The Replacement Mentality Archives - Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue

They Had A Life Before You. Acknowledge The Backstory.

October 25, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Sometimes we become so consumed by our involvement with someone that when it ends, we lose sight of the fact that this person existed before we came along. We spend weeks, months or even years torturing ourselves over the “what ifs” and feel shortchanged and even wronged that they couldn’t become who we wanted them to or who they promised to be. It doesn’t matter if one hundred exes came before us or what their backstory is; everything they are or aren’t now seems to hinge on our worth and our supposed actions.

When people say to me, “But Natalie, why haven’t they called? Why didn’t/couldn’t they change? Why don’t they want me?”, I remind them of the biggest truth that they’re steadfastly forgetting: This person had a whole life before you. They didn’t just fall out of the sky and land into your life ready to play a part.

A typical example of this scenario is when we get involved with somebody who even if they’ve been married, they never stopped dating or they were not a committed, emotionally available partner with their ex(es). We rock up and carry on as if we’re supposed to get the best version of them. What we don’t often admit to is that aside from expecting to be the exception, we on some level believe that it’s the fault of the former partner/spouse when somebody is not a truly loving, giving partner. We believe that their exes weren’t doing enough and that things would be very different if the right person came along who knew how to love them right. Of course when this person doesn’t change or even behaves worse, we blame ourselves.

The question we have to ask ourselves when we’ve been hellbent on peddling a narrative where we have determined that we have failed due to our self-worth and even that we have been wronged by our hopes and expectations not being met is: Why are we owning all of their pain and problems?

We also need to question why it hasn’t occurred to us that there are other people before us who have experienced disappointment with this person and blamed themselves. Why is it that we are The Biggest Loser of Them All? Why does our involvement with this person black out everyone else?

Advice Wednesday: Should I Let My Ex Know About My BPD Diagnosis?

September 28, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Stephanie asks: One year after my ex broke up with me, I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. We had issues; I was clingy/jealous, he was avoidant/promised more than he could keep. I offered to seek treatment, spend time apart and try again, but he said he needed a “clean break” and since then he has ignored me whenever possible. I haven’t been involved with anyone since as I am terrified of being left by and/or hurting another person. I am also not over his lack of empathy after the breakup (blanking me in the streets). Weeks after, he started dating someone new and they’re still together.

I don’t want to resume the relationship but wonder if I should inform him about my diagnosis as it contributed to things. I wonder if him ignoring me and jumping into a new relationship is his way of protecting himself/forgetting past hurt. He knows I’m truly sorry and in treatment. Do you think it would be useful for him to understand that I have a mental disorder? I don’t want him to feel absolved from everything because “I’m crazy” either. We’ve had no contact in 6 months.

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I imagine that this is a very vulnerable time for you as you navigate your diagnosis. Now that you have an explanation for some of your thinking, emotions and behaviour, there is undoubtedly a period that follows where you press rewind on your mental tape, watch back previous events, analyse your own actions and his, and wonder how different things would be if you could turn back time and you were both aware of your BPD. There can also be a temptation to assume that because your actions were in part influenced by the BPD that ipso facto his actions were too, and that’s not to discount that there will have been an element of that but if everything is put on your diagnosis, you won’t see the woods for the trees.

In order for you to begin to truly take care of you in and out of your interpersonal relationships and to move on from this experience which has clearly hurt you a great deal and pushed on your abandonment and rejection buttons which will be very heightened by the BPD, it’s critical that you where possible, distinguish between disorder-led behaviour and thinking versus what is being influenced by the actual circumstances that you’re in. I say this because I’ve heard from many thousands of people who were clingy and jealous with an avoidant, Future Faking partner who also have experiences in their backstory that contribute to fear of abandonment and being involved with people who fit a type that taps on old issues and allows them to continue in a pattern where they can try to right the wrongs of the past, gain validation, and try to fill voids created by their needs being inadequately met by their parents/caregivers. The overwhelming majority of these don’t have BPD and I say this to you because I don’t want you to write you off.

The degree to which you needed to gain some independence in your life (emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually) so that you can be interdependent in your relationships reflects the degree to which he needed to allow himself to be more depended on (not codependent) so that he could be interdependent in his own relationships. As a result of your involvement with him, the pain, fear and guilt that came to the fore and the way in which you reacted prompted you to seek help and get a diagnosis—you needed this breaking point.

Podcast Ep. 48: No Get Self-Esteem Quick Scheme, Why Them & Not Me, When A Friend Doesn’t Feel That Way About Us

September 16, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 2 Minutes

It’s time for another episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions.

