If You Struggle With Limerence, Here Is How You Start The Healing Process

if you grew up without consistent love and safety and validation from your parents you've probably already noticed how vulnerable you are to the idea of a great love a great love that just shows up in your life like there's ordinary people who are actually in your life and maybe you're single maybe you have a partner but there's this other hypothetical relationship in your imagination and it's just legendary it's beyond what other people normally experience it's a perfect union kind of love and you have a deep sense of what that feels like for you to be loved for who you really are to be safe and to be certain that you are in the right place in the right relationship in the right life and chances are you have someone in your mind who feels like they are that person for you and chances are they aren't actually with you now these are the perfect growing conditions for what we call limerence which is a state of infatuation or Obsession that people with cptsd can be especially prone to it can happen to anyone but with trauma and neglect in childhood it just seems to get a real foothold sometimes so sometimes you're going to get limerent feelings for someone you're acquainted with sometimes it's someone famous or imaginary and sometimes it's someone who is actually in a relationship with you but in a limited way that leaves a big empty space for that obsessive waiting hoping searching obsessively for Clues and evidence that they love you that often goes with limerence so I got a letter yesterday from someone I'll call Lisa and she writes dear Anna my first marriage was 32 years ago with my best friend ever or at least I thought so Mike and I were so connected in so many ways I didn't expect that I was in love with him until I was it took one and a half years for us to recognize that become a couple and get married it was great but then it wasn't he was doing drugs and I had to make him leave Lisa says I was devastated and it seemed he was too he was sobbing his brains out yet didn't want to go to rehab he didn't want to do the work to keep us together I came from a nightmare home with screaming verbal abuse physical abuse mostly my mom and brother got the physical abuse what I did was hard-hearted as everyone seemed to observe Mike was the best thing that ever happened to me I was so crushed confused and broken but I recall saying to myself I can't be like my mom and stay in an unhappy situation so I did what I had to do and we split got my pencil here I'm circling things I want to come back to when I go through this letter again but let's just read through now I remained in touch with Mike's parents especially his mom after our divorce he was married two other times and divorced two more times his mom used to fill me in here and there but he was not our main topic we were actual friends with other stuff to discuss I never saw Mike after the divorce because he moved to another city and that was that as soon as the internet became a thing I searched for him on a regular basis even though I was with a new boyfriend to whom I eventually got married it took me five and a half years to agree to marry him and when I did it was because I needed his health insurance so I could return to school my new husband and I did have fun through traveling having lots of friends and a lot of socializing still I searched and thought about Mike on a regular basis I don't feel this was normal but I could not stop myself she says after about 25 years Mike's dad died I asked his mom to please ask him if it was okay if I attended services she said no need to ask but I didn't want to feel intrusive the day came and at the service Mike and I saw each other we hugged and cried for what seemed like an hour it was very emotional his latest girlfriend was there and we were introduced it was all laughs and a great to see you kind of vibe he asked if we could be in touch on social media and I agreed we never talked after that but would occasionally like each other's pet photos and little things like that very generic but I was secretly thrilled to know this guy again my first and biggest love the funniest smartest person I've ever known was back even if it was just via social media so two years later Mike's mom died and he messaged me directly and from that point we became reconnected talking and laughing and he apologized profusely about drugs and ruining our marriage he even had a tattoo of us on his arm I was a bit freaked out by that but loved it of course all of this communication led to meetups and I'm skipping ahead a bit she says or this will go on forever the meetups led to a first kiss and then an affair he was now engaged to the girl I had met and I was still married we both seem to love every moment then he decided to get an advanced degree for a new career and it all slowed down but we still communicated almost daily just nothing about hooking up it was mutual and equal then it wasn't I could feel the pulling back on his end but we continued on discussing school jobs Sports and always music which was our biggest Bond it's now been two years since we've seen each other I go to therapy and he goes to class it's been almost three years that he's been engaged she is loaded and his keeper if you will even after many times of him saying it'll never end until one of us is dead he's slipping away I know it and he knows it the problem is that I cannot stop thinking or obsessing over him I know it's affecting everything in my life although my husband doesn't know I'm sure he can tell part of me is gone I watch every video out there go to therapy speak to certain friends that know the truth Nothing Stops me from thinking about him I'm obsessed and I do not want to be I will always love him because I loved him but I'm never going to have him am I so bored in my marriage or am I traumatized once again by this ex-husband and due to my crappy childhood I have always missed Mike and our fling just makes me miss him all over again it's ridiculous and I feel ridiculous I do not regret our time together but I need to make my brain stop because he's stopping and I'm now trying to stop reaching out I even sit on my hands so I do not message him he calls occasionally and we still text but I need to stop waiting and living just to hear from him and I can't my therapist said it's because of my miserable childhood and not getting my needs met then she says this is a trauma Bond she's right you're right but how do I make it stop he can reach out that's fine but I need to stop living for it he doesn't want me back in the beginning I was the one in control and he wanted to know where I was and why he hadn't heard from me every five seconds but that quickly turned and now alas here I am lonely and longing for any bit of attention from him please help if you can from Lisa oh Lisa I'm so sorry this is one of the most painful things in life and right now the options that you're facing are all painful but I'm going to help you find the right way through okay I circled a bunch of things on your letter here that I wanted to come back to all right so I I believe you're in your 50s now so your first marriage was 32 years ago and Mike had been your best friend ever and then you fell in love and you were married and it was really great at first but then it wasn't and the only thing you say about what was great then was it was great but then it wasn't that's a really short statement okay and the reason was because he was doing drugs and you didn't really say whether he had been using drugs the whole time and you just realized it or he got into drugs or what happened there but I know firsthand how devastating it is to love somebody who turns out to be using drugs and that it is an impossible situation and he didn't want to go to rehab and he didn't want to do the work to keep you together okay so clue number one about Mike is not just that he was an addict and ruined your marriage but he he didn't want to do the work to keep you together all right and this shows up again later so here we go all right and then you explain and my heart goes out to you you come from a nightmare home with screaming verbal abuse physical abuse and mostly your mom and brother got the abuse uh that was how it was in my family too what I did you say was hard-hearted as everyone seemed to observe hold on a second there I actually think leaving somebody who's addicted to drugs and not willing to stop is not hard-hearted it's common sense it's common sense you don't give a lot of details about this but when I hear the whole story here of what happened and um I I'm just gonna take your word for it he was an addict and there is no happy relationship to be had with somebody who cannot stop using and some people who are using can stop and they can heal and it takes time but he wasn't doing that so I really think you did the right thing by getting out then right but I can also see what it says to me that you feel like you were too harsh and um I think that what got stuck in your mind is that you did it prematurely that you know maybe you shouldn't have that it was this great love it ended up being so hard to find anything and I believe that you guys loved each other I get it so then you say Mike was the best thing that ever happened to you okay well okay I'm just gonna say accept that he turned out to be an addict and wasn't willing to do the work to be with you and so you know I know that later you married somebody who does do the work to be with you so I'm just going to sort of challenge that idea that this this like wild child guy that you were with was the best thing that ever happened to you what I what I'm hearing and I totally understand is that this relationship awakened a part of you that you don't ordinarily have access to and that's a beautiful thing and yet I I suspect in people like you and like me what that is is it's a it's a trauma memory and it's a it's a it's the satisfaction of a trauma wound with a fantasy and as people with childhood PTSD we sometimes have a really hard time telling the difference between what is a great love and incredible compatibility and what is something that has all the painful knife wounds of what happened to us as kids when it was terrible and people could not do the work to honor us and treat us caringly lovingly in the way that we deserved all right you got that as a kid you got that in your marriage so I really questioned that it was the best thing that ever happened to you I at least know that something much better can happen for you okay and you say I was so crushed confused and broken but I recall saying to myself I can't be like my mom and stay in an unhappy situation so I did what I had to do and we split now I don't know if you noticed that but you've done exactly what your mom has done you are staying in an unhappy situation in this limbo and we're going to talk about what about your marriage um in a minute but I don't mean just instantly that that's the bad thing your limbo is a living hell you're suffering and suffering every day and you have been for a long time okay so um you know I'm the tough love fairy and I think on some level you kind of knew what I was going to say when you wrote but if you don't know I'm going to tell it to you with great love and great understanding and relatedness because I've been through this too so then you say I remained in touch with Mike's parents and since you had been married to Mike that's not crazy especially his mom and then he got married twice and divorced twice so he had had three marriages by the time you ran into him he's got a fiance for a fourth marriage and you know hey people with cptsd that's often what it looks like so no judgment but just saying he does have in the way that he has relationships he has this pattern of you know going in and going out going in and going out it's not working out and that would be also extremely consistent with somebody who was an addict and very charismatic all right some people are addicts and nobody would marry them because uh the drugs just blatantly make them awful to be around but he's a charismatic addict that's how I would describe it from the little you're saying so his mom would fill you in here and there but it wasn't your main topic you had an authentic relationship with her and you know after the way you grew up I totally understand holding on to the family that you once had when you were with Mike all right so you never saw him after the divorce because he moved to another city and that was that and good good there were 25 whole years between getting divorced and bumping into him again and that's good boundaries um but as soon as the internet became a thing oh wasn't that a crazy couple of years for those of us who get limerent right as soon as the internet became a thing I searched for him on a regular basis even though I was with a new boyfriend to whom I eventually got married and so you search for him even though you were with a new boyfriend it took 5.5 and a half years to agree to marry this guy and when you did it was because you needed his health insurance so that you could return to school okay so I think what you're trying to tell me is but I never really love this guy but what you're accidentally telling me is something quite terrible all right you're exploiting somebody but here's the thing if you're gonna be happy Lisa you cannot live in such a way that deeply deceives and hurts and uses other people it just won't fly it doesn't work that way you can call it karma or you can call it inner peace but you cannot have peace and you will not find love you now I'm not rendering judgment on this marriage we're going to talk about that in a minute but the fact that you're trying to tell me oh I just went into it for health insurance that's that's just so morally wrong and so going into it just for health insurance is sort of saying I'm going to do something that looks like this conventional thing that people do called marriage but I'm not really doing it it's a material reason for so that I can go to school and if you grew up with trauma I bet you your youth was extremely complicated you didn't get that education really or you couldn't be present for it or you couldn't stay regulated enough to keep up with studies and move your career forward and also the whole thing about money like so