Baggage Reclaim » Breaking Up

You Can’t Erase An Ex From Your Mind…But You Can Reduce Their Power AND Keep Pushing Forward

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:25:31 +0000

Shag! I just realised that thinking about not
thinking about them IS thinking about them.

I need a lobotomy.... " width="480" height="359" />

Recently I was talking with someone who was like a broken woman consumed with thoughts of her ex morning, noon, and night. “How am I supposed to stay NC if I can’t stop thinking about him all the time? I’m never going to be able to move on!” That’s when I thought “Woah! Hold up a second here – who said anything about NC being about forcing yourself to never have a thought about the person ever again?”

No Contact is initially about not making or accepting contact, but it also provides the space to not only grieve the loss of the relationship, but to focus your energy elsewhere and begin rebuilding your life. What it isn’t, is cutting contact and then sitting around trying to not have anymore thoughts about them.

Experience has taught me that the more you try not to think about something, is the more likely you are to, and then you’ll stress yourself further about the fact that you are in fact thinking about it and what you think thinking about it means, and then often react off the back of it. Exhausting!

Back in October 2010, when I was told to cut out wheat in an effort to reduce tinnitus and vertigo, after initially thinking it was going to be fine and then discovering that wheat is in many things, I went on a serious moan-a-thon. In an effort to remain focused on what I thought was the task at hand – not eating wheat – I attempted to put wheat out of my mind, only for it to turn up in my dreams dressed as the likes of eclairs, hot buttery toast, and my puff pastry covered beef pies. I seemed consumed by thoughts of wheat and what I was feeling were the inconveniences.

After a while, mostly because I was wearing down my own last nerve and probably those of the boyf, I began putting effort into finding alternatives, discovering places to eat with varied menus, and making myself food that I enjoy. As I’d felt the health benefits after a week (seriously), tempting as it was to, for example, snaffle down a mince pie, I accepted that uncomfortable as it had been, overall I felt happier and better.

I’ve seen this replicated in so many aspects of life – change doesn’t come without change which means discomfort, but the change feels positive when you don’t just sit around complaining about the inconveniences of the change or trying to force yourself never to think about whatever it is that you’re changing from and/or having to leave behind or put on hold.

If you’ve had hopes, dreams, aspirations, and experiences good and bad with someone, it’s a bit tricky just to cut them out of your thoughts. It’s also part of the grieving and healing process to feel your feelings and process your thoughts so that you can draw conclusions, accept and move on.

Yes I had to avoid wheat, but I was making my life about avoiding wheat instead of focusing on improving my health. Equally, I found that I made great strides in being happy when I stopped making my life about maintaining NC and instead made it about having a better life…while keeping my ex at bay.

To go to the trouble of devoting your energies and attention to not thinking about someone and then obsessing about the fact that you’re thinking about them, is actually just another convoluted way of giving them more attention and remaining invested.

If you think about not thinking about them, you’ll think about them and if you persist at it, you’ll eventually ‘break’ and make contact. Same goes for anything else – you’ll either slow your progress by being resistant to it, or you’ll backtrack/fall off the wagon.

This doesn’t mean you should go “OK I’ll think about them all the time” but it is about helping yourself by doing 3 things that will make your life a hell of a lot easier and over time reduce the amount of time spent thinking about them (or something) and eventually replace these thoughts:

1) Accept that you will think about them but don’t make a mountain out of molehill. For many people, thinking about someone equals ‘I love them’; ‘We should get back together’;'It was a bad decision’. Initially, you’re bound to think about them a lot – it’s like ripping off a plaster (Band Aid) – but it’s important to remember that you’re processing a situation. There are many things that you think about – you don’t attach a call to action on all of them. As time passes, the thoughts will pop in but it doesn’t even have to mean that you’re not over them – they’re just thoughts and just memories and as your life builds up and moves away from them, these thoughts shrink and don’t carry the same weight.

2) But do have some self-control. If a thought pops into your head, for all you know, it’s just your unconscious processing away and throwing something out. What it doesn’t mean is that you should ‘make that call’ or ‘send that text’ or load another gazillion thoughts on top. If you spend hours or all day thinking about someone, that’s not one thought – it’s a sequence of thoughts. Unless you’re living in on another planet, even after a few minutes, you should become aware of the passage of time. Whether you recognise that you’re going off on a thinking track after one or twenty thoughts, pull yourself back to reality instead of saying “Ah shag it! I’ve had a thought or few about them – let me just write off today!”

Refocus your thoughts in reality – What can you do? Who can you talk to? What positives can you say to yourself to affirm the decisions and actions you’re undertaking? Isn’t there some work you should be doing? Things to be enjoying? I know quite a few readers who set a time limit when the thought pops in and then it’s ‘ding ding ding’, back to life. Initially you’ll use up all the time – 10 minutes is good – but the habit will actually have you reluctant to be a slave to your thoughts. It’s about being conscious.

3) If you have thoughts but you’re still active in the conscious, life will happen to gradually replace them. The more you ‘occupy’ your own life, as in living it, the more things that your mind has to spread itself across.

If you have a suddenly flurry of thoughts after feeling that you’re doing better, don’t panic – on a subconscious level, you’re actually moving towards acceptance. Maybe you’re enjoying yourself or have realised that a week or so has gone by without really thinking of them – it’s panic about rolling with it and letting go, so as if to make up for it, you go on thinking overload. It would be better to focus on returning to what you were being and doing before the panic arrived.

You don’t have to erase your ex from your mind but you also don’t have to give those thoughts so much power or airtime. You can think about them, you just don’t need to spend all day, all week, or all month on it – break things up a little…or a lot. These thoughts don’t own you – you own you – and you will find when you put plenty of positive action into your life, that the thoughts begin to follow that path instead.

Your thoughts? (hehe)

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Image source SXC

Are You Being Used As A Confidence Booster To Launch Your Ex Into Their Next Relationship?

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:12:13 +0000

Often, when I read stories of exes coming back, proclaiming that they’re sorry and that they want to get back together/can’t live without you, only for them to end up causing you even more pain, often moving onto someone else quickly (or even having them in the background already), I get the distinct impression that aside from checking in with their ‘backup plan’, that you’re a confidence booster.

You see, when someone’s been told that they’ve been, done, or even are something, it can make them feel a tad unsure of themselves, especially when you’ve traditionally pumped them up, so that the both of you start to believe that they’re more special than they actually are.

Suddenly, you’re not taking their calls, ‘sorry’ isn’t good enough, the old formula doesn’t work, and you’re essentially no longer jumping to the beat they’ve predicted. Maybe you told them all about themselves, itemising everything that’s pissed you off. Or…maybe it’s a simple case of their conscience ticking.

Most people are uncomfortable with knowing that someone is hurting as a result of them…even if they actually have a hand in causing the pain by saying and doing things that busted your boundaries and had them treating you without love, care, trust, and respect.

Just like when commitment resisters get panicked and almost have a fever trying to exit the relationship or lessen the commitment by any means necessary, the ex who isn’t feeling too assured of themselves and even feels like there’s ‘evidence’ out there that contradicts a current image that they hold of themselves, or more importantly that they’re portraying, will have an overwhelming urge to ‘reconcile’ it with the image you hold of them.

It may even feel a bit ‘Sopranos’ style, when they feel like there’s evidence of their assholery out there so then it’s like buttering up the witness…

If you return their contact, profess your feelings, accept their apology even if you’re not ready to or don’t think they’re sincere, or even take them back, it’s a confidence boost – they feel safe in preserving the image they have of themselves.

It’s like you give them a launchpad into their next relationships where they may even feel safe to press the Reset Button and give themselves a fresh start elsewhere. Even though they’re going to be in trouble with you again, in their eyes, it’s only for a ‘recent misunderstanding’ as opposed to issues stretching back in your relationship because they perceive you as having ‘forgiven’ them, or you may even have taken more responsibility than necessary, or even absorbed the blame.

Of course this whole ‘confidence boosting’ via a ‘surrogate’ extends beyond ex’s returning.

If you’ve ever been the Other Woman/Man, you’re like an upper and a painkiller, letting them feel more confident about areas that are their ‘weak spots’ in their main relationship and helping them to avoid painful and uncomfortable feelings and issues in their life, which by self-soothing themselves on you, they feel more confident in general. I know my confidence would get a boost if I had you turning down the possibility of being with someone in an available relationship, for me and my crumbs.

I’ve come across so many people who after a breakup, embark on dating someone to not only avoid grieving the loss of the breakup, but also to boost their confidence. They’re passing time, often not that fussed about whoever they’re involved with, and the person they’re dating becomes like a ‘symbol’ that they’ve still ‘got it’, or even a mascot or comforter.

Let us also not forget those who ‘florence’ and ‘renovate’ people who they deem need fixing, healing, and helping, only to end up giving the person the impression that “Hmmm, maybe I can do better?” and next thing they’re preening like a peacock and confident in ‘braving’ it elsewhere.

Also, if you’ve got that friend or family member that seems to thrive when you’re down and almost revels in you having problems, you’re being used as a confidence booster there too.

Of course there’s a lesson in all of this: Don’t allow anyone to use you as a rainy day, backup option to fall back on, and certainly don’t allow yourself to be an emotional airbag come upper come painkiller to help people avoid themselves, their feelings, and their problems. Certainly don’t allow someone to drain you out so they can make themselves feel better – like stealing your frickin’ life source!

Stop pumping them up, especially when your own resources of love, care, trust, and respect are already seriously depleted.

These experiences are draining and demoralising, sapping you of the very energy you need to regain your confidence in yourself.

The reality is that if you’re in reality, you won’t create the cocoon of bubbles, clouds, and illusions that has you being an emotional airbag in the first place. You’re better than being an option but you’re also better than being used as some sort of ‘prop’ in someone’s life like a medal, certificate or social proof that they’re better than what they themselves think or know themselves to be.

When someone is able to present themselves with their code amber and red problems, excuses, and even bullshit, or they’re able to swan in and out of your life while screwing you over repeatedly, it’s like giving them a certificate with a clean bill of relationship health that is in contradiction with reality.

