Welcome to another episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions.
In episode 75, I cover:
#relationship goals: I was a guest on the Melanin Millennials podcast earlier this week for their relationships special and we got onto the topic of people posting photos etc with the hashtag ‘relationshipgoals’ and aspiring to other people’s relationships. This got me thinking about how we sometimes put our relationships under pressure to ‘hit’ goals but also how our perception of other people’s relationships is often projection not reality.
The Common Denominator: I explain what it means when we recognise that we are the only person who shows up to every scene, act and moment of our life, so if there are recurring themes in our hurts, frustrations etc, we need to be willing to examine our side of the street.
Links mentioned
It’s OK to want to love and be loved: I talk about why it’s a very real need and desire to love and be loved, but whether we want a relationship or not, it needs to be from a positive place.
Links
- About Loving You First
- Valentine’s Day: Notes On Love From Me To You
- 12 Empowering Thoughts for Valentines Day
- What is love and a good relationship?
- Keeping It Real About Valentines Day
- Love, Care, Trust & Respect book
Listener Question: How do I stop feeling guilty over my breakup that I didn’t even instigate?
What I Learned This Week: Sometimes we expect too much of ourselves and we have to cut us some slack.
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Listener questions can be emailed to podcast AT baggagereclaim DOT com and if there’s a topic you’d love me to talk about, let me know!
Nat xxx
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Repost …seeking advice …
I’m here again…
It’s 1 in the morning and I realized that I have to get back to work and normal life tomorrow. I posted here several times in the past few months about my involvement with a man I was dating who wouldn’t commit to me 5 months into it. I was unhappy and I decided to end things right before New Years day but I think I did this thinking this would make him combust to wanting to being with me considering he was about to lose me. Of course… that was an illusion.
Not sure what it is, but I can’t seem to stop crying myself to sleep every night. I lost a sense of who I was, stopped going to work as much, stopped eating…and I honestly hope my daughter doesn’t feel it because I try to be really happy around her little soul. This all just hurts so bad. I reached out to him about 2 wks ago…asked if he was dating again, he said he was. I asked if he was having sex…he said he was…and this broke me to pieces. I remember driving as I read his text and had to pull over because I felt like I was having a panic attack and I couldn’t breath.
He claims he ended things because he needed to figure out who he was and what he wanted out of life. 37 year old man and still searching…okay. Said that he is casually dating and that there are plenty of women out there who want sex no strings attached. He tried to force the friend thing on me and I wasn’t having it because I wanted more. Said that he wasn’t sleeping with me as much because I got too comfortable around him…wearing sweats and a t-shirt everytime he would come around and that he never had to go through that with any of his exes. Said that I became too much for him…I complained too much about my expectations not being met and pressured him too much for a relationship even though he was at my place almost every day and our kids were spending tons of time together and i was cooking for him and washing his clothes and basically being a girlfriend to him.
Funny though, when I confronted this man about why he still talked to his ex or why he still had a dating profile on his phone…he said that these are things he would only give up if and when he was in a relationship and that those things didn’t really matter to him that it was just my own insecurities. I’m 27 and i’ve been in almost 10 emotionally unavailable relationships my whole life. i don’t even know what a relationship is supposed to look like and this was the closest I got to experiencing it but he leaves and moves on so quickly and sleeps with someone else…like I meant nothing.
Why am I still stuck on hurt…? why am I holding on to the idea he will find himself and come back running? why am I still trying to understand why this ended when I felt like I had finally fallen in love with my best friend? why have I made myself a complete fool to him to a point where he no longer even responds to my texts/calls…? when does this pain end ????
1. I think you are right, I might honestly be trying to avoid intimacy and this is the reason why I lack friends. I realized that my people-pleasing around all sorts of relationships led to a detriment on my part. I gave so much that sometimes I didn’t even have rent money and I did this with both the people I was dating and my friends. Every time my girlfriends had birthday parties for their children or baby showers, I always aimed to look like I outdid everyones gifts, I was always there when they called me at 4am for advise, always there to pick up the tabs when we went out and I started to look back and realize that nobody was ever there for me in return. All they did was take, take, take and this is something I felt like I could only stop once I removed myself from the situation.