many of us get financially hurt because of our trauma and because the families that we came from are so troubled like there's there is no money and that's I mean that's how I I grew up I got a little bit of money when my dad died when I was a teenager it was it helped a little bit but you know I was on financial aid for a little bit I got Social Security benefits because my dad had died while I was a minor you know I scraped together and it took me a long time to finish college because I had to work and you know I know what it is to have to like scratch your way through survival and how relationships play a role in that and and so I I'm not standing here above you you know I had relationships that I just needed so I had somewhere to live I can see now how much what a soul-sucking thing that was for all concerned that I hurt other people that I couldn't be happy that I was never free that when I did meet really great men I had weird stuff complications going on in my life that made me not seem like an ideal match to them and they weren't really interested so okay so then you say your new husband and you did have fun through traveling you had lots of friends you socialize a lot and you still searched and thought about Mike on a regular basis and you didn't feel this was normal but you couldn't stop yourself so uh-huh yeah that's you know that's when you have limerent Tendencies that's what you're gonna do somebody comes along and the idea that you know you had this miserable existence before that was so terrible that you had to rip yourself out of a marriage to get out of it but now it's going to be better and that idea comes in and that is what we do that's how trauma distorts our thinking and when it gets control over our lives it takes us right off the tracks so I'm here I'm your tough love fairy I'm just calling it for what it is you got limerent you know that's a like an infatuation an obsession on somebody you don't you're not actually with like if you were actually with him the same old problems would manifest and you it's interesting in your whole letter you never say whether he stopped using drugs maybe he did and maybe he didn't but if that's not like a hugely significant fact about him whether he's using or not he's still in that addictive behavior that's I mean that's yes that he's having an affair he he gets into an affair right after he gets engaged like who does that right who does that as somebody who has just as much fear and avoidance as you have some people do avoidance by you know they just don't get into relationships but some of us have this subtler way where we want the simulation of a relationship or a marriage but we don't give ourselves to it and limerence really comes in as a way to sort of like take this huge piece of our heart and our love and our our like the thing that we have to give to another person if it were to be for real we we're like here I'm gonna I'm gonna direct that over here and then with this person I'm gonna have this limited thing and some people will criticize it and say oh it's a strategy so that you don't get hurt I don't think it's conscious it's not my experience that it's anything conscious it's uh you know it's just like I can't help feeling like I need to eat food every day I can't help feeling like I need to breathe every day and there's a lot of behaviors that we can't help they come so naturally to us because they're just wired in there but while we do have to breathe and eat every day we actually can change these behaviors we can work on that brain level we can work on the cultural level the social level we can heal these cptsd symptoms so take heart all right there is a way out of this there's a way out of this hell and into peace and happiness for you and something that feels good and just like organically good for your life all right it's here for you and so I'm going to go through the letter and find it okay I mean I know where I'm going with this okay so then Mike's dad died and um he contacted you directly or no the mom contacted you and you came and you saw him and you got into the affair so yes we started talking about the affair you were thrilled to know him so what's interesting is when you first saw him he was with a girlfriend and everything was like Hey great to see you we're friends we're introduced so right away everybody goes into a fake persona or at least you do I can't really speak for the other two uh surely this girlfriend has been jealous and upset about you I mean unless she's completely high all the time and doesn't feel anything she's noticing there's something going on right so you see him and you're thrilled but everybody pretends oh yes we're just friends you know we used to be married hi how's it going and then he says can we stay in touch and yeah you know that's not like crazy to stay in touch after 25 years it seems like everybody can be friends but the energy the electric energy that you were feeling probably he was too and especially because he's an addict or that's my experience that these things like sometimes we're just tripping in our own mind but sometimes both people feel them and the fact that he entered into an affair with you means he was feeling it so I don't doubt there was a real love between you and a real connection and that even 25 years like you could feel it right away but oh why is life like this sometimes the great love you feel is not compatible with daily life and there it is you know it's just it's this great you know thing that brings you out of yourself and helps you experience the Eternal and feel connected with it and no Union with another person except life with that person sucks it just it can't be done they won't do it they can't do it they have an addiction they're with somebody else and you know he was only engaged and I know you thought about this Lisa you didn't write about it but he was only engaged he could have broken that engagement and he chose not to um so that was your clue and it sounds like you were like well my my marriage you know I I never was really feeling it and I feel this and maybe I can have both things all right you're certainly not the first person to give that a try and but just like everybody who's given it a try you've got into a place of great pain and um so another thing I wanted to say that was significant you know I noticed that you had a like a lack of empathy for your husband I notice you have a lack of empathy for Mike's now fiance that you have a lack of empathy for her I just didn't hear you say anything acknowledging what she was going through and so you know you may have seen my video about how complex PTSD can give us narcissistic traits and that's what happens the need for love is so voracious and so consuming that it drowns out empathy for other people ordinary empathy and I think intellectually you must realize that this woman is something terrible has been done to her by you and by Mike and it's still being done by you guys because he's still in touch with you and you're still you know wanting him and hoping he'll leave and and what about her so again you know I I I've been in your shoes but it's see when you're in the middle of limerence it is it's another sort of weird kind of brain state where you you cannot you can't perceive the full spectrum of reality and I'm just here outside your limerence just going oh yeah this is terrible you're a good person but you're doing a bad person thing that's really inconsiderate towards two people who are being robbed of something that they've been promised and that they showed up for in good faith right and that is just morally devastating and there's I there's just no way to really live your life that way and be happy so I want you to take hope it's like there it is and you know it's funny like you've been in therapy all this all these years and your your therapist is talking to you about it your friends are talking to you about it and you know you say you're watching videos but none of those things are doing anything about it and I don't know if people are calling you out on the fact that you're not taking action on this what I hear you doing is you're waiting for him to decide if he's gonna like you know call you or give you a little bit of that you know intense love that you are craving now it is like an addiction isn't it it is and it's it's the stuff that what it does to your life is just like what drugs do to a person's life so I just keep going back like you could not stay in an unhappy situation so you did what you had to do and you split and um and that's where you are right now that's where we're going so first we're going to deal with the matter of Mike okay it's been two years since you've seen each other you're going to therapy he goes to class um he's still engaged he still hasn't gotten married and I'm not surprised and um oh I feel for that girlfriend that fiance that he's having an affair on the whole time you're very logical you're very reasonable you're I can tell you're a good person but this one little bitter line comes out about about Mike's fiance she's loaded meaning she has a lot of money and she's his keeper if you will so that sounds like um some envy that she has money and you don't and that's why he's with her uh and you might be right you might be right if it's any satisfaction I it's I don't think it's going to work out between them given the way that he's treated her and it sounds also exploitative so he you you project that he's with somebody because he just wants the money but just calling you out here does that mimic does that Echo a little bit how you're with somebody also because you want the Financial Security so we've got two people here who had a great love but they were not spiritually ready for it and when I use the word ready I'm not trying to give you hope because I think that this situation has been burned out too hard to call it back a really good relationship can only take so much and uh it will take it has certain like rubber band qualities a really good durable relationship like real love it has rubber band qualities and that you know there can be hurts and it can come back it comes back to its shape but the the stuff that you two have been through is so great and because um years went on with this like lying and hurting other people my take on it is this is too damaged it's they're it's not only because he won't come back to you it's because the good thing has been tainted by the toxic stuff and it's so sad but that can really happen and that's why love is so precious that's why caring for other people is something we strive so hard to learn how to do as people with cptsd because our our traumatized Behavior does spoil good and precious love and that happens but it doesn't have to anymore you can make today the day that you don't do that anymore today can be the day that you clear it up so you say you can't stop thinking or obsessing about them it's affecting everything your husband doesn't know what I keep saying we're going to come back to your husband he's very important in this um he can tell a part of you is gone and um yeah I I called this out before you watch every video you go to therapy you speak to certain friends that know the truth so I guess you had the idea that if you just kept talking about your feelings about them that it would change I used to think that too when I was in a situation that was a little like this and I thought if I talked and talked and talked um I would pop out of it but that's not what happened you know what happened it got worse and worse and worse and it it took on properties that were nothing like love it was more like depression self-attack not wanting to live it was terrible and so you know what the day that changed it for me was is my friend who showed me the daily practice that I teach everybody every I mention it in every video it's always down in the description section if you want to try it but this is a technique what I really needed was not to be obsessed on something that wasn't there what I really needed was a way to find comfort and meaning and rest and Clarity that's what I really needed and by a stroke of amazing Good Fortune I met somebody who showed me these techniques where I could just get these horrible thoughts and feelings out of my head onto paper and then rest my mind and it's two specific techniques it's easy it's free you can learn it too but that's what happened and my friend taught me this and then I said I'm still really troubled about this relationship you know so obsessed and can't let go she was just like oh having any kind of contact that has romantic intent with a married person is wrong and if you want to get happy now cut it off that simple okay and I literally nobody had ever told me that who I'd gone to for help now everyone knows that but I was being very selective I think about where I would go and so I was going to this therapist and we were drawing pictures about it and talking about dreams and you know why was I sad and what was the last interaction like and you know this is a long time ago but she she had never said and I guess I had really carefully picked friends who wouldn't challenge me who would just say cut it off and that when she said it to me it first it struck me like somebody just took a sword and stuck it through my heart and then I just realized of course that's it and I did it I cried for about 45 minutes and then I felt so good I felt free of course that's what it is you cut off contact with these people so you'll hear me say this we've been talking about limerence and other videos and you know people who get stuck in their whole you know your whole life it's like pouring cement on the engine of your life to get stuck in something like this it's it's so just life destroying and there's a solution and the first thing you do is you stop pouring cement on it you stop having contact so sometimes you need a friend like me to just get in there and say let's look at it were you happy no when you were with them you were miserable you know was he available to you know the one of the Hallmark signs of a relationship that's good and right for you is that that person can be with you and will be with you and if they cannot or will not be with you they are not the love of your life they are not they might be an ex-love but they are not for you and there it is and I say that like in them I