focus off him and bringing it back to you, you instead look for reasons to stay emotionally invested in the situation even when he’s gone.

What is there to be gained by knowing why he’s with her? The fact that he’s moved on shows that YOU should move on pronto, not be putting your life on hold to obsess about him and the new relationship.

Even if you sat there and analysed every conversation, action, flick of the hair, and slip of the tongue over your entire relationship, it’s a waste of your time that will never give you all the answers.

You’re not seeing the wood for the trees. Instead of asking ‘Why her and not me?’, you should be asking ‘What is it about my relationship habits that had me in this relationship?’ or ‘Why am I pining for someone who doesn’t want, love, or respect me?’

Look at the bigger picture and see beyond him and the new relationship and focus on washing him out of your mind and life, and ensuring that you don’t fall into the same traps. He’s her problem now, NOT yours.

Your thoughts?

My new book How to Lose an Assclown in 90 Days is due out soon but if you want to get ahead on understanding your relationship struggles, especially with emotionally unavailable men, there is also my ebook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. Find out more and download.

Advice: Help! I’m the Other Woman to the Other Woman: Does this sound like a man in love?

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:59:59 +0000

Amy asks:My situation involves a married man (my high school sweetheart) and an affair. Three years ago we ‘reconnected’ after 40 years. Both of us it seemed, were in unfulfilling marriages and we had a 2 year affair. The contact physically was brief…a 3-4 hour drive for both of us, 2 hours in a sleazy hotel and then return to our homes. Even in high school this boy was never really ‘there’ for me. He made up some lame excuse not to take me to my senior prom…after he’d promised he’d go. He generally treated me poorly even then, not calling for weeks and weeks at a time, etc.My question is this: He decided it was too risky to continue our relationship, so he called it off last year. Then I caved and started e-mailing him and he returned the emails. We were almost ready to get back together (!!!) when he told me that he was seeing another woman (also an out of town woman….someone from his past).

He wants me to go along with this situation, that is…he’s still married, has this other woman AND he wants to see me. We’ve been through all the yo-yo patterns you’ve described. Now he’s telling me that for the sake of my happiness I should have this physical relationship with him, regardless of other things in his life.

We’re down to occasional e-mails at this point, all of them VERY neutral, and barely saying anything. The last time I asked to talk to him over the phone, (I don’t like having our whole relationship over some keystrokes), he told me he’d already said everything and nothing had changed. I feel like we’re back in high school. He won’t choose one or the other of us, or so he tells me. Does this sound like a man in love?

NML says: You are not in high school so I suggest you graduate to reality. It’s been forty years and this guy started out a using, disappointing chump, and is still a…using, disappointing chump.

This isn’t a man in love or in anything. He’s non committal all the way from his cheating to the way he has to have not just one, but two out of of town women to play around with. All of his behaviour is screaming ‘I’m not interested in you, I’m just using you’ and I must say that I fail to see what is so attractive about this guy that has a history of letting you down. This guy is an assclown!

Road trips, sleazy hotels and a lot of emails bouncing back and forth do not a relationship make – in fact, it sounds like a long winded, long distance booty call without too much thrill.

You need to cut off this guy and turn your attentions to why you are pursuing him because he has shown you time and time again that he is a disappointment and that he has nothing to offer. From the moment that he not only had no intentions of being anything more than a booty call and then told you that he was with someone else, it was time to bail. He doesn’t love any of you and he is only interested in fulfilling himself and massaging his own ego. The fact that he has told you that you should be with him for the sake of your own happiness is not only incredibly egotistical but actually shows how he truly sees you – as the woman who will be interested no matter how little he has to offer. He doesn’t think you respect or love yourself enough to tell him to take a run and jump and believes that you would be happy with this.

You have gone from an unfulfilled marriage to an unfulfilled, mediocre, arrangement.

He has stated the terms and that is all he has to offer. It’s not love, it’s not a relationship; it’s a crumb that he is throwing you. If you accept it, it means he can sleep with whoever he wants, never phone you, disappear, sleep with you when it suits, and continue to treat you in this despicable manner.

If you don’t accept it, you’ll be treating yourself with love, rejecting his behaviour, and cutting him off.

The choice is yours.

Your thoughts?

My new book Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. Find out more and download.

Reader Question: He broke up with me because he met someone else – Is he a bastard?

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:03:49 +0000

Marianne asks: I am reeling after my boyfriend of the past 18 months came to me and said that he’s met someone else, he hasn’t cheated on me, but he doesn’t want to continue our relationship. This was two months ago and now they’re a couple and by all accounts really happy, and I’m the rejected ex!

Over the past few months, he had said that things didn’t seem to be working with us and I admit that they weren’t ideal. I was crazy about him though and would have done anything for him and I thought that he would appreciate that. It’s not supposed to be like the movies – this is real life! I definitely did feel like there was a distance building between us and things just weren’t gelling but I thought we could work on it because I truly believed he was the one!

