I have an answer for you. Coz the girl is damaged too and no well-adjusted guy that would treat you right will want you. Believe me I know. I tired to date these great guys before, but once they find out that the girl has issues, they run for the hills. And you end up feeling rejected and defective.

So what are these girls left with but Assclowns. These guys stay around and yeah it sucks, but the only other options is to spend years alone, working on yourself, being lonely. Are we worth it? Yes, of course, but you also need the proper support to get away from guys like this.

If no one is there for you to help you through this, or worse yet, you have even more people around you that are also bad to you, such as family members who messed you up in the first place or crappy co-workers, that’s why women stay. They feel even their family doesn’t love or value them, treating them like total crap on a consistent basis, year after year. That’s how this happens.

Women got programmed to accept this behavior early on, the treatment continues, she has no one positive or supportive to turn to, the resources to help aren’t there, and boom, she finds herself in Assclown city with little to no alternatives.

So my question is then, what are women in these type of situations suppose to do?

Then, over the weekend, he didn’t call or text. I got a lame text yesterday morning, “how was your weekend?”. He goes away, doesn’t think about me, sends me a text I could send to my grandma. Then he expects I will do what he wants on Tuesday. My blood was boiling. At 2:30 (the dog woke me up), I sent him a text saying I wasn’t going, he doesn’t think about me anyway, why does he even want me to go. I got two this morning, one saying he wanted me to go, the other saying, basically, why can’t you just chill out and enjoy our time together?

What time together? When HE wants it, not when I want it. I emailed him that why can’t we ever get together on the weekend (no, he’s not married, I’ve been to his house many times), when it’s MY free time? Why can’t I be included in things with your friends? Why do you only want me if you can get something from me? I said that the pull me in/push me away thing was getting old, and he now got what he wanted…he pushed me away for good. I then blocked him on my email. I’m done.

If I had a friend going through this same thing, I would shake her and tell her to snap out of it. This website is the equivilent of that, I think. I felt sad for about 15 minutes, more because I can’t believe what I have put myself through for someone who didn’t deserve it.

This blog gets a lot of exposure, some pages get visited and new comments sometimes years after they appeared.

I would email NML with your request to form a group, or create a Yahoo! group or other entity, rather than actually post emails here. When you post an email address, you lose control over who you hear from.

Just my thought.

Brad K.’s last blog post..BR: Commitment, a perspective

Lindsay June 7th, 2009, 5:00 pm – “My Mother who had custody of us kids wasn’t any help either. She abadoned us over and over again, picking guys she’s dating over us”…..

Are we related? That above sentence makes me believe that maybe we are. (The rest of your paragraph doesn’t apply to me; however, I HAVE created quite a distance between me and my mother, just like your sister did.)

Parents don’t seem to understand that what they do or don’t do with/ say or don’t say to their children will affect them for a lifetime.

All parents do the best they can, some really cannot do well at all, and some do worse than that for sure. Parents have their own issues and problems. My Mom was drugged most of her life, once when I asked my Dad how he felt about something serious he said ” How do I feel ? with my hands ” End of discussion, I never forgot that.

Later, my dad cut my family off when his only grandchild was five, at his wife’s insistence, because I hung up on her after she swore at me on the phone. After I hung up I was shocked by my childish behavior and called her right back, but she would not answer the phone and I left a calm message. That one confrontation did her in. She is really not a nice person, so it was hard to feel a loss about her, but my Dad, I just feel sorry for and really disappointed in.

So, my parents, well they were who they were. Once I got over my self medicated youth, hey it was the 70′s, I realized it was up to me to become the self confident person that is a force for good in the world.

And I was doing great till I went down the EUM rabbit hole. Like I have said, I am working hard to get back out, like I see the light, and I am crawling towards it. Crawling, not walking, I have been wounded.

But why I ever went there in the first place, except maybe I thought I was strong enough to handle it, is something I want to understand. Maybe its as simple as co dependency/ trying to fix my parental issues, I know family of origin issues are responsible for much of our learned behaviors, healthy and unhealthy.

But I know new behaviors can be learned. This is where I think paying attention, self awareness and strength of character comes into play. Somehow my failing in my desire for the EUM and me to come around and work on our family of origin issues made me regress back a few decades. Dumb, illogical, confusing and a bit scary that I could lose my focus for so long.

But I do have confidence that I can pull out of it. I just wonder what the resistance was, what made me stay with it so long, and why it is taking me so long to get my shine back.

I am glad I wrote the above words about force for good because it says it all. It is up to me to become the self confident force for good in the world that I want to be. So, I have learned about one big hurdle to my goal, despair, in the form of the EUM, that has kept me stuck on stupid.

I like this list site the way it is. If NML does not mind us exploring our issues, while trying to stay on topic, then I think the come and go of many people is a huge plus. I appreciate everyones insights and the thought that others in the world might know what I am going through.