The best confidence boost you can give yourself is to start treating you like a valuable entity day after day after day and distance yourself from anything and anyone who isn’t reflective of this. Instead of boosting their confidence, boost them out of your life so you can be free to focus your energy where it’s most deserving – on you.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

No Contact: Why you need to keep your proverbial door closed…even when they try to break it down by any means necessary

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:28:21 +0000

Many BR readers are currently going through breakups, which may include No Contact – this is essentially closing your door on the relationship by cutting contact and distancing yourself, so that you have a chance to gain objectivity, break an unhealthy partnering, and gradually rebuild your life. By closing the door, you signal that the privileges that they’ve enjoyed in or out of the relationship no longer exist, and by enforcing boundaries, you also impose limits on your own behaviour, which may have detracted from you.

But as some of you have discovered, after the breakup or during No Contact, your ex may periodically, or even often, try to get your attention. They might do the same thing, almost like clockwork – I hear from readers who have exes that always reach out on the same day, or every X weeks, or Y months. Or during the holidays or whenever. Some of you have let the same ex back in with the same con numerous times.

When you’re broken up but are still receptive, it’s basically like having a security keypad on your proverbial door. Because you’re still receptive even before they attempt contact, you’ve avoided doing anything as ‘drastic’ as changing the lock or taking back their key. With the access code, you either haven’t changed it, or you have, but you’ve either changed it to a code that you know they’re likely to guess, or you keep dropping hints making it easy for them to figure it out. Maybe you send texts saying that you miss them or that you’re really hurting and finding it hard to move on and they get an idea of which ‘buttons’ to press.

Your post breakup access code can be made up of validation, Future Faking such as plans and claims of changing, and Fast Forwarding including seduction.

When they successfully gain access and are basically inside the perimeter of your heart and mind, your ex may also take it upon themselves to press The Reset Button which can be as drastic as restoring you to your ‘original settings’. Then you end up having to ‘relearn’ why you broke up with them in the first place and gather the strength to boot them out and change the code and lock your door.

Reading a comment from reader ‘Yoshizzle’ a couple of days ago, whose ex comes into the store where she works several times a week, I was struck by the almost brute force mentality of people who are trying to get you to ‘give in’ to them. Yoshizzle has no desire to be with him and is NC but has been unseated by his Jeckyll and Hyde behaviour – some days it’s like she doesn’t exist, other days he says hi, and sometimes he’s giving her filthy looks.

It’s the same when you have an ex that attempts to get their foot through your proverbial door by any means necessary…sending you dumb jokes, weather and sports commentary, asking if you’re friends yet, provoking you with information about them with a new person, sending nasty messages, sending apologetic messages, turning up, moaning to your friends, pitching themselves to your family, slagging you off knowing full well that you’ll hear it back and may confront them, making up lies, claiming that they’re ill, claiming that they’re dying, claiming someone else has died, claiming that they don’t think they can live anymore, saying that they have to get something from your place even though there’s nothing there, reneging on agreements to pay you back, claiming that they’ll leave their wife/husband/partner, claiming that they’re almost ready to leave, and the list goes on.

It’s natural to be affected by this onslaught, but as I explained to Yoshizzle, they’re being tactical to break down your defences so that you ‘open the door’. They don’t want you; they just want to win.

When you remember this, they have less power.

Don’t misread this bullshit and see it as flattering (it’s not, it’s boundary busting big style) or where it’s particularly unpleasant, as being reflective of who you are. You must recognise that when you have boundaries and/or try to move on, for some people, this makes them feel out of control so they have to pull this stuff to try to give themselves a sense of being in control of you. If you give in, with the control follows a loss of desire erection.

Imagine yourself as a door, that you’ve now closed and locked.

Your ex comes along and tries to open the door, but discovers that their key doesn’t work. They keep trying it but no result. They have a root around and pull out a selection of keys that they know used to work on you. Still nothing. They come back another day and try to jimmy the lock with hairpin. Another day they try with a credit card. Another day they kick at it furiously and you’re near crapping yourself and feeling you should cave in and unlock, but you hold your ground.

The next time, they try the gentle and polite approach with the door, maybe pressing the doorbell, and trying to look through the letterbox. The time after that they serenade you (reminds me of Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore), or leave flowers or rat droppings (snigger) – let’s hope they don’t put poo through your letterbox… Then they get pissed off again that the door isn’t open so they try to take a hammer to it. Maybe they kick at it, thump the crap out of it, or stand a few feet away throwing rocks and hoping you’ll be intimidated. You’re scared and wondering why the hell they’re doing this. They then try a calmer approach to the door. Then get frustrated again. And lather, rinse, repeat.

What you don’t do is open the door. Especially when you’ve previously opened the door and got yourself hurt for your trouble. It’s like letting someone pull the same con on you more than once. Where’s your door chain?

Yes their antics are a pain in the arse but the best thing that you can do is recognise how unbelievably inappropriate their behaviour is and use it as further validation of why your relationship needs to be over.

Let me say it again – it’s not flattering; it’s effed up.

You don’t need this type of negative attention – not all attention is created equal.

Door bashing relies on either a receptive occupant, or the perception that the person will be receptive, and if they keep being met with a closed door, they’ll eventually fade away and find some other fallback option to pester. In the meantime, don’t let their antics own you and keep moving forward.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Image via webcooltips

When They Come Back Claiming That They’ve Changed…But Have They?

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:58:04 +0000

Picture this (adopts Sophia from Golden Girls voice), Dublin, 2000. It’s a few days before Christmas and I’m making my way to the arrivals hall with all of my baggage (literally and figuratively…) after getting off a flight from Miami. My parents thought I was just coming home for Christmas in between semesters, but I was actually moving back and getting myself as far away as possible from what I’d slowly come to realise was an abusive relationship creeping up on me.

My relief at being home quickly dissipated when within minutes of arriving, my mother told me that my ex had been in touch with her, apologising, saying how mean I’d been to him, how much he’d changed (oxymoron right there), and that he wanted to get back together with me. I felt panic grip my insides and the dark cloud I thought I’d left behind me in Fort Lauderdale was back.

Hours later he showed up in an ill fitting leather jacket, with a large bunch of flowers, and an overwhelming need to win me over. In theory you’d like to believe you’d be happy when your ex ‘comes crawling back’ after treating you badly and he was ticking boxes with flowers, apologies and engagement references, but I just couldn’t muster up happiness. Instead I felt afraid. He apologised repeatedly but really it meant “Hurry the eff up and accept my apologies so that I can stop feeling out of control.” He pitched me a life where I could have a “little car” and a “little job” and go and do a “little course”, and we could be so happy together.

But do you know what was odd though? During that visit and over the course of five weeks when he pursued me and harangued me about taking him back until I stopped sleeping, he was never once able to tell or consistently show me exactly what was different. Oh he felt bad that I had felt bad about him treating me bad, but in truth he was a Future Faking wrong footed man.

“How do I know if they’ve changed?” is a question I’ve been asked thousands of times. Too Good To Be True Exes will have you saying “They say they’ll even go to counselling” or “They say they’ll never hurt me again and that things are going to be different this time”.

When someone comes back to you claiming that they’ve changed, that they’ve missed you, are sorry, full of regret, that they’re never going to do or be whatever again and yada yada yada, they should be able to tell you what is different.

What is different in their thinking and actions now that they’re saying that they’ve changed and want to get back together? What problems have they identified that they’ve addressed that can have them claiming they’ve changed?

Anyone can claim they’ve changed but it takes someone of action to show it.

When they come back saying they will change, they’re asking you to take a punt on something that hasn’t happened yet. And it can’t have because the truth is, if someone treated you badly and really had changed, they’d have the good grace to leave you be.

What amazes me, is that the great majority of people when confronted with these claims, don’t take enough time and energy to find out what’s been happening since you broke up.

Where have they been? What have they been doing? Who have they been doing? How did they come to these realisations? What help have they had so far if professional help has been needed and would they still be doing it irrespective of whether you were around? Have they said they’ll change before? If so, what’s so different this time? – Make a list.

What they won’t say is “Well…after we broke up, I quickly got onto a dating site and started collecting attention, followed by an attempt at a relationship. That hasn’t worked out and I suddenly realised that I miss the familiarity of that someone that loves and believes in me no matter what I do to them.”

They’re definitely not going to say “To be honest, I was kind of surprised by how you cut me out of your life and even told me all about myself. I suddenly wondered if I’d misjudged you/our relationship. I also hate being out of control. This whole situation makes me think I look like an assclown. If you take me back, then obviously I’m not.”

Being out of control, something that many unavailable people equate with desire, feeling lonely, fear that you’re not an option, rejection from elsewhere, the problems they had with you following them elsewhere and creating problems, are just some of the reasons why they may find themselves claiming that they’ve changed when they haven’t.

Just like someone can overestimate their interest or capacity for a relationship, the desire or capacity to change can also be overestimated. Sometimes they’ve been Future Faking the possibility of changing over and over again down the years to their family, co-workers, friends, and exes – you just don’t know it. You’re just someone else believing in them and buying into the pipe dream that they’re going to have to disappoint when you expect it to be delivered on.

If you do know it and are thinking “Things will be different this time” and ‘this time’ is the third time (most people love giving out second chances) and beyond, it’s a sign that you’re still holding that defibrillator on your flatlining relationship while wearing rose tinted glasses and the fur coat of denial.

This isn’t to say that people can’t and don’t change – hell I have, as have many other people, but we do it because of our own motivations and the change takes place regardless. There has to be major consequences to not changing and often that doesn’t equate to not being with you. Why? Because if you’ve put up with all sorts of inappropriate, boundary busting stuff from them, they know you’ll take ‘em as is. If you haven’t moved on and left them in the dust while also being receptive, it says “I’m hopeful that you’re ready to make me the exception to your rule of shady behaviour. I’m up for negotiation.”

This is why It’s absolutely critical that when they come back claiming that they’ve changed, that you don’t prompt them or put words in their mouth. Actions speak louder than words but if someone’s going to come squawking about change, they’d better match.