In episode 48, I cover:

Making a start with building your self-esteem: One of my most frequently asked questions is, How do I build my self-esteem? and I talk about why it’s about getting started from wherever you’re at and making small, regular contributions. | 100 Days of Baggage Reclaim ebook

Why him/her and not me?: It can feel very painful when we not only hear that an ex has moved on but when we diminish us by convincing ourselves that they’re living the fairy tale and being a better person in a better relationship. I talk about some of the reasons why we feel this way including feeling territorial about our investment and conflating the fact that they’ve moved on with our worth or the fact that it must mean that we are ‘to blame’. I share some tips for beginning to move forward so that this pain doesn’t become a distraction from taking the next step with moving forward with our own life.

Articles on Baggage Reclaim related to ‘Why them and not me?’

When you’re afraid they’ll become a better person in a better relationship, without you

He’s with someone else – Why her and not me?

‘Why him/her and not me?’ Not everything is about us!

Do you have a Replacement Mentality?

The Replacement Mentality: But WHY did they go back to their toxic ex when they could have had me?

Don’t Be The Bridge Between Someone’s Old & New Relationship

Return On Investment in Relationships

‘I Can Change Him’ Syndrome/Fixer Uppers

Betting On Potential – Are You Gambling On a Relationship Capacity That Doesn’t Exist?

Betting On Potential in Relationships

There’s no need for someone to announce their dislike: It baffles me when people go out of their way to clobber people with their personal opinions, such as feeling that they have to let someone know that they don’t like them or letting them know their opinion about their appearance or other judgements about how they feel others should live.

Listener Question: This week Alison wants to know if she has a right to feel as bad as she does after cutting contact with her best friend due to her being in love with him?

What I Learned This Week: I don’t have to do everything.

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Don’t Be The Bridge Between Someone’s Old & New Relationship

July 11, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 3 Minutes

Odds are that if somebody came to you and said, “I like you. You seem like a good, kind, loving, accommodating person so I have a proposition for you: I’m wounded because I’m fresh out of a relationship. Thing is, I don’t really want to think about that relationship or my feelings about him/her, or what went wrong or what I can potentially learn from this experience. I know I’m not ready for a relationship and I don’t really have a great deal to offer, but one day I might do. I have an ex so, you know, be hopeful that I might extend a relationship to you one day. I could theoretically be woeful at relationships, but because you know that I have an ex, I want you to assume that I have a good line of relationship credit that I might spend on you one day. Give it enough time and I could transfer my time, energies and emotions to you. So…, what I want you to do is be in a rebound relationship with me. I want you to help me transition from being hurt /angry /frustrated /disillusioned /depressed /ambivalent or whatever I am post-breakup, to being relationship-ready…for someone else”–you would tell them to jog on.

But if you’ve been involved in a rebound relationship, then you’re all too familiar with how you accepted some variation of this rather painful proposition. Invariably, you invest yourself into this setup and aside from feeling short-changed by your role of being The Buffer who acts as an emotional airbag, often wind up providing safe passage to their next relationship. In some cases, they go back to their ex.

When you enter into a rebound relationship, you end up being a bridge between old and new. Instead of them having to stand on their own two feet, they stand on you.

Rebounding invites delay and pain into your life. You get to busy yourself in a problem that wasn’t created by you but you also avoid making a decision about what you want. You don’t have to commit but instead it looks like you want to, it’s just the matter of this pesky partner who is still unavailable and resisting commitment despite you being there for him/her.

Advice Wednesday: Even though we’ve both moved on & got married, my ex still wants to mess with my heart & my head

May 25, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Sometimes you think that you’re OK about the one you let go of because you think, Well, they’re not the marrying kind, and then even though you’ve moved on, when you hear that they’ve only gone and done what was considered the unthinkable, it can cause you to feel unsettled. You might doubt your original judgment about the situation or question how into you they really were. Being wooed and pursued by someone who at the same time laments their inability to give you what you want, can feel quite flattering. You might feel extra special and so when you do move on, there might be a part of you thinking that you were the person they really wanted to be different for but couldn’t.

I suspect that this has a part to play in today’s Advice Wednesday where she’s seemingly happily married but a year into it, she’s discovered that the ex who didn’t want marriage, is married. He’s now sniffing around, sending her messages and she suspects that he wants to mess with her heart and her mind again.