really Stern teacher voice because it just needs to get through it needs to get through the fantasy of like because when you are a kid and you're dealing with the abuse and the horrible stuff that you went through it's so easy to think right it's like yeah you know Dad's hitting mom and my brother all the time but but actually everything's okay and then you go to school and everybody's like well how are you Lisa and you're like I'm fine right you get so good at that I call it crap fit you probably know that if you watch my videos you fit yourself to crap and you've been doing that all along you've been fitting yourself to crap and you've been trying to survive you've been using crap fit to get by in the world and so one little thing I want to put out there for you is if Financial insecurity is a thing for you whatever you do about your marriage I really encourage you to get out there and get a way to make money and to have health insurance so you never again have to set up some fake relationship that you're miserable in so that you can have health insurance I know how hard it is it's crazy expensive but it would be better to go on public assistance and get that kind of insurance which is not ideal I know and a lot of Hassle and paperwork it's not ideal but it's still you still get to be a free person and not exploiting anybody else for your security not deceiving anybody else oh you oh yeah your therapist says this is because of your childhood it's like yeah but I just wanna yeah obviously your childhood everything that's happening here is is what we do it's what happens to people with cptsd so I agree that it's because of that but I don't know what came after that you say you don't know how to make it stop so since your therapist didn't tell you here's what you do you're not going to see Mike again all right if you want to use what my technique here don't see him again you send him a text if that's the safe way that you can communicate without harming any ever again his fiancee now whether they work it out or not that's no longer your concern but you're not going to get in there to apologize you're not going to try to explain anything and you're not going to try to get closure closure is a fake word it means opening really when you when you're addicted to somebody so you go in there so you send a text and say I've thought about it and I've realized that for my own mental health I need to not have contact with you this is goodbye and I wish you the best that's all you have to say you don't even have to say I wish you the best but go ahead you know just send that Goodwill and then what you do is you block you block texts calls social media if you have and you can social media lets you block people the person on YouTube I know all about it when people get yucky I can block them so you can block people and if you have to change your number change your number you know since he shows signs of being somebody who's in active addiction either with substances and or in in relationships um getting cut off by you could trigger a fake you know that this like reaction of like oh give me give me give me and he might try to make contact with you so for you to be strong for that I'm just telling you he may do that again but it's going to be the same fake kind of interest in you that doesn't involve saying I've realized I love you I totally stopped using drugs I got my life together and I only want to be with you right now if you're willing to leave your marriage like if he he didn't say that and if if he anything he says now to try to keep the little dopamine thread going with you because that's what it is right life feels empty and and you can always like send a little text and get that little and he's getting the same thing from it and he makes contact when he needs a little lift when he's feeling empty all right if when a person loves you they don't put you through this this is such a hard video isn't it Lisa and um but I I just want to be straight with you it's not love when somebody does this to you keeps you on a string and does not show up to be in your life and and and give you love so you can have love you can have it and this brings us to the question of your husband so you're in a marriage that what you're saying is not really a real marriage that you got into it for financial reasons and that you have friends together and you've had travel and it's fun but you're not really feeling it it may be that you got married under false pretenses and the right thing to do for his sake and we really have to consider what's best for him because getting married is making a promise to somebody and sometimes we have to break that promise but this this requires careful thought whether you think that if you could detox from this addictive relationship you've been in if you if you would like to give that some time to see if your feelings can blossom for your husband I would totally back you on that but it has to be a really clean thing and and whether you do that or whether you immediately exit the marriage I'm really encouraging you to have to possibly change your therapist I think you I think therapy is a great idea but if you haven't been if you had therapy for two years and you don't know how to make these things stop which is just a tactical set of actions if you don't know um I think you may want to get a therapist who's a little more experienced with love addiction and who can help you draw your boundaries and hold them and talk more about the boundaries and not the feelings that make you want to cross the boundaries the feelings are going to be there it'd be like if somebody were addicted to drugs and just wanted to go talk about the drugs all the time and how it felt to be high and how much you miss them rather than okay what are you going to do to stay clean today right what are you going to do to stay away from the people who you know are going to be tempting to you let's make a plan so those are the people you need friends too so friends who really support that one thing you can do I have a dating course and uh this you know I feel like this is not the time for you to go dating but what I want to call your attention to is that I start everybody out with writing down what they really want what do they really want and so you can start now writing that down and as you detox and as your mind clears you can keep updating that and to get clearer what you really want but under no circumstances I just know you don't you don't want some guy who's like engaged to somebody else like why would you want that right that's not what you want so you can begin to just lay out there there is something you want and that can kind of help you endure the withdrawal that's going to come it is withdrawal as you let go as you let go for good and make no more contact with this guy who's been life-sucking for you you were doing okay and then this came and so now there's still time for your life to be happy there's time for you to have a wonderful relationship so your husband is stuck by you um somehow he doesn't know that's a little odd because it seems like it might you know anybody sensitive might know but maybe you've been very good at hiding it but I think that a therapist and friends could help support you over time to make a decision um within 90 days if you're going to try to make it work with your husband or not and he certainly deserves a chance as a person but if if you're not feeling it then the most loving and honorable thing to do is to end it is to end that relationship and I thought a lot about this question of whether you tell them what's been going on that's a hard one a lot of people are just like an automatic yes tell always you you know honesty you can't have a good relationship without honesty and so that's that's one that needs to be worked out with you and people you trust who know the details of the situation with you and your husband but I will just say that if you do decide to be honest it needs to be entirely limited to what needs to be said for him to understand the situation that you have not been fully in the marriage and either yes you want to work it out with him or know you are ending the marriage that it needs to be clear and not drag him into a chaotic confusing you know heart-wrenching thing so for that that's why I say I really encourage you to do this with a strong therapist or perhaps consider going to a 12-step program for love addiction and getting the best sponsor in the room you know go to enough meetings notice the woman who's really kick ass and ask her to sponsor you and to help you do this cleanly the thing about cptsd and especially limerent thinking is we we can't think clearly for ourselves we have to bring other people into the decision process you can too okay you can do that the other thing I'm going to recommend whatever you decide to do or how to handle this is try out my daily practice you need a place to to self-comfort there needs to be a way to do that without resorting to texting him thinking about him uh talking about him and did I mention that don't just not have contact with him don't think about him don't talk about him and I know some thoughts are involuntary they'll come up in dreams but you can do this if you cut you have to like start training yourself if you catch yourself thinking about him have a go-to happy thought that you have instead all right and if you catch yourself talking about them just pull back and with your friends just say I'm trying not to talk about them I think this is an extremely underrated technique for getting somebody out of your mind don't think about them don't talk about them and so sometimes our friends and even therapists can enable us in continuing to stay obsessed by letting us talk about it and as if that's going to lead to some breakthrough if it hasn't led to a breakthrough by now I mean talking about it is necessary up to a point but if you haven't had a breakthrough yet I don't think it's going there I don't think that's going there what I see here is you need peace you need a nice clean slate sort of like somebody who walks into a river river and bathes themselves and comes out on the other side and wraps themselves in a white robe and just being safe and putting down and cleansing away all this stuff you've been doing to try to find love that's hurting you and hurting other people and you'll find that when you're making a good and Noble Endeavor like this the right people to help you will show up and sometimes you'll just find that the wind is under your wings you get help you get help to get through the hard nights there's going to be a lot of Tears a lot of feelings because that's what addictions do is they're helping us handle and suppress this well of pain we've got and the interesting thing about pain is is just sadness it's grief it's some anger and if especially if you have a comforting technique like the daily practice that I teach it can just kind of come up and you cry and you feel mad and it just like rolls through you and it's a it's just a wave that passes and then you have a quiet period where you can do the laundry get a job you know do the dishes call your friend get your nails done you know whatever it is that's just daily life for you right so that's how it's done you asked how do I make it stop and that is how how do I set boundaries so that a relationship can turn out into the loving committed relationship that I'm craving and not the temporary disappointing experience that I keep having have you had this problem so today I'm reading a letter from someone I'll call Connie and she says dear fairy I'm confused I've been seeing a guy we started out as friends we talked a lot and I really like being around him I knew he was fresh out of a relationship for three months and still living with his ex obviously not ideal says Connie after a while things got sexual and I did tell him about my no casual sex rule as I don't feel comfortable in investing in someone where there's no future I asked him before we got intimate you told me you wanted to be alone for a while I need to know if there's an option for dating before we do this because I could develop feelings and get hurt if it's one-sided he responded with I have feelings for you now and we can do everything but I don't want to ruin what we have now so we had sex a few times and then after a week we had a conversation and it came up that he wanted to be alone but have it all so he wants to keep seeing me like where you're doing now but nothing more and I got really sad and then really furious and I went into a little rage against him I'm not proud of which I can only describe as the abandonment melange that you and Pete Walker talk about the thing is I feel like the no casual sex boundary I put up scares away guys before they can develop feelings he even told me you're like my ex she is also afraid to get hurt you need to trust someone a hundred percent and if something happens that you don't like then that's when you take the trust back I feel like there's some Merit to this but I can't see clearly how I do this in real life how to trust and just let things play out and have boundaries to protect myself I don't think he said this to manipulate me or anything I think generally he's a good guy just with poor communication skills I'm conflicted because men value their freedom and they need trust but I need commitment and I don't want this to keep happening because it's gone this way so many times I tend to meet guys who are done with me after sex or fake their whole personality to get me into bed and then when they conquered me they are done and it makes me feel like an empty shell of a woman and I don't want to respond to this with using sex as a bargaining chip I think that's how my boundary gets interpreted it's situations like this that make me even more needy and that just don't help any relationship to flourish so my question is how can I go around relaxing around guys and exploring the connection without being so hyper focused on the end result while keeping my boundaries and being true to myself with kind regards Connie Oh My Darling Connie I feel for you so much this is a very very painful place and I think I can give you some help today I'm gonna go back over your letter and this is going to be tough love all right this is going to be tough love and it's not because I want to give