Do not fill in the blanks. Make no assumptions. Let them explain. For all you know, you could assume they mean the thing you’ve been on their arse like Zorro about for a gazillion years and they could have latched onto something minuscule as a way to get their foot through the door.

If they have an issue that requires professional help, they should have been doing that for a few months at least before they come rolling up for a chance.

Hard as it may be to hear, some people say that they’ve changed because they know it’s a conversation and even leg opener. Claiming change will end silence or even calm down anger. They know that they have to front like they have changed to get your attention and gain your trust. If you’re receptive, your imagination is up and away Betting On Potential. Or you’re naked.

Before you sell yourself in on a new deal, do your homework and make sure you had something good enough in the first place to warrant returning to. If you don’t, it’s like allowing the dodgy door to door salesman that sold you the busted vacuum cleaner to come back and sell you another one. Anyone who has previously sold you a dodgy relationship is only back to sell you another one. Instead of being curious, close the door on their foot or just don’t answer.

Your thoughts?

Check out my posts – Why some relationships don’t work out, Knowing when to work at your relationship and Giving Them a Second Chance

If you have a habit of having partners claiming that they’ve changed, have dealt with Future Faking, and being a Florence Nightingale, check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Image Credit: SXC

The Trouble With Feeling Owed After a Relationship ‘Investment’ Goes Sour

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:28:44 +0000

I’ve heard from more than a few readers recently who are feeling resentful after being in a relationship where they feel that they gave and gave and gave and that they got nothing or very little ‘back’. Leaving more than a sour taste in their mouthes, they feel ‘owed’ and even lose sleep ruminating over whether someone else will reap the benefit of their ‘investment’.

In truth, the area of investment into relationships is very shady territory. Just like in my last post where I explained how when people are confronted with what they know to be at best inappropriate, and at worst downright dangerous carry-on in their relationship, that they increase their trust, you will step up your level of investment when it feels like you’re on a crumb relationship diet.

It’s like “Hmmm, this relationship isn’t panning out how I expected. I could fold but instead I’m going to ramp up the level of my investment so that when they realise how much I love them and that I’m more than good enough, that they’ll match me.”

The trouble with working hard at a greatly imbalanced relationship is that of course it’s going to feel like incredibly hard work and a huge investment of your energy, because it’s like putting your bucket down an empty well repeatedly and hoping that water will come back up. Or trying to break concrete with a plastic shovel. At its worst when you’re actually in a relationship where the person is busting up your boundaries left, right, and centre, it’s like peeing into the wind – it all comes back at you in a rather unpleasant manner.

Relationships are 100:100 – you never have to feel like you’ve busted up your back, contorted yourself into a pretzel, or sold yourself down the river if you 1) arrive to your relationships as an equal and if you 2) only remain in your relationships when it’s mutual. If you feel ‘owed’ it’s because someone left some of their effort on the table.

Once you start ‘topping up’ the other party like a Pay As You Go Relationship, or doing things with a view to triggering their fountain of love, or even doing all of their effort for them, of course you’re going to feel like you’re ‘owed’ because in recognising that there’s supposed to be two of you in this, when all is said and done, it looks like the other party has reaped the benefit of your over investment.

When people tell me that they’ve given someone a roof over their head, money out of their back pocket, cooked, cleaned, turned a blind eye, taken them back repeatedly, ‘overlooked’ what they shouldn’t, and basically been incredibly indispensable across the board, I hear where they’re coming from, not least because I’ve been there…but, and there is a but…aside from some of these things being silent contracts with uncommunicated expectations, sometimes we do this stuff to substitute for really stretching ourselves.

If may seem easier to pander to their every need and even fix their problems, because if you strip it down to the basics of mutual love, care, trust, respect, shared values and intimacy, commitment, progression, balance, and consistency, it would cause you to realise your fear of being vulnerable and ‘risking’ yourself plus you’d come up short from the other party.

You can focus on their problems and lack of ‘matching’ and then remind yourself that you’re ‘there’, that you ‘love’ them, that you’ve suffered the most for this person and that it takes someone special to put up with some of the stuff that you have.

If it was a question of how much you ‘suffer’ for someone’s love, we’d all be shackled to assclowns. Pain is not love. Forget love against the odds or ‘sacrificing yourself’ – that’s bullshit! If you’re ‘suffering’, you should be exiting.

If it was a question of how much you love someone, you wouldn’t need their input because in theory you could say “I love this person to infinity and beyond!” and qualify yourself for the relationship and their ‘love’ based on what you perceive to be this grand love. Unfortunately we’re not very objective when we consider ourselves in the love equation and may have very unhealthy ideas about what constitutes love.

In the new edition of Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, I talk about being an indispensable overgiver, where I explain:

“I’ve heard from many indispensable Buffers who basically cook, clean, babysit, chauffeur, and nursemaid uncommitted men. This is excessive. In a healthy relationship, he’ll prioritise having shared values and mutual love, care, trust, and respect over your housekeeping and other abilities.

Focus on getting your relationship in order and addressing issues. Being indispensable will not address your problems. Don’t substitute taking an active role in your relationship and being emotionally available with doing stuff like cooking, cleaning, etc., because they’re not one and the same thing. A man who has one or both feet out of the relationship and has emotional and/or legal ties elsewhere will lose respect for you while availing himself of the fringe benefits of a woman that just doesn’t know when to step back. If you did, you’d soon see where this relationship really was, and ultimately, why do you need to run yourself into the ground?”

People only talk about ‘investments’, feeling ‘owed’, what the other party ‘isn’t', and only have a sense of what they’re doing and essentially keep tabs, in unhealthy relationships. If you become too focused on what you’re ‘giving’, it ceases to be wholehearted – it becomes The Stuff I Do To Provoke You Into Giving Back What I Want. That’s not giving to them; that’s giving to you albeit via a very convoluted and painful route.

If you’ve ever given someone a home, material goods, money etc with the idea being (even if you didn’t quite verbalise it), that the person would ‘reward’ your generosity with a relationship, you’ve likely already discovered that this isn’t what happens and you’re probably out of pocket too. Hard as this may be to hear, the most they owe you is a thank you, some respect (although not a given), and potentially rent or monetary payback, not a relationship.

If you ‘give’ to drive a relationship that doesn’t exist in the way that you hope and expect it to, you’re getting your relationship action back to front. Establish the relationship first and ensure that it’s mutual and co-pilotted. If you’re giving to provoke a match, you’ll wind up bankrupt, emotionally and possibly literally.

You don’t have a ‘claim’ on an ex or even all your exes – they don’t owe you their better selves, just like if and when you make positive changes to your own life, much as an ex might try, they don’t have the right to collect what they feel they’re owed.

We have to invest ourselves into relationships – it comes with the territory. If we don’t put ourselves in, we’re out. The key is 1) choosing healthy relationships and 2) knowing what our deal breakers are so that we fold when the relationship ‘deal’ can’t continue. If you don’t do the due diligence, ignore code amber and reds, or you then stall to trust yourself and make decisions, you’ll end up knee deep in an unhealthy investment trying to ‘recoup’ what you’re ‘owed’.

When you do feel like you’re owed, it’s confirmation that your relationship isn’t or wasn’t mutual. It means it’s either time to walk or, if the relationship is now over, confirmation that it’s right to be over, because if you feel owed, and you stay, you’re just going to end up feeling more owed.

Your thoughts?

If you have a history of spending too much time hanging around in an unhealthy relationship, check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Actions Matching Words in a Nutshell: If You Haven’t Got a Match, You Haven’t Got a Healthy Relationship But You Do Have Problems

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:38:41 +0000

I see so many people practically getting a Ph.d in investigating what someone said but didn’t back up with words, or investing themselves in something that looks like a relationship but the other party has said things to the contrary, that I felt it was time to break it down.

If the person appears to behave like they’re in a relationship by exhibiting the hallmarks of one such as spending time with you, sleeping together, introducing you to people, acting like you’re in a relationship, but then says that they don’t want to commit, that you’re “just friends” or ‘Friends With Benefits’, or denies that you’re even together, or says they’re not ready, their cat’s stuck up a tree, they haven’t got clean drawers, their budgie died when they were five, or whatever, if you continue, you’re ignoring the fact that their words don’t stack up with what you believed to be the actions of a relationship.

This is basically not seeing the wood for the trees because you’ll be telling yourself that action speaks louder than words, as if having the hallmarks of a relationship without the landmarks of one, trumps someone essentially disrespecting you and your relationship. You don’t realise they are lessening their responsibility, managing down your expectations, and telling you that you have the wrong end of the stick. “This isn’t a relationship so whatever you’re reading into things, it doesn’t hold the same meaning for me. I don’t feel the same way.”

It’s time to ask yourself what the hell you’re doing with someone who will shag you, get an ego stroke, play house etc but then say things that completely contradict that? When they say stuff like “I don’t see myself settling down with you”, you must be thinking “What the what now? Pur-lease! They don’t know their own mind!” That’s like thinking they’re a bit thick and need some hand holding in the relationship department.

However, when someone says any of this “I don’t want a relationship” and other such BS that contradicts their so-called action, it’s a get out clause and forewarning. If you continue, they assume you know the deal and recognise that how they’re acting is with a backdrop to what they originally said. They haven’t changed their mind.

On the flipside, I come across an incredible number of people who are sold on the wing and a prayer of words. Some have been interacting with people who have never had their actions match the words that come out of their mouth for over five decades. That’s some heavyweight Future Faking with an even heavier does of denial, rationalising, and minimising.

When you allow someone to persistently and consistently talk a good game without delivering, it’s like allowing them to bend over in your life and fart an incredible amount of hot air.

You may be thinking “Oh but they said it so they surely must have intended it” or “People who don’t love you or don’t want a relationship don’t talk like they’re in a relationship” or “They must say this stuff because they intend to do it and then it must be something about me that’s making them not do it so if I love them enough and become a loveable person then they’ll finally come up with the goods”. These people are a violation of the Trade Descriptions Act while selling you goods under deception.

