What happens to us that we, perfectly intelligent, level headed women suddenly begin justifying to ourselves, beyond all sense of reason, why he’s treating us the way he does, why it's OK that he has rules about how often he can spend time with us, why it's understandable that he needs so much "guy time", why it always has to be the way HE wants it to be?
And why do we continue to believe that we’re so much better off with him than on our own?
The reality is you're not.
We’d be so much better off on our own at this point, so much better off without this guy bringing us down, doing a number on our self-esteem, but we have such a hard time believing that because when it's good, it really is that good, and we tend to focus so much on those moments that we forget how it feels the rest of the time.
Because we know just how good it can be.
That potential it's got if only it could be that way all the time. If only he could be that way all the time. But that's what got us into this mess in the first place.
We have a hard time looking at things through that lens of oh so hard reality. We so want to see what we want to see, what we know could be there, that we just don't see what's really there. The reality of this not-so-great relationship that we're in.
My point is simply that in spite of how we can come to view them, these guys really aren't that amazing. In fact, all too often they only seem so amazing after they become so indifferent to us.
They’re nothing special, nothing more than so many other guys out there (and probably a lot less.) But they've got something that reels us in and then keeps us hooked the longer we stay.
But the truth is, if they really were so amazing, we’d feel really good about them and ourselves while we're with them and while we're away from them.
We wouldn't be having the roller coaster of the highs and lows you’re experiencing where one minute you’re so excited to be with him and feeling on cloud nine, and the next minute you’re in agony because you called him on his cell phone and he’s not answering and he was supposed to be at your place two hours ago.
Because there’s something about this guy that you know you just can’t completely trust, so you have to keep calling because you have to know where he is right now!
OK, this is what I'm talking about. Stop right there with me for a minute. If this guy was all that, you would never have to keep calling his cell phone to find out where he is. He would have left you a message or called you to tell you he was going to be late, or he would have somehow figured out a way to let you know.
More importantly, the reaction you’re having to your guy being late and not calling is a huge clue that something is really wrong here. Your radar is going off (I mean, after all, you're a smart, beautiful woman, and you're obsessively calling some guys cell phone.) The reason your radar is going off is because you know deep down that you can't trust him!
You do know where he is. You’re smart. That radar is your intuition that is usually totally accurate when it comes to this guy if you really listen to what it’s telling you: that you can't trust him
The reality is this isn't going to get any easier because now he’s learning that he can get away with treating you like this and still have you, and you’re learning that you’re not worth anything more than him. Your self-esteem is getting lower and lower and lower. And this is the hook – this is what keeps you here.
He sees how little respect and affection and attention you’re willing to settle for and still stick around and he doles out just that right amount. With a little extra here or there for special occasions – like birthdays and Christmas and, oh, maybe Valentine’s Day too. Or when your cat has surgery.
The good news is that there is a way out.
You can change this.
Because what makes all the difference to you getting unhooked, is first realizing that this is not about you. This way he’s being with you? It’s about him. The way he was raised. The way he learned about being in relationships. The way his personality works. The way his dad treated his mom. The way his best buddy treats his girlfriend. The way his brain is wired. Whatever.
Whatever it is, it’s about HIM. Not you.
His lack of ability to know a good thing when he sees it and start doing the work to make it happen. His lack of willingness to seek out some help for himself for this problem of him. Because it is HIS problem.
Realizing this makes letting go much easier.
It’s becoming yours the longer you stay with him because it’s bringing you down when you could be out finding someone who’s the real deal – someone who loves to be with you and actually treats you that way.
The only way we ever begin to make a change is by waking up to the need to make a change. You can't change him, so the only thing left is to change yourself, in the way you see thing's for what they really are.
That’s what we’re beginning to do here - wake up. However long it takes; wherever you're at right now. It's time to regain your inner strength. Because this is not all that you deserve.
You deserve the real thing.
What do you think? Share your thoughts and comments with all of us below!
I so completely agree.