How am I supposed to get past this? Is he a bastard or as you call them, an assclown because I feel so betrayed!NML says: Marianne, Marianne, Marianne! I think if you read your email out loud to yourself, you would answer most of these questions for yourself!

There are assclowns out there, that go out with you, meet someone else…and start screwing the girl behind your back and conducting a double life. The first you hear of it is when you catch him red handed and confront him, or when she puts her foot down and tells him to make his choice.

Now I admit that it’s not very nice knowing that your man has fallen for someone else but the difference between him and those assclowns is that he had enough integrity and courage in his nuts to be honest with you and end things. That doesn’t make him an assclown; that makes him a decent guy in a no doubt highly uncomfortable situation.

In your mind he was ‘The One’ despite a struggling relationship which you readily admit. This suggests to me that you’re more in love with the idea of him and keeping him and whatever potential you thought you both had than you are about getting real.

Not every relationship is destined to be ‘The One’. Some relationships work, some don’t. Some have very tangible reasons for ending, others don’t, but they either work…or they don’t. You either both want to stay, or you don’t.

Now regardless of what you think, you are in a situation where your relationship has ended. He is the one who has ended it and it’s not just because he met someone else and would have been uncomfortable with the deception, but also because your relationship was going to end anyway.

Now unfortunately, what this says is that you want a relationship with someone that doesn’t want it with you, and from the moment this happens, this is a signal for you to step back.

Wanting a relationship with someone who doesn’t want you is like self-mutilation, especially when he has moved on!

You need to consider the fact that he either didn’t recognise how great you are enough to want you and keep trying, or that regardless his heart wasn’t in it, and either way you look, something wasn’t right with this relationship. This in itself, doesn’t make a relationship with him very attractive. Why do you love and want someone who doesn’t love and want you?

The fact that he met someone else is just the straw that broke the donkey’s back, but the thing is, if you meet someone and you truly want to find out if you have what it takes, you have to take a chance on it. This is why I regard cheaters as major cowards because they hedge their bets but if you’re considering being with someone else, that’s not a great sign for your existing relationship in the first place. I know people who have been in the same situation as your ex – for a lot of them it worked out, and for some it didn’t. That is real life.

You mention that “It’s not supposed to be like the movies” – that’s true but I think that you have gone the other way and are far too passive about your relationships and you’re prepared to settle for mediocrity or so so middle of the road. Relationships need love, commitment, a foundation, and two people with both feet in them and unfortunately, yours had this missing.

Don’t project your feelings and opinions on your partners - What you feel is not the same as what he felt. What you were satisfied with was not what he was satisfied with. If relationships were based on how much you did for someone, the great majority of readers wouldn’t have the problems they do, and at the end of the day, it takes more than “appreciation” to keep a relationship together.

Stop focusing on being rejected because saying ‘Let’s break up’ is just what makes the end of a relationship final, but in reality, some relationships are long over or on their way out before these words ever get uttered.

She’s not why you broke up – your relationship with him and its issues were why you broke up. Meeting her just made it final.

Unless you want to subscribe to on-the-way-out relationships, it’s now time to pick up yourself and start getting on with your own life and accepting that whatever non gelling relationship you had with him, you won’t be settling for that feeling next time round.

Your thoughts?

Understanding the The Cheater

Natalie (NML) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:14:33 +0000

In this excerpt from new eBook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, I give an insight into what is running through the mind of The Cheater, the man who likes to have his cake and eat it too, whilst lying on it and promising the world….

The Mr Unavailable that cheats is a special breed. This guy has made it down the aisle or appears to be in some form of committed relationship (or at least his partner thinks so!). But this doesn’t make him any less emotionally unavailable.

The mistake that the Other Woman makes with these men is assuming that because these men appear to be committed to someone else, that these are the type of men that commit, and that they’ll eventually commit to her.

It is possible for Mr Unavailables to be in relationships or even married. It doesn’t change who they are, it’s just that for whatever reason they have chosen to take the plunge. It could be through fear, it could be through a desperate urge to keep that one woman who wouldn’t tolerate his behaviour and made him jump through hoops, or he could even have found himself trapped. It could be for any number of reasons but for whatever reason, he hasn’t changed, or if he did, he has now reverted back to his old self. It is not a victory to get an emotionally unavailable man down the aisle. If he’s not married but is cheating, it’s very possible that the woman that he’s in a relationship with is clutching at straws with him too. The reality is that there are a lot of people out there who are prepared to believe that they are in a committed relationship, even when they aren’t. If you’re reading this book, you are one of them!

I’m sure some Mr Unavailables make the decision to work at engaging emotionally with their partner. But others expect the fact they’ve moved in or married or had a baby to work some kind of magic, heal their issues, and make them happy. When they still feel distanced, lonely, and miserable, they tend to blame the partner, and behave as when they were single/uncommitted. They may cheat or drink or become workaholics, or simply indulge in cold, distant, punishing behaviour. Maybe some just keep their discontent to themselves and try to behave well — but unfortunately, I haven’t been in a relationship with one like this.

