Really Needing Advice ....Encouragement

[AntoniaB]

Sunshine I applaud you for writing in such detail all these things you want from him above, because the only way you can fix this in yourself is to focus on the truths...and now you have a list. Like Cadet said, if you read Codependent No More, you'll see that much of what you've said above is script from that book. Just like the MLCers have a script, so do the LBS's if the LBS's are extremely codependent. I'm not a doctor but I read that book AND others, and I also am a reformed (mostly reformed) codependent, so I can see the behavior a mile away.

You said yourself you're trying to get back something you lost with XH by having a rel. with this guy that will sort of continue where the rel. with XH left off...regardless of what nightmare XH put you through with his MLC, you have to acknowledge if you want to grow yourself that part of the marital problems leading up to his MLC or during his MLC were your problems of codependency. And maybe he PUSHED you into codependency, maybe it was all you...but it's irrelevant whose fault it was. What IS, is that you are very needy, and when you say "I'm sorry I'm so needy but I don't know any other way to be", I get it, I totally get it. I was there too.

But you don't HAVE to be that way. The only way to not be needy is to GAL. And there are different types of GALing--to me, GALing with the goal of not being needy means that you have to learn to do things that are only for YOU and your own development or to help others, like family or friends, and you aren't doing things because you're movitated by it getting you a man, whether that man is your X or a current guy or a new guy.

I still struggle with this...but I'm getting better...small example: when I get an accomplishment with my current project, I have the instinct to celebrate with my XH. Knowing that I can't, I'm choosing a few friends to confide in--girlfriends--and sometimes I'm even learning to keep the good feelings to myself.

I think women SO often are taught that our accomplishments aren't "ours" but that they have to be done FOR men in some way...do you go buy some sexy lingerie, for instance, to wear to bed BY YOURSELF? Or do you say to yourself, "why should I buy that if I don't have a man here to admire it?" Most women don't buy it then. Or if they do they "put it away till a man comes along."

I don't even really think men are at fault here. If you look at women's magazines, most are headed up by women and THEY are the ones putting this crap out to the world. I think most women are taught to feel exactlty the way you do, and unless you make a gigantic effort to learn how NOT to be so codependent, you will probably just try to fix yourself with another person, as Cadet says.

You need a plan, and that plan needs to be to read on GALing, codependency, and put all your effort into fixing yourself now instead of him. You need to learn healthy relationship detachment.

It may be that this guy senses your neediness and is unwilling to give you an inch because he's afraid you'll take a mile, and pushing him to move in together is evidence that you've already had that tendency. He's holding back for a reason. Perhaps if you are really changing/less needy, he will meet you halfway. Perhaps he will not and he's a rebound guy and it will never work. But all that aside, you have the best chance at a future relationship that is healthy if you really work on your codependency.

Make it a goal to post mainly about what you're doing to work on yourself from here on out :-)