2. With this last guy I dated about 5 months, I know I shouldn’t have asked him if he was dating or sleeping around but I sort of wanted more of a reason to stop crying every night and to get on with my life. I wasn’t surprised by his his response but it pierced me so deep because I couldn’t believe that it was just that easy for him. How could he just up and move on like what we had meant nothing. So i’ve been texting and trying to call, begging to see him, begging to talk to him….telling him i’m hurting and I just want him to help me feel better of course most times I never get a response or he tells me that i’m doing too much. I just can’t believe this is the same person I told I loved…and I genuinely felt like I did.
3. My daughter is 8, his daughter was 10. We spent a lot of time in my house because he still lived with his mom. So on weekends we would travel with the kids sometimes and this is the first man I ever introduced my child to because for the first time in my LIFE, I felt like I was in a relationship. It wasn’t mutually fulfilling, he hadn’t committed to me, but it had something everything else lacked. It had consistency, respect, care and trust. For once I didn’t feel like I was getting played, for once, I met someone who ALWAYS wanted to see me, who was never on his phone, not on social media, who helped me with fixing stuff around the house, being a best friend, listening to me and being there even when I needed someone to talk to at an unGodly hour. It was evolving so I just felt like he needed more time to commit but I didn’t doubt we were getting there.
4. Sometimes I feel like I ruined it because yes, like he said I might have got too comfortable. I didn’t understand why he didn’t want to sleep with me or kiss me as much anymore and he blamed it on the fact I was always in sweats and a t-shirt. Said he is a visual person and I acted as though I didn’t need to win his affection. I remember telling him that I didn’t feel comfortable that he was still friends with his ex of 3yrs or that he was still on a dating website and he goes on to tell me that those are things he would only be willing to sacrifice if he was in a relationship and that I was demanding of things too early when I shouldn’t have been concerned yet. He said that I brought up concerns too much. Every day I had something to complain about, every day he was falling short on a certain aspect and I wasn’t giving him a chance to figure things out. So sometimes he didn’t even want to come over afraid it would be an argument…but in those times sometimes I slept on my own couch crying myself to sleep as he slept comfortably in my bed because I was un happy with the fact this man still hadn’t committed to me and afraid it would end up like every emotionally unavailable relationship I had been in that he knew about. At one point or other, he actually told me that maybe the reason all those men didn’t commit to me, was because of something on my part. Said it was hard to believe that i’ve been single 5 years and just attracting emotionally unavailable men…something must be wrong with me…why didn’t they commit to me. He said that he thinks I might have been putting too much pressure on them to commit instead of just going with the flow. Could he be right? I might have acted out of fear. Before him, I had dated someone 3 months who told me after the fact he was too busy for a relationship, before that the man went back to his ex and actually ghosted me, before than I dated someone 9 months who I found out I was rebound for, before that I dated someone 6 months only to find out he had a gf, before that I dated someone out of state only to find out he was a socio path who admitted to me that he was still healing from his ex after we dated almost a year…before that I dated someone who was back and forth with his ex for 6 months, then dated someone for a month who moved to Germany and got married. So I meet people now and say i’ve been single since 2012 and it’s always a red flag to them because it raises the question…what’s wrong with me?
For some strange reason I feel like I really dropped the ball in this past involvement because maybe if I had just shut up and just gone with his flow….maybe i’d have the relationship I desired. Who knows…if it would have led to that. I complained about the fact he never took me out, I was always taking him out, I got him so many things for Christmas and his daughter and he barely got me anything, I complained about our lack of affection, couldn’t understand how we could spend a week together and he wouldn’t kiss me, I complained about the fact he didn’t allow me to have boundaries around sex or seeing each other because he had boundaries around commitments. He would say that he had uncertainties, say that he wanted to make sure he wasn’t just with me because it was convenient. When he went to strip clubs I felt uneasy because I didn’t know why he needed to go to these places and he complained that i was suffocating him and that I needed a hobby…had the nerve to say I needed to spend time with my friends. Said he thought that me and my daughter have a weird friendship and that she doesn’t always listen to me. He never complimented me because he believed I should already be confident. Sometimes I wanted to go through his phone because I just honestly believed it was something holding him back. He felt like was never good enough and i’m here feeling like I lost a best friend.
