A few days ago, I shared insight into how I bounced from relationship to relationship, unwittingly playing ‘The Opposites Game’. This is where you subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) home in on a trait (or traits) of your last partner that you believe to be part of the reason why the relationship didn’t work and then seek out someone with the opposite trait. And then still find yourself running into a number of the same problems.
The fundamental reason for playing ‘The Opposites Game’ is simply that we don’t actually understand why the relationship ended.
It’s a hell of a lot easier to jump on the most annoying thing about them. This is no doubt part of the problem, but it’s not all of the problem. As with a lot of things in relationships, it’s important to see the wood for the trees. Yep, the big picture.
When we play The Opposites Game, we focus so much on avoiding the previous annoying thing that we may totally overlook or be blinded to other red flags that signal that this new relationship is not healthy for us either.
Just like when we stay in a relationship with someone and focus on their ‘good points’ as if focusing for instance on 10% goodness can totally obliterate what is 90% dubious or downright outrageous, focusing on ‘bad points’ and not understanding what fundamentally wasn’t working about the relationship will result in being involved with same person, different package.
The Opposites Game ends up being about avoidance because in focusing on specific things, we don’t look at wider reasons or even address our own issues.
When we carry beliefs about ourselves, love, and relationships, we choose people that reflect these things. If we have negative beliefs, we are drawn to and attract people who will confirm, not challenge those very things. Until we’re aware of what is contributing to our pattern, we’ll keep throwing ourselves back into oncoming traffic. And then wondering why we’re getting run down. Yep, relationship insanity.
Relationships serve to teach us more about ourselves. They’ll keep serving the same lesson(s) at us until we learn what we need to.
I’ve written in detail about common misunderstandings about what makes for great relationships. We’re particularly focused and sometimes obsessed with type, compatibility, and common interests.
As a result, when our relationships don’t work out, using the same flawed reasoning about type, compatibility, and common interests, we end up focusing on the wrong things about the person and the relationship. This makes it easy for us to keep falling into the same traps and making the same mistakes.
Chasing people with misunderstandings about type, compatibility, and common interests means missing out on the fundamental things that are needed for a relationship. Like boundaries, values, and love, care, trust, and respect.
Playing The Opposites Game won’t change the fact that you may still be looking for the wrong things in partners. It won’t change being unaware of the impact of other factors that have the potential to contribute to not only the ending of the relationship but also to the diminishing of your self-esteem.
So, take my experience of playing The Opposites Game. If we step back and look at what we were looking to achieve or avoid with each partner, we can actually learn a lot from the experience and grow out of it. That, and we instantly realise that playing The Opposites Game is foolhardy.
I wanted security without having any personal security. Boom, I looked for love in all the wrong places.
When I found myself with someone who’d switched from feverish pursuit to lukewarm and often cold, I vowed to be with someone more expressive.
I wanted to achieve being with someone who could talk to me, express his feelings, and show me love. I wanted to avoid being with a mummy’s boy and feel devotion. Devotion, though, came in the form of an intensity that was smothering and aggressive. I found myself with someone who did nothing but express himself, both passive-aggressively and aggressively. And it was often whilst drunk, veering through extremes and never in a middle ground.
The next time I wanted to avoid being challenged. I wanted peace, and I didn’t want to be in an intense relationship.
In fact, I wanted to be in control. I got someone who was so agreeable he made my teeth hurt, and yet I discovered that he was passive-aggressive anyway!
So then I decided that being in control wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I needed someone who could challenge me and I could challenge back. He appeared to play the equals game but slowly turned the tables. It was a bait and switch, and the balance tipped. Any challenging was met with control and withdrawal.
When I was the Other Woman, I didn’t want to get hurt. I wanted to avoid real emotional intimacy by being with someone who couldn’t be with me properly. I also didn’t want to be silenced and wanted to ‘express’ myself.
Of course, in the quest for validation, I drove myself crazy expressing every thought in my head. I still looked for security in a guy without having my own, and still had someone who was veering between extremes with how he expressed himself. He created conflict every time I wasn’t agreeable, and wanted everything on his terms.
None of these people really gave me what I had been looking for. Instead, I picked up more problems on the way.
It took all of these experiences and more for me to wake up and realise that there’s more to these men and the problems that we had than a trait or two. It wasn’t enough to just seek the opposite.
It’s too simplistic to just choose opposing partners as it’s never just one thing. The world is not divided into good and bad people. You could go from being involved with an aggressive drunk to an aggressive sober person.
Playing The Opposites Game causes you to miss the point.