I have been with a wonderful man for 2 years. Connected on every level - made me feel loved, said he wanted a future with me ... but he lives in another county and despite having retired and there being no family, close friends or commitments where he lives, he will not move to be with me because he doesn't want anything to do with my 4 children (ranging in ages from 15 - 21) who still live at home. He tells me that if it was just me, we would be together now but that he doesn't think our relationship would survive him living in the same place as my kids. I have finally told him that if he truly loved me as he said he did, he would find a way (I moved across the country when I met my first husband, and took on his kids) - isn't that what you do when you love someone? Put them first? My heart is breaking because I love him body and soul, but feel so hurt that he refuses anything more than a weekend relationship; like I am some sort of good-time-girl; when I want to share the mundane daily bits of life with him that make up a real relationship. He has told me that he is bitterly hurt and angry at 'my rejection of him' and cut off all contact with me. I feel constantly nauseous and shaking, cry every day and pray that he realises that I am worth the taking the risk. But he has not made any effort to get in touch. It has been 3 weeks.
He's not right for you.
Yes, Ali. That's what you do when you love someone - you find a way. Not in spite of their baggage. But because of it. You know more than you think you do. Time to trust yourself and listen to what you know. No man, and I mean no man, is worth what you're putting yourself through.
At the end of the day, or the end of a romance, it becomes powerfully clear, as Jane points out, that we need not give our power away. Once we realize our full value, worthiness, and empower ourselves with that realization, then we are free. I have become wiser in recognizing quickly who is deserving of my attention and who is not.
Self respect is something we should never lose to someone else. It's easy to lose sight of when you are in the relationship, but it's so important to learn to recognize quickly if you are not being respected and valued and if you are in a relationship where the giving is even on both sides.
So true, Susan. The "recognize quickly" part can't be stressed enough. Sounds like you've learned this well!
Thank you Jane for all that you write. This one really resonated with me especially. Just wanted to ask about closure. What you describe happened to me, I understood what your wrote perfectly, and I realized it (I went through emotional hell because of it) at some point and just wanted to stop feeling so bad about myself and wanted to return to my "real" self, not what I had become in my mind. It's like you say, regaining your "inner strength." And that has taken me a long time. Is that alone the closure in such situations? By just coming to this realization that you talk about? Thank you so much for what you do!!
You're so welcome, Geri. I'm so glad it resonated with you! I understand exactly what you're talking about in regards to closure. We're so used to taking everything on ourselves, making his issues - his confusion, his lack of clarity, his needs, his happiness - our own, that we've lost ourselves in him. When it's repeated enough to become a pattern, it's hard to get that closure we feel we need to let go and move on. You're the way out, Geri. You seeing what you couldn't see before. You understanding what was such a struggle to understand before. The timing is unique to our individual situations, but it's this process of seeing and understanding combined with recognizing why we choose who we do. The closure comes over time. Not from someone who isn't capable of giving it to us, but from us walking through, discovering who we are and recognizing that none of these men had anything more than potential they couldn't fulfill. Own what's yours, give back what isn't. Change what you choose to, and accept what is beyond your control. I hope this helps, Geri. I love your questions! More than anything else, what you struggle with is where you find your greatest growth!
I greatly appreciate your answer Jane! It truly was with first finding you and your videos and writings that I began to move in the right direction. You just communicate it so well! Once again, thank you so much!!
Oh I'm so glad, Geri. I never who I'm speaking to, until I find out like this from you. Thank you! 🙂
I always feel so heartened and hopeful about my life and myself when I read your words of wisdom and compassionate understanding. I have let go of him and starting life anew. You have helped me get on this path and I so get that this is about him and not taking it personally at all.
Thank you, Jane! You shine a beacon for all of us
Aren't you sweet, Rebekah. Thank you for your beautiful words! These are huge lessons you're learning - and so much you're unlearning that's necessary to grow. Be so proud of yourself for how far you've come!
Jane, Your topics always relate to me in way one or another. Thanks for being so insightful! I've been dealing with the same person since 2013 who I met on an online dating site. To make a long story short, he only contacts me maybe every 3-4 months to go out with expectations of intimacies. Like a dummy, I keep letting him do this to me knowing after all this time that he is just using me. Right at this moment, I'm experiencing an all time low and I can't take it anymore. I'm making changes and no matter how painful, I will not see, talk or text with him again. It ends now for me. I think depression has set in and I need to see a therapist for professional guidance. I'm 50 years old and lonely with no real social life. I've tried the online dating sites with no success. At this point online dating sites don't work for me. Maybe in time I will explore other avenues but my options are limited in the area I live. Also, I think I need to refocus on myself and just give up on the fallacy of finding a boyfriend to share the rest of my life with. I will continue to read your sage advice and hopefully soon do one of your programs. Right now, I'm just frustrated and tired of trying.
