As not only a new year, but a new decade approaches, it’s time to ask yourself what you’ll be doing and how you’ll be spending your time.
1. Is it time to say that you no longer want to be stuck? Relationship insanity is continuing to do the same thing in or out of your relationships but expecting different results. If you’re stuck, it’s time to accept that the answer in coming unstuck lies in you. Continuing to do more of the same and hoping that everything and everyone will shift around you could see another year or decade whizzing by. Is this how you want to live your next day, week, month, or year(s)?
2. Relationships require a leap of faith. Without trust, you have nothing, so are you prepared to take a leap of faith on you? Are you prepared to trust that if you love yourself, and act with trust, care, and respect towards you and opt out of your previous relationship pattern, that you will have and find happiness?
3. Are you ready to live in the real world? Can you deal? If you hold onto illusions, you hold onto lies, making it harder for you to actually move forward and build real happiness. You can have pretend love, but the reality is, the other person’s not feeling it, and in reality, neither are you. If you get real, you can start to address your life from a real perspective so that you can get happy.
4. Wouldn’t it be better to work on being happy now instead of hoping that someone will make you happy in the future, if they only changed X, Y, and Z and realised A, B, and C? Are you going to hold out for someone who doesn’t exist yet and miss out on enjoying now? Are you going to invest in someone who doesn’t exist anyway because you’ve shrouded him in illusions, or wait for someone to change in the hope of being happy one day? Do you really want to be in relationships where you’re hoping that one day you’ll be happy? Or even thinking ‘One day my prince will come’?
5. Are you ready to have an ‘enough’ moment? Surely there has to be a limit. How much more airtime and mental energy are you going to give to Mr Unavailables, assclowns, and anyone else who wants to have a go at not treating you right?
6. Do you know that if you can have a hand in creating your own pain, you can have an even bigger hand in creating your own happiness?
7. Are you ready to accept that if you carry enough negative beliefs about yourself, love, and relationships, that you will find relationships that reflect these beliefs rather than challenge them? If you don’t accept this and challenge and adapt your beliefs accordingly, you will keep being involved in dubious relationships and feeling personally unhappy. Unfortunately negative beliefs do give you the relationship you believe in because you don’t believe in a different type of relationship when confronted with it.
8. Are you willing to make a different choice or accept the choice you’ve made? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that your guy may have undesirable traits about him that you have pointed out and expressed your desire for change for, but there comes a point where you either accept the man and work with what you have…or let go, and focus on being with someone who has those values rather than has them imposed upon them. You can’t stay and complain and will, hope, and demand for change just because you don’t want to make a different choice.
9. Can you embrace you? Warts (and I bet you don’t have any) and all, can you realise that if you don’t at least like, never mind love yourself, and accept you through unconditional of yourself, it is difficult to expect someone else to see the greatness, especially when you’re not going to believe them anyway and are programmed to expect the worst. Learn to like, love, trust, and respect you and you’ll stop depending on the undependable and recognise when people devalue your life.
10. Can you cut contact or at least accept that it’s over and give yourself a chance to grieve the relationship? Feel the pain, feel the loss, feel the emotions so that you can work your way through them instead of throwing yourself back into and at the source of pain and delaying the process.
Your thoughts?
My ebook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl is my guide to understanding the dynamic between emotionally unavailable men and the women that love them and is available to buy and download.
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I discovered this blog 2 days ago and have done a immense amount of much-needed processing, getting real and waking up since then. I spent Christmas by myself this year for the first time- my daughter was with her father so I told myself I was going to take time just for me which is partially true, but have realized in the last few days I also isolated myself as a desperate attempt at being available in case my EUM decided he wanted to spend it together. He didn’t. 🙂 So this post reflects everything I was thinking this morning upon waking: are you ready to make this decade and year and TOMORROW different than what’s manifested in every relationship you’ve ever had? Yes. YES!
My revelations about self-love have been revised. I do like myself (really), have learned to take time for me, say no, set boundaries with friends and family, pamper myself, etc. All of these things have helped me overall, but despite those changes I’ve failed to set boundaries with a romantic partner. My friends say to me, “I think you have discovered self-love more than anyone I know.” But it’s not true. Because of abandonment issues, I cling to commitment-phobes, the hardest to get to “love” you because if they did, I’d have validation from the trickiest of prey that I was WANTED. My romantic relationships up until today have not been based on a mutual supportive true healthy love, but on a power and control game of want. There’s a fine line, and difficult to see, but I feel keenly aware now of the differences between want and love.