I started looking at the commonalities between these guys and also the commonalities in how I was behaving and how I was feeling.
As you can see in part one, while there were some differences, the frightening similarities were difficult to avoid. Also, I was a secretly unhappy person that valued the wrong things in people and relationships and didn’t value herself.
Some of these guys were major pains in the backside, but you know what? If I’d had more love, care, trust, and respect for myself, I wouldn’t have peed on any of these guys if they were on fire, never mind given them the time of day!
How do you stop playing The Opposites Game?
Get out of the illusions and get real. And I don’t just mean about them, but also about you.
I asked myself, “What can be going through your mind for you to end up in this place again?’
What does their behaviour say about you? And that’s not blaming yourself for their actions; that’s being accountable and recognising that we make choices even when we don’t think we’re making choices. We often stick with poor situations in relationships because it works for us. It’s the quiet agenda of negative beliefs and self-sabotage.
We may be miserable. We may be wondering why they’re ‘not changing’. But it ‘works’ because we get to avoid confronting the real issues and making change.
The classic example of this when we get involved with people who have an allergy to the truth or whose actions contradict their words. This is a sure sign that we are illusions focused and often in denial.
It’s very difficult to change the situations you’re in, break patterns, and steer clear of choosing opposites if you’re not prepared to get real about yourself and also about what makes for better relationships. If you can hold your hands up and say ‘OK, I was so desperate to be loved that I’d rather have taken the crumbs than stand up for myself or be alone‘, that’s real. You can say, ‘Yes, it’s a damn good idea to look out for the signs of manipulative people, or emotionally unavailable people or whatever. But I know I will be better equipped to try and forge relationships if I deal with my own issues and start getting a healthier picture of relationships and myself’.
The reality is that you could bounce from opposite to opposite picking up much of the same problems for years. Nothing’s going to change until you shift your mentality and address your own issues instead of believing that the solution to your relationship problems lies in someone else.
And don’t fall into the trap of playing the opposites game with yourself.
I’ve bounced from needy, to aloof, to argumentative, to meek and mild, and round and round. Trust me, it’s not just one thing. Even if you are needy, for instance, you still need to look at why you are needy and address it. The answer isn’t to say ‘Ooh, I think I was really needy in the last relationship. Right, so I won’t call them on anything in case they think I’m too demanding’.
Just like when I’ve said that being with someone where there is no middle ground is dangerous, not having your own middle ground is also dangerous.
Playing The Opposites Game can take you to extremes.
It can make you hypersensitive about your own contribution and also about the factors that you feel led to the demise of the relationship.
Particularly if the other party jumped on something and used it on you, you may internalise this and make it the focal point of your thoughts and actions. Next thing, you’ve forgotten about everything else. Classic gaslighting.
Just like the way you can’t hang around someone and dine solely off their few good points to the exclusion of the things that are actually damaging the potential for the relationship, it’s important to look at the whole picture of the relationship. That’s you, them, and what you both had (or didn’t have) together. It’s all-too-easy to choose something that suits you to pin the relationship’s failure on and miss the point entirely.
I can’t stress this enough: it wasn’t just one thing. In fact, take the one thing and look at how it fed into everything else, and you’ll quickly reveal more about the entire relationship and yourself. Yes, you might learn some uncomfortable truths. The opposite (aha), though, is carrying on in denial or obliviously throwing yourself in the front line of pain.
Your thoughts?
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Being emotionally scared/unavailable myself and not having healthy boundaries is harder to overcome than I thought. The issue/pattern of low self-esteem keeps coming up, even as I gradually get a little wiser and stronger.
Every man I have picked simply hasn’t been there for me the way I claimed that I wanted. And the men who WERE there for me, I wasn’t physically attracted to. What a perfect formula to protect myself from ever getting in a relationship!
My parents’ marriage was so horrible and cruel, somehwere along the way I probably vowed I never wanted one – and voila, I’ve been quite good at keeping that promise.
I’ve been learning how to be successfully alone without being lonely except on the occasional holiday.
And I still need to work on my self-esteem, self-confidence and self-respect, regardless.
.-= Aurora´s last blog ..Apple’s i Pad =-.
Great article – I enjoy them all. However, I’ve just worked out that I’m an emotionally unavailable female with commitment issues. I’m early 30s and, somewhat paradoxically, would love nothing more than a family of my own – how do I even begin to get there? After a four year abusive relationship (my first and only relationship) I spent a decade avoiding men except for occasional one night stands (no, I never called them again.) I was always drunk during them. Last year I tried dating and had sex sober for the first time in a decade – it was horrible and the guy was very controlling/belittling. He reminded me of my only ex and I fell apart. No more one night stands. I want to move forward now. But how?