you a hard time it's because I want to help you unpack like What's Happening Here I want to help you see what what's happening and how how the person setting you up for this problem is actually you and that's good news because if it's you then you can change how you do this all right so let's go over the letter again line by line you start out I'm confused all right yes I've been seeing a guy we started out as friends we talked a lot and I really like being around him alright so far so good I knew he was fresh out of a relationship for three months and still living with his ex so tough love Point number one for you Connie is if a guy is still living with his ex he's not out of the relationship he's not out of the relationship so if you're gonna change your life and you're going to reserve your heart for a committed relationship one type of person that doesn't get on the list of people you hang out with romantically are guys who live with their girlfriend or ex all right they need to be emotionally available and when he's emotionally available one sign you'll have just one sign this is not the end-all bill but he will not live with another woman who he's ever slept with okay so that's thing one all right so you acknowledge that he lives with this x is obviously not ideal after a while things got sexual and I did tell him about my no casual sex rule as I don't feel comfortable in investing in someone where there is no future okay my next piece of tough love for you Connie is that you don't have a no casual sex rule you had casual sex so whatever you may want or say your actions communicate that you're okay with casual sex there's no rule there all right so you describe this as a rule but it's really like a preference or a desire all right that's what I would say so you don't feel comfortable in investing in someone where there's no future and you know I'm just going to encourage you to be more specific about it's like discomfort that's like when you go to the dentist and they pull a tooth and they say oh this is this is going to be uncomfortable no it's going to hurt a lot and so it's not that you're uncomfortable with it it's I'm just going to speak for you here you're devastated when sex doesn't turn into a relationship that's not what you wanted right so then you say I asked him before we got intimate you told me you wanted to be alone for a while I need to know if there's an option for dating before we do this because I would develop feelings and get hurt if it's one-sided all right so this is where I'm really hearing the childhood trauma like complicate your ability to ask or or set a boundary here so you say you asked before you got intimate you told me you wanted to be alone for a while all right when a guy says he wants to be alone what that means is he doesn't want a relationship it doesn't matter if he says for a while a lot of times when people say put something in temporary terms like I don't want a relationship right now they're trying to be kind they don't want to say I don't want a relationship at all or they don't want one with you and I know that's harsh but it's really important if you want a committed relationship to just sort of take a statement like that when you ask somebody about their availability and they say they don't want a relationship just take it at face value don't put hope in that for a while and so then what happened is I need to know if there is an option for dating before we do this so you're asking like might he is there an option that means like it's possible that he would want to date you and what's a little strange to me is that you're sleeping with him but you're talking about like you're not considering it dating and if you want a committed relationship the first thing you do is date you don't sleep together and then date and I know that we all know people where that ended up working out for them but if you have childhood PTSD and you get devastated by casual sex I'm just saying Casual Sex by definition is sex without even going on a date like not even going to dinner not not only are you not committed but you're not even dating so you said I need to know that there is an option for dating before we do this because I could develop feelings and get hurt if it's one-sided so I know how human beings are sex is bonding once you have sex with somebody if you're going to have feelings for them they're going strong right then and this bond has been formed but even if he said yes I guarantee I'm going to want to date you in the future right now this is just sex even if he said that your bond would kick in and your and and that part of you that feels devastated is not gonna like that and I'm going to talk to you in this video about what it could be like if the next time that you ever have sex is in a relationship with somebody you know is really into you and wants to be with you you can reserve yourself for that situation and I'll tell you how in a minute okay so he said I have feelings for you now and we can do everything but I don't want to ruin what we have now that's really interesting because what you heard you said you had sex after that with him so what you heard is that he somehow went along with what you were saying I need to know he says I have feelings for you now but right before you have sex with somebody of course they have feelings for you right it's sexual feelings it doesn't necessarily mean he didn't even say like I want to date you and he also said I don't want to ruin what we have now so let's look at this critically if setting the parameters that you would need to even be dating somebody to sleep with them is going to ruin what you have now what does that mean about what you have right now if it gets ruined by any kind of like weird dating statement it's not dating okay so you expressed a preference and you felt like it was going to be a boundary but it wasn't and so he it doesn't sound like he you know pressured you from what you're saying you sort of said this is my boundary and he said well I you know I feel something for you now and we can do this and you know we don't want to ruin it this is a little bit of a cliche and disappointing experiences right where somebody just goes hey we just live for the moment I don't think he misled you here I think he would not agree to date you and you know he's he sort of left it open-ended but that's what happens you these negotiations and this clarification of what each person wants out of a out of a relationship they're the best time for them to happen is not like right when sex is about to happen people's thinking is very distorted so Connie says we had sex a few times and then after a week we had a conversation and it came up that he wanted to be alone but have it all so he wants to keep seeing me like we were doing but nothing more meaning what casual sex but by alone not dating not in any kind of a boyfriend girlfriend thing or having dinner and then you say I got really sad and then really furious and I went into a little rage against him that I'm not proud of which I can only describe as the abandonment melange that you and Pete Walker talk about so yeah I totally get it the abandonment melange I don't blame you at all for having abandonment melange and I don't blame you for being confused because I know that you were traumatized when you were a kid and you would have learned some of these structures about how to communicate and how to read people and how to know where they're coming from so you felt sad and mad at him because it turns out that after he said he didn't want to date he did he actually didn't want to date he he was hoping to keep having casual sex and I don't think that highly of him because he knew that you were worried about that and you know anybody could have seen that you wanted that boundary but you weren't holding it and usually that happens Connie because we need to be loved so bad there's such a deficit of love going on in our lives that we kind of unconsciously want to take whatever we can get and then just hope hope like somehow it'll turn out differently this time but here's the thing is that having relationships like this that are casual communicate something about us that's not attractive for healthy people who want a committed relationship people like healthy people they're looking for people who have boundaries who are demonstrating that they care very much you know what kind of a relationship they get into and in fact it can be kind of part of romance to have to like Chase somebody a little bit to have to get up on your toes and try a little harder for them and so if some guy just sort of says oh yeah whatever casual sex and you're like well I don't really want it but okay you're communicating something that they don't take seriously you're basically telling them not to take you seriously and not to consider your needs I don't think that's good I don't think that's good that they take advantage of that but the person who's got to change this dynamic because you want it changed is you so you said then the thing is I feel like the no casual sex boundary I put up scares away guys before they can develop feelings I want to give you a new idea about this because the fact is good guys who want a good relationship do develop feelings before sex happens that's why they have sex because they have feelings for somebody all right so there's always going to be people out there who have casual sex and they say it's fine and it works for them but if you have cptsd and you've suffered with this you know that's just not a luxury you have okay and luckily the world is full of people who would like to have a good relationship too and what you're communicating when you when you say that you prefer no casual sex but you go ahead and have it you're communicating that there's um that you have difficulty setting boundaries that maybe there's some trauma there it suggests that maybe a lot of trouble could walk into your life and I just want you to put yourself in another person's shoes who's looking for a relationship they want to see somebody solid right they want to see you with all your self-respect and you being picky and honestly that is very attractive to both men and women when somebody in front of them is self-respecting in that way who has standards people who just want casual sex yes they will be turned away they will not be interested in you if you have that boundary good we want them out of here we want them to go hang out with the people who want what they want you want something different you're looking for something different now I have this course um dating and relationships for people with childhood PTSD and the very first exercise I have in there and it's actually really hard for a lot of people to do it's to write down what you actually want and you write down what are like deal breakers for what you actually want in somebody and so for you it might be no casual sex I want somebody who who is only interested in a serious relationship and would be interested in dating to get to know each other before it turns sexual all right you can you can write that on your list and the magical thing about writing this down I mean you can still break your own rules it's always possible many of us do but once you write that down you have a clarity about you where you know when you meet somebody you're allowed to communicate that to somebody and then find out what they say about it and then you decide if you're going to begin dating them I would for you suggest just like dating is really essential if dating sounds like too heavy or too much of a commitment for somebody they're not appropriate for you to have sex with not appropriate to hang out with okay all right so then you said he said you're just like my ex she's also afraid to get hurt well I just gotta Wonder like why is she afraid of getting hurt is he also asking her to have some sort of casual open relationship and she's afraid of getting hurt so hmm okay wondering and he said you need to trust someone a hundred percent and if something happens you don't like that's when you take the trust back okay right there he kind of lost me um that is a manipulative thing to say uh I but you're an adult and you know darn well that's not true you say it's compelling but the only reason it's compelling is because it allows you to have that magical thinking that if you just have sex with him now he's going to fall in love with you and I I think that's always in a situation with this Dynamic that's extremely unlikely that that's going to happen if they have to tell you that look just trust me a hundred percent and then and then don't trust I can't think of any situation where trust means that he's it's basically describing having no boundaries and then being discarded all right and then accepting that so that's that's what you are being set up for there and again because he said this he said this is where he's coming from up front I'm still I know a lot of people are going to write in and say what about the guys you know he's responsible and it's like he may be I don't like what he's doing here I think he's taking advantage of a vulnerable person but he didn't write me so I'm I'm answering you Connie because I want to help you just get your power back I want you to get your power back so you can begin to have love and have the kind of relationship you want and never get treated like dirt again never again okay all right one thing you say here is when he said that you should trust him 100 and then just not trust once he screws you over you say I think generally he's a good I don't think he's trying to manipulate me but generally he's a good guy just with poor communication skills and right there this is where this is where I think your thinking got really distorted I wholeheartedly disagree with you I think he's got fabulous communication skills to that he's using to manipulate I mean when you suspect that he just had poor communication skills what did you think he meant to say I don't think you have any reason to think he meant something other than what he did which is use you and discard you which is try to continue having totally casual sex with you no strings attached at all right and while he is technically alone and honestly having sex that's not alone that's not alone that's all he wants all right I think he has good communication skills all right so then Connie