Sadness

[endlessjourney]

Do you ever just sit there one day and get confused about relationships you've been in? Have you stopped and thought about some of things things people have done to you in the past and then shut yourself down so damn much that its almost as if no one else even wants anything to do with you. Sometimes I think of past girlfriends and think "yea, I really f..ked that one up". I guess it takes two to make something work and there are always two sides to the story. I guess if you don't trust someone there's probably a good reason for it. Maybe messed around on me because I screwed something up. I wasn't good enough for her. Maybe I didn't open up enough, maybe I was too insecure or I drank too much! Maybe I was just an asshole who just didn't care enough. Everytime I fall back and think that its my fault when relationships go bad. I know it's irrational but I have made my mistakes. This is how I feel.

 

[Lantern]

I've been thinking about my last relationship recently, too.

It's very easy to think that you should be the one to be blamed for things that go wrong, but I know (with two years' hindsight) that she did far more wrong to me than I ever did to her. All I wanted to do was care about her and be cared about.

And, of course, it's easy to be hard on yourself anyway; it's a natural byproduct of what we've been through. It's very hard for other people to understand it, but if you've been prepared to lay yourself open to people, and be honest, they should respect you enough to respond to that and try to understand things from your point of view (as much as anyone can).

Even if you did occasionally drink too often, or say the wrong thing, we are after all very much human (hence all the pain) and therefore we deserve at least a little accomodation in our actions.

My ex was the only person I have ever told about what happened to me (apart from a therapist I saw for a few sessions), and to be perfectly honest I don't think she gave a damn.

I just remember; it may feel bad to wonder whether the blame is mine, but I'd rather be a caring person that thought that than an uncaring person who just bulldozed through every day not giving a shit about others.

 

[roadrunner]

endless journey,

To my mind, the kind of thing you're talking about can get really complicated very fast. One thing we need to recall is that when we are feeling low, that's the WORST time to start assessing our history of relationships, our faults, our lives, etc. The results will always be dire, simply because we are feeling so low and are feeding only negative feelings into the way we are looking at things.

The other point is the one you mention. It always does take two to make or break a relationship, and if things go bad then there's work to be done. But the healthy thing to do would be to look at things as objectively as we can and with the aim of doing things better next time, not collecting more evidence proving what fuck-ups we are. Everyone makes mistakes, and well, sometimes a relationship just isn't "right" and it's demise is the best result, painful as that may be at the time.

You end on a very interesting and important note where this whole issue of relationships is concerned:

Everytime I fall back and think that its my fault when relationships go bad. I know it's irrational but I have made my mistakes. This is how I feel.

Would it help you to strike a middle ground where all this is concerned? What I mean is yes, right, your feelings are YOURS. You have to acknowledge them and get them out into the open so you can work on the issues they represent. But that doesn't mean you need to accept as fact all the things these feelings tell you. Actually, one of the biggest challenges in recovery is to reject and discard a lot of those old bad feelings about ourselves, and for a very good reason ... they aren't true.

Much love,
Larry