I can’t even begin to explain the amount of pain in my heart right now. Me taking days off work, barely eating…this ended in December and i’m still here feeling like it ended this morning almost a month and a half later. I’ve been here before, I am always crying and unhappy about my involvements with men but I don’t know why I don’t get used to it cause literally every year, every DAMN year, at least twice if not 3 times, I am going through a period of PAIN & i’m not sure what this is doing to me internally. I’m about to be 28…still single. Yet i’ve somehow loved and lost and my last and only relationship with my childs father to be honest couldn’t even be called a relationship. He was never there… it just had a title that meant nothing.
I might have been trying to seek validation…I wanted to be CHOSEN. I wanted this to be IT. I’m tired of this chase… I want to find someone that i want but that most importantly WANTS ME TO. & I feel like I just wish he would wake up and just give me a second chance… I can dress sexy every once in a while, I can tone down on bringing up issues every night, I can be more secure in myself so i’m not wondering if he’s being loyal when he’s out with his unfaithful married friends, I can RELAX. They always told me that I was too intense, too passionate and that I needed to RELAX and let things flow. When do I need to step back and look at my fault in all this? It can’t truly be all the men that i’m dating. Isn’t the whole idea of getting relationship simply about accepting someone for who they are and vice versa and moving from there? Was I wrong for trying to make him take initiative, trying to make him care more, trying to make him want to attend my family functions…
He said he needed to work on himself and he couldn’t do that with me in the picture so he completely dismissed me from his life. He never thinks of me, never texts me first to say hi…nothing. Just said he needed to work on himself as a man and feels like he never really took the time to be single since his last relationship to really figure out what he really needs. He said that he doesn’t want me to wait for him but that who knows…maybe once he gets himself together we can try again but that’s not even in his thought process. He said the girl he is sleeping with now is just a friend with benefits and they have an ‘understanding.’ Said he loves sex and the attention of a woman so just because he is trying to find himself doesn’t mean he has to be alone in the process.. I’m just wondering… should I wait? Just give him time and reach out a few months from now and see if he is willing to try again? I really think it was timing that ruined things between us but I honestly can’t even entertain the idea of being with someone else right now… but maybe he just needs time and maybe so do I?
Oh Cycles….this guy isn’t worth it. Nothing that you did caused him to leave, and moreover, he wasn’t a good partner to you in the first place.
When someone tells you that they don’t want a relationship, accept it. Please don’t waste any time hoping for him to come back – if he does, it will just be more of the same.
Cut contact. I know it hurts so much right now, but I promise that you’ll look back at this one day and wonder what you even saw in this guy. The first step in healing is to stop reaching out to this guy and causing yourself even more pain.
I’d suggest counselling to work through this and to undercover the reasons behind some unhealthy relationship patterns. Take some time to focus on healing and on yourself and your daughter.
So cut contact with him you will see him come crawling back in good time …. he’s a messer and seems to love the chase and the casual thing so maybe he’s not right for you anyway. Stay strong and think of yourself and how your feeling right now … hopefully you won’t want to continue feeling that way and leave him to himself and find yourself a better more suitable man for you .. x block him completely so your not sitting there waiting it’s so much easier than knowing he could contact you… if he is blocked he doesn’t get that choice xxx
Hello Natalie,
I was just wondering if you were still doing “Why Did We Break Up?” I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed those episodes and I wondered if there were any plans for there to be more of them. Thank you.
Hi Freedom Tastes of Reality. Yes, I will be. I’m bringing them back in the Spring. And thank you!
Looking forward to it. That is great to hear. Thanks so much for all the good work you do.