I think the lesson here that can really be applied to all sorts of situations not just a romantic one is, don’t rent out space in your head to people who say one thing, do another, or who are quite simply all charm and not much else because before they’ve even done anything, you start using up your energies trying to make sense out of nonsense and trying to anticipate their motives, what their next move is.

When it comes to people who are not that into boundaries and who love an ego stroke, the bulk of their thrills comes from knowing that they can still ‘command’ a response from you. It’s like, Yeah baby! I’ve still got the magic touch. Knowing that they can have you or that they can certainly insert themselves into your consciousness and potentially disrupt your well-being and/or how available you are to a current partner, is in their mind, as good as having you. Don’t give them the space or the opportunity. Flush! And don’t respond. Silence says a great deal more than your words will.

Have you had an ex pop up out of the woodwork when you’re all moved on? What did you do? Have you had an ex say that they’ll never commit/marry only for it to look as if they’re living the great fairy tale with someone else? What advice do you have for Priti?

Advice Wednesday #8: Is He Really Not Over The Way He Broke Up With His Ex or Is It Just An Excuse?

March 16, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

The Tricky Situation: Marcy asks, I was recently dumped by a guy. We dated exclusively for four months and he ended it because he wasn’t “ready for a relationship” yet, though he had “thought he could be” with me. He claimed he wasn’t over what happened with his ex, who he had been with for four years, despite the fact that he doesn’t want to be with her and broke up with her. He says he still has guilt about how they broke up (over the phone cause they were long-distance) and that she didn’t get any closure. I can’t help but wonder if he is just making an excuse — can he really be hung up simply on how they broke up? They broke up less than a year ago when we had met and he had already dated one other girl between her and me. I believe that he stopped dating the other girl because she wanted to be “too serious too soon,” but since we made it to four months, I thought we were going to work out. I guess that was a sign, but I just feel completely duped. Am I crazy?

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You’re definitely not crazy Marcy but I do think that you have fallen into the trap of ignoring your intuition and yes, even an element of trying to be the exception. When you said that you had “made it to four months”, all I could see was a situation where you were dating this guy and on some level knowing that he had issues and then pushing down anxiety and almost praying that you can get past what you might think was the rocky mark in his previous involvement. This sounds like a challenge not a relationship.

I can’t tell you whether he is or isn’t over his ex but what I can tell you is that he doesn’t seem to know his arse from his elbow, with all of his contrary, flip-flapping, “I’m not ready for a relationship” but then carrying on as if you were supposed to be a commitment sorceress who was going to make him available and able to forget his issues.

What also cannot be denied is that if he was in a relationship for four years and some or all of it was long-distance and things ended over the phone nearly a year ago and he feels guilty over the lack of closure, why hasn’t he done something about it? As Oleta Adams sang in her hit, ‘Get Here’:

“You can reach me by railway

You can reach me by trailway
You can reach me on an airplane

……I don’t care how you get here
Just get here if you can”

His kind of guilt is of the procrastinating, not really as guilty as he makes himself out to be kind. It’s a way of avoiding showing up in the present and when he fails to deliver in his new relationships, he can play the guilt card. He could have made this right a thousand times over in the time since he broke up with her, especially because surely the ending of the relationship he had directly after that breakup was the call to action? He doesn’t want to be with his ex and yet she’s his go-to excuse; I don’t blame you for feeling confused and suspicious. Not being over your ex isn’t always about still being in love; he’s not over the relationship. Even if he’s bullsh-tting to a degree, he’s not over his past relationship(s) because it is impacting his current behaviour.

He may very well be hung up on how they broke up because he is avoiding thinking about the content of those four years. That requires introspection and recognising who he is, what he needs, and what that relationship reflected about his emotional state or what he was truly available for relationship wise.

Us humans are funny ‘ole creatures. Even when we can be logical, we’re not, but even when we are being logical, we can often be derailed by emotional reasoning. His position makes sense to him but of course it doesn’t make sense to you. The fact that you think him being hung up on how they broke up is odd, doesn’t mean that it’s not real. His lack of self-awareness means that he doesn’t understand what is motivating him to reach for that excuse, but his position is his position.

No One Wants To Get Left Behind or Passed Over

January 19, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Don't want to be left behind or passed over? Don't should yourself and don't sell you short now in the hope that you'll be rewarded or recognised later. Our romantic relationships and life in general imitate what occurs in the workplace. People are at various levels and have all started at different times and with different experiences and perspective. Each worker has their own idea of what they bring to the table and what, when, why and how they feel they should be noticed, promoted, or rewarded.

