Starting Over

[25yearsmlc]

Not to belabor the point on voice messages but you kind of lost me. What I am saying is that for ME, listening to voice messages is the last thing I do b/c I have to wade through the saved messages first, to GET to the voice message

and I would not know who left it until I get to it unless I do some end run around around my cell phone's menu, but if I'm driving or busy or in a meeting, no way.

So I don't know what you mean if he said he had not listened "yet," or if you're upset that he DID listen to it, but did not answer... is that it?

If so, if he was reachable buy SOMEONE, then would you agree that's all that matters? Or no?

As far as believing what he says and not attributing negative stuff I get stuck a little

it's important to stay focussed on actions and try Not to paint or label them into being monsters (we rarely come up with positive labels) or do our pseudo-analysis so that we feel we have figured it all out.

We tell ourselves it HELPS "just to understand", but I think that's a lie.
It's part of a negative cycle we participate in.

For one thing, It does NOT help the relationship to label them or pretend we understand them, OR even to actually somehow truly understand them, if WE DO nothing differently.

Seriously. The "analysis" we do in their absence is nearly always inaccurate b/c we don't know their inner monologue, or the background context of their emotions then,

or what happened to THEM that day/ OR how they feel physically, OR what "x" event symbolizes to THEM, not us, etc...

Second, I think it cements negativity in our feelings about them, the more we label it. And THAT labelling in the name of understanding, negatively affects how WE interact in the R. After all, we just diagnosed them as jerks, narcissists, control freaks, paranoid, jealous, slobs, etc. Harder to be loving to people like that.

Finally, to them/him, that behavior of ours towards them in the interactions (Based on our labels of them) is "unfairly negative", so

then HE thinks you mistreat him b/c of some character flaw in YOU..."and the wheels of the bus go round n round"....

see how circular this gets?

And it's NOT Helping you move forward in the R, OR helping smooth the interactions. So yeah, I say Just stick to the facts.



Like I'm in IC and IC is helping me see that I often get myself into Rs where I don't get my needs met - now I realize that if I had done better and been healthier around that, I may not have chosen exBF in the first place.


Understood. I get it. I'm not saying there's no place for this type of analysis. Not at all. It's very important to know this before you engage in another R. to own it and to change the way you pick them...clearly b/c you said you've never had a long term R, right? Okay so there's work to do there, later on...

I am saying this isn't the focus here, b/c DBing is about improving the present R, in the present...and going forward.

As harsh or odd as it may sound, a lot of the "why" you chose him, and patterns you create, or what else "then happened" to you, is your own personal work to do - absolutely - BUT it is perhaps ALSO

irrelevant to fixing this r at this time...AND

It can actually make things worse.

A therapist I know recently said, "Sometimes talking things out, is NOT the healthy thing, b/c it only serves to relive the trauma, and keeps them mired in it"...

I wonder if the "need to understand" the past CAN also do that.

It's a blurry thing, this "past", and no two people see it the same...

and it's also a way to avoid working on the NOW...

The DB concept is radically different in this respect, [b]it's short term solution based therapy about What to do NOW, from now on...that improves things...period.

BTW
the short term solution based T will tell you up front, if they cannot help you in a few to a half a dozen appointments, you should move on. That's radically different than most.

But sometimes we talk about him to show how I didn't get my needs met and he couldn't give me what I needed. So I don't mean it to be negative, but it feels inherent in this kind of discussion.


Yes - It IS inherent in these types of discussions. By their very nature, we "get negative" (b/c we're usually not seeing a T or C for reasons having to do with how great we think they are. )

I totally get that.

OTOH, you have had a lot of these discussions w/a lot of different c's and t's, and not a lot has changed, except he's left now.

So the discussions changed nothing. The "identifying" the patterns, recognizing the "underlying issues", and focussing on him and his behaviors (via the route of "trying to understand" him) has not changed enough of the actual behaviors, to alter the outcome.
[u]
FOR ME, that's not much of a payoff. Life is short. [/u]

I'd want to do or focus on something vastly different b/c that's too long a time to be in essentially the same position, practically speaking, as I was in - 6 months earlier.



Also, my old IC and this new one have both said - believe what they do not what they say, and I don't know where to fall on that. "I'm not abandoning my family" as he drives off without telling anyone and doesn't answer his phone for three days ... I wrote and said "I didn't say you did, but what should I think when you do that, you tell me" kind of thing (trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I don't know what that is - certainly not the normal behavior of functioning beings)