Love and Self-Worth

Anyone who reads this blog might consider it at times to be about, “man-bashing”, but honest to God it isn’t! I really love men, in fact I love them so much that at one point it actually became a detriment to me, a detriment and a wonderful learning experience. My last X-husband taught me so much about how dysfunctional I was that after 2 years of reading and therapy and self hatred and denial I realized I would never, ever put myself in that situation again, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. I did several short stints with some guys I met on the Internet and I soon realized that nothing had changed inside me. I was just dashing off trying to establish a relationship of the same ilk as the one I had just gotten out of. I was trying to establish relationships that eased my loneliness but did absolutely nothing for my life by way of quality. I was the same old me dating the same old loser and I had everything to offer and nothing to gain. So I started to really wonder why I was doingthat. I felt like I was scrambling around in the dark clutching at anyone who would ease my pain if only for a moment. I was clutching at anyone who would get my mind off my X, who had conveniently planted himself into a new relationship before he extricated himself from ours. I felt like a throw-away girl, like a disposable blade he used to clean himself up before he moved onto new and better things, and that really, really hurt. I perpetuated my own pain by focusing on it. I focused on it to the point of obsession, but worst of all I hated myself. I hated myself for not being able to keep my man, for not being a good enough wife or lover, for not being thin enough, nice enough or mean enough. And so, I started a quest to find out everything I could about what I had done wrong in the hopes of preventing another failure in the future, and sadly enough, in the hopes of re-capturing his heart. You see it didn’t really matter how many men I dated, it was my X who I really wanted back and I thought if I could just fix myself, he would somehow, magically, return and everything would be better. But, I was living in a delusion. If you want to read my story, (which I am updating slowly, scroll down to the second entry, until I figure out how to make a separate page to it).You see the thing I refused, profoundly refused to do was accept the situation for what it was. Rather than seeing him as the self-serving prick he was I decided to blame myself for the short-comings in the relationship and the more empty he was the more I tried to fill the void by being loving and accommodating, but the problem inherent in trying to adapt myself to someone elses needs was the exhaustion I created within myself. I was constantly scrambling to anticipate his needs, constantly wondering why he had all those female “friends” programmed into his phone, constantly wondering why it took him so long to get home at the end of the day, constantly wondering why we never had sex and constantly figuring out what would please him, while he constantly worked on pleasing himself. In all fairness to him, he did try to work on the realtionship for about a minute, which he viewed as an eternity. While I went to therapy he stayed home and played computer games and spent money on electronic gadgets for which I freely indulged him.If nothing else, I thought he was my friend, a kind gentleman who was probably the only person in the world who could live with me and put up with my, “craziness”, my “illness. You see when I was a child my father molested me while my mother was dying of cancer, so I never really so I never really had parents. I went through life on automatic pilot, falling into bed and into love with whatever man would have me and there weren’t too many, and I considered myself lucky that anyone would love me at all. These all were actions and experiences prompted by the want of a love I had never experienced as a child and nothing more. Of course I didn’t know anything about how to love either, except for experiences with my father which are too deluded to mention here, but I am sure you can use your imagination.My inexperience with love left me with no expectations, but some fantasy of what true love was, probably gleaned from television or fairytales, so I mainly attracted men who were just like me, wounded souls with nothing to give, on a constant path yearning for the love they thought they could absorb through someone else. It’s sad really, like vampires, and I was guilty as hell, but if you don’t know what you are doing is wrong, is it?I had many question like that and for me everything seems to be this quest for knowledge, the quest for truth and on that quest I actually learned something, and it’s not about hating men, it’s about loving yourself first, Honoring yourself first and treating yourself the way you would want others to treat you. This is a tall order for someone who has no idea what these concepts entail, but I assure you the solution is not to go right out and start dating all over again. It should be about introspection, self observation and self change. It may be more difficult to cultivate self love than it is to keep doing what you have always done and in the end it will be worth it.

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