My daughter is 7 and I refused to allow my EUM to spend time with her because I didn’t want her getting attached and then him leaving her. Yeah, I know that should have been the wake up call! I’m proud of that decision but I want to always be proud that I can offer to my daughter a mother who loves herself, knows boundaries, is only involved with people who treat her respectfully instead of having to hide the unhealthy parts of myself/my life from her. There shouldn’t be unhealthy parts and therefore nothing to hide!!!!
I’m at a point where I know that if I am to have a relationship, I will go into it only when I feel complete in the love that I already am- I go into it as a whole person, and HE WILL TOO. Our EUMs don’t know self-love either which I know now is their journey, not mine.
Thanks NML. This has been a blessing. Happy New Year to you all!
Until I read this it had not dawned on me that this is a new decade. New Year yes – new decade – no. Self love is something I have been working on and each day gets a little easier – I still fall back into stinkin thinkin from time to time but at least I am not beating myself up for it – just trying to redirecting my thoughts.
I am giving me the gift of a long overdue makeover – inside and out. I feel better when I look better – so self care is a must from a new hairstyle that suits my personality better to personal care of my body and skin. I have choosen a new fragrance for me – ironically its called “P.S. I Love You”. I tell myself that each morning as I put it on to my face in my mirror – I love you. (My EUM/AC didn’t like me to wear fragrance stating he was sensitive to it. OK can see through that one now. Probably told the OW that one too – so we won’t smell each other on him.) Then on to my closet and get rid of the old to make room for the new. I plan to spend the weekend going through old boxes and junk that has been collecting dust and really clean house! Especially get rid of anything that reminds me of EUM/AC. My home gym is in serious need of dusting and reorganization of the area. But most importantly a committment to myself to a workout schedule and JUST DO IT! I know I will feel better, look better and be proud of myself for keeping with it. I have everything to gain.
Thank you NML for the road map. I will be adding this to my personal journal and working through each one – honestly. Treating each question with an honest evaluation, creating a plan of action and actually DOING something about it.
New Year, New Decade, New ME!
Happy Life to All!
Six weeks and counting, and I am getting through the grieving process it hurts but I know it is the right thing to do. 2010 is going to be my year of healing and of seeking my dreams and not living for anyone else. My daughter and I have begun to plan a trip to Ireland and the excitement is amazing. I am going to start therapy in a few weeks to jump start the self love learning process.
I want to thank you for this site! It has made me realize I am not alone and that my choices alone cause my pain so I am moving up and moving on.
Good luck to all you beautiful women who are trying to get the courage to make positive change in your life. Please know that joy is a choice so look for the joy in your life each and every day.
I understand what you mean about the abadonment issues, I think that is something that has made it hard in the past to let go of EUM.
Basically in my last relationship, after he blew hit and cold for a year, words that never matched his actions, mixed messages and loads of insecurities. He then ditched me. Usually if I’m still in love, this is where the problem would arise, I could not let go or found it hard to. This would give them permission to manage me down to just friends or casual sex. It gave them permission to treat me bad and I wouldn’t be able to really heal and move on. This can waste years !!!! This time I did try to save my relationship, I tried to get him to work on things, I said all I needed to say. He dud throw me the friendship card and u tried that. But it wasn’t long before I saw a scary pattern start to emerge, he started to still go hit and cold, send mixed messages, have mood swings and then finally nit treat me so kindly. Everything was on his terms and held all the power because I still lived him. Because I’d been working on myself B 4 I net this guy I saw the pattern immediatly and remembered that my biggest regret in past relationships wasn’t actuay meeting these guys it was how much time I wasted! And it was simply because I didn’t let go and neither did they, so I didn’t move on. This time after 3 months instead of years and years, I cut all contact. It’s hard ! And painful because you have zero illusions to cling to. It’s difficult because I work with him, it’s difficult because he was my best friend. But I could not allow him to treat me in such a way. Most of all I know I’ve just broken a very toxic pattern I had, breaking this pattern, making changes and getting real takes me closer to trusting myself, loving and gets me closer to the relationship that I’m still very open to. I know it’s hard to cut contact, I still do love and care for my x and we had some great times and loads in common but he became unavailable which turned toxic for me. I know in one way or another I could be in his life for ever, I have a great relationship with his dhole family and they didn’t forget me at Xmas BUT at what cost?