Dear Natalie,
Just wanted to tell you I’m very sorry to hear about your dad’s illness. I know it’s been going on for a while now but i kind of hoped there could still be a way out. There’s so little one can say except I hope he’s not going through much pain and that doctors are doing their best to make him as comfortable as possible. You’re going through such a lot right now, and yet here you are, continually trying to make us all feel better and encouraging us to take care of us. Thank you for being such a loving person (and, of course, for this timely post). It’s so great that you’re sharing BR with us all. Please don’t forget to take care of you, too!!
Love,
Maria
Thank you so much, Maria. I’m very touched by your message. I will be taking some time off soon as I need to make space just to ‘be’ and deal with the upcoming loss. Take care of yourself xxx
Cycles,
This man sounds like a narcissist. Not worth your time or pain. Not someone capable nor interested in changing. You have to move on.
@cycles, all I could hear when I was reading this is that this guy loves women and he wants to sleep around. The fact that he was annoyed that you wanted a relationship and tended to push you away; the things Hes said and the fact that he wants time away from you to find himself? This is all guy speak for saying, “I don’t want you to think I’m a dog, so im going to put thisnin soft terms. I want to sleep with other women.”
Evidence:
– goea to the strippers
– hangs out with unfaithful guy friends where they can hook up
– doesn’t want a relationship with you and says you want too much from him but he is more than happy to hang out and have you sleep with him and do his laundry
– says he’s a visual person, so dress up sexy
– is still on dating apps and texts with ex girlfriends
– is already sleeping with other women
– says he didn’t get a chance to be single
He might be using language like, I need to find out who I am, etc. reeks of a man who wants to sleep with other women. He’s just saying it in words you want to hear so as either to look good or not hurt your feelings.
So knowing all that, I’d say there’s only one path to take here.. Onwards and upwards, away from this nightmare of a man who clearly doesn’t love you (and really never will). I don’t say that to make you feel bad: I doubt he can really love anyone.
I dated a similar man for about a year and the breakup was so insanely painful! In many ways he was exactly who I always wanted to be with, but in reality he was missing some very key pieces: loving me entirely and he was a narcissist. It was doomed from the start because of who he is, but I fought hard to make it work – to bend in everyday he seemed to want me to and to do whatever I could to turn him and the relationship into what I thought it could/would become. It never did.
My advice to you cycles would’ve to take a huge step back. Print yourself a calendar and set a goal of no contact for a month. And then after that make it two, and then three and keep going. This man is bad news for you and for your life. If you feel this bad right now, I think it’s toxic for you to stay around and be in contact with him. You need to make a list of everything wrong with him and why you wouldnt be happy together in the long run and tape it to your bathroom mirror. You need to get away from him for yourself and for your daughter. I say this as a parent who went through a very bad spell after the breakup I mentioned. So bad and in prolonged the pain and exacerbated it by being in touch. This mans is never going to be the man that you thought he was for you and the. Man that you with he was in your life. That man exists and you need to get well and put this in the past so that you can meet him (if that’s what you want).
You have a lot of exes, but it sounds like there were some legitimately hard circumstances and men not over their exes. So I wouldn’t get too worked up about yourself over that. If anything I think you need to build yourself esteem. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider the themes of the feedback and see if there are ways to improve yourself for future – a good practice for all of. But be kind to yourself. You’re dealing with something very difficult that noone deserves: heartbreak. Grieve it though and move on.. This is not the man for you.
Cycles, what country do you live in? I saw a previous comment of yours saying you can’t afford therapy, if you are in Australia, you can get 10 heavily discounted psychologist sessions with a referral from your GP
This man will not change, he will not give you the relationship you want.
Would you want your child to be involved with someone like this, treated like this or in a situation like this when they grow up? What would you say to your child if they were? This is what you need to tell yourself.