Thank you, Annette. I'm glad these are resonating with you. Don't be so hard on yourself. We're not dummies, we're believers until the very bitter end. How could you imagine meeting someone? Where would he be? What would he be like? If online dating isn't for you, what is? When I was frustrated and tired of trying, I gave up the search and focused on me for a change. I feel like that might be your first step. Maybe you missed something there along the way that you're ready to embrace now. Maybe who you could have been or wanted to be or at least try if you had another chance? Look for the doors that are ready to open for you, just to see. Don't push open the closed ones. I'd never known the light like I did until I'd first been in such complete darkness. I think you're onto something here just by recognizing where you are!
Thank you Jane, for your great insight into the dillema of the man who learns how to keep you hooked, while giving less and less. It's like that awful analogy of the frog
that gradually cooks to death in the water that is slowly turned up to the boiling point.
You don't notice the subtlety of the neglect over time, and with that neglect the
deception, lies and devaluation. Just like that quote from Ilse Lehiste, "No matter how much you feed the wolf, he keeps looking at the forest". Empaths are especially at risk.
It does come down to the fact that the unassuming, open hearted, caring kind of women
somehow think they can transform others to be basically good, when in fact the men they are treated this way by, are not good. It usually comes from the man's genetics and from the neglect in the way they were raised by their mothers at a very early age.
The men I refer to are wearing a mask, they can perform but sadly they cannot connect.
They settle for manipulation and control, since they are better off with this defense as it is far easier to find fault with the woman than to face what's wrong with themselves.
Until they are willing to put in the work with a qualified therapist, they have little chance of transforming as their habits are deeply imbedded.
Exactly, Susan. The more we allow, the more it becomes easier to allow so much more until we have no idea who we are or what matters to us anymore or what we're even allowed to expect anymore!
Perfectly said! It makes so much sense when you say it, why is it so hard to see when your in it?
Because we're so emotionally invested when we're in it, Marci. We lose all objectivity. We feel what we feel and it feels real. And when it feels like this, we come up with every possible reason in the world to justify why it's going to get better, why it's just a temporary blip, and most of all, why WE can turn this around by being more of everything we've been told they want us to be!
Yes! I need to keep reading this! On the road to me!! Looking forward to a brighter year in2018!
So glad this resonated with you, Michele. I'm right there with you, cheering you on!
" ... when it's good, it really is that good, and we tend to focus so much on those moments that we forget how it feels the rest of the time.
Because we know just how good it can be."
It is occurring to me that, at age 68, I have not yet experienced how good a committed relationship with a man can be. What I once thought was so good is so much less than what a healthy relationship brings.
I have learned so much here about myself in relationship to men and to my parents.
Yes. I do tend to focus on those good moments in relationship with the man I loved, when I felt good in and about myself, but the sad truth is that they never lasted long. The moment of brutal physical violence 37 years ago after the man I loved for so many years returned from Vietnam didn't last long either, and something in me was broken that night, but it was a familiar broken. It was the broken I had experienced in my family of origin.
It was just like the episodic moments of brutal physical violence at the hands of my mother that broke me again and again until I was 8? 9? 10? years old. The last time my mother hit me as I crouched to protect myself on the floor in the hallway next to my bedroom, I clearly remember thinking to myself, "That didn't really hurt." I've always wondered if she realized that I wasn't afraid of her physical violence anymore and that in order to cause me pain, she would have had to escalate her violence beyond a place she was willing to go. I remember the look in my mother's eyes before she would hit me. It was just like the look I saw in the eyes of the man I began to love a few years later. The look was blind rage. There was something else she was hitting besides me. The person I wanted so desperately to love me was gone. In those moments, the person I was that she tried to love ceased to exist and became an object of her rage.