Really, being with someone who talks but fails to act, is like calling up one of those chat lines over and over again. “What’s your fantasy today?” they ask, barely disguising their boredom while cutting their toenails. “Tell me about the type of relationship we’re going to have, the things you would do, where you would take me and then tell me all the excuses for why you won’t do any of those things and then reel me in again with some more Future Faking…”

I know I’ve said this many times but if actions and words don’t match, you’ve got problems. Match, match, match, match, match.

When someone is a person of integrity, they act like they’re in a relationship and talk they’re in a relationship because they think like they’re in a relationship. People whose actions and words don’t match have a disconnect with their thinking which is reflected in their actions and words, which also causes them to not live congruently with values they profess to have and desires, needs, and expectations they claim. The disconnect means they undermine what they say and do.

They don’t match because they don’t commit to what they say and/or they don’t commit to what they do.

The person who acts one way and says something else is talking themselves out of any perceived commitment to you so they can lessen their vulnerability and responsibility.

The person who says one thing and then does another thing entirely or nothing at all, is passive aggressively acting themselves out of any perceived commitment. The longer you hang around, the more they realise that you buy the fantasy so they take their foot off the peddle and just keep farting that hot air, occasionally throwing out a little action in times of panic and then gradually undermining it all over again once they think it’s safe to.

This means that there’s no point latching onto what they say about being in a relationship with you if they don’t act like they’re in a relationship with you, and there’s no point latching onto the fact that they appear to act like they’re in a relationship with you but they tell you that you’re ‘just friends’ or that it’s ‘casual’.

If you don’t have a match, you don’t have a relationship but you do have problems. No match, no healthy, mutual relationship but you’ll definitely have a whole load of mind effery going on.

When someone’s actions and words don’t match, you can never truly trust in them or where your relationship is headed, which by the way is nowhere. You’ll be left hungry for substance and very confused.

Just because an ex did those things with you and called you their boyfriend/girlfriend or you ‘feel’ like you’re in a relationship, or your feelings within this pseudo relationship are that of someone in a relationship doesn’t mean you’re in a relationship or that you know better than someone who’s acting or saying differently.

Actions do speak louder than words but don’t get it confused. When it’s not a match, the actions tell you everything you need to know.

If someone appears to act like they’re in a relationship but says different, it means that the actions are now those of someone who is not in a mutual relationship with you, which means you’re feeling and giving in what you perceived to be a relationship and now need to roll back.

If someone says they’re in a relationship, but doesn’t back it up with action, their actions contradict it or they even do nothing at all, it also means that not only is this clearly not mutual, but it doesn’t exist as stated, which is verging on a fantasy relationship.

If actions and words don’t positively match, which means you have hallmarks and landmarks, you’ve got problems. You will have even greater problems if you fail to recognise the disconnect and push your flush handle. The funny thing is that when they do match, you know where you’re at, and when it’s a good match, you’re not spending your life feeling mind screwed and ‘hungry’ for substance.

Your thoughts?

For a no holds barred guide to actions not matching words, check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Excerpt from Mr Unavailable & the Fallback Girl 2nd edition: He Keeps a Foothold in Your Life

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:33:32 +0000

Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl is now available in print – yay – so I thought it was high time I shared an excerpt from this completely rewritten edition. In the chapter, He Keeps a Foothold in Your Life, I explain how playing the ‘Friend Card’ and popping up from time to time in your life no matter how long you’ve been apart can make it difficult for you to move on. As many of you have already discovered, it can be very tricky to shake someone with the tenacity of a cockroach after a nuclear bomb out of your life when they’re determined to keep you as a rainy day option in their back pocket…

Let’s cut straight to the chase – he can’t keep control of you and maintain The Status Quo (his comfort zone) outside of the relationship if he doesn’t have a foot in your life and is unsure of your interest. He’s all about his comfort zone, so aside from having a comfort zone for when you’re involved, he equally has one for when you’re no longer together. In his mind, you’re either going to be together on his terms or apart on his terms. As a result, he’s quite frankly a pain in the bum.

From pushing the ‘Friend Card’, to poking around in your life, to chasing you for contact, attention, and even sex, he’s devised a number of means to attempt to maintain control even when the relationship is over. He can’t commit – whether it’s to being with you or leaving you the hell alone – so he’s ensuring that you’re an option should he change his mind or have a use for you, while feeding his ego with the security of what he perceives as your affections for him. He’s rarely upfront about this so of course this wreaks havoc in the lives of any and all Fallback Girls that give him the time of day.

The moment that you appear to be moving on is when he’ll home in on you, blow hot, and set you back ten steps. You’ll readily accept his offer of his friendship because you don’t want to let go either and you keep reminding yourself how he’s so nice, what great qualities he has, and how ‘connected’ you are, and how he’s so like your soulmate except for the small problem of him being emotionally unavailable and unable to commit. Let’s just cut to the chase:

He’s not your friend and he exploits an innate human desire to be perceived as being friend-worthy.

When he suggests that you should be friends or comes back and dangles the ‘Friend Card’ when he’s trying to squeeze his way into your life on lesser terms, it’s because if you won’t give him the time of day, let alone your friendship, aside from the fact that it will be very tricky for him to keep a foot in your life, you not being his friend communicates that he might not be as ‘wonderful’ or ‘innocent’ as he believes.

There’s a universal belief that if someone is still prepared to be your friend after you’ve broken up, it means you’re a good person. Securing friendship and respect, even if it’s undeserved, becomes of paramount importance. What he’s failed to realise is that these are things that are earned and if he’s that bloody concerned with being perceived as hurting or wronging someone, it’s about time he sought for his actions to reflect this.

You know when he asks to be friends after the breakup and you don’t hear from him for a while? It’s because, in you saying YES he’s secured enough of an ego stroke that he only sees the need to get in touch with you to check that it still stands.

You know when he pesters you about hanging out, catching up, or whatever to show that you’re ‘friends’ and then you agree and he suddenly goes ‘dark’ or the arrangement falls through? He secured enough of an ego stroke through your agreement that he sees no further use for you. For now.

You know when he badgers you to understand things from his perspective or for your forgiveness, only for him to go off and mistreat you again? It’s because he’s gained what he wants – forgiveness – so the slate’s been wiped clean. Even though he may do more stuff to piss you off, in his mind you’re ‘friends’.

The truth is: only people who are undeserving of your friendship have to badger, railroad, and guilt you into being their friend. If they were someone who acted with love, care, trust, and respect, they’d have a relative comfort in knowing they acted well enough that there is a possibility of friendship, but they equally would respect your need for space and not assume that they have a right to your friendship.

POKING AROUND

It’s easier to keep in touch with minimal effort, and with so many of us sharing aspects of our lives online that often link us to mutual friends and acquaintances, it has never been so easy for someone to poke around in our lives.

When he’s in ‘investigative mode’, he’s looking for clues either from you or third party sources that 1) you haven’t moved on, 2) you’re still the person he thought you were, and 3) that you’re still an option. Unfortunately, as Fallback Girls, we’re inclined to see poking around as something flattering – we think it’s a reflection of his feelings and inability to resist us. Be under no illusions – he’s poking around to maintain The Status Quo. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you haven’t heard from him, little do you realise, he may have done the poking around he needed without having to let you know about it. He may have asked mutual friends about you who told him that you’re OK but suffering (he thinks you’re still into him), or checked your Facebook profile and seen that you’re not happy or people sympathising with you (he thinks you’re still into him), or seen you walking around the office or town looking like someone has died (he thinks you’re still into him), seen a ‘tweet’ about how much your heart hurts (he thinks you’re still into him), or heard how you tried to date but decided to stop (he thinks you’re still into him).

Equally, he may have got confirmation that you’re still an option from you.

He may have gotten a call, text, or email from you checking in to ‘see how he’s doing’ (he thinks you’re still into him), or another message wondering why you haven’t heard from him (he thinks you’re still into him), or you told him he’s an asshole for treating you X/Y/Z but still responded to his next contact (he thinks you’re still into him), or you quickly reply to messages or agree to meet up (he thinks you’re still into him).

When you get the frenzied poking around, where he’s calling, showing up at your work or home, etc., it’s highly likely it’s because you’re not responding to any of these, or have responded in a drastically negative manner, and he hasn’t found third-party means to confirm your interest. While for a lot of Mr Unavailables even a very negative response is still attention in their eyes, for some, a very negative response will trigger that out-of-control sensation, and – yep, you guessed it – they start pursuing you, thinking they want to get back together, Future Faking etc. If you eventually move from very negative to positive again, which confirms your interest and validates their ego, they’ll bail or turn into Mr Not So Interested.

Your thoughts?

The new edition of Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl is now available to buy both in print and in digital formats plus check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and and more in my bookshop.

Dealing With Happy Birthday’s and Big Occasions: To Send a Card or Text…Or Not To Send, That Is The Question

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:13:03 +0000

Over the past few months, I’ve found that I’ve had quite a few readers asking me about what they regard as a particularly tricky situation – What do you do when it’s your ex’s birthday or it’s an anniversary of something or Christmas/Easter/Thanksgiving or if you’re really trying to stretch things out, things like National Curry Week? Do you send a card? A gift? A text? Show up in a fur coat and no drawers?

Really, unless you 1) truly are friends and then if that’s the case 2) have no ulterior motive for reaching out to them, you do nothing. With birthday’s being the biggest source of angst, I’ve got four words for you: It’s not your birthday.

Like your average healthy relationship, a genuinely mutually fulfilling friendship doesn’t require pulling teeth or angst. You don’t have to keep trying to force the fact that you’re friends, or reminding them to stop trying it on with you, or worry about giving them a call, meeting up, or sending a greeting card. Why? Because you’re friends.