I have not been on the site in a while… And perhaps I am just reading your posts through new eyes or you are starting to delve in to new areas that just speak to me more.
I played the opposites game and internalized all my ex told me so that when we got back together, I promised to change everything about myself.
I stopped arguing, I was loving, always said supporting things, I never disagreed… I stopped speaking if I did.
I took all he said and felt the failure of the relationship was my fault, until I changed to what he wanted to be and he still tried to fight, put me down, etc.
It was almost like an experiment. It didn’t matter what I was… HE was still who he was.
Great post — I am continuing learning and take great comfort in seeing how similar your experiences, thoughts and feelings are.
Absolutely spot on! Did not realise this is what I was doing. I was wondering why so many of my relationships had not worked because each partner was so different to the last. Little did I know, they were all the same man, just in a different package.
I thought I had dealt with the demons of my past. When going into any new relationship I believed I had given myself time to heal from the previous one before diving into a new one. I have spent time looking at my behaviour and my defects of character and believed that I was truly a good person who made bad choices. So now, at 43, I am disappointed to discover that I still have much work to do on my self esteem. Don’t know how to get started.
After reading ‘Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl’ plus many posts on this website I can’t believe that it has taken me till now to see that I am the common denominator in all my relationships. Yes, the men were assclowns, but I accepted them! I don’t think I’ve ever really successfully stood my ground with a boundary in any relationship ever (except when I eventually leave). I always find an excuse for HIS behaviour eg. he was abandoned as a child, he was abused, his wife left him blah, blah, blah. ALWAYS put their ‘supposed’ needs before mine. This screams to me, severe lack of self esteem.
Now, I am single and ignoring attempted contact from two EUM’s (one from over a year ago and the other from over a month ago). I want to be loved and I want to love someone, but I have a journey of self discovery to go on first, and I so hope I can find the worth in myself so that I never attract another EUM/AC ever again!!
This is my first comment on the site. I have been amazed by the insights of NML and the courageous contributions of others. I am 44 years old and for the first time in my life in a relatively healthy relationship with a man for some years, although I would be lying if I said there weren’t still issues that were lowering my self esteem. Mainly his reluctance to discuss our non existent sex life. Even though we are very physically affectionate with each other. I have been physically ill for a number of years, had to give up my career due to my health and am still, in many senses, emotional unavailable myself. I have witnessed my own mother suffer humiliation and abuse at the hands of both my father and her second husband, and it is only now they have separated, that an authentic person is starting to emerge- I see my mother becoming so much more forgiving of herself and others and much more willing to take responsibility for staying in relationships that gave her absolutely nothing. She has denied, minimised and blamed others for so many years, and she is now 64 and is learning to live for the first time in her life free from any kind of control and manipulation from a partner. I so much don’t want that to be me in 20 years time. Yet I am having to admit to myself that, if truth be told, I have rarely had a relationship with a man that has been mutually supportive and where I feel I can be myself. I tended to stick around when there were clear red flags or confusion about his feelings.
Thanks to therapy, reading, and sites, such as this, I finally feel consciously aware of my own emotional issues, enough to get a true picture of what went wrong in these relationships. Rather than pick opposites, I seemed to go for a certain ‘type’ – those who chased and then backed away when I became truly ‘interested’ (notably when I realised they could make me feel emotional pain ) Prior to my current partner, my longest term relationship was for five years and included one disastrous 2 year marriage at the age of 19. Certainly the similarities are more striking that the differences.
I offer my admiration and respect to all of you who post here, or read the comments, on your own individual journey of healing and self discovery.
