In any event, he is a great guy. A real gentleman and very considerate and nice. Definitely not an assclown. He calls, he holds the door for me, he’s respectful. We have fun, there is attraction – I could go on and on.

Where I get insecure is that I don’t think either of us know exactly where we are headed, and it’s too early days to have that sort of discussion. A lot of my friends want to know if this we are going to become girlfriend/boyfriend and other girlfriends (many eternally single girlfriends) seem excited to tell me how to act or not act.

Adding to that my poor choices in men over the past few years, my confidence is low sometimes.

Turning inward – my thoughts range from thinking that after he paid me a huge compliment (like saying “I wish every day could be like that day we spent together”; or “every weekend with you is a fun weekend”) – he’s about to deliver some death blow like “but I can’t go out with you any longer”.

He’s away this weekend on a hiking trip and I’ve taken the weekend to process why I am feeling the way I am feeling. It’s not because of any red flag behavior on his part. It’s all me and my insecurity.

I don’t think he’s picked up on it – I hope he hasn’t. I am determined to conquer these irrational thoughts.

Do I know if we will become boyfriend/girlfriend at this stage? No. But what I do know is that this is the healthiest, most fun, most positive dating experience I have been in in well over a decade.

A friend told me of an expression when your mind starts hurling garbage at you. It’s “Get your Captain on deck!” Meaning – get a hold of yourself, take charge, have confidence and believe in yourself. Do not sabotage yourself. Be happy.

That’s what I am committed to doing.

Being eternally single (or eternally with an assclown) – is my comfort zone. When I am single – it’s an easy thing to just “wish you had someone special”. When you are with (or at least me) an assclown, it’s an easy emotion to over analyze and feel angst about “why things can’t be better.” Dating and being in the beginnings of a healthy relationship is brand new territory for me. It can be easy – I think it’s a combination of “enjoying the calmness” and “getting your captain on deck”.

Anyway – thanks for the post. This site has really helped me grow over the past few years. Grow out of negative and unhealthy patterns. I still have a ways to go – but – it’s just so nice to fell like I am making progress.

x!

I was a drama seeking girl. Because it was familiar for me and I truly believed that was just who I was. Now l know that I just thought I didn´t deserve serenity, a family, the whole package. I was afraid that l wouldn´t measure up to a good guy. I.e. I didn´t think I was good enough.

Now l realise that I need a man that can have some empathy to a little flaw or a little insecurity once in a while. Nobody is perfect. And I don´t have to be perfect to deserve a good guy. I just have to know that I want and deserve compassion. Not just passion.

After a good 2 years of meeting EU men, I now fear my internal messaging is out of whack. I’ve met a nice guy but wonder if, deep down, he’s just like the rest – sure, he flatters me, is respectful and lovely and we have a great time together, but I feel (after repeated negative experiences) as if I’m now so needy for attention that because he doesn’t call me every night (we work at the same place) or doesn’t reply to EVERY email/text, that it’s a sign he’s not interested. I do not make this insecurity obvious to him.

On the one hand, I am quick to cut ties with anyone who is overly demanding or who has obvious issues: like the guy who told me he had 3 kids and then questioned/overanalysed why I wanted to know the gender split, refusing to accept I was merely interested to know! And the guy I tried and failed to meet up with, who refused to accept my explanations then sent me long, ranting texts saying he was ‘trying to be nice’ (how big of him).

But give me someone I like and I am filled with fear. Now I don’t know if the nagging voice is one of reason or if it’s the negative self-fulfilling prophecy voice. After all, I am telling friends I am scared to say I have met someone new, because I KNOW it will go wrong; but I so desperately want to enjoy being with him.

Long story short: my recent experiences have left me scared to love. How do I tune into my true instinct again? What do I need to look out for in this guy, and perhaps even myself?

Several people have suggested to me over the years that he make have undiagnosed aspergers. If that is the case, I am not equipped to deal with that type of disorder.

The issue isn’t controlling his money. The issue is his lying and deceptiveness towards me and his repeated poor judgment.

Carm, yes he probably was embarrassed and ashamed at being duped but when I discovered what had happened and we talked about it. He knew I wasn’t thinking badly of him and he told me he wouldn’t give him anymore money, I thought it was all a non issue and resolved.

You are right. It isn’t about me controlling his money. It is the poor judgment and the lying and deceptive behaviors that came out. He started lying to me about all kinds of things.

So when I saw the note dated after he had promised not to loan the guy anymore money and I confronted him and he looked me right in the eye and lied to me saying that was before, I knew this was very serious. I knew he was capable of looking me in the eye and lying to me about something that I already knew the truth about and that he was capable of being sneaky and deceptive about other things.

He broke my trust forever and I said goodbye.

Situation: We’ve been together for 5 years. We do not live together but we are in a committed exclusive relationship.

We had the Christmas holidays off and he admitted to me he loaned some guy from work $500 and was having trouble getting it back. The guy kept calling him while bf was at my house over the holidays.

I found out later bf had lied to me about the amount. It was nearly $3000 and there were a whole bunch of lies associated with it.

I was quite angry at him because he financial good sense is one of the things I had really admired in him and I thought we were to the point of bouncing ideas off each other when we weren’t sure. Any major purchases I had made I ran them by him first just to make sure I wasn’t doing anything foolish and he tended to do the same thing.

We got into it over this and his lying and nearly broke up over it. I felt I couldn’t trust him anymore. He promised me he would not loan the guy anymore money ever again. The guy never did pay him back either.