Much of the time it was just like my relationship with my father. My father was absent and on business trips much of the time as I was growing up. He left for work at 6:00 a.m. and returned at 6 p.m. on weekdays. I knew he loved me and was proud of me, but he kept me at a distance. Now I can see that he kept everyone at a distance. It wasn't as personal as I thought. It was about him and how he grew up with a distant and angry father, and then he married a woman who was distant and angry. As a result, I never expected that a man would spend much time with me. When my boyfriend was gone most of the time we lived together, I occupied myself by reading books in my bed, just as I had done as a child in the context of a violent mother and an absent father. The man I tried to love for so many years was a combination of my parents' limitations. I never knew what to do when a man really did want to spend time with me. It didn't feel right. It felt awkward. I was used to a lifetime of being alone.
The only time the man I loved hit me was after he pushed me to the floor during a conversation next to our bedroom when we were discussing a separation. My memory isn't completely clear, but the next thing I knew I was crouched on the floor in the bedroom in the same way I had been crouched as a child while being hit. I was more shocked than physically hurt. It had never occurred to me that a man would hit me. A woman, maybe, but not a man I loved. He stopped hitting me when I yelled as loud as I could. "You can't hit me!!!!!!!" I couldn't do that when I was child, but I able to do that at age 21. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life being treated the way I was treated as a child.
Who is supposed to love us more than a mother? Who would we continue to seek love from more than a mother? I know that I stopped feeling love for my mother early in my life. I needed her, but I was afraid of her. I tried to please her. She was unpredictable. She could be such fun to be with and then turn on us in rage. She kept her distance from us.
Who is supposed to love us more than a father? Who would we continue to seek love from more than a father? I stopped feeling love for my father early in my life. I couldn't count on him to be there, to protect me from my mother. My mother told me I was lucky to have a father at all, when I cried about missing him. She never talked about missing him. I didn't sense that she loved him. Around that time, I gave up on him. It is occurring to me that my mother gave up on men. I didn't want to be like her in connection with the man I loved more than I ever loved my father.
Astonishing how many years I was able to turn to a few good moments in my first relationship with a man and feel them and keep hoping that there would be more of them, long after the relationship was over. I treasured those moments. I kept telling myself that he really did love me, that we had a lifelong bond despite the fact that he lived 1000 miles a way and had for 34 years. He was a combination of my mother and my father. I was not going to give up the feeling of love that I had not experienced since early childhood. I thought I would die without that feeling of love for him. I didn't realize I could die for lack of love for myself.
Three things I've learned here and from other affirming sources are that I don't need to take the way I was treated by my parents and the man I loved personally (their behavior was about them, not me), that I don't need to blame them for my feelings (my feelings are my responsibility, not theirs), and that the story I tell about myself and others in connection with my parents and the man I loved can change from that of being a victim to being one who survived and is healing with each new day.
I know that I have told variations of this story numerous times here. As a result of that process, today my story is no longer a grievance story. It is a story of how I was before I knew what I know now about myself (I am worthy of love), what happened to change that (listening to women who have learned from their experiences), and what I am like now -- I can forgive my parents, forgive the man I loved, forgive myself, and have a fuller and joyful living experience, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, no matter what happens.
I'm not saying that this is easy, but I'm going to keep doing this because I now understand how good it is to live this way.
Thanks to you, Jane, and to the women in this community, I understand that true love is not what I thought it was. It is so much more.
Just when I think my heart can't break for you anymore than it already does, Ella, you prove me wrong. I'm so sorry for what you've been through. I hope it helps you to understand why you can put up with behaviors that have no place anywhere near you. We feel the depth of that bond and hang on for dear life no matter how abusive it is, because as children, without that bond, it would be akin to death. I hope it halps to be validated, to be supported and to see just how far you've come. Just to understand that what you thought true love to be is not, is huge in itself for it opens the way for a real true love to reveal itself to you. So proud of you!
Everything I've learn from you has helped. So much has healed in me in this past year. I have been validated and supported by you, and I am astonished at how far I have come. My hope is that there is no more of my old story to tell. Now I have a new story of knowing and loving myself no matter what happens. Thank you!
Love your new story, Ella. I'm so glad!
I have thus guy. He texts me every day, but I haven't seen him for longer than 15 minutes (2×) in over 3 months. He won't talk on the phone. He won't listen when I try to break up.
So he can be as distant as he wants, because I'm seeing someone who wants to do things with me...and if he doesn't work out I'll find someone else, because I deserve it.
He's listening now, Connie. Actions speak so much louder than words. You've got this, girl!