This means that when you sit at home burning up copious amounts of brain energy with a train of thought that goes a little something like this: “It’s Phil’s birthday next week. I wonder if I should send him a text or card? Or maybe I should give him that gift I was originally going to give him before the bastard finished it with me… But will he expect to hear from me? Or will he think it’s weird if he doesn’t hear from me? I’ve been trying to get him to meet up with me or at least talk to me so maybe if I send him a message (Hmmm, I still don’t know if I should just send a text or will go for the full on card?) he’ll see that I’m thinking of him and finally respond back to me. Oh my God – what if he responds and asks me to meet up and we end up back in bed together? Or jaysus what if he completely blanks my message? I’d be mortified! I don’t know what to do. I feel like I should send a message to show that I still care. I also don’t want him to think that I’m childish…”, it’s a sign that you’re looking for an excuse to get noticed by someone who isn’t noticing you in the way that you want.

If you have to put this much effort into sending someone a greeting card or going for the low energy option of sending a text or writing on their Facebook page, it’s a sign that you shouldn’t be doing it. It’s not natural.

What’s downright scary is that often the person you’re putting in the effort for doesn’t make the same effort with you. One woman who had spent a month trying to work out what card and gift to send had never had a gift from her ex during their FOUR YEARS relationship! And then even more of you that worry about this greetings malarkey aren’t even on speaking terms with them and are in fact No Contact!

If you’re No Contact or basically aren’t on good terms, why are you sending a greeting? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose or send out conflicting messages?

When you dig deep (or maybe not that deep for some of you), the truth is that when you invest energy into 1) fretting about whether to send a greeting and 2) actually sending a greeting to someone who isn’t your friend/didn’t treat you well in the relationship, you’re far too worried about how you look and being the Good Girl / Guy.

In reality, when all is said and done and you’re on your deathbed or have passed on, trust me when I say that nothing and no-one is going to come along with a printout of all the ‘brownie points’ you’ve clocked up through life by doing things that are not actually in your best interests and say “You have done so much good. According to my notes, back in October 2011, you sent a text to one jackass ex to wish them happy birthday. In fact, as I flick through my log, I see that you’ve been such a good person always letting people that may not have been thinking of you know that at least you’re thinking of them with a host of greeting cards, gifts, thoughtful texts, and a whole heap of boundary busting.”

When you break, you break. This is not to say that ex’s don’t send each other greetings on big occasions but they fall into two categories:

1) They really are above board friends.

2) They use the opportunity to re-open the proverbial door, gain attention and even a shag, money etc.

If you’re contemplating sending a greeting to an ex that you’re not actually friends with, you fall into category #2. You are using an occasion no matter how flimsy, to send a white flag or more than likely a “Hey! Look at me I’m still here!” or “Surely you can’t dare to ignore me now that I’ve sent you this card/message and will have to contact me now?” or basically “I still want your arse!”

And by the way, this also goes for when something bad happens. It’s one thing if you’re showing genuine concern, for example “Just wanted to say that I’m sorry to hear about the floods and that I hope you and your family are OK. Take care” but that’s incredibly different to when you reach out because you’re worried about whether they’re wondering why they haven’t heard from you. As I’ve had to explain to several readers over the past few months, it’s not about you! If they’ve been flooded, the house is burning down, or whatever, they’re not burning up brain power wondering why someone who has been No Contact with them for a period of time and that they in fact treated poorly hasn’t been in touch. That is unless it’s to think “Wow! It turns out they’re not as much of a compassionate doormat as I thought!”

Don’t be disruptive. I say this as someone who has had a few exes try to drop a contact bomb in on an occasion and ended up taking over in their attention seeking or I’ve ended up ruining my own day investing energy into their ‘effort’.

You can’t just carry on like nothing has happened. Hard as this may be to hear, they may have someone in their life. Do you really want to be a conversation piece or even cause friction? Or maybe you do… Same goes for if they used to cheat with you – let their partner do their greetings! It’s inappropriate!

And seriously, do not buy a gift. Save your money, spend it on yourself but do not buy a gift because it’s like you’re still trying to continue the relationship on an alternate universe and you may even weird them out.

Maybe that’s one of the biggest things that comes out of this – you may actually be crossing boundaries.

Don’t give to receive because your ‘giving’ is not whole hearted and has hidden expectations and may even be an attempt at guilting them into responding. Particularly on birthday’s, which are a personal day, don’t make it about an opportunity to get your foot through the door or soothe your ego. Oh and if it’s them sending a greeting to you and you’re not on good terms, respond after the occasion has passed if you feel like it. There’s no fire!

Unless you’re genuine friends or at the point where you’re over them and it makes no odds whether they respond or not because you’re just being friendly without expectation, don’t send the greeting or go and post on their Facebook page like every other Tom, Dick and Harry does. Just like when I’ve said “It’s just cake”, it’s just a greeting and they don’t owe you a debriefing or excessive amount of acknowledgement. If you wouldn’t send this message on any other day, be real with yourself – you’re just seizing on an opportunity. Let it be.

Your thoughts?

The new edition of Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl is now available to buy both in print and in digital formats plus check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and and more in my bookshop.

Why You Should Imagine Yourself As Cool, Calm, & Confident When You Deal With Awkward Situations Like Bumping Into an Ex

Natalie (NML) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:18:33 +0000

Our imaginations and mentality have a lot to answer for. When we consider a hypothetical situation and lack confidence in our ability to deal with it and in fact imagine the worst, we’re setting ourselves up to fail before we’ve even started. Where I see many people shoot themselves in the foot, is when they imagine coming face to face with their ex. They say stuff like “I hope that if I see him/her again that I can be strong” or “I hope I’ll be able to resist them” or “I know that if they say X/Y/Z or do A/B/C I’m going to give it another shot/wind up with my underwear swinging from the chandeliers”.

What you don’t realise when you picture yourself being weak or ‘effing up’ before you’ve even effed up is that you’ve already given up, accepted defeat, and resigned yourself to the inevitable.

The odd thing is that with all the ruminating and mixing up your overactive imagination with horniness and then potentially throwing inverted ego issues into the mix, is that with all that thinking, you’re not using any of that energy to come up with a plan A, B, or C. It’s like only the worst or whatever you envision can happen – nothing else.

Much like when you blame yourself, when you let yourself get hijacked by your imagination and remove your power, you’re being a perfectionist. Instead of being “It’s all my fault or not at all”, you’re now going down the road of “It’s going to be how I imagine or no other possibility”.

There’s a lot to be said for imagining yourself as cool, calm, and confident when you contemplate the possibility of being in a particular situation.

If in your imagination you see yourself bumping into your ex and being scared sh*tless or being in bed ten minutes later or them character assassinating you, well of course you’re going to have a shaky mentality! They’re already overpowering you in your imagination so it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to do it in reality.

Instead of thinking the worst of yourself and ‘hoping’ you can survive the situation, imagine yourself cool, calm, confident and what you will do and even say. People who imagine themselves as hopeless end up being powerless. Thinking about what you will do is the beginning of being conscious and having self-control.

Don’t say “I hope I’ll be strong”; say “I will be strong”. What will you do if you’re in a particular situation? It’s time to start planning ahead positively. If you know that you already don’t want to do or be something and that it would be a bad idea, or have even been down this road before with them, you know you’ll say NO so work out what you’ll say and do. People who imagine themselves as having their own power end up using it and planning ahead.

I can tell you right now that you’re not going to call Ghostbusters – you’re going to have to call on yourself. You and only you can handle your situations. If you’re relying on the other party to Do The Right Thing especially when that’s not exactly their forte, you’re handing over your power and leaving your progress up to fate.

I made plans on days when my ex was most likely to make a move plus I was already keeping busy, to not only keep myself out of trouble, but to actually help redefine my life on my terms. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who keeps sacking off their friends to accommodate the whims of some guy, so I really meant it when I said I was busy…even if I’d made an agreement with myself that I was having some down time at home alone.

I find the ‘And…move…’ trick very useful. If you see them at a social occasion or bump into them, respond politely to their hello or even a little warmly, say ‘I’m great” when they ask how you are, and then say “I have to go / Have a nice evening (or whatever)”…and move away before you can be drawn into a conversation. Treat it like being professional with a colleague…which they might even be… The key is to avoid looking like a wounded animal by practicing smiling in front of the mirror where you don’t look like a maniac but instead come across as composed.

What you don’t do is launch into The Big Discussion about why you broke up, or why you’re still hurt, or what you think they should have done to change. I’d also avoid asking them if they’re single etc – that just says “I care WAAAAY too much about you.” You also don’t start flirting or trying to act like you’re friends – It is amazing the sheer volume of people that don’t recognise that you can be ‘friendly’ without having to be in a [pseudo] friendship.

If and when your ex calls, especially if you’ve gone No Contact and they do the sneaky sneaky and call from a blocked number, quickly regain your composure once you realise it’s them and say “I can’t talk right now” or “I’m actually on the way out so let me give you a call another time…OK take care byeee” even though another time might be in 2047…

PLAN A – Polite, friendly, firm and off the phone within 0-5 minutes, of if you don’t like them, go straight to PLAN C.

PLAN B – If they’re being rude or trying to draw you into something, polite, extra firm and exit within 1 minute. Remember it’s not important to have the last word or find out what the hell they want.

PLAN C – If they’re not taking the hint or you just don’t like them “Please stop calling me”…and hang up.

And let’s just cut right through the bullsh*t – I’m all for having a chat with a friend but if they’re trying to get into your pants or have been busting up your boundaries, or you still have feelings for them, then you’re not friends, which means you can be ‘friendly’ but you don’t need to hang around/stay on the phone for a great deal of time. It’s also OK to be unfriendly.

It’s also not a bad idea to practice saying the word NO out loud. Seriously because most people imagine saying NO and then quake at the thought of the sky falling in but don’t actually say it out loud, even to themselves. You’ll notice when you do say it that the room doesn’t start shaking like there’s an earthquake!

Believe that you can handle a situation because when you think you can’t, you won’t handle it and when you think you can and are not allowing anyone to steal your wind, never mind your power, you consider other options instead of thinking the inevitable is your only option. Don’t talk yourself out of succeeding before you’ve made a truly concerted effort to get on the path of change, which does involve getting out of your uncomfortable comfort zone.