It hurts like hell now but I hope this situation is the breaking point in these “cycles”
Hey Natalie! Thanks again for a great episode. I was looking to see if you have a meme re unconditional love as your definition is spot on. You said that its about loving someone through every circumstance and not whatever they do to you? I would really love to hear more about this as there’s so much online regarding unconditional love and that it’s about sticking with someone even if they mistreat you!
I’ve read blogs about that too Lizab! I used to believe them. The message was always: If you love someone enough, they will eventually turn around and start appreciating you. Such a croc. Thank god I never truly tested it out for very long!
Ugh, talk about expecting too much from myself! Or was I stupidly naive and I should’ve expected more? should’ve I known better?
I feel sooo betrayed and hurt right now by a guy who I believed was my friend and who i wanted to be more. He’s strung me along. And now I find out he was hooking up with another woman behind my back. All the while telling me they were “just friends” and now I find out through the grapevine that they might have just become an official relationship?!!
Oh god I feel so dumb! I’ve been reading baggage reclaim for almost 2 years! I should know better. I’m still a terrible judge of character, obviously. I can’t believe it. I feel so hurt.
I get that he didn’t have an obligation as a boyfriend to let me know whats going on. But as a friend I expected more. And yes I’ve read all the posts NML has written about friendship and sex and entanglements. I thought I’d be the exception to the rule. What an idiot!!!
So_True,
Don’t be so hard on yourself. You aren’t an idiot for trusting someone you thought was a friend. It sounds as if you had feelings for him all along and these feelings clouded your judgement just a little. The fact that he chose to lie about the other woman speaks for itself. He knew it was not okay or he would have come clean.
You are better off without this guy. Yeah, it sucks that he is with someone else, but he doesn’t sound anything like good relationship material.
Thanks Stephanie! You’re correct, I definitely developed feelings for him during our friendship. The funny thing was, he was interested in me first. (Yes I believe he was sleeping with her at the time, as I have now discovered). But I wasn’t ready at that time to be with him as I was on a dating hiatus and trying to figure some things out for myself. Plus I had many reservations about him.
Over time I saw that I was right. He’s a very selfish, unavailable person. He smokes lots of weed just to be able to function like a normal person. Which isn’t healthy. I know he uses it cover up plenty of issues. But still I remained friends with him. I’ve wanted to cut him out of my life so many times.
The truth is, I’m alone in another country and I was a bit desperate about clinging on to any friend I had. So I kept him around, hoping he’d realize what a great friend I was and start being more appreciative of me. Plus he came through for me when I needed a place to stay for a few days of homelessness. I tried my best to make other friends but not much luck. So I stayed and my feelings grew for him. Not exactly sure why, but I have realized he actually is a LOT like both of my ex’s in different ways, so there’s some things there I’m attracted to and need to work on. Probably around liking guys who don’t appreciate me, needing to win their affection, loving the hot n cold games etc…
I agree Stephanie, he lied about her to me, because he knew I’d be pissed about it. And he might lose his side-chick. And the way he was acting towards me was more than friends/sexual and not appropriate and I would’ve NEVER gotten physical with him if I knew about her. I also know you’re right about him not being a good boyfriend and I actually feel kinda sorry for the other woman (I’ve never met her, he kept us apart) She’s only 21, he’s 31, and I can guarantee if he’s taken advantage of me, he’s taken advantage of her too. At least I’m older and wiser so I recognize how shitty he is. But I imagine her as young and naive about him and guys in general. But there’s no way I can let her know what’s been happening. There probably wouldn’t be much point if I could anyway. She probably wouldn’t listen to a stranger… I know they’ve been sleeping together for a year though. Poor girl, I imagine she’s in pain, wanting him to become emotionally available but I know he won’t be, probably ever. I could be wrong though, it’s all just speculation with her.
In the end, there’s a disconnection between my logic and my deep, subconscious feelings. I KNOW logically this guy isn’t relationship material for anyone. I always knew it, really. But my feelings don’t want to listen and I’m not sure how to change that or fix it. I’ve done heaps of inner-work, I honestly thought I’d be better at this by now…
I’ve cut contact with him. I think it’s for the best but I’m worried about not having someone to rely on here.