There are some tricky issues coming up in this latest topic and I guess it goes to show how complex and delicate the whole relationship thing can be. As I see it, there are some basic assumptions to be made in all of it, though, and I fear we can become bogged down by details when really we need to keep one or two big points in mind. First, the Needy bit. There is nothing wrong or shameful in wanting a good relationship, wanting to love and be loved in return. In fact, it is a human NEED. However, that Need often drives us to fear being alone (although my experience would say there is nothing more lonely than a bad/abusive relationship) and that in turn makes us put up with and excuse disrespectful treatment. Second, Baggage is, to a certain extent, inevitable, particularly in those of us who are no longer in the first flush of youth. Actually, if you met someone who did NOT have baggage it might be wise to avoid them! To totally eradicate and resolve past hurts and misplaced trust is a very tall order, and most of us have neither the time nor ability to do this. Besides, when a person comes into your life the interaction between you can often trigger something you didn’t even know was baggage. I would say that is more likely to happen in a good relationship, because frequently we bury our very strongest fears and insecurities so that the crappy blokes don’t even get close. That’s part of the commitment phobia we ‘victims’ often display. As for self-esteem; well, it’s bound to take knocks as we go through life, whether from partners, parents, work, friends, it all amounts to the same thing, which I see as loss of faith in self. It’s not so much a sense of being a ‘bad’ or ‘good’ person, more that we lose sight of the fact we are just human and s**t happens, and we forget to trust our selves. The answer is also the problem – relationships exist on a continuum, are dynamic and interactive, so what works (or not) in one might not in another. For instance, I walked on eggshells with my ex, was terrified of saying anything that would upset him or prod his mummy hatred/fear of intimacy/body dysmorphia/anger. I told myself that was because I cared about him, could understand why he had these issues and wanted to help him. Yeah, right. There is nothing wrong at all with caring for another person, to want to help them and be supportive and understanding but, I forgot to do those things to ME as well. As with Dazedandconfused, it made no difference, as even when I did his bidding I was still the ‘wrong’ one. Now happily married, my husband and I find that we cannot manage if we know the other is holding back, even if it means saying something quite provocative or challenging. This has meant we often find hidden pain or lack of understanding we didn’t realise was there. But, we talk it out, sometimes noisily, sometimes gently, always with a view to learning and not defending. To do this, we need faith in each other but, most of all, faith in our self. Co-dependency is, like Baggage and Needy, relative and not necessarily bad, but exists in degrees and relies on 49% of the couple to respect and acknowledge the influence on their partner and, consequently, the relationship. The last point I want to make is that reading posts often makes me feel sad, not just for myself and the memories they trigger but for the people writing them. Top of the list, those of you who have realised you have a common demoninator or have made bad choices or displayed less than attractive characteristics or generally let yourself down (in your estimation) – forgive yourself. That’s how you move on.
Just to add to my message, I got lots of insight from a YouTube post called How To Mend A Broken Heart by daveawake. In it he talks about loving yourself first and how to deal with the hurt caused by trusting someone who lets you down. Just a thought…
I have almost always been in a relationship, but most were relatively healthy and one was so long term it kept me off the streets ( sarcasm here : –) for three decades. I never go seeking out a type, rather I seek to get to know people and see where it goes.
I think that like Prickly says, relationships are dynamic, evolving and changing, and the best partnership is one where two people are willing and able to try to gracefully note and work with the changes. A certain level of self confidence and maturity is needed for both to do this, and there is no way around the fact that two mature self confident people also have to continue to hold this work of relationship as a priority.
I knew it was over with my ex, the father of my child, who I lived with for decades, when at counseling I finally said.. ” It does not seem that you really want to work on this relationship anymore” And he replied, “Yes that is true.” Really that was the end of discussion there.
So my point is, assuming you are not dealing with an EUM/ arseclown / manchild…the two most important qualities I think needed for a successful relationship are a strong foundation and a strong work ethic. Not saying it will then be roses all the time, but instead that you will be able to successfully weather the storms that come up because your ship is solid. Personality traits are less important..I see them more as accessories, they add to, or detract from the whole, but they are not the basis of the foundation.
Another thing is that weathering storms is what makes most relationships stronger, storms are not necessarily bad things though at the time they can be hell.
I do not think the EUM has a strong foundation, so I do not see much hope for a strong relationship with them. If you are dealing with an EUP they can have an amazing inability to be blind to the work to be done as a couple. Additionally, you will be blamed for all the trouble and there will probably be a lot of dopey frustrating drama flying around.
Maybe you are or have become emotionally unavail yourself some, either as a reaction to the flakiness of the EUM or maybe because you have never learned to feel loved for who you are and learned to treat yourself lovingly.
No big deal, but you do need to ditch the drama and usually this means leaving the EUM, going NC, and getting to the work of knowing you are loved and lovable. Learning to know you are loved and lovable can be done with another who is secure within themselves, or it can be done alone. I don’t think you can do this work with an EUM in your life;the drama of their insecurities demands way too much attention if you are attempting relationship with them.
I work to know I am loved despite this and that relationship not working out and I work to hold and keep that love in the forefront of my attitudes. I also work to take it out there as I go about my day.