Yeah it would be rather handy to experience these situations we fear and either zap them with our forcefields of power, have The Most Perfect Person in the Universe draped on our arm to scare them off, or have some 3rd party ‘thing’ occur that will somehow cause you to avoid conflict without you getting uncomfortable. I actually think half the time, we’re privately hoping the other person will change so that if we don’t exercise any self-control, we’ll somehow be quids up without having to get uncomfortable. Not.Gonna.Happen.

Be cool, be calm, be confident and plan ahead especially if you’ve been in this situation before – you have a good idea of what to expect so have a plan of action instead of looking to be the exception. If you’re going to predict a situation for yourself where you have control over what you do, forecast success.
Your thoughts?

You Don’t Have To Hate Someone Or Be Out of Love To Break Up

Natalie (NML) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:10:22 +0000

Over the years I’ve found that when it comes to making the decision to end a relationship and move on, there’s this misguided belief that you have to 1) hate/dislike someone 2) have no feelings for them or 3) find something wrong with them before you can break up.

What isn’t realised though is that by holding onto this belief, it means that not only is there a possibility that things may get a bit ‘extreme’ in the relationship, but that you’d almost want to mentally divorce yourself from the person while you’re still in the relationship, ‘grieve’, then say “sayonara”, and then skip off and move onto someone else. I imagine that it’s what those people who say dismissively “Oh it was over for weeks/months/years before I left” mean…

While there are of course relationships that don’t work out because feelings change, invariably the main reasons why relationships end is that irrespective of whatever feelings exist, you’re potentially two right for each other people behaving in counterproductive ways that eventually render you incompatible, or it may be just that you want different things (you don’t share the same values), they’re busting up your boundaries, displaying code amber and red behaviour etc, ultimately making you both incompatible. All of these things can happen without you hating their guts, being emotionally bankrupted, or even doing something so heinously wrong.

Classic examples of these situations:

While they may not say it out loud, many cheaters are waiting for their partner to do something so ‘bad’ that it would give them a legitimate reason to leave without saying ‘I’ve been cheating on you’.

Assuming that because you still have feelings for an ex and are even still hurting that the level of what you feel equates to how right the relationship/person is for you and using it as a sign that you should go back.

Remaining in the relationship because your trigger for ending it, is when you damn well near hate their guts or your spirit has become so broken you have no feelings left for them anyway.

Post breakup pretty much ‘villanising’ your ex which once you realise that you’ve been doing it may cause intense confusion and desire to go back because you then fixate on their ‘good points’.

Letting ‘good points’ totally override things that you have genuine concerns about in your relationship…even if the good points are being somewhat overvalued.

It’s dangerous to rely on extreme negative feelings as a benchmark for exiting, simply because there may already be a million and one reasons in existence before you even focus on how you feel. There are enough famous examples of less than exemplary people on this planet who have still had people love and even idolise them. I’ve read enough tales of people loving someone who treats them in a very less than manner that it’s quite obvious that what you can perceive as ‘love’ isn’t intrinsically linked to whether you should be together.

This reminds me of when a reader said to me that she hadn’t been faring too well on her own so she decided that it was the right thing to get back together with the ex that she’d hadn’t been faring too well with. The two things don’t match! They’re not even linked!

Just because you’re miserable on your own, doesn’t mean that the solution is to go and be miserable with someone else.

Likewise, just because you still have feelings for someone and they don’t bring out the same level of revulsion in you that a serious criminal would, it doesn’t mean you should be together.

Love, or what we perceive our love to be of someone doesn’t act as some sort of quality assuring, people picker. It’s like assuming “Hey, I don’t need to do any personal growth, have any common sense, use any judgement, have self-esteem, knowledge of boundaries and shady behaviour because I’ve got my love detector to identify who I should be with”.

Just like if you meet someone who is in possession of physical attributes, characteristics and qualities or even common interests that you find attractive and then over-correlate this information to the rest of them and assume that they’re a perfect match for you, when you assume that certain feelings will tell you when to take a parachute and jump, you’re giving yourself waaaaay too much credit.

Bearing in mind that some people mistake sexual connection for a love connection, are co-dependent, don’t like/love themselves, are attracted because of the person reflects unhealthy beliefs or an unhealthy pattern and may even be like an unhealthy parent, are ‘hooked’ on something that keeps them fixated on their partner, are dating out of loneliness, fear of it being the last chance saloon, collecting attention, and the list goes on, using what may actually be unhealthy feelings as your basis to stay, is a messy one way track to pain.

Because so many people use ‘extremes’ as a basis for leaving, they end up knee deep in unhealthy situations that they then find it very difficult to extricate themselves from.

In fact, this whole “I must hate their frickin guts / have no feelings left for them before I can leave or be done with them” malarky is the trying to think and feel things out to 100%. Some of you are literally waiting around for things to be ’100% bad’.

Judging by the amount of people that listen to a lot of BS excuses, engage in denying, rationalising, and minimising, avoid making decisions, are afraid of rejection so avoiding it, have little or no boundaries, are not aware of unhealthy relationship behaviours and signs of disinterest, are hearing but not listening, it’s clear that relying on having no feelings or excessive dislike makes their 100% rather subjective – I’ve literally seen some people claim to love their partners more the worse they’re treated.

It’s very difficult to divide people up into the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ pile and the truth is that if you go to the trouble of ‘villanising’ a partner, you only end up making yourself feel like crap because internally or even out loud you’ll be saying “Jaysus, what the frick is wrong with me why I’d love someone so awful?” and then you’ll remember a good point and latch onto that and romanticise it.

Even when people have been involved with complete assclowns, they’ve had their ‘good days’ and ‘good times’. It’s true when they say that you can’t just switch off your feelings and by the same token, I don’t think you have to rustle up hate or overwhelming dislike in order to break up or move on, although I do believe that where you have been treated inappropriately, it’s important to get angry as part of the process of grieving the loss of the relationship and moving forward.

It’s also important to remember: Good, nice, kind, decent, happy, respectful, caring, loving, trusting and trustworthy people break up. Yes, really. It doesn’t have to get all Ike and Tina!

Better to keep it real, have good self-esteem, and recognise when a relationship isn’t working for you.

If you try to get to a point of hating / immensely disliking someone or looking for them to do something that you deem as ‘wrong’ enough to warrant you giving them the chop, or try to leave on ‘empty’, you’re actually dishonouring your own relationship. It’s painful to be involved in a demi-relationship where someone is cruising on a half, quarter, or even drips of feeling – they deserve better, you deserve better.

Equally, you’ve got to know when to fold. Breakups hurt because they’re a loss and it involves the breaking of a relationship – trying to get out without feeling anything is another attempt at a shortcut. At whatever point you leave, it’s going to hurt to an extent so either way you have to deal with those feelings – don’t avoid them or try to get to extremes whether you’re in or out of the relationship.

Your thoughts?

Image via SXC

Why avoiding rejection actually opens you up to more & why it’s not always ‘rejection’

Natalie (NML) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:55:22 +0000

Many people, especially those with a penchant for unavailable relationships, struggle with rejection and take it very personally, which is unsurprising when they also fear making mistakes and engage in trying to ‘win’ people over.

Rejection is feeling that you’ve not been shown due care (hence you feel uncared for) or being turned down which leaves you feeling that you weren’t up to ‘standard’.

Things not working out and hearing/experiencing NO is a part of life. We all go through it although you’ll notice that those who cope with rejection, don’t call it ‘rejection’. They call it ‘breaking up’, ‘it not working out’, ‘not getting the job’, ‘the friendship growing apart’, ‘different priorities’, ‘a disagreement’, ‘they said NO’ etc.

In dating and relationships, ‘rejection’ is impossible to avoid because not all dates and relationships are supposed to work out – that’s why dating is a discovery phase and even if it progresses into a relationship, it might not work.

Short of only ever being with one person, you will have to turn people down, let go, and break up with them and vice versa.

It’s unavoidable and being able to say NO, to opt out of situations, to admit when something isn’t working, is part of the natural order of freeing yourself up to be available for a mutual relationship.

Unfortunately, if you have found yourself in unavailable relationships, especially as a Fallback Girl (or guy), you have some major issues with rejection, either taking it too hard and being derailed by it, or busting a gut to ensure that you don’t experience it, even though you actually are.

Every day I hear stories of people who are completely overwhelmed by rejection or repeatedly throwing themselves under the same rejection bus because they don’t want to deal with the pain of accepting someone’s choice in another person or their treatment of them.

They think they can make one or a number of rejections right by trying to get this person to validate them and unfortunately end up experiencing even more pain.

Or…they languish in the sorrow of the rejection and they end up living in the past, thinking about the coulda, woulda, shoulda, shaming and blaming themselves, and avoiding their present and future. The rejection triggers a previous rejection plunging them into more pain.

What you need to realise about avoiding rejection, whether it’s by living in the past, fearing starting over and giving yourself a hard time about all of the things that you perceive as a rejection of you, or you’ve been clinging to a one trick three legged horse and refusing to fold on a relationship that’s completely detracting from you, is:

All of this trying to dodge the rejection bullet is actually doing anything but what you intended because you are rejecting yourself.

The mindset that surrounds someone that thinks they’ve been rejected, are rejectionable and that there is external evidence to support their mindset means that the unhealthy beliefs and feeding the self-fulfilling prophecy automatically opt them out of anything that contradicts this, not least because they’re not participating actively in their lives and moving forward.

The two easiest ways to avoid rejection in relationships – don’t have any relationships or get involved with someone who offers the least likely prospect of commitment or a relationship – it’s ‘safe rejection’ but both still wind up being self-rejection.

I’ve had to learn to stop taking things to the nth degree, making everything about me, and seeing things not going my way as ‘rejection’. I’m pretty sure I used to get abandonment and rejection confused hence why I’d feel so terrible – they’re two different things but also people not doing what you want isn’t rejection or abandonment; it’s just people doing their own thing.

Rejection paves the way to opening a new door in your life. While it can and often does hurt, them doing what you may not be able to do for yourself, frees you up to gain perspective and be available for yourself and a more fulfilling relationship…if you don’t avoid it.