you said I'm conflicted because men value their freedom and they need trust well we all value our freedom and we all need trust all right but I need commitment and I don't want this to keep happening I'm with you it does not have to keep happening but here we go you say because it has gone this way so many times I tend to meet guys who are done with me after sex all right again I'm just going to put this out there what if you date guys for X number of months before sex is even on the table I know then you say well they fake their whole personality to get me into bed I don't think this guy faked his personality I think he showed his cards for what he wanted from the get-go if you had had proper parenting Connie what your parents would have taught you is about how people not just men but people when they want sex they're going to put on their best behavior they're going to look for ways to get you to say yes all right that's not love it's not love it's totally it's it's a it's a you know it's a flirting thing that people do and it totally works for some people but when you have a big attachment wound like you do it tends to just lead to trouble and grief okay so then you said and then when they conquer me they're done and it makes me feel like an empty shell of a woman I don't want to respond to this with using sex as a bargaining chip and you say I think that's how my boundary gets interpreted so somewhere in there you got programmed that you having boundaries about wanting to be courted wanting to be wanting somebody to be into you wanting them to date you and treat you well and show you that they are capable of a committed relationship you got an idea that you're being needy that you're just bargaining that's so not true what you're describing there is just respecting your own intentions and what you want in your life and it's and what you're talking about here what you want is a good thing to want I want you I want you to be properly loved for anybody who had a tough childhood who Longs for a relationship one of the most wonderful things that can happen is to end up being loved by somebody solid all right that's something I never thought I was going to have and I get to have it now and I you're supposed to say stuff like oh a relationship won't fix you and it won't it's not going to fix your childhood PTSD but it's profoundly healing to be loved by somebody who's committed to you so if you're going to have that and you have this attachment wound it's just time to clear out anybody who doesn't fit the bill if that's not what they want then they're not the one for you and if you feel like you can't ask them what they want then they're not the one for you when you get to know somebody you'll feel safe enough to ask them what they want you'll be able to have deep conversations about your common interests and goals you can say you know I'm interested in finding the love of my life and getting married and um you know I might start dating you if if it turns out that we're compatible maybe we can get to know each other a little bit getting to know each other means coffee all right maybe a lunch dinner starts going into dating right so dating with the intention of getting to know each other romantically now this is the part that nobody ever wants to hear but if you have attachment wounds the longer you can postpone sex the better chance you give yourself of being able to discern if this person is is a fit for you and you're going to be surprised like like when you haven't had that good person yet before you you will imagine that they hold all the cards that they are the ones who decide whether they're going to give that love to you but when you have a chance to be in such a relationship you're going to find out there's a whole bunch of complexity to you too and when you get to know somebody you're going to have mixed feelings come up sometimes you'll gradually realize that this person is not who you want even though they love you that can happen too you may have never even had room to have that Dynamic so you're giving both people time to get to know each other and discern what's there and if you've had a lot of like hurtful relationships in the past there's going to be rough days as you get closer and closer to somebody there's going to be rough times rough conversations Old Wounds are going to come up old PTSD Reactions where you know you're fearful or paranoid or desperate feeling and when you have a really good friendship underneath that and a mutual commitment that you're dating now that that's what you're doing that you're hanging in there with each other it might not mean you get married yet but while you're dating having that kind of security it gives you a little bit of room to have your feelings come up because if this person is going to marry you they need to know like that you have some fragile places you have certain situations where you become a little bit like you know emotional or unreasonable even that's just part of it that's part of what we have to accept in each other of course we don't want to accept any kind of abuse and nobody should take that from us but you so you had said how can I relax with guys and explore the connection without being so hyper focused on the end result while keeping my boundaries and being true to myself all right I think you have a pretty good goal there except the part about the end result I think you do need to hyper focus on the end result because you know exactly the result that you want in your life and that if that result is a problem they are not somebody to go out with it's so simple and I promise you if you can actually set that boundary for yourself like write it down decide when and if some guy takes an interest in you definitely before any sex you put out there you put out there to him what your boundaries are what they are a boundary by the way is what you walk out of you can say all you want but unless you break up with a guy or refuse to go on a date with him it's not a boundary right so you're the one who's going to keep that boundary you're going to be willing to walk away from a perfectly Grand Saturday night with somebody because it's somebody who doesn't want a relationship that's the boundary you say I'm sorry this doesn't sound like what I'm looking for but nice to meet you that's a boundary the last thing you said about your goal was that you wanted to be true to yourself and I love that goal that is the best ultimate goal to be true to yourself you have to be honest with yourself about what you really want and so if that committed relationship is what you want then being true to yourself and holding boundaries around it definitely means no more casual sex so that's just something that you can decline from now on and you're going to be surprised when you actually set the boundary you're going to be surprised how people respond to you differently almost immediately there have probably been a lot of situations where a man was seriously interested in you but something about your pattern signaled to him that you were not ready for a serious relationship right so you're going to notice a difference right away when you actually have that boundary so I hope you can continue supporting yourself healing your trauma connecting with women who can help you I be clear about your boundaries from day to day and when you go out on a date to have women you can talk to and say okay let me tell you what happened can you help give me feedback like do you what signals am I getting from this guy and that's that's what women do for each other we help each other interpret reality and it's really important to be with people who are also on a healing path not who are in some sort of negative um acting out Behavior who are just going to be cynical and negative but people who are also trying to build something better for themselves dear Anna I need help a nine-year relationship with a married man ended a couple years ago because his wife found out about our relationship he and his wife wrote to my boss telling him that he should have fired me stressing that I'm older than this man he was 40 I was 52 as everything ended I've never tried to contact him I had a very bad time trying to rebuild my life I've changed jobs moved out and tried to let everything connected to him get behind me of course I've had a very bad childhood both my sisters suffered to such an extent that they turned out to become seriously mentally ill schizophrenia Etc she says you understand how this works in life and we stay with people who do not care at all about us because for us it is enough to have someone to love without even needing to be loved back which is so useful for a man who is cheating on his wife I take full responsibility for the harm I've caused to the wife of that man they have two daughters it was very hard already during the nine years thinking I was doing something wrong but well I've chosen to do what apparently he was needing I I have really huge problems too starting any relationship I feel very bad with 99 of people I had to come back and circle a couple things I want to talk about here so I got my pencil I feel very bad with 99 of people even if nobody knows about it because I hide my discomfort and everybody thinks I'm outgoing and happy that's what we call a covert avoider okay so I stay alone and I do not wish to have any man in my life the man started to pay visits to my LinkedIn account which I use for my work and this is worrying me I miss the possibility to love someone even if I do not want to have a man in my life I'm profoundly convinced I have to stay away from him but this is the logical part of myself I'm afraid of the irrational part of myself you know that people like us have a black hole inside which can easily eat our lives before we know it if he were so stupid to pop up again I'm not sure that I would have the strength to stay away from the big mistake to start to talk with him again I know you say that we see PTSD people tend to start relationships too quickly but I need years before I can build any trust and this never worked with normal people you go slowly in relationships okay the married people are not in a hurry they can comfortably wait so here we are he took time and built up intimacy with me day by day in about two years and he was my boss she says oof before something started between us I was coming out of the darkness of a profound mourn my mother had died of pancreatic cancer and she was the person I loved Beyond every limit even if she's always been very avoidant she had been abused all her childhood and had problems to be loved I imagine about my father well I do not write a word it's too difficult okay so here we are I need some words to hold my position that is staying away from the wrong situations and wrong people you know how hard this is with a wrong background I send you a big hug and thank you so much for being the lovely and Brilliant person you are with a lot of gratitude Serena oh thank you thank you for your kind words Serena um I I feel for you so much I'm so proud of you I'm just so proud of you um you're like so many of us vulnerable needing love so bad that you end up nine years oh that must hurt so much that's so much of your life and so much time when you didn't get into a relationship that was durable and you're not alone even people who didn't have trauma you know have long relationships and yeah I hear you this is very sad the whole time he wasn't really with you and he had a wife and oh dear and it's been two years and so I hear your question your question is how do you stay away from him if he tries to make contact so first of all if it's any comfort It's Not Unusual for people to just look at a LinkedIn profile and it doesn't mean necessarily that they're going to contact you and I know you know this but I'm just going to put it out there um there's that you know what you can do with LinkedIn is you can stop paying the extra money you have to pay the monthly fee to see who's looking at your profile and I know for a fact that some for some people that is a trigger and they're always wondering who looked at them and some people hide their settings and you just see that somebody in this industry looked at you and you're like could it be could it be and that's like classic limerence Behavior right where where you're looking for that stuff now I'm not hearing that from you I'm hearing you just saw that he looked and I'm sure it gave your you know your heart and your feelings a big surge right there of just like oh what is this but let's just say he comes back so I think that your strength here the strength to stay out of a bad relationship also the strength to stay out of limerence for anybody listening limerence is like a Obsession or infatuation that some other people here suffer with and it's the same sort of thing where you really want to put it down one of the best things you can do to set yourself up to succeed at healing these old feelings for people that you do not want to have anymore is to have a great life limerence and and attachment to an empty relationship are all trauma-driven behaviors that they find fertile soil when our lives are empty boring and lonely so what's important for you to have is Friends fun and interesting mentally challenging things where you feel like you're actually growing as a person so if it's been two years it sounds like you're 55 this is a great age for you to start to be developing stuff that you actually are interested in now if I was in pain I think I would find it really annoying if I asked for help and somebody said you should join a club you should read books but I'm actually going to say that because sometimes when you if you've been living in a broken relationship for many years your friendships haven't developed your hobbies haven't developed it's been draining that energy and that creativity out of you if you had been in a happy relationship all that time that energy and creativity would probably be showing up as like flowers in the garden right and a beautifully stocked closet full of folded linen and all these things I don't know I fantasize about these things like if I didn't have PTSD I'd love to have nice things like that my life isn't that perfect but uh but I have a lot more order and sweetness in my life I do have a garden I do read books I have Gatherings at my house where people