Hope everyone is having luck with sticking to the NCR!
Much love xxxx
Apologies for all the typing errors, dam iPhone 🙂
Thank you very much for this post, Natalie! I will follow all your wise points and will change my situation…Time to move on and be happy:-)
Happy NEW YEAR Natalie, and our lovely ladies!!!
In past months I was going trough the start of the grieving over my broken relationship. My body and soul were like a frozen ice cube.
I discovered your blog a few weeks ago. The things you wrote about certain ‘type’ of guys and women’s low self asteem ‘addicted’ behaviours as well as other related things, they have really taken me aback…it was like you’ve read my mind, but said it out loud. It was no chance but to confront all that…
Your blog puts my feet on the ground when I need it most. It has waken me up from the depression and made me feel anger. I’ve been putting that down for so long. Your words are making me think really hard and clear. It is such a positive, grounded message. All best to you, NML.
Happy New Year to you all.
I just read the “Letting go of a relationship that does not exist” and I can honestly say that every single word of that article is me. All of it. How do you know me? =)
Anyway, it made me laugh at myself. Because I am that person you are writing about, and my latest “imaginary” relationships that I have been holding on to for so long is exactley that – imaginary. It was all me, all in my head, all the time.
I am still in shock (in a good way) and feeling very embaressed for being so stupid, that I just want to say THANK YOU. I now understand some things about myself that definitely will change the person I will be in the future. I’m getting off the imaginary donkey!
From a very cold Sweden / L
75 days today of NC. I thought I would feel better but I didn’t until I read this post especially #10 “Feel the pain, feel the loss, feel the emotions so that you can work your way through them instead of throwing yourself back into and at the source of pain and delaying the process.”
I realized that some of those 75 days were spent not feeling anything and I didn’t want to (too painful) but I would suspect that’s probably normal. Getting my life back isn’t going to happen over night just as losing it didn’t happen over night. I’ve also learned its definitely one day one week at a time. Everytime I tried to look 6 months down the road the task seemed daunting so I go for small victories like no contact over the holidays which actually wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
I too am redoing myself inside and out. I’ve been home on vacation since the 24th and I’ve read 2 books, cleaned out closets, rewrote my resume, went for a spa day including a new haircut, took myself shopping for a few new things, I’ve hit the gym everyday but one and got serious about eating healthier. No Xmas cookies for me!!!!
I’ve learned loving yourself is the key. Its not selfish to take care of yourself, its essential.
Thank you for this website. It has been an eye-opener and an inspiration.
My New Year’s resolution is to to delete all emails I have received from the EUM. My wise daughter thinks I’m still holding on by keeping the emails. I told her I just want to be reminded of how poorly he treated me, by re-reading the nasty ones. She says I need to go cold-turkey. I have blocked his emails, as of yesterday, and 6 phone numbers. I think I’m doing pretty good. I didn’t block him from my email before yesterday because of the holiday season, as he claimed he was so distraught about us breaking up (I ended it after 3 1/2 yrs. of hell).
Too long to go into, but I finally have come to my senses.
I know I have to do NO CONTACT and I will do it.
Happy New Year to all you wonderful people on this site.
Trinity – I agree …. it’s the wasted years that suck the most. Only I never before realised I was wasting them. Too busy trying to change myself, make them happy and please others too.
Lately I’ve been hit by a (somewhat obvious) new idea .. shouldn’t these people have been trying to make me happy (at least as much as I was trying to do for them) !
I have a daughter – 9 years – whose boundries I protect and whose right to be an individual I constanly stick up for. I have to learn now how I can do that same thing for myself.
Currently I have one tight focus – making it past new year with NC intact and then 2010 is for me and my daughter
Good luck all
Chris
66 dayz of NC, I am working on self love and shuting up that voice in my head that create illusion with him. I am not replacing his thoughts with someone who does not exist. Working on myself to feel that love for me that i never felt before. I am kinda excited about the thought. Good luck to me and all the beautiful ladies who have been on painful path of love,where i came from best of luck to all of you and Happy new year!
Thanks NML!
Happy happy New year to all of us 🙂
xx and hugs
De
Thanks NML.