There’s someone who ‘punches their card’. They’re not exactly setting the world alight but they’ve got coasting down to a fine art. While some do it out of laziness, for many it’s about lack of self-confidence and a protective measure. They’ll settle if it means that they can remain in their comfort zone, even if it’s uncomfortable. Despite feeling frustrated or miserable, they’ll reason that at least they’re not thinking or feeling too much.

Someone else does too much (including other people’s work and overdoing it on briefs and instructions). They want to be liked. They also fear saying no and lack self-belief. It’s as if they have to do extra to prove that they’re not a fraud. They invariably feel under-appreciated and taken advantage of.

Someone follows “the rules” to the letter even when it hurts. It’s their internal rules, their sense of fairness and how they think things ‘should’ be done. When they think about raising ideas, they worry about sounding “rude” or “demanding”. They water their communication down to minimise risk which effectively minimises what they convey. Even if their career progresses, some feel left behind or passed over by people who didn’t do things the ‘right’ way. It’s also very possible that they don’t love or even like their job or chosen career. In truth, they feel unfulfilled but don’t feel as if they can or should do something else. They quickly remind themselves of security or dangers when they contemplate change.

Some people collect the friendship of exes and love interests – don’t stay in the harem!

November 11, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Talking with a friend recently who was rather enamoured with a chap who was super ambiguous, a little probing revealed that this guy has a hell of a lot of female friends. A lot. Like when you see those shows about hoarders and then can barely move for all of the stuff piled up around them and they feel super attached to stuff that they’re never going to use or appreciate for that matter.

This guy collects exes, love interests that he’s turned down as well as becoming friends with the exes of his friends.

As soon as I heard about this, a code red alert went off for me. “You’d want to watch yourself there with all of those exes. You don’t need to be another one in the collection.” I was cautious because things were so ambiguous and not moving anywhere. At this point, she was still thinking that he was that special and putting him on a pedestal. I had to remind her that she is pretty damn great too. Undeterred, she reassured me that these friendships (erm, more like a harem) were genuine and that he has all of these female friends because, well, he’s so intelligent, funny, and quirky.

Here’s the thing: Some people love collecting exes.

I don’t mean that they go out of their way to make partners into exes by botching up relationships (although I suspect some do sabotage to resist commitment and then console themselves that they’re Really Great People ™ and A Really Good Ex ™) but more that their ego needs almost constant supply from the pool of people who have tried to forge something with them in the past.

These exes are like medals – Dear Ego & World, look at me. I’m such a good and great person that I can remain friends with all of my exes.

They’re also deterrents that tend to keep potential new partners at bay or are disruptive if it progresses. Even the most secure people in the world would feel rattled by going out with someone who spends most of their time juggling their exes including ex love interests.

People who collect exes and who in fact collect ‘supply’ are what I’ve joked are ‘haremologists’. If a person collects attention but is pretty indiscriminate about it and doesn’t have a harem per se (like people who trawl for attention on introduction ‘dating’ sites, Facebook et al), they’re more of an attentionphile.

Some ‘haremologists’ extend this penchant for collecting exes to collecting those of their friends. “Look! Your ex girlfriend/boyfriend likes me and I’m making him/her feel better about having been with you.” A number of my early relationships started this way – the friend of an ex swooping in on his broken down donkey disguised as a white horse. In these situations, you love the attention and the diversion plus, let’s be real – you get a kick out of remaining connected to your ex but also out of knowing that it’s likely pissed them off. Note – some people like going out with their friend’s exes because they’re pre-approved.

Being friends with the exes of their friends elevates them and they may even enjoy listening to these people expressing their hurt over the breakup and then… gradually seeing that they’re now falling for them instead. Then the haremologist gets to have a brief romance and then turn it down or to claim that his/her interest has been ‘misunderstood’ and that they just want friendship. In fact, I’ve heard a lot of versions of this story where they claim that they’d assumed that they were kindred spirits who were coming from the same emotional place and leaning on each other for friendship and support. Yeah, of course.

‘Why him/her and not me?’ Not everything is about us!

February 3, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

When we make other people’s behaviour about us, we not only end up distorting our own perspective but we also don’t see the wood for the trees. I often hear from men and women who when they’re stuck on a particular ex or even feeling territorial about all of their exes, they wonder, Why him/her [the new partner(s)] and not me? What’s wrong with me?