The fact is that while occasionally I see people being torn up about a relationship not working out with someone they had a mutual one with love, care, trust, and respect that has for whatever reason not worked out, the overwhelming majority of people I witness struggling with ‘rejection’, are struggling with feeling that they weren’t up to ‘standard’ for someone and a relationship that they shouldn’t have been available for in the first place. It’s back to ‘I can’t believe they don’t want me’ syndrome.

“Why am I not up to standard for someone and a situation that was undeserving me? OMG! I must be highly rejectionable!”

If you were actually in something that detracted from you and had a load of code amber and red warnings, them ‘turning you down’ is actually a blessing in disguise. Let them skip on down the street and find someone else to mess with.

Stop feeling bad about the fact that someone who you knew (whether you choose to admit it or not) had clear signs that they weren’t capable of being the person you wanted them to be or giving you the relationship you want, didn’t ‘change’ for you.

The funny thing is – you not accepting someone is…rejection. You’re feeling rejected about the fact that they didn’t change from what you find rejectionable.

You don’t have to see rejection as something terrible.

You were in this relationship too. Instead of rejecting the truth of who they are or your relationship, accept it and recognise that you’re ‘out’ for a damn good reason!

People are allowed to say NO to you. They are. Don’t panic though – it cuts both ways!

You can’t just wallow in pain or stick to a relationship that detracts from you like glue just because it’s better than feeling ‘rejection rejection‘.

Some of the things you see as rejection aren’t rejection – it’s giving you an Early Opt Out with no penalties, a difference of opinion, or NO.

Them not changing = them not changing.

Different values = wanted different things.

Disagreement = disagreement.

They couldn’t give you what you want (even if they talked out of their bum) = overestimated capacity and Betting On Potential

Even if they were ‘great’, they’re just not that special that you should deem yourself as being some sort of ‘rejection case’. You wanted different things – that sounds a hell of a lot better than “They rejected me” especially because rejection automatically creates the assumption that you are wholly and solely responsible for why the relationship hasn’t worked out or why they behave as they do – you’re not.

Don’t see your relationships as a ‘waste’ or that you are now ‘rejectionable’ – that’s writing off both bad and good times. Not all relationships can or are meant to last and to wallow in rejection or to avoid it, is to also disregard the truth. Maybe there are things you could have done differently but guess what? You weren’t alone. Whatever your relationship was supposed to be, it’s been even if you would have preferred it to be something different.

Instead of feeling crap about everything you didn’t get that you think you were entitled to – remember who they were and why it’s over. If there’s some good in there, great, but if what you’re mourning is the loss of what didn’t happen, don’t ‘waste’ your life by devoting it to taking up pain and rejection solitude as a vocation.

Same goes for dates – dating is a discovery phase! Trust me when I say you haven’t discovered anything so fabulous about a date that warrants you carrying on like they were the last chance saloon!

You wanted different things. You had a difference of opinion. They’re not ready for commitment whether it’s you in the hot seat or The Most Perfect Person in the Universe. Whatever it is – it’s not the definition of you.

Your thoughts?

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

Stop Ruminating. Stop Obsessing. Stop Over-Thinking. Very little is going to happen without ACTION.

Natalie (NML) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:06:17 +0000

A few days ago I wrote about how we need to Stop Explaining. Stop Talking. Boundaries are upheld with action and today I wanted to focus on talking overload’s friend – thinking used as a way of masking inaction.

I have a friend who spent over a decade (yes you read that correctly) ruminating on her relationship. Every time we caught up about what was going on, she was trying to “work things out” or “figuring things out” or “deciding what the best thing to do is” and even “trying to avoid making a mistake”.

This is all code for deciding whether to stay or go which means being unsure to a great degree, which means something is very wrong, and with a ruminator this translates to thinking things out to the nth degree and being non-commital.

The trouble with ruminating about something, is that you can go into such a level of deep thinking, you end up with your feet metaphorically stuck in cement while your life passes you by. There’s no easier way to sit on the fence in your own life by thinking the crap out of everything while saying it’s the other person or old situations or the pain that’s holding you back.

Exactly how much thinking can one person do? You’re not trying to come up with a cure for cancer or coming up with theories that will have you going down in history with the likes of Einstein and Freud; you’re thinking deeply about yourself or another person or the sum of your relationship or even life, in an unhealthy manner.

You might be making a decision about whether to stay or go. You might be thinking about what happened in your relationship and pondering the coulda, woulda, shoulda. You may be wallowing in pain and rejection. You may be thinking that you wanted them to be the right person and that you don’t want to have to try again. In fact, I know a lot of people burn up copious amounts of brain energy trying to ‘work out’ the other person

What are they thinking? I wouldn’t do something like that – why are they? If it were me and I did that, I think it would mean X. They said Y in January – how could they not mean it in July? I wonder if they’ve got something wrong with them – hmmm, let me Google possible conditions and work up a diagnosis. Oh my God – what if they change for the next person?

Here’s the thing: You can think about what you might say or do ‘next time’ something happens, or analyse the crappola out of what they said, or replay scenes from your life over and over again, or stew and ferment in your your own negative self-talk and pain, but at some point, it’s time to puck yourself in the head, drag yourself out of the fog, wake up and get into the present.

It doesn’t take years to decide whether to stay or go or to work out what you feel about someone. Remember when you’ve been involved with that person that sat on the fence, treated you like an option, flip flapped, said they weren’t sure of their feelings? Well that’s what you’re doing by another name. Commit to a decision. This requires being available so you can be emotionally honest with your eyes and ears open. Not making a decision is a decision in itself – a decision to do shag all. The mistake isn’t the outcome of the decision itself; it’s to not make one.

When you stop over-thinking and take action you make decisions, and if you remain a person of action that has a life, a good level of self-esteem and doesn’t treat each person like they’re the last chance saloon with the key to your happiness, you don’t have regrets because you know you did the best by you with the best of the knowledge that you had at that time.

You could’ve put in another few years in search of the holy grail of having 100% of the answers but instead you’re off living your life with no room for regrets because you’re not looking back all the time or sitting on the fence.

Looking back is being uncommitted to the present and the future.

Playing the coulda, woulda, shoulda game is basically living in the past while taking no responsibility for the present and beyond. The truth is that we could all have done many things differently but that time has passed. Investing a deep level of thinking into something that’s gone and that you have no control over, is a waste. It’s also important to recognise that aside from relationships serving to teach us about ourselves, changing you in the equation doesn’t change them. You’re not God or capable of Jedi mind tricks – you don’t have that level of influence over someone.

Learn and apply as you go. I can assure you if you spend years in inaction stewing in a long drawn out thought process, when you ‘go back out there’, you’ll likely wind up in a shady relationship out of over-thinking.

Wallowing in pain and rejection is like having an open wound and feeding it some salt every day. Of all the productive things you could be doing for yourself, this isn’t one of them. It’s unlikely that you like pain but you’ve become used to being invested in feeling bad. It gives you a purpose but the truth is, your purpose has become finding reasons to continue justifying the pain and rejection and basically why you’re not good enough. You’re actually rejecting yourself and truth be told, you’re also resurrecting and reliving old pain.

To continue wallowing in the pain post breakup instead of grieving it and busting a gut to get past it, is like saying that your relationships aren’t allowed to not work out or only you can end it. And then thinking about it some more.

Wanting them to be the right person because you in essence can’t be arsed to have to put yourself out there, is doing yourself and even them a disservice. It’s like saying “I don’t care that you weren’t the right person for me and that you even behaved like a jackass! I’m gonna THINK about how I wanted you to be the right person for me instead of putting myself out there and trying again to find someone and something more deserving of my energies!”

It’s a misappropriation of energy and time to spend it focusing on someone else when you should be focusing on you. Of all the things you could be ‘doing’, obsessing about them and playing Columbo trying to hunt out more clues, or sitting there like a CSI with a pile of evidence but deciding not to process it and draw a conclusion, is like peeing into the wind.

Yes you get to avoid looking too closely at yourself but while you may have a PhD in them, you’re skipping all the lessons you could be learning about yourself - how can you have less knowledge about you?

Instead of being an expert in your ex, or shady relationships, or pain, be an expert in living your life authentically to make you happy. If everyone ruminated but didn’t apply or share, we wouldn’t know many of the things that we do or make mistakes to learn from. Action converts thinking into a meaningful life.

IMAGE CREDIT = CYAN SXC

Your thoughts?

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

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

Photo SXC: Sue_r_b

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.

Why You’re Still Stuck On Hurt

Natalie (NML) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:49:21 +0000

Years ago, I used to wonder how ‘everyone else’ could bounce back. I was doing such a good job of burying my various hurts and distracting myself in more unavailable relationships that I became numb and trapped in a vicious cycle. In the meantime, looking around me, some people were like Teflon and seemed unbothered (not a good thing it turns out) and then others, would go through difficult breakups and experience other losses and difficulties such as losing a loved one through death, professional struggles etc. and would gradually recover over time and come out the other side.

Many people have been in my situation wondering:

Why am I still stuck hurting?

Long-time readers will know that my ‘old way’ of dealing with stuff was basically not dealing with it. I’d will my latest hurt, anger and indignation to the back of my mind and lock it up for a few months with the idea being that when I eventually revisited it, the hurt would have dissipated. A habit learned in childhood where I developed a ‘wonderful’ aptitude for invalidating and/or ignoring my feelings and experiences as a coping mechanism, I still check myself before I wreck myself and make sure that I acknowledge feelings ‘currently’ instead of experiencing an onset of convenient ‘amnesia’.

The last major (or even minor) breakups were different and I was musing on why I’d come out of the other side instead of carrying Yet Another Breakup Suitcase on my back with all my other excess baggage, and it’s because in using my old blog as a place to share anecdotes from my life including some of my angst, I inadvertently dealt with things ‘currently’, didn’t continuously interrupt ‘the process’ of grieving the loss and the hurt and ultimately didn’t run the opposite direction and ‘shut down’ when I came up against something that made me feel ‘vulnerable’.

If you’ve read The No Contact Rule or my NC support email, you’ll know about the importance of working your way through the loss of the relationship and not avoiding your feelings. You’ve got to grieve.