Thank you, thank you , thank you! I sincerely appreciate your input. Deep down, I don’t know why I am still “hopeful” for this idiot of changing. You are right, if I was the love of his life and the one who got away, this is how I’m treated? Like you said, idealized and discarded like I’m sort of a toilet paper. No more.

I think it’s stemmed from the first man I’d ever love, my Father. He has similar ways of inflating my ego when he’s with me, when he wants to be with me, which was not as often as a father should. He was charming, everybody loves him and whenever he left after seeing me, I am left longing for him. He had disappointed me thousands of times. For example, he had visitation rights, he would schedule a time to pick me up for “his” weekend. This man would not show up at all. I used to wait for him for hours and hours until around midnight on the day he was supposed to pick me up, I would give up and go back inside our house and cry myself to sleep. He wouldn’t even call, he wouldn’t even have an explanation. He would just leave me hanging with no regard to my feelings. I’m abandonned over and over and over again.

My Mother who had custody of us kids wasn’t any help either. She abadonned us over and over again, picking guys she’s dating over us, telling them that we aren’t her children, instead telling the guys she’s dating that we are her “nieces and nephews” so she would appear to be younger than her real age. Again, the abandonment was done to us by our mother over and over again, even up until this day. Recently, she’d met a man 13 years younger than her and she’d lied about her age to appear closer to his age. When she “accidentally” saw my sister while she was out on a date with this man, she introduced my sister as her “cousin”. My sister was hurt and she stopped all contact with our mother. I don’t blame her.

My parents divorced when I was 6. My father was not a good father, but I loved him unconditionally. Even though I know all of these things about him which were not good and very painful to me, that was all I know coming from him.

I am angry with my father the way he had treated me. Back in 1992, I wrote him an 8 page letter saying why I’m such a mess when it came to men, all because that was all he have treated and taught me. I wrote that he has that much of an affect in me and psyche and how I don’t know how to go on trusting men. The only men I completely trust are my son and my brother. I would like to die being able to trust a man completely like I trust the only 2 men in my life that matters.

When my father passed away this past February, I was devastated. I’m still mourning his death. But now, there’s no way I can resolve my issues involving him. During his funeral service, pictures of him and his friends dominated the service. There were hardly any pictures of me or his children. I’ve never even met his best friend of over 20 years until the funeral service.

I want to work on this. I want to resolve these issues that I’m going through.

This ex-BF of mine who’d recently contacted me is still on my Facebook and Twitter. I am going to delete him today. I want to have no contact with him whatsoever, even though he has my email address and phone number.

Aphrogirl, this is what I need, the brutal truth sprinkled with sugar. Thank you again.

There really isn’t a group therapy for things like this. There’s AA for alcoholics, there’s NA for narcotic addicts, etc. Why isn’t there one for us who are addicted to AC and EUMs? I think we could apply the same concept that AA has and continue supporting and encouraging each other. I don’t want to break any rules in here by posting my email, but how would we all get together? Thank you

Thanks for your reply to my situation too.Im trying to not take it personal but his behaviour did afected my self esteem.He would act like if being with me was a bother,like he would be always wanting to spend less time together and when he was with me I could notice that he didnt like it and was couting the minutes to go away.That made me fell bad and like if I wasnt a good person to be with.I know isnt true but it did afected me,my relationship with him damaged my self esteem pretty much.Anyway Im working on building it up again.

“I would like to thank my lucky stars that I’ve found this site.
I believe that forgiveness has to happen, not forgiveness for the person who’d hurt us, but forgiving ourselves for allowing these AC and EUM to hurt us. I for one have forgiven myself and have learned a lot about myself by going out with a few of these AC and EUM.

True forgivness must be earned, it is the hardest of work. There is a lot of good material here on NML’s posts, and a lot to learn from the insights we can share with each other in real time.

” Recently, my AC/EUM from the 90s came back into my life like an F5 hurricane. We dated in the 90s and broke up in 1998. Fast-forward to May 4, 2009, for some reason my AC/EUM hunted me down to 3 different prior offices I’d been to, and my corporate job. He signed up on Classmates.com site as if he’d graduated in the same school as me so he can see my posts, pictures and request recent pictures and information about my current life. It’s so bizarre that this guy would go to great lenght on finding me. Finally, he reached my current office and the receptionist at my current office gave him my cell phone number.”

NOT bizarre at all for the narrcisist, certainly cunning and manipulative, for all the wrong reasons, as was sadly confirmed by the outcome …..