In these situations we forget that they’ve been with several people so there are several people who could be wondering exactly the same thing. Bearing in mind that we can get stuck on the why with regard to relationship prospects that didn’t come to fruition due to our feelings not being reciprocated, never mind the people we actually had something with, and it’s easy to see how we can get completely carried away with this distorted thinking if we don’t rein our egos in.

Even if we were the first person to be with our now ex and they’ve been with a few more people since, that’s a few more people that it didn’t work out with. Fact. Why do we do ourselves the disservice of casting our exes in The Perfect Life fairytale when they themselves will not regard their own life as such… even if they pretend that it is on Facebook…

We’re ex#1 and wondering, for instance, why they were with ex#2, 3 and 4 and are feeling jealous that they are currently with #5 and then agonising over what they could possibly have that we don’t. We might even take it as an additional insult that it hasn’t worked out with 2-4 and yet they haven’t come back to us, or that we’re the rainy day option that they fall back on between relationships but then they move onto the next ‘future ex’, likely slipping in some reminder about why it hasn’t worked out with us again while still ensuring that they keep a foothold in our life so that they can fall back on us, again. We’re so busy giving ourselves a hard time over these ‘amazing future’ exes and this better relationship that we feel entitled to with them, that we’re only too willing to hang around.

It’s the, I know you think that you can do better but when you find out that you can’t, I’ll be right here waiting for you attitude.

We’re wondering what’s wrong with us and unfairly judging ourselves against these people and for all we know, those same exes are judging themselves against us and/or wondering what’s wrong with them. We’re acting like there’s something deeply flawed within us as if to suggest that if we’d been “good enough” or even perfect enough, that they would not have even had to shop or dabble elsewhere – we have an I Must Get It Right First Time mentality but we’re also under the very mistaken impression that it’s another person that makes a person, so if we’d been able to change them or we’d been ‘good enough’ in the first place, then there wouldn’t have been the issues that we’re now conveniently forgetting while being focused on our ‘flaws’.

The Replacement Mentality: But WHY did they go back to their toxic ex when they could have had me?

November 25, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Sometimes we spend a little too much time wondering why someone who we gave so much of ourselves to, would return to somebody who mistreated them and gave so little in comparison and we forget to empathise, in spite of the fact that if we did, it would actually provide the true answers about why they left. We remember their hurt, we remember the stories, we recall all that we did to show them another way and really, if it comes down to making a straight choice between which side their bread is buttered on, there’s no way in hell that they should leave us for pain, so of course when it appears that they’ve left us to go to pain, we wonder what the hell was wrong with us.

The thing is, when we get into the whole comparison thing in general, it’s a confidence depressor anyway where we judge ourselves as inadequate against our own imagination, assumptions and generalisations, and maybe what we believe is the information that we know. When we compare ourselves to our ex’s toxic ex when we have been The Great Girlfriend / Boyfriend, we’re so busy viewing things through the What’s Wrong With Me? / After Everything I Did Filters that we actually fail to see that person and reality.

Think about abusive relationships and how many people leave and yet despite knowing that that person and the relationship is toxic, they go back or cave when they hear from that person. They’ll even go against their own restraining order. They’re still hoping that this time things will be different and that they can change the person. They might latch onto an occasion such as a birthday, Valentine’s, or Christmas, convincing themselves the ‘magic’ of these will slot everything into place, only to wind up disappointed.

Do you have a Replacement Mentality?

November 18, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

One of the things that many people struggle with is this idea of being replaceable. We like to feel that we can’t be substituted with ease and that we mattered enough that another person won’t be able to just come along and seemingly take over where we left off. We want to believe that we matter and that OK, a person’s going to move on if we’re no longer together but that they’re not going to do it in a way that we feel would disrespect what we had with them. A prime example of this is when we go through a breakup – it cuts to the core when we discover that they moved on before things had ended or had someone else in their mind and/or bed within hours or days of us leaving. We feel replaceable instead of realising that the person is clearly avoidant.

One of the things I’ve learned from looking at my old relationship habits and those of the many readers of BR is that often people who base their value on whether they feel replaced and also live in fear of it, spend a lot of their dating and relationship time trying to be the replacement for others.

It’s a Replacement Mentality. When we look at who we spend our relationships with and what we’re basically trying to do, it’s all about taking the place of someone or something.

Choose me over him/her or your problems.

Replace him/her or your codependent behaviour with me.

We make our lives about competing and become too embroiled in what others are being and doing and where we can offer a ‘competitive advantage’. As soon as we do this we’re not truly respecting ourselves or others.