have we have speakers and we present ideas and these are all things that I needed to do to myself just to be well just to be well I need to exercise I need to take basic care of my appearance I need to take basic care of the relationships with my family all of those things work together to make me strong and resilient and so if anything were to come along to either upset me or tempt me to cause harm I have a lot of resilience against it because I'm really well grounded in my life and that's what I want to present to you and I think when when you have your heart broken this stuff sounds terribly boring I remember that but it's not terribly boring it's terribly sweet when you don't have it then even this crappy guy who reported you to your boss who was your he was your former boss and he told the employer on you oh dear oh you know there there's a part of you that knows so well that this guy is not even your friend there's nothing to talk about anymore but I also want to talk about the shame you feel I read your letter before I read it aloud and I remember my first kind of like impression of your letter was that there was a lot of Shame there and that you were struggling a bit with it and you were reminding yourself again and again because this happens to people like us and I'm here to say you are so right it does happen to people like us and it's not our fault we have cptsd but when we hurt other people which is what that is having an affair is hurting other people and not just the wife but him and the children and yourself and the people in your life who may have been counting on you to be present and emotionally real with them so a whole bunch of people get hurt when there's a deceitful relationship I'm not saying you're a bad person I'm just saying there's there's a source for that feeling of Shame that's where it's coming from and the beautiful thing is you can clear that up now when you've had an affair the the clearing up is never going to involve making contact again with other people it may be it would be appropriate to call them up and talk about what what happened and what you did and apologize but with somebody when it's an ex even if there wasn't an affair even if it was just a you know a relationship that fell apart the reason we don't contact exes is because they are either we know they're in a relationship or they might be in a relationship and are contacting them would create that charge that you got when you saw that LinkedIn thing it would activate old feelings in them which is by nature toxic to the relationship they're in so here's this innocent party the spouse or partner that somebody else is with and if you really want to clear up the wrong of the whole thing and stop feeling ashamed you raise up your regard for those people and the way that they were hurt and the best thing you can do when they've already been hurt like that is shut the door and do not make an appearance in their life don't make an appearance in their life that's the best thing you can do all right so no contact is needed no clearing up but a decision like you're not going to do that and so you have predicted that the hard thing will be for you if he contacts you and tries to stir things up again and you know that's entirely possible because people who have affairs are like that right people who haven't healed yet or people haven't gotten in touch with the terrible feelings that that brings up of emptiness and I I was interested in what you said that it takes you a really long time to trust somebody so he was a co-worker so you were around him for two years and since he was married you weren't like inconveniencing him by just being a platonic you know employee there and he could put up with it but you fear here you fear and I'm going to call this fear because I don't think it's right you fear that nobody would ever put up with the time that you need to trust but a I think you can work on your trust issues by first really making a clear resolve and creating a plan for what you're going to do if this ex contacts you and one thing you can do is start to build up your network of understanding friends who you can text right then and go okay he did it he did it he looked at my profile again or I saw his car or you know these things that happen they happen and it's funny they seem to happen by Magic sometimes right when you're most vulnerable You're not vulnerable when you have a life that's fun when you're not lonely because you have friends okay so those are the first orders of business you you get your life together then you're going to have a resolve and you're going to feel the Integrity in yourself of having that resolve that no matter what you are not going to re-engage with him you know nothing good can come from that there's nothing more to talk about I'm sure you guys talked about everything there was to say It's just sad it's a sad loss and you will be able to handle it life is full of losses there are many of them people come and go out of our lives and the thing about romances and I know this was nine years but it was nine unfulfilling years where you never really got to be with him so you say I you have a choice that you don't really want to be with anybody and that's a totally okay choice you cannot be with anybody or you can be happy and be open-minded about it happening if you want so if that's your goal then your happiness becomes very attractive whether it's a friend or a romantic interest person your trust level can it doesn't have to take two years when you are acting with Integrity when you're able to make yourself promises about not responding if he contacts you you know maintaining a no contact with him and that you will protect your boundaries in new situations and be clear what they are now if so if dating were something that you think you might be open to sometime some people take my dating course and in that one I have everybody write down you know what is it that you actually want and it can be you can also write down things that you will never tolerate again so one really good thing to put on that never do again is like somebody who's not available they're married or they have a girlfriend or they have an addiction or you know for some people they even put on somebody who is if it's a long-distance relationship don't get into it for a lot of people who are avoidant um you talk about covert avoidance of looking happy one of the biggest reasons why people with cptsd go into isolation or covertly avoid other people like you go be social but you never really connect with anybody which sounds like where you are that we do that because people are just too triggering to get in but when you have some healing people are less triggering and you have boundaries so that you know if everything gets out of hand or you realize somebody's awful you step out you know that you can do it and in the past when our cptsd ruled our lives than being in a hectic relationship or a painful situation it was like a death sentence because you couldn't get yourself out the attachment wound is too strong and the abandonment wound is too tenacious and to to ever step out of it so we either have to get like dumped or the person has to die and that's where it comes to when those things are operating very strongly but see you can heal you can have less of that when you know that you can exercise choice you can use your discernment and you can you open your heart at your own speed and feel good about yourself head high cleared up all the problems then you will find your trust issues are a little bit easier for yourself but you know what it is totally fine if you don't open up your heart very quickly we do do that as people with cptsd we want to rush in because instinctively we know like it might slip away we're probably making a bad choice that feeling like you have to hurry that's what we do when it's a bad choice so there's there's time there's time for you to hang out and pay attention and use dating if you decide to ever date again use dating as a way to decide to take in information do I like this person do I want to let them in my life that's appropriate so I think that you're in a good spot I think you're in a good spot and I just can Intuit that you're having trouble forgiving yourself for what happened so I just wanted to give you one final thing about what to do about that feeling of like uh you know if you feel like nothing you do could ever set the thing right being that I don't recommend you make contact with the family again is you become ready should you ever bump into a member of that family on the street that you know what you would say you know what you would say there's a very small chance that would happen you run into the wife you're both confronted with each other you would know what you need to say you would be ready you would have done the work and you can get help with that kind of thing from a therapist or a 12-step program or in my courses and my membership program you can get help from others sort of determining how would I apologize for this I also have videos on how to apologize so you would be ready you would be ready to apologize and just knowing and doing that work I think it's important to work it out with another person and you read it to a friend you read it to an understanding friend who who understands what you're doing and they hear you and they say yes good work Serena that's good if you ever run into that person that that would be a good thing to say that way you've done the work in your heart and you're going to find each time you do the work like that you can hold your head up you can feel the Integrity of yourself and you will have the capacity to trust people more because you can trust yourself more Frank writes dear fairy I myself definitely have some cptsd issues I had an alcoholic mother and as an adult have been a definite rescuer circling here with my pencil a crisis in my marriage has brought my attention to these issues so I'll Circle things that I want to come back to after we just read through it we're going to read through it one time and I'll see if I can help you Frank my wife had a way worse childhood she has left to chase a limerent object that's a person who someone is limerent over kind of obsessed in a Fantasy Realm but not a real Realm she has left to chase a limerent object and moved in with him she won't initiate divorce and she's told her good friend that she hopes one day maybe we can work it out in reality the only thing stopping that is she won't stop I think she's heavily caught in the fantasy do I continue to wait am I just acting out my own childhood by sticking around waiting for her to return we have four kids and I hate to divorce and formally break up the family but is that the wake-up call she needs to shake her from the fantasy I don't want to be a slave to my own trauma but I can't seem to just really be done with the relationship I've already waited six months so I asked Frank I said well tell me more this is intriguing but I need to know more um where are your kids and what does your wife say about the possibility of return so he says there's four kids they're now splitting custody 50 50. and yes unfortunately he says this man has taken a role in the kid's life we went to a marriage workshop at the beginning of the year designed for marriages in this scenario and they actually teach about limerence so it's where I first learned about it they teach that while your spouse is limerent they're not going to be rational at all that in addition to this what they're doing likely goes against all their values this being the case they find themselves in major cognitive dissonance and become very confused this has been her to a T when you ask her it is a lot of I don't know which from my coaching with the previous organization is very common they also tend to vilify the spouse me to justify their actions which she did badly in the beginning she also has complained about just following her heart but not knowing what her values really are anymore I've noticed you mentioned it's very common with cptsd but it's also it's common in limerence because they're trying to justify their actions due to the immense amount of cognitive dissonance they're in when I kind of pushed for divorce she was willing to acquiesce but I pushed her specifically wanting to know what she thought because she has accused me all these years of doing whatever I wanted and she knew she didn't make her voice heard so I pushed back and asked what she wanted she said she didn't want to string me along but that she's on a journey right now and feels like she needs to see it through so cryptically she's saying I wish you'd hold on she's made some efforts to establish more of a friendship with me considering a few months ago she said I was a monster that was controlling and quote abusive it is a large about face so there are small signs that she's warming up a little another is that she had agreed to participate in a Bible study with an old friend long distance and she's even recently told me she started reading her Bible again and praying more we used to be pretty strong in our faith and during and before this we both had kind of walked away at the same time she's not taking discernible and credible actions to repair our relationship she continues to live most of her life as though there is no thought of returning there are times I feel like she is simply having her cake and eating it too keeping me on the back burner this isn't who I've known my wife to be all these years at the same time none of this is my wife used to be the most rigid and planned out person in fact her hobby is decorating happy planners with stickers and stuff yet when asked about the future she says I don't really have a plan but I think that's kind of the point for me to figure it out as I go it's tough because this organization educates that limerence will eventually end they'll come out of the fog and may realize what a mess they've made of their life and I think you've done the best I've seen at describing the fantasy that limerence is the drug that it is my wife never wanted to be like the addicts in her family sadly she is hooked on the guy and you can tell she's falling apart I love my family I love my kids I never wanted them to have a broken home yeah I'm someone that is committed to being the best person I can be I struggle