I thought things had been resolved about it. I really did.

I was over spending the night last night and wanted to write something down quickly I saw online. He was still sleeping. I just grabbed a piece of paper on the desk and started to write my phone numbers down and then I noticed there were a bunch of figures on the paper. I opened it up and there was a handwritten promissory note from the con artist guy to my bf. It said that my M had loaned him $900 on January 5th and he would pay him back on January 6th with $100 interest.

Ok I nearly went through the roof! My bf had promised me no more lying and no more giving this con artist money the last week in December.

So I was livid and went in and confronted him about it and bf basically told me it was none of my business and it was his money and he can do what he wants to with it and that I had no reason to be angry with him.

I said you lied to me and you promised not to give him anymore money and then bf kept lying saying he hadn’t.

I said clearly you see yourself as a single guy who has zero commitment or obligation to me so I think we should cool it for awhile. I said you be single all you want and so will I. I said that his financial responsibility was one of the things I really liked about him and attracted me to him and that trust is the back bone of any relationship and I don’t trust you.

I got my things and left.

What do you think?

Great post, and great website, and great book.

I will never be able to thank you enough or communicate enough how much you have helped me to overcome my EUM addiction and to become a better person.

After all this journey, now I have a big question and I hope you can help me.

I read your book back in October, after a very nasty break up with my exboyfriend, for whom I left my life back home (somewhere in Latin America) to move with him to another country (Middle East), only to for him to dump me a couple of weeks after. I left my job, friends, family, sold all my stuff, because I was like you say, too hooked up in my own little fairytale. I screw up big time. However I don´t regret it because it was my ephypany relationship. And I needed that. I needed my wake up call. I am turning 34 this year and I´ve had enough after having only dated emotionally unavailable men since I started to date back in highshool. Honestly. I´ve never been attracted to nice guys. And I´ve had enough.

So after the nasty breakup I knew things had to change so I turned to the internet for answers and luckly I found you.

After reading your book I understood how the EUM addiction is rooted on low self esteem and negative messaging. I already suspected that all my relationship problems were related to my parenting. My father is an alcoholic (sober for 8 months now, thank God), and an EUM, and my mother is EUM too.

Apart from reading your wonderful book I also complemented my change process with another book about healing your inner emotional wounds from childhood and reconstructing your self image and self esteem.

Is been such a long and hard process, but is been worth it. I’ve already became a much more positive person, I am truly loving myself now and taking care of myself. I no longer believe that I need to be perfect in order to be lovable. I no longer believe that I don’t deserve to be loved. I have taken responsability for my actions, for my emotions, for my emotional healing, and for my well being in every single way. My transformation has been incredible. As you probably know, in so many ways adult children of alcoholics remain children even when we become adults. I´ve worked so hard to tame my past and come in terms with that and the progress has been amazing. My growth as been amazing. After my therapy and inner work I am becoming a more responsible person, I turn up on time for work, I actually get my work done, I am commited to losing the weight that reflects my old self esteem, I take care of my health and hygiene, I eat healthier, get enough sleep, drink and smoke less, etc. Equally importantly, I’ve learned to set boundaries on myself and others, and stick to them, I have taken giant steps to overcome the residual depression that I still go through after having being diagnosed with clinical depression 3 years ago. Now I know I am perfect just as I am, and I am lovable and deserve to be happy. I have learned to control and ignore all the negative inner talk. I just walked away from a EUM with GF a few weeks ago. As I said, my progress has been amazing, and I truly feel it and mean it.

However it´s been a very overwhelming process, and sometimes I do get tired.

I get tired of all the changes I’ve had to make and all the changes I still have to make.

I get upset because I wonder why does it have to be so difficult for me whilst others have it so easy.

And more important, I am getting a little discouraged because I keep attracting EUMS.

True, now I detect them much more easily, and I walk away from them, even when a part of me wants to stick around and jump through the hoops and go back to my bad habits of “working hard for love”.
But none the less, I keep attracting these guys, and I am getting discouraged.

So all my rant basically is because I want to ask you how can we remain positive and motivated and think that eventually we will meet the right guy, when we keep meeting all these EUMS ? I am getting tired of this and I am seriously thinking about giving up, even that I know that would be even more counterproductive

Any advice would be much appreciated.

THANK YOU AGAIN FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART, YOU´VE CHANGED MY LIFE NATALIE.

I ignored my inner voice because people around me who did not see the real clown behind the ultra successful UM thought I was not being fair expecting proper behaviour from such a “Catch”. I held friends opinions over my own gut feelings which further eroded my self esteem. I held off kicking this guy to the curb for years because I did not listen to me FIRST.

I would like to share one thought that helped me let go:

Let us imagine that life is a river. Most people are clinging to the bank, afraid to let go and risk being carried along by the current of the river. When the pain of hanging on becomes greater than the fear of letting go, we let go and the river begins to carry us along safely. Once we are used to being in the flow of the river, we can begin to look ahead and guide our course. We choose which of the many branches of the river we prefer to follow, all the while still going with the flow. We can enjoy being here now, flowing with what is and at the same time, guide ourselves consciously toward our goals by taking full responsibility for creating our own lives.

The pain of hanging on became too great. Finally I let the river of life take me to where I am supposed to be. I am 4 months NC and my life is much happier and less stressful than it used to be waiting on my EUM now I have hope for my future.