“In the beginning, it was great to hear his voice again, but all of the bad memories and reasons why I’d broken up with him in the first place came all flooding back into my memory. The 2.5 years of ups and downs and me not getting what I need from him, the tears, the disappointments were just too much for me to tolerate and live with.I immediately put up my boundaries and he kept asking me to meet with him right then and there. The following day, then the next, he texted me and called me and emailed me asking me to immediately meet him for coffee. He told me and apparently, everybody else in his life since 1998 to the present that I was the “one who got away”. He started saying that I was “the best kisser and the best in bed” as if that’s something that would make me jump through hoops to see him. *rolling eyes* ”

Ugh, this is the thing he chose to say, after ten years, to ” the one that got away.” Brand new huge huge red flag. That is so juvenile and pitiful in its shallowness. These are not the words from a man, these are the words of a boy. But at least you got to see thats as good as it gets, ten years later.

“All through the years, he entered my mind, but I never once tried to contact him even though he is a public figure, politically in the city I live in.I didn’t meet him immediatley. In actuality, my schedule was so busy in the month of May, I didn’t have any time to see him until June 6th, today. So, back on May 4th, we scheduled to meet today. Deep down inside, I knew he hasn’t changed. I think he was disappointed that I didn’t drop everything for him and changed my schedule around to fit his like I did when we were dating. I guess he figured that “I” have changed.”

Putting him off was good, gave you time to think. But, if your intention from the beginning was to meet, it only prolonged and added to his excitement of getting you to say yes. You became an even bigger and more valuable catch, even more desirable. And this gets important when he moves on the the next stage of ….letting you go.

“True to his color, 1 week before today, he “emailed” me saying that he’s going to be out of town today and won’t be able to make it. He apologized and didn’t ask to reschedule.”

So, this is the way he treats the one that got away. Idealize and discard. Such a silly clown with such a foolish heart.
Of course, you sort of knew he would do this, but what we all have in common here is that we do hold hope and give them plenty of chances. I might have done the same thing. After reading all over on this site, about this move of cancelling with no explain, I have to say, surely this was his point, think about it. ALL that effort to hunt you down, to get to this final outcome that had little to do with wanting to be with you, show you this ” love of his life” and instead was everything to do with knowing you might want him. Not rescheduling is, of course, the big clue that ten years later he is still a narcissistic babe, wanting to use you for his needs, unable to give you anything that you want.

“Knowing how he is, he probably found something or someone better to do. He probably has a girlfriend and just happen to “forget” to tell me that important fact.”

No, no no, this thinking is just plan WRONG about you. The choice of the word “better” insults you. Maybe that is not what you meant, but you did write it.

“But this confirms that I have grown, for the better. I have claimed importance to myself before him or anybody else who really doesn’t matter. Although he is on my mind, and as much as I want to contact him, I’m strong enough not to.”

I find it hard to read that you want to contact him, I am worried that I will always hold this stupid wish / hope for the EUM I knew, and I don’t want to. Maybe, just maybe, you are reeling from the disappointment and rejection, which is entirely understandable, and you confuse that very real insult as a reason to want him ? I hope you can say, upon furthur refection, that you were confused about wanting to contact him.

“I recognized the AC/EUM men much earlier now. I have encountered a lot of them and I actually thank these AC/EUM for showing me the ways of what type of men I don’t want in my life.I’m learning a lot from the ladies who posts in here. I see myself in some of them. I want to thank all of you who pour you life and thoughts out in these pages.”

Angelina brings up the best thing to think about…what on earth is the basis of the magnetism to a person like this? My relationship was more like Lisa’s above, I had to keep it freinds becasue I knew something was off. But the magnetism was still there, the friendship and contact was intense, and had the AC not been so flaky I would have done anything with him.

While I read your story I said ” Oh no, no way” But I have the feeling that if the same scenario happened to me in ten years I might act the same. I know I would at least have hope that he had dealt with his demons, was a changed man, ready to engage fully. But I also like to think that once the email came with the excuse and no reschedule that would be the instant end of that thinking and I would be able to move on so much quicker than I can right now.

I am thinking the magnetism has to do something with the ambivilent abandonment conditioning they put us through with the intense pull in / reject cycle. NML writes that it is relationship crack and the analogy to drug addcition feels true but…. what do we really get from these EUM guys that makes us drawn to them ? Is it what they do with the pull in ? The guy that brought me here had the most intense way of letting me way in, emotionally, from the beginning. That felt like a very deep connection that I was very drawn to. And then he would distance himself, emotionally, just as far on the opposite side of the spectrum. Eventully it was not satisfying enough, the wanting for a whole healthy realtionship became stronger. And the wanting felt so much like an addiction I was not at all comforatbale with and this got me to go NC.

Drugs are a physical addiction, that start off with pleasant feelings but then once the drugs are out of your system you begin the addictive feeling of wanting more. And that also begins the discomfort associated with having an addiction. I wonder if something in the intense push pull sets us up inside the same ways as drug addiction. Maybe some of us are more prone to addction and have to learn to take a much harder stance with these kind of guys to avoid engaging in addictive tendencies. But then, like Angelina asked, I wamt to know why I even want to go there in the first place, so I can beat the addcition for good.