I realised that up until summer 2006, I never grieved or really thought about anything painful to a great extent. Nothing.

Not my parents splitting up just before I was three, the whole hospital saga, moving away, a catalogue of childhood drama, throw on some adult hurts – nothing. It’s not that I didn’t get angry or upset; it’s that I did it randomly, buried it, and felt crappier about myself by blaming myself, so I’d be hurt over a breakup in 2000 but I’d actually be crying and angry over something from 1999 or 1989 even.

And that’s where I recognise where 1) you get ‘stuck’ and 2) why you ‘can’t’ unblock yourself.

You get stuck because one hurt reminds you over another hurt – conflict, ‘rejection’, breaking up can re-open old abandonment wounds and make old hurt and experiences ‘fresh’.

This then becomes like “Well if I deal with my feelings about this breakup, it’ll remind me of another breakup and then remind me of when my father/mother abandoned me when I was 5. Oh and to top it off, if I do start to look at this all a little too closely, I may even see things about myself that I don’t feel like facing right now.”

So of course you’re going to remain stuck when the current hurt is shielding you from the old hurt and the only way of reaching the ‘plunger’ to unblock yourself is to work your way through the hurt first, take action, and face all your feelings and realisations, good, bad, and indifferent.

If you’ve wondered why you keep going back it’s because not only are you trapped in your feelings and seeking validation but if this current hurt is similar to an old hurt, it’s like “Let me avoid dealing with what I need to by trying to control the uncontrollable and attempting to right the wrongs of the past”.

The stages of grief that we go through are part of honouring the good, bad, and indifferent of what we felt, experienced and even hoped for, and are entirely natural and necessary. If you’re stuck, it’s because you get stuck on one particular aspect of it or veer back and forth.

Some people get stuck in denial. Wanting to not believe it is natural and initially it helps you come to terms with what’s happened if you have your feet in reality. It’s ongoing denial that’s dangerous because reality isn’t catching up with the fantasy.

Some progress into anger and stay angry both with themselves and/or with the other party. Anger is actually a great healer if you process and grow out of it but sometimes we can become obsessed with the anger, blaming ourselves too much, being a victim, or feeling like we have to tell them all about themselves or even take revenge.

If you’ve ever gone back and forth to an ex or are still coming up with Plan 179 to ‘win back your ex’ it’s because you’re still bargaining. If you keep playing out the drama in your head, coming up with plans or even trying to act upon them, you might go back to being angry or in denial.

If you can’t move past the depression, it’s because you’ve become stuck in the negative side of accepting that the relationship is over. You may even have gone back to denial or anger. If you’re not expressing it and directing it towards yourself plus it’s aggravating the unresolved hurt from the past, it may feel overwhelming and knock you for six.

I came ‘unstuck’ when I faced the ‘new’ and ‘old hurt’. Initially it was like a dam erupting (or like when my waters broke in labour and seemed to explode like one of those American fire hydrants – choose the image you prefer!) but it was freeing to get rid of the toxic stuff that was eating me up.

Yes remembering is painful but actually, the power to hurt is quite limited and ridding myself of 28 years of pent up hurt, anger, and frustration gave me clarity and calm. The sky didn’t fall down, my ex skeletons didn’t come back from the unavailable and assclown cemetery to haunt me, and some fresh perspective (support groups, therapy, feelings diaries, unsent letters etc. can be very helpful here) helped me to stop taking ownership of other people’s BS and instead focus on what I knew I could truly be accountable for – my actions and what I chose to be and participate in going forward.

One of the things I’ve realised over the past few years is that things I procrastinate over for oodles of time take a shamefully small amount of time to do/address. Like minutes or hours to do versus weeks or months of putting it on the backburner. Breakups, moving on, dodging old hurt – they’re exactly like this. When I stopped dodging myself, romanticising a ‘bad romance’ and putting myself at the centre of other people’s actions, it took months instead of the many years I’d clocked up treating me like I wasn’t good enough.

You can’t force yourself to get over something but you can help it there with your feet in reality, the BS Diet, not avoiding your feelings, having boundaries, and having a positive commitment to you instead of negative commitment to someone else or to bathing in feeling bad. Treating you well will break the hurt cycle and you will come out the other side.

Your thoughts?

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

Transitionals & Rebound Relationships: What’s on their mind when they’re not over their ex but they’re involved with YOU?

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:27:52 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Transitionals, people that are recently broken up, separated, divorced, or widowed and are still emotionally and possibly legally tied to their ex. If you get involved, you end up being a Buffer, an emotional airbag that lessens the impact of their transition caused by the end of their previous relationship. I’ve had a lot of comments and emails since wondering about what the hell is going on in the mind of a Transitional, so here are the key things:

Their ex. Hard to hear, but true. Whether it’s them, the things that they’re frustrated or in denial about from the breakup, or the feelings they’re struggling with, their thoughts are either actively preoccupied with their ex or they’re putting in overtime to push them out of their thoughts. What you can be sure of is that their mind is not anywhere near as focused on the relationship job at hand because they’re distracted by the emotional and/or legal ties.

Keeping distracted. Look, I get it, it’s hard after a breakup or a loss through death because you’re consumed with thoughts about them and recognise that you need to get back out there. That said, they’re with you for the wrong purpose – distracting them from or even helping them completely avoid their feelings or any fallout from the previous relationship. Which leads me to…

Impact reduction. People who don’t manage their own ‘impacts’ from relationship are far more comfortable finding a Buffer (yes that would be you) to lessen the impact of the previous relationship during this transition. You help numb the pain but what you don’t realise is that it’s not gone. They seem to think other people like you are there to inadvertently sort out their problems and pain.

Responsibility dodging. They could take the time to get over their ex, but no, they think “Hmmm, if someone is that fabulous, I’ll spontaneously combust into being available and over them.” What they don’t realise is that this passes the buck to you. You have to get them over their ex which is why they don’t get over them and why you can’t enjoy your own relationship because you’re living in someone’s shadow.

Tumbleweeds. Some people don’t do thinking. Seriously. At least not the conscious sort that will allow them to contemplate their actions and connect the dots of their behaviour with what results. It’s like there’s cotton wool or tumbleweeds in there. They’re not thinking about you or really anything. They’re numb.

Commitment avoidance via maintaining emotional and/or legal ties elsewhere. They cannot commit and they don’t truly want to commit in the truest sense of the word and if push comes to shove, they always have the emotional and/or legal ties to distance and protect them.

They hate feeling that they’ve made a mistake or failed. Emotionally unavailable people take the possibility of mistakes and failure very much to heart, either blaming themselves for everything or blaming the other party. The quicker they can tie themselves up with someone else is the faster they can feel ‘right’ again. Particularly for marriages or long term relationships, they may be struggling with comprehending the ending or be worried about how they ‘look’.

They rationalise that anyone that meets someone that’s fresh out of a relationship, separated, widowed etc must realise that they cannot commit or be fully emotionally intimate. They then deduces that you mustn’t want commitment or intimacy either. They’re passing time and having a good time, hence they assume that it’s what you want to do, even if you protest otherwise.

Feeling good again. They may genuinely be feeling very crappy after their breakup and you give them a boost. While this is nice, it would be better if they treated themselves to a holiday, a nice meal, read a book, or nurtured themselves. You’re not Heartbreak Hotel, Rehab Rachel, or a fluffer.

They want stability and are often used to someone making themselves indispensable for them. They may be the type that quickly wants to saddle up again and next thing you’ll be cooking, cleaning, ferrying their kids around and slotting into their exes old life – this is a major pitfall for women in particular. Unfortunately they’re still getting over their ex on your time and they’re unlikely to be receptive if you raise issues.

They mistake being out of control, fear of being alone, fear of making a mistake, and desperation to be coupled up again as deep desire for you or at least for a relationship. It’s not that they’re not attracted to you but the reason why they’re attracted to you now is very reflective of where they’re at emotionally.

They either believe that what limited ‘resources’ they do have are enough or a lot, or they’re overwhelmed. If it’s the former, they either have a lot of bravado or have a history of thinking that what they have to give is more than what it is, which means they’ll shut down any protests from you if you say otherwise. If they’re overwhelmed, they may directly state it (listen to them) or they may be feebly hinting or being disruptive by flip flapping – they’ve bitten off more than he can chew.

They may have changed their mind. The truth is that they often know that they’re not ready for a relationship included any that they’ve suggested you can have with them – Future Faking. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with you per se, but they’ve realised that they’ve overestimated their capacity and capability for a relationship with you and have overextended themselves. If they’re the type to avoid conflict, they’ll be hoping you get the message telepathically or by acting up in the hope you’ll tell them to beat it.

They’re learning new things. This can be both about themselves, their previous relationship, their needs, or even dating as a whole and one of those things they may learn is that they’re not ready to close down their options.

They’re feeling guilty for moving on, how things ended, their kids, or even for misleading you. Guilt can play a large part in emotional torment and it’s a natural feeling that can arise when going through a big transition or worrying about what you could have or should have said and done. They may feel pulled in numerous directions especially if they’re still in dialogue with the ex, or in recognising that they can’t be and do what you want, they may feel guilty for getting you caught up in their life.

They’re afraid of making another mistake so they put you on layaway and remove you off the market while giving themselves the option of some R&R on your time while not being in it emotionally and often physically. They’re afraid that if they tell you the truth and you or they end it, that they’ll regret their decision and someone else will snap you up. Or they’re afraid that if they put both feet in that this may be a mistake that opens them up to risk and they’ll be getting mixed signals from the fact that you’re there even though they’re not.

A rebound relationship puts you in a de-prioritised position where you have to work two relationship ‘jobs’ to make ends meet – getting them over their ex and trying to sort out your own relationship. This dooms things not least because you can never feel secure around someone that’s into someone else and/or mooning over them on your time. You’re making it too damn comfy for them, breaking your back with your two ‘jobs’ while they enjoy the fringe benefits without genuine commitment, intimacy and other healthy relationship landmarks. Don’t go there. The moment you find out, deflate your airbag and take a parachute and jump.

Your thoughts?

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

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