Happy New Year to everyone 🙂
xxx
This website has been a real eye opener and life saver for me. I have been with the lowest form of Assclown for the last four years. I have been drained, confused and at one point on the edge of suicide. As a strong intelligent women i didn’t realise just how much i had lost myself and my self esteem.
Over the last month i have realised just how damaging the relationship the relationship i have been in for the last four years. Today about an hour ago i have finally done it. I have told him to get the rest of my things from my house and bugger off and don’t contact me anymore. Yes it’s news years eve and I my old self would of wanted to have an evening with him where we get on……. but it’s all fake.
The gut wrenching feeling in my stomach is going, the feeling like i am selling myself short is disappearing, my confused mind is calming. That’s just after an hour. I am going to go for no contact. I have had enough of making excuses for this idiot. The man is a compulsive liar and he has the audacity to accuse me of cheating on him. More than likely transferring his actions on me. I suppose he believes i will tolerate this crap because it’s New Years eve, but there is never a right time to ditch an Assclown, except when the penny drops i doesn’t matter what bliddy day it is. Dignity and self respect should be an every day occurrence.
I have read so many articles on here and have really took everything in. I feel so much better but this is one Assclown that i know will not leave me alone. At present he has moved back to his mother, he is 47 years old, no commitments, no bills to pay with a control freak mother who blows smoke up his arse.
What i expect now the rose coloured specs are in the bin is psychopathic behaviour from him that worries me. It is definitely an enough moment for me.
I will still be going out tonight and celebrating this year and everything i have learned. Hopefully this year will be a year of no confusion, lies and bad treatment.
Thank you all here, and have a fab new year.
xxx
Happy New Year
The only twinge of regret I feel now is for her(the one he chose to be with) after all the time and emotion I wasted on him…he;s her problem now, and I feel sorry of what she is going to go through, him blowing hot/cold…non-communication all of it. She is going to waste an untold amount of time and emotion on him She’s happy and in love now, but knowing what I know about him, she’s just in for a world of hurt and misery.
I can only hope one day she finds this blog and it does for her what it did for me.
“Because of abandonment issues, I cling to commitment-phobes, the hardest to get to “love†you because if they did, I’d have validation from the trickiest of prey that I was WANTED”-well said A19!
I think we are drawn to that which we know we can’t have…we thrive on the challenge of striving for someone’s approval that will never give over, and lap up the crumbs they throw our way.
I said to a friend last night in the throes of tears, “I feel so lonely. No one needs me anymore…my kids are grown, I moved out of my house, my dog is even gone. I feel completely detached”. Then I laid down in my bed, closed my eyes and suddenly saw a picture of Me needing Me. I NEED MYSELF!! I need to tend to my heart the way I’ve tended to others. Wow, what a revelation to see it from that angle. Take all the energy, time, love, validation, accomodation that I’ve poured into others, and turn it back to me.
The only way to turn the tide is to love ourselves, thereby diminshing the “demand”/tolerance for EUM behaviour. When we collectively say “Enough!” and no one will have them anymore they’ll be forced to glance in the mirror and decide maybe they’d better have a look inside. This isn’t man-hating, it’s about holding out for the love you will eventually come to know you deserve.
Here’s to fresh starts and learning to tend our own hearts first!
Happy 2010, Sweet Sisters!!
amen to tending to our own hearts and I will add these goals of mine… focus some basic attention your body and looks, make yourself healthy foods, give up the unhealthiest of addictions you may have, get outside in the fresh air more, dance and sing more.
Best wishes to all who hope and work towards a more beautiful life for themselves, for I believe that knowing and loving the beauty and joy within ourselves is truly how we project much needed joy and beauty into the world…or somethin like that ! : – )) xoxoxo
I am truly greatful for finding this site several weeks ago and have read many articles and post that reaffrimed so many of the life lessons I learned over the years. My most recent moving on moment came early this month. I had reconnected with a high school friend at a class reunion two years ago. We had one date and he was totally truthful about who he is. A confirmed bachelor, with many women over the past years and offered a “Friends with Benefits” arrangement which I promptly declined, however we agreed to remain friends. He wasn’t currently in a relationship. Things went well, we shared some good times, laughs, hugs and thoughtful caring phone and email conversations catching up on old times. He was having a hard time reading me, but I had been honest from the start. Then about six months ago I started feeling like it was the beginning of the end. He started suggesting that we give each other a try and I almost fell for it. I was feeling some power and control tactics, because I called him on some of the games he was starting to play. He was beginning not to be able to live up to the friendship committments he made to me. I think he realized that he had met his match in me. I also realized I was spending far to much of my time and engery on a friendship Instead of keeping my self open and available to meeting other available men. I probably have my own committment fears. I painfully but kindly had to detach in a loving way.
