Reading an amazing book - this is the one for me - "Facing Love Addiction" - shows how two people "Love Addict" and "Love Avoidant" interrelate and it matches my H and I to a T.
He is distant, workaholic, scared of intimacy, I pursue, chase, want the closeness we lack - it's a cycle....so much more to share but that's the essence. IT explains why my childhood of neglect motivates me to continue to chase after unavailable men.
The sad part is, as abusive as he is, I can see all the unhealthy things I do to stay enmeshed, make it worse, etc and I feel so much shame. It certainly confirms my stance of dimness - to keep disengaging from the cycle - and it also shows how the "avoidant" will often bait and bait as a way for negative connection and a way to point the finger to the "addict" who gets upset.
Supports staying detached.
But it doesn't take away my shame at how I have done things I"m not proud of either in response to him, for my part in the cycle that were not rational and were damaging, where I did embarassing things to try to get the attention of a man who was so shut down from me for so long - it doesn't take away the fact that I did those things.
It also doesn't help that H reminds me of those things constantly as the blame spew of why we're never meant to be together.
IF we could both look at our patterns, we could change them. But for now all I can do is work on myself.