What great insights. It’s so true that we either subsciously, or unconsciously get ourselves into situations that fit our issues. (What you said) We refuse for a while to take responsibility but it’s until we had enough, our lesson with these relationships is that we need to take responsibilty in order to discover who we are. Before we discover that, we really don’t know what that really is. I read somewhere, actually in this book “a course in miracles” that we are responsible for everything we are in, everything that seems to happen to us we had asked for and I truly beleive that. I did the same thing in the past with choosing different people; thinking that was the problem… yes, trust me some of the people I met or dated were very outrageous… like candid camera outrageous but it goes to show how we truly feel about ourselves. Either it was me putting up with illusions when dealing with men who I knew were dishonest, or being with people who had no respect for me… because the truth was, I didn’t know what it meant to have self-respect from childhood. Now childhood isn’t to pity party, it’s just the journey we need to go through to understand ourselves and reach our highest potential.
So how did you start to value yourself? This is what I am having trouble with. I do exactly what you say here, and have for so long that now I don’t even know who the real me is to get started or to value myself. I don’t even know me.
.-= Danielle´s last blog ..The damn thing lied to me =-.
Danielle – I agree that it is hard to know where to start. If you go back into the archives here under the “The Single Life” tab, you will find a lot of posts that speak to how to make yourself happy and find the “real” you. Sometimes I have to read them more than once for it to really sink in, and when I am going through a low self-esteem moment or day, I just pull up one of these posts and it helps me work through it.
I think the biggest thing is to have some quiet time with yourself figuring out who you are and who you want to be. I am really struggling with this after adopting the likes and dislikes of the many EUMs that I have dated over the past decade. I am starting to figure it out and it is the first piece in finding myself again.
The other big thing is to “get a life” – which means load up your schedule w/ friends, hobbies, organizations, etc. Along the way, you will figure out which things you value and what you want out of life. I am working on this journey and taking a year off from dating to figure out “me”. I have no business even trying to be in a relationship right now until I figure this out.
Hope this helps somewhat! Just know there are a lot of us in the middle of this struggle and we can come out on the other side! And NML has some great insight to help you!!! Hang in there and have faith and hope that you will get yourself back…
Danielle, I think your question is the reason I feel sad reading some posts. Loving yourself starts with forgiving yourself, which starts when you get back in touch with your inner child (we all have one). Your inner child certainly holds the key to your essential soul and holds pain as well as innocence. As a biological child we trust so many others to show us who we are when, really, we know who we are. But, the world wants us to be who it wants us to be. Give it up, embrace your innocence, show guilt the door and begin to trust that, when you are true to yourself you will know that you are loveable. I, too, read A Course In Miracles and although it seems weird at first it does help us understand the illusions we live with and the tricks the world pulls on us. Yes, ‘loving yourself’ sounds like a bit of trendy psycho babble and can seem out of our reach but, I promise you, it’s not. Mind you, this site is amazing for putting stuff in perspective and expressing things in an easy to use format so, I’d say – keep reading it! Hold on, it’ll come. x
@ Aphrogirl
I think that like Prickly says, relationships are dynamic, evolving and changing, and the best partnership is one where two people are willing and able to try to gracefully note and work with the changes. A certain level of self confidence and maturity is needed for both to do this, and there is no way around the fact that two mature self confident people also have to continue to hold this work of relationship as a priority
This is what i believe and all id expect from a partner, that and both feet in the realtionship. I think we all no that people are not perfect and nor should we expect them to be, there will always be issues in relationships. After all your 2 different people with different views, emotions and understanding of things. I said it a millions times to my X. Its the way you handle those issues and move forwards that count. I had someone in my life that was very critical and if there was an issue it was the end of the world or it meant we shouldnt be together. It was exhausting trying to deal with an issue and him at the same time. This was someone who made every small thing into a huge confusing drama, then wondered why he felt unhappy then utlimety blamed me and left. What i realise is he was unhappy before i met him, in the realtiosnhip and even now. Nothing to do with me. However i do see my part, take responsibilty and have started making changes and learning from them, rather then just push all the blame on him, like he did to me.
check out this quote i found the other day, i have it next to my bed:
Artist’s Wayâ€:
“Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop–an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole. Instead of creating freely and allowing errors to reveal themselves later as insights, we often get mired in getting the details right. We correct our originality into a uniformity that lacks passion and spontaneity.â€
I know that this isn’t a forum for me to get help alone, but I just wanted to thank shoelvr and prickly for their comments. They help a lot and I am going to go back to “the single life” tab immediately. I was also trying to get to both of your blogs and can’t find a link. I would love to see more of both of your journeys.
.-= Danielle´s last blog ..The damn thing lied to me =-.