Mediatrix, Mr Unavailable Guide reader comment

The trouble with Mr Unavailable is that he sees himself as Mr Wonderful, and with the The Cheater, he is very good at distancing himself as far as possible from the reality of his behaviour. I’m not claiming that they don’t realise that they are sticking it to someone else, but for most cheaters, it gets rationalised so that they don’t get to feel too bad about themselves. Trust me; if they faced the reality of what they were doing to the person that they’re cheating on, and what they’re doing to the OW, they’d bail out far quicker. It’s the ability to delude themselves and romanticise the situation that keep things ticking over for so long.

The Cheater is a particularly insecure breed of Mr Unavailable because in some respects, he needs the security of what appears to be a proper relationship under his belt so girlfriends and wives are almost like trophies or show ponies.

Men, just like women, are privy to the same pressures from their peers, family, and societal expectations, and they find themselves trying to do, not what they want to do, but what they believe they ought to. So you’ll often find that The Cheater can be a high achiever or certainly aspire to the great things in life and in some jobs, men that appear to have all of their bases covered and are settled can climb the career ladder quicker.

Mr Unavailables are incredibly opportunistic, so whether she looks good on his arm and makes others around them believe that he is king of the castle with a perfect life, or he gets the benefits of her money, a pending inheritance, or a promotion at her father’s firm, he is investing in his image and his future. He will play the dutiful boyfriend or husband, but after a while, he needs to distance himself from what appear to be the shackles of his relationship. He needs to blow off steam. He needs to believe that he’s still got the magic. He needs to escape.

Some of the guys find themselves believing that they are trapped and held by their short and curlies. I have had countless emails from Fallback Girls who found themselves pregnant by their Mr Unavailable and sometimes impending fatherhood makes these men believe that they can change and have them aspire to be more than they are. And then sometimes they’re just scared shitless and attempt to do the right thing. But either way, at some point, he realises that it’s not enough or that the weight of expectations on him is just too much and he starts looking elsewhere and in his mind, casts himself as a victim.

Whatever it is that causes him to find himself as The Cheater, he becomes like a little boy playing truant, believing that he’s getting one over on everyone around him and outwitting them. He thinks he’s really clever, and he actually convinces himself that he behaves as he does because it’s in everyone’s interest to protect them from the truth, but in reality, he’s just excusing himself from the responsibility of his behaviour, much like he’s decided to excuse himself from the responsibility of his relationship.

You may wonder what runs through his mind and whether he intentionally goes out of his way to deceive the women he entangles in his web. I think at the beginning and certainly for the first few months, maybe even a year, he believes what he is saying about wanting to be with you and wanting the time to be right and yada, yada, yada, but to be honest, he is too caught up in the thrill, the excitement, the escapism, and having his ego massaged to actually genuinely concern himself with the finer details.

He’s just reacting to his urges and his instincts and unless he’s a total bastard, sometimes he feels genuinely conflicted about what he’s doing.

He’s like a scared little boy and he doesn’t know how to make a decision because he is afraid of betting at the wrong table and he would rather have both than have just one that he’s not sure of. He likes cheating or should I say, he likes the results of it, and as the OW, you fit in really well with his life because you quickly adopt his schedule making things oh so easy for him. He’s getting what he wants from both of you.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that one of you is giving him what he really needs. Don’t get it twisted! No matter what crap he tells you about his problems at home and how he didn’t see himself doing it, that situation at home works for him. You have no idea what his true experience is and at the end of the day, whether he’s got a girlfriend, living together, married, kids, waiting for them to go to college, waiting for a kid to go to school, waiting for her to get over depression, waiting for her inheritance to come through, it.works.for.him. No matter what he says, it is an excuse to continue the charade because the reality is that there are men who cheat and there are men who meet you when they have someone else, but the conscience and their morals won’t allow them to mess either one of you around, and they sort out their lives and take a chance on being with you.

The Cheater cheats everyone around him and OWs tend to focus on him deceiving others to be with her but they don’t spend enough time considering that he has to deceive them too in order to deal with their other life.

They learn very quickly to leave out important parts of their lives because they don’t want to set you off on a ‘When are you leaving her? Tangent.’ There is no escaping their deception and what you have to accept, is that they deceive everyone including themselves so very little truth comes out of their mouths or actions. They mean what they say as much as you can mean anything when you have a total disconnection from who you are.

When people say that he won’t leave his wife/girlfriend they are normally right. Obviously you have to be skillful enough to weed out the plain ‘ole haters, but if everyone from the cat to his great, great Aunty Betty says that he won’t leave, I’d listen to the evidence. I know there is no legislating for love but when everyone knows that you’re the other woman and they see the real him; you’d be surprised at the truth of their words. “He won’t leave him” should translate to “Abort mission. Take a parachute and jump!”

This excerpt is taken from the chapter The Other Woman from my new eBook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. Find out more and download.

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