At my age, most of the gals have settled down happily with husbands and kids. Yes part of me, I envy them so much that I loathed their happiness. But on the other part of me, I am still in denial to open up to a new relationship. Maybe I’m still waiting for the best man to come, or maybe that little flicker of hope has long since gone, buried and without its marking.
Hurt. This is beyond hurt, something that you couldn’t even describe in words nor poems to express. I’ve tried to rekindle my flame for men, but it was just platonic. Call me cowardice if you want but at where I stand from and where I see it, I’m not a damsel in distress. Not just yet. My journey is a long and winding road. Last night, I was fighting with RH. It was like a spur of the moment. I feel cheated. He asked me to keep our meetings a secret. I couldn’t understand this at all. Why must he treat me like I’m a skeleton in his closet? Last night too, someone claimed to be my number one fan. All of a sudden, I realise I have a stalker for three goddamn years. He knows me, and kept on pestering to meet me, but why now? And I wouldn't dare to meet this man.
He may be one of you who are reading about me online. He may be one of somebody’s friends trying to play prankster. I am nobody’s enemies, unless they thought so. Yes. Some of you out there have already had that in mind. Hating my guts and my soul. Hating me for my whole being and existence, and because of my platonic relation with someone. And that the whole me is seen as a threat? Life is simply not fair. It’s not easy being so single and unavailable. I chose to lead my life and it’s my right to be what I want and have it my way. Being so independent for years have taught me to rely only on myself.
I am going to share how my fear of intimacy caused me to sabotage my latest romantic relationship which in turn led to me opening my heart in a truly magnificent way. In order to lay the basis to explain the great breakthrough I had in my personal growth process - which also turned into the single most excruciatingly painful experience of my recovery - I am going to share a summary of my relationship which were driven by my fear of intimacy issues. The fundamental dynamics of both extremes of my issues - as well as the prominent themes - were recreated in the transformational relationship experience that began for me in August 2000.
For most of my adult life, I effectively had a relationship phobia. In my first emotionally intimate relationship (not any true emotional intimacy because I was incapable of it then - more accurate would be to call it emotional attachment) I got completely enmeshed with a man I met online when he was pursuing his PhD in Dundee. Let’s call him AA. He was the one who really initiated me into being involved…too involved in fact that he had promised for us to be legally married to my whole family. We nearly engaged to be married – twice. But somehow there were always excuses from the man’s family. This made my whole family puzzling for two and a half years on my relationship. During our breaking point, I always stumbled upon AA with his so-called cousin. So he claimed. Naively, I trusted him with all my love and all my heart. After so many heartaches and gut instinct feelings, I faced him and his so-called cousin up front, unplanned and unprepared. Only to find out that he was engaged to his cousin through family arrangement! Why must he keep me in the dark? True enough, he was engaged to his 10-y-o-younger-than-him cousin, who is still studying nearby. They are happily married 3 days after Hari Raya last year.
I vowed to not in the months and years to come, make the mistake of getting involved with someone who have the power to hurt me like that. I rebound, and being a hypocrite to love men that was not to my liking, emotionally, intellectually and physically. I pursued only unavailable men. I always had someone unavailable that I was obsessing over, trying to figure out how to get him to see how wonderful we could be together. (This was completely unconscious and something I only realized looking back at my patterns in recovery.) A truly rebound relationship. I was living in denial that I moved on…and that I can always replace the man I was so deeply in love with. The man that hurt me the most – AA. When I walked out from MTN in January this year, I met SAS. Somehow, SAS made me want to love again, but still that was not enough for me to really commit to him. Once again, I broke a man’s heart…even though I know how he loved me, I ran. That also happened to KA, Is, DH, Ac, SMN and ZMN. I said no to being committed. To say I chase men for their money? I’m not, but I used them for my own agenda, but I promised none. To say I chase men for their looks, I’m not, for men with faces makes me cringe with jealousy. Yes. When I really love a man, I get jealous so easily. But those feelings died. It was actually less painful for me to be alone, obsessing about someone who was unavailable (like RH and Is), then it was to be the unavailable one. In those interactions, the evidence seemed to indicate that I was incapable of loving. The other person would often accuse me of exactly that. Being able to blame someone else for my feelings of abandonment and betrayal was less painful than blaming myself for being defective. More bearable than the pain of that little gal who felt she had failed in her responsibility to be a good daughter
I was terrified of being responsible for another persons feeling, for their happiness. I had failed in my responsibility to my parents - and was certain (subconsciously) that I would fail again, because something was obviously wrong with me. Any men who felt available, was someone to run away from, or push away. I was terrified of being smothered, of being engulfed, by a man's emotional needs - and then being betrayed because of my defective being. The excruciating pain of finding my boyfriend’s engaged to someone else was the proof of, and felt like punishment for, that unworthiness. In my latest relationship experience I went from the unavailable one to the one who was available because of my breakthrough. Then the man that I opened my heart to loving became the unavailable because of his fear of intimacy and betrayal issues. That caused him to react to his issues by making his life busy, avoiding me all the time - which left me feeling abandoned and betrayed. Then again, back to square one, where I become the once again unavailable. A wonderful opportunity for growth, indeed!
"Co-dependence is a disease which involves the being's emotional defence system being dysfunctional to the extent that it breaks our hearts and destroys our ability to Love and be Loved, wounds our souls by denying us access to our Spiritual Self, and scrambles our minds so thoroughly that it causes our minds to become our own worst enemies."
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