Hi OrangeDog: I saw your post on SmileysPerson's thread and thought I would come over to your thread and learn more about what you've been going through and sharing...
I'm glad you've got Coach here already - he's got the kind of calm perspective a lot of us need when we're hit with the worst of our own emotions...
I hope you don't mind, but I thought I would copy and past what you wrote on SP's thread:
Quote:
My W is one of those people who was always right. I was always wrong and never good enough. I've spent the past three years trying to dig myself out of depression only to get hit with the bomb (she admitted she was waiting till I could handle it). I'm probably stronger now then I've been in the past years but I don't think she was healthy for me. I'm sorry I don';t have a point here but maybe I should'nt work on it. Maybe I should find someone who better works with me. Comments?
So...reading what you wrote above and taking it with what you wrote in your post about her making you feel like you were always wrong and never good enough...my inclination would be to look for what, in your/your past/your family of origin, conditioned you for this type of relationship. It's not that I think there's much use to digging into the past - I'm much too sold on solution-based therapy for that - but I do think that something about our past contributes to the patterns we repeat into the present - particularly if we find ourselves with a partner that seems to use our most sensitive vulnerabilities against us...
BUT....here's a big thing that jumped out at me...you wrote..."maybe I should find someone who works better with me" - and that sent me spinning...primarily because I have come to agree whole-heartedly with the idea that we can never be in a happy relationship - and cannot make another person happy - until we are complete in ourselves. In other words, and I know this is bordering on truisms, we can't expect to have a fulfilling relationship if we feel incomplete - it just doesn't happen. I once said it here before...that line, "you complete me" must be one of the worst things ever said in film...it's such a horrible fiction - and such a wrong way to think about love (and marriage).
I never would have said this just a year ago, but I am now convinced that we can never be happy with another person until we are able to be wholly at ease with ourselves...not that we don't need other people - the very design of our bodies suggests a predisposition for more than a casual interaction - and a need for physical contact - but we have to be able to enjoy the moments we have to ourselves when on our own, so that when we find another person, we do not burden them with our expectations - or with any of the responsibility for making us happy. It just does not work to put our happiness into the hands of another person - but when we are fulfilled on our own, we get to enjoy the tremendous kind of happiness that comes from giving - true giving - without wanting/needing anything in return. It's astonishing how powerful that form of love feels...but for some of us...like me...it took annihilating what had brought me to my point of crisis...and that was the strange opportunity presented to me by my STBX's dropping of that bomb...