So I am wishing all the ladies and my self a Happy Moving on for the New Year and being open to the Best is yet to Come!!!
I, too, just discovered this blog. I have been TOW for 5 years… I cringe to write that. This week we were going to see the movie “It’s Complicated”.. our first public date in…5 years.. I burn to write that. It’s good to see in print all the things i’ve been telling myself… for years. I thought about how much I wanted to go see that movie with him…and that was my moment. How pitiful that little crumb was. Although i’ve had several attempts, reading this blog and comments allows me to forgive myself..and just like New Years… start again. Forgive, understand…move forward… good luck everyone..and thanks
I discovered this website in March 2009, as I was having “trouble” with a man, unbeknown to my unenlightened self, a classic EUM. Nine months down the road, with my epiphany relationship behind me and relationship free, I realise that my ex husband and subsequent three relationships, since my divorce, had all been with EUMs. I initiated the NC rule in April 2009, downloaded Mr Unavailable and the Fall Back Girl, and have never looked back! NC was difficult, but when I realised I was using relationships to fill a lonely gap in my life, and my fear of being alone, I knew I had to change….fast! While there may not be many available men of my age around, and understanding that a lot of them can pick and chose and act like assclowns, this lady is making a stand against them all. I’ve had dates with two of them in the last few months. The first waved his big red flag (married!) on the first and only date, and couldn’t understand why I would not be happy with the third rate situation he was offering me. The second man demanded sex on the 2nd and 3rd dates. Well he didn’t get it,(sex!) and his insensitive reply was “Oh, don’t you like sex then?” A classic EUM reply if I ever heard one!
This is the first Christmas and New Year holiday without a man in my life for over 35 years, and it’s been the best one I have ever had. I’ve had a great time with my family and close friends and have accepted all invitations without having to worry if the latest EUM was going to include me in his Christmas plans, or get drunk or moan about what I wanted to do etc etc etc.
Ladies, it’s tough, there’s no getting away from that, but keep believing in yourselves. All those EUMs out there need to get the message loud and clear that we value and respect ourselves, and we don’t need them and their s****y behaviour messing up our lives!
The very best to all of you for 2010, and stay strong!
number three really hits home.
its hard sometimes to decipher reality from fantasy. you get so caught up with the good parts of someone you overlook all the bad or all the red flags when it is staring you in the face. i am learning more and more it is better to live up to my expectations then my imaginary ones. my new years resolution is going to be focusing on myself.
It is a New Year. And now I am seeing that so much of what we expect to receive from them, is what we need to expect of ourselves first.
Even after we were long over, I have been trying so long to be a friend to someone who does not have the ability to do the same, whose idea of effort is incomparably small, and yet who clings to me the second I distance myself. Nevertheless I continue to expect him to step up and care about me – not only because he has often emptily promised that he does, but because I myself have been afraid to step up and care about myself. The idea that my worth is dependent on his actions, well let’s do some math: his actions are empty words, unmotivated actions, desperate attempts to make it right, immediately following ambivalent reactions….so let’s calculate all that into my supposed personal worth. Ouch. Well, writing it and reading it make the whole situation come into focus – it’s simply unhealthy.
And kudos to him, for whittling down my sense of reality. But instead of blame, I just feel sorry for him. I can’t call him anything bad, because he is the victim. Although this one time he got me to think and act this disillusioned way, this is his permanent view of how to lead his relationships. And that is sad – I can honestly say I wish for him that one day he will know what love is. I do, unlike him I was very lucky to learn it from my mom and dad. And I know that I have the best chances to heal, move on, and find it. With Extreme Gratitude To You, NML.
I discovered this site on Chirstmas 🙂 this was the best Christmas present I ever gave myself… or rather you gave me NML. Bless you!
So here we go, this new year to me wil be:
New thoughts -> new actions -> new habits -> new behaviours…new me…
This new me will not include any assclown who was, or rather, was not, in my life up until end 2009.
mm mm feels good to be free….