immensely because I don't want to let my kids down they miss their mom even though they see her half the time my wife used to stay at home and even homeschool the kids so it's a major hole in their life at the same time I don't want to just be a Mindless slave to my past and cling to a dead relationship so I wrote to Frank again at that point because what had caught my ear is that she said she accused him of being abusive and I'm like why does she say that so he gave me a little more background he said we've been together 15 years married for 12. we've four kids and she has most of her life been a stay-at-home mom and even homeschooled the kids when we were first married you see it's sort of like unfolding isn't it when we were first married during our first year she became very depressed and abused some of her prescription pills and actually had an affair that was limited to a couple of times she came clean with me pretty early on and I forgave her chalking it up to her deep depression and young foolish Behavior after that she threw herself into our faith and became an excellent mother she cared for our kids and was probably looking back terribly self-sacrificial never knowing when to stop or when to indulge in self-care we also struggled financially many years and so life has been stressful without a doubt fast forward to about a year ago and we both due to covid had stopped being active in our faith she expressed concern and wanted me to take our faith more seriously she warned me that she feared without it things would fall apart I didn't realize how dependent she was on it for a sense of values and purpose shortly thereafter we made a regretful decision to experiment in our marriage with a threesome and this is how she met this other guy this came out rather late in the letter writing process we were in such a great place at that time that I wasn't threatened in the least by the time I realized how bad it was it was too late and she was in the grips of limerence earlier this year she moved out of our home she lives with the guy they got together we split custody by all accounts this guy is not exactly a better choice but she says her relationship is different with him and they work well together he's the complete opposite of me in many ways and I know he too has a porn addiction to okay it feels as if there are two addicts together having their own way she's pretty depressed suffering from an increased number of panic attacks and has taken up smoking as well as gained quite a bit of weight she's very vague about the future and doesn't push for divorce for now she's living each day for herself she won't discuss our relationship with me and is full of more I don't know which I'm told can be her cognitive dissonance I want to save my family but I fear I'm simply acting out of my pattern of saving my alcoholic mother as a child by waiting around for my wife this whole thing is brought to light that we both had a pretty codependent relationship with each other and I've worked on myself the last six months to fix these problems I love my wife dearly but she has hurt me considerably I know forgiveness is possible trust can be rebuilt but am I just hanging on because it's what love is to me am I just fitting myself to crap what's the healthy thing to do I'm honestly confused and I keep going back and forth I hate the idea of not having my kids full-time separate holidays Etc but is it inevitable and then I asked Frank what he thought was hard for her why did she say she left and he said I would say that controlling and abusive aspect of the relationship that she refers to were mostly in light of codependency as the ways you'd expect a rescuing partner who kind of takes on a parental role in a relationship I was overly critical and not empathic enough and I would say to some of her issues through the years they were all more covert issues of control and some was likely backed up by my super conservative religious background you know the husband is head of the household and that whole thing this was amplify by the fact that she is super avoidant which I didn't know so any issues she had through the year she never spoke up about I've felt to always be a person that if you confront me I'm willing to consider change I look back though and I realize I have definitely been super defensive and would often blame shift issues in the past too I really struggled at needing to be right about many things I'm sure it made her feel crazy at times okay likewise I'd say for many years I felt super manipulated my brother-in-law who lived with us for several years told me he felt like my wife would often play the victim and pout until she got her way so I feel like we both had our super unhealthy ways of getting what we wanted but by and large I thought we were pretty happy there was never physical abuse and never anything really purposely done to hurt each other it was more just shitty communication patterns and stuff from our families of origin really in a nutshell I can see that I've been overly focused on myself through these years and should have been more insistent on taking in her perspective and at times deferring to her to make a decision even if she was reluctant I definitely have carried over really toxic communication strategies from my childhood too that I've worked to untangle I use things like non-violent communication which is a technique to better handle conflict I've allowed my emotional dysregulation to run the show for many years and made many life decisions based far more on these emotions that are from a really crappy framework this has caused me to constantly change my mind be difficult to criticize and often selfish I so related to having no emotions during really bad times and so I'd lack proper empathy and support I have read several books on codependency and have worked to stop being the fixer and advice giver in life I've dramatically reduced the behaviors in the last six months I have attended coda and my own therapy I've apologized for anything and everything I recognize I've done perhaps too much and I've asked for forgiveness I've accepted my lack of control and ability to only change myself and have reacquainted myself with my faith in a much healthier and less judgmental manner can you help Frank okay Frank my goodness this is a really tough situation I read this whole letter with all the parts of it because I think it's such a strong example of how complicated life can be how there's no easy answer how we suffer through these things because we're human and but I'm going to try let's see if I can help shed some insight for you so you wrote you had an alcoholic mother I did too and I I just relate to that you've been a definite rescuer and you really the crisis in your marriage has brought that out your your wife had an even worse thing you mentioned she had addicts in her family and she has left you for what you call a limerent object and moved in with him and she won't initiate divorce and she's told her friend that she hopes it might work out um and you were wondering do I continue to wait now this is interesting I expect in the comments we're going to have two camps and one's going to say stick it out and one's going to say leave and the reason we're going to see that is because this is it's a very complicated situation and it doesn't have an easy answer I normally don't comment on the person who didn't write in but I I feel like I have a sense of what could be going on with her so I'll be commenting on that a little bit so so you're splitting custody 50 50. you went to a marriage workshop at the beginning of the year when this whole thing first started when she I guess first got limerent and it was about limerence and and she agreed that's what was going on they said don't make rash decisions she did anyway she moved out to live with this guy so it was interesting because the first letter I got from you was very short and somehow I detected like there's there's this Brewing storm here but you hadn't said what it is and I just I don't know I I cannot kind of understand that I'm really used to as a person with trauma and drama in my life I compartmentalized it I didn't want everybody to see it but I thought it was just kind of interesting when you wrote to me how much important detail was left out and maybe you just needed to be asked so I asked we had several rounds of communication um and your answers made sense to me but they CA they all came as a surprise because it didn't I was like oh that's that explains a lot so yeah somebody who's limerent is not going to be rational they will be in cognitive dissonance they'll be confused they'll blame you for what's going on that all sounds about right it's really trippy that she went to that workshop with you so interesting that there is such a thing and she went but you know she it just doesn't sound like she her heart was in it but she tried or she was willing to go through the motions of trying the feeling I get about her is that she's been doing that all her life that she's has not been able to develop an identity or what she wants I think that might be what's going on and then when you ask her she says a lot of I don't know I just don't know and they that you were told that could be her cognitive dissonance and that's just a funny way for saying yeah she she doesn't know she's unclear what she's feeling or doing she just finds herself running away from home her actions speak louder than what she what her intentions are expressed to be but also keep in mind she's trying not to hurt you she probably has a horror of hurting you and how she's let you down and how it's affecting the kids so she is probably putting the lightest spin on this possible that doesn't mean I can read her mind but just normally that's what a person does unless they really want to hurt you and I'm not hearing that that was the case for either of you but you said when I kind of pushed her for divorce and I get it you maybe tried to force a decision like what is this are we getting divorced or are we getting back together I need to know one way or the other very fair okay even if she couldn't say anything and she said you specifically wanted to know what she thought because she kept saying you know I never got to weigh in you know my feelings were never considered in all of this so you were like come on you know let me know how you feel I do want to know and I'm proud of you that you you know you were able to turn change that about the dynamic where you really like kept opening up the space for her to say how she felt it didn't get the answer you wanted but you did it and that's really good that's a really good thing she didn't want to string me along she's on a journey right now and it feels like she needs to see it through so cryptically you said she's saying I wish you'd hold on um okay so the key sign of limerence is that somebody is looking for signs and so this is the interesting thing Frank I think you're in a bit of limerence I don't think she is and you know why because she's actually living with the guy she may be in a I don't know I agree she's in kind of an altered state of some kind of trying to uh well we'll talk about her in a minute because that is speculation but I just think that you looking for signs that what she really wants is to come back it feels a little bit like you're looking at signs you say later that all of her none of her actions support you know credible you know consistent incredible action towards getting back together when somebody has strayed and they want to get back together you know what they would do if they were sincere about it is anything they had to do they would just keep showing up they would do everything that you've been doing they would take the classes read the books see the therapist try to come up with what was my part in it what can I heal in myself like you've done an amazing job of that I don't hear that she's doing that I hear she's in a flight mode she's running away and just because it's um it reflects us internal struggle or a trauma reaction it doesn't mean it's not real she really has run away and that's the sad thing about this you can't really explain that fact away with her trauma or limerence or anything but the thing about limerence is once you're actually with somebody limerence goes away because you're living with them you can't really have a fantasy that everything would be great what I've noticed is that people who are limerent like limerence we're vulnerable to it if we were terribly neglected as kids and our lives suck so I think that may have been what was happening with her her life was feeling empty she had a terrible childhood so a fantasy relationship where you just think if we were together oh my gosh it would just be so amazing actually being together with anybody totally kills that you go whoa what a disappointment right it's not like the fantasy and a lot of people will avoid actual relationships with the person they're limerent over at least on a subconscious level because they know that real life would kill the fantasy that's keeping them going but what that fantasy is doing is allowing a person to avoid the pain of their life and the difficult decisions they have to face so whatever this is coming from whatever you want to call it she's being a terrible partner to you she's just being a terrible partner to you there's no answers what she is to herself is one thing what she is to you is another what I hear you doing is abandoning yourself and hopping the fence and trying to figure her out trying to excuse her actions trying to create a bridge for her and I don't blame you having four kids together is a serious thing and of course you want to save the marriage and I don't blame you for trying but I would just say I see you you did do a lot of work on yourself but I'm going to recommend to you Frank that you really get self-disciplined about focusing on your own side and not trying to make her see anything not try to figure her out not try to make her come back like if she's gonna do that she will let you know she will let you know you don't have to do a thing you can start focusing on your life and following the split custody agreement I have a little concern about that as a you know previously single mom before one thing that I noticed is that when you're separated but not divorced you have one set of rights as a parent when you're actually divorced you have a different set and when you're divorced for example and this is in my state I don't know if it's absolutely true for everybody in the world here when you're divorced you have your spouse cannot take kids out of the country without your consent so if there was any concern that she would run off with the kids or anything like that I mean it sounds like she's not in a position to but just gonna say you know I would recommend you at least speak to a lawyer about this and find out about implications for parenting money spousal support and all that and not try to do this all emotionally I think divorce is certainly like a possibility right now and you knowing the facts does nothing but helps you make a clear decision you know a better decision for yourself whether it's for or against divorce I would not condemn you if you decided to wait longer on this one it sounds like a crazy situation what's the hurry but I would like you and your kids to be legally protected for crazy shenanigans that might arise because I don't know much about these other people but it sounds not great you know it doesn't sound great I think it's really sad because the kids need contact with both of you I you're doing a great job at it I know how half custody is not the same but there are things you can do to make that as good as possible so but this was interesting Frank you said when you kind of push for divorce um and you pushed her wanting to know her opinion she pushed back and she said she's on a journey she needs to see it through you thought she was cryptically saying I want to come back maybe but I don't think so she's made some efforts to establish more of a friendship which is good because you're co-parenting and a few months ago she thought you were a monster you were controlling and abusive and she's come around on that so good you know I think that it's a lot easier to deal with a bad Dynamic when you're outside of it so whatever pressure she felt in the relationship even though she may have jumped out of the fire and or what is it out of the frying pan and Into the Fire um at least she's out of the frying pan and she can see the frying pan and maybe she's feeling less angry at you and she's warming up a little bit but another thing is that she's agreed to participate in a Bible study with an old friend long distance yeah that's secondhand knowledge or something it's also long distance it's an old friend maybe maybe you know I sometimes if she if she has a pain of guilt or she wants to placate you you said that you had a codependent two-way Dynamic that's the sort of thing she would say you know well I'm looking you know when I would guess you've probably said to her but don't you realize this is morally wrong and she'd be like yeah well I'm I'm going to a Bible study I swear I'm going to do it you know I'm going to do that that just sounds like that kind of thing believe it when you see it and don't even worry about what it is because what matters is what she actually does and what she's doing is staying with this other guy and not coming home so this thing where you guys lost your faith I just have so much compassion for you yeah so that you kind of walked away from faith and I think that's been happening for a lot of people especially with the pandemic and at the same time she's not taking discernible incredible actions to repair so there you have it she continues to live most of her life as though there's no thought of returning there's your sign if you want to look for signs she's not acting like somebody who's returning and that's really significant You Can Let Go Frank you know what you can let go you can stop trying to make anything happen and if she does have it in her that she wants to come back and work it out with you she's a lot more likely to do it when that space is just a nice neutral field without you hanging there waiting for her like are you coming back are you coming back because I can I mean it is like so clear she was not able to be herself before she was feeling pressured she needs pressure off let her out just let her out it won't do any harm she's already gone you know as a human being she in and as your friend and as the mother of your kids it just sounds like she's very lost right now and she keeps saying the point of her doing this is I don't have a plan I'm trying to figure it out you said she had this Hobby she had homeschooled the kids she didn't work and that tells me she has no source of income I don't know about this guy but she doesn't have a way to get some space without a guy because she has no money I'm guessing you guys had financial problems she doesn't work that's a terrible position for a person to be in and you know we've seen other letters like this in fact I'll put one at the end of this where a family was breaking down kind of similar things there was an infidelity it kind of you know snowballed in that case the woman had a career in this case her not having a career in homeschooling kids you know if she was really young and everything just kind of happened I just couldn't really see this is what a lot of like my mom's generation went through where there was this set of expectations from this culture you were in you'd be the head of the household she'd do the thing no one ever asked what she said she couldn't Express what she wanted she didn't know what she wanted you know I don't think it's good what she's doing but I sure understand the need to just like get out and breathe and just be like I don't know I'm gonna go create my own problems for a while and try to remember like who am I what am I here for what am I trying to do so I I have compassion for her even though this is a messy way to do it some of us we don't know a better way to do it than to do it messy yeah the stickers of the happy planning and now she just doesn't want to plan that is so poignant with the homeschooling the not working and putting stickers on things as a grown woman I don't know it's sad to me it's sad to me it's pretty shallow and um I I do agree that raising kids and educating kids is total good Noble work and it's important but just for her as a person for her to just feel like I don't even know what to do with myself she might need to get her heart broken out there she might need to have some experiences outside of what's been prescribed for her all her life so that she can figure out who she is and sadly the cost of that might be your marriage but I don't know like you're feeling that everything was great here's something that really like caught my attention it was just you know as I said it I I noticed like these incredibly important details came out you know it's like oh she left you know she's just Limerick oh well we had a threesome with the guy and we left the church right before that I'm like whoa wait a second so you guys had a collapse of your world view to do this stuff and you believed we're in such a good place it'll be great I I don't know I'm hearing sort of a history of denial and I understand you know you're a traumatized kid we do that but it's but that's what's working against you here is you're not able to read a woman who's desperately unhappy you're not able to read that the marriage is not in a good place I love all the Insight that you came up with about yourself I think you've done an incredible job of that and you're probably right it's probably too much but I love how you've really worked to have insight about what you could have done differently and so good on you whatever happens after this you having insight and taking responsibility for your pattern and how that would have been hard for her and for you and for the family and for your situation yeah you know that's that is Noble work that's a good job I don't know what she's gonna do this whole thing where she's smoking gaining a lot of weight depressed panic attacks confused it sounds like she's in a bad place and that you're you're still like codependent you're trying to fix your life by making her by trying to pretend that what's going on is limerence that it's just some fantasy thing she's gone dude she's gone and that doesn't mean she won't come back but there's it's not it's just like this is if she ever does and I don't think it's very likely if she ever does it's got to be on her terms you've got to let her have things on her terms and how you do that is not by saying I'm listening I'm trying to listen to you I'm trying to like get you to tell me how you feel like now is the time when you can just go okay well if you want to talk let me know like give her that space and I know it's sad I mean this is terrible losing a wife and losing a wife when you have four kids it's it's tragic but you know what you're in good company I did it many here did it and it turned out for the best like it ended up being okay it's a really hard slog I think the first year is hard you're already halfway through it Frank you know and you can do that but then you said this other thing that was shocking to me you go I don't think he's that great he's a porn addict too it's like wait a minute so and then you said there are two addicts together so you calling her an addict I don't know if you meant drugs limerence because she had this history of abusing prescription pills yeah so I guess I didn't read this but you had she when you first got married she got super depressed started taking all these prescription pills had an affair like the whole thing happened then I don't know I can't read her mind and she didn't write in but it if somebody does that right after getting married I would just say oh hold on it sounds like they spiritually weren't really on board with their own decision for that and that happens that happens to young people it happens to traumatize people it happens to people who are raised in a super strong you know like belief system like it sounds like YouTuber where she she went along with the program and then something in her was just like stop wait and next thing you know the kids so yeah you guys were collapsing from within for a long time you've both been prescribed these roles I'm the head of this everything's okay and if if you're copying that role as the like head of the Family Guy and then having Financial struggles I would imagine and people do lots of people have Financial struggles especially lately but coupled with that like I'm the head of the family there's like a self-esteem wound right there so then she's leaving I don't know I think you don't know who you are just as much as she doesn't you guys feel young to me and that's good you know that's good you're not like all used up and old and it's too late for you it's not too late Frank I think it's time for you to work on your life it's time for you to learn to let go to change your pattern that you had from having an alcoholic mom of waiting and hoping and trying to be the good son from time to time I recommend this book No More Mr Nice Guy by Robert Glover I love this book it's a really good for men who are trying to fix things by being nice so that the woman won't be mad that's a toxic Dynamic sometimes what you got to do is stop worrying about how other people feel including her because she's gone so you're not responsible now and you just focus on making your life good if you have a porn addiction I'm just going to suggest you Frank you put that front and center I'm glad you tested out Coda I'm going to suggest you go to sex and love addicts anonymous and deal with that porn addiction stop caring about whether the other guy well actually I would be very upset if my kids were in custody where there was pornography around I don't know some people feel like that's okay or that's contained but I have a red flag up for both of you it is a big deal deal it's a big deal it's not a good thing to have in the house with kids certainly I don't think it does any favors for marriages and because you call it an addiction it suggests that you can't stop so you know there's a very unpopular view but I for one you know when I wrote down and got clear what I really needed in a in a spouse when I really was ready to turn my life around that was one of the things no pornography use now for all of you out there who are like hey it's no big deal I like it no big deal well you do what you do or ask yourself how's that working for you but I had had enough experience trying to date men who did have that problem who are way into it and they just would totally dissociate you know they're not capable of intimacy it's a very understated problem a lot of people don't want to talk about but I'm going to talk about it I would not date somebody who did that and so whether you end up with your wife or you know maybe one day you have a new relationship be a stand-up guy who's totally emotionally available and cancel out this Hemorrhage of your emotional energy like you really can live without it um so sex and love addicts anonymous or essay sex addicts anonymous those are programs where men can go I would suggest you go to a men only meeting and get the best sponsor in the room so when you said you checked out coder I forget the word you used um I don't know you went you didn't say you worked the program it's a 12-step program and so you can sort of put your toe in and go what is this thing by going to meetings and be acquainted with ideas but as a 12-step veteran myself I don't put any stock in anybody who doesn't work all 12 steps with a really good sponsor visiting a program is not it it's weird I got this very angry email or not email but a comment today from somebody who was trying to tell everybody that AAA I wouldn't recommend it to people who have been sexually abused or physically abused and it's like oh like everybody who's drinking that's very bad advice by the way person who said that very very dangerous advice there are a lot of people who are fragile and are finally they're in a little bit of sobriety and that's all they need is somebody to BS them when you're ready to get sober from your addiction Frank you will go to any lengths to get help for it and I don't think that that helped the help for that kind of addiction is available like everywhere not all therapists know it um I think some Churches take it on but being together with other men who are working on it themselves there's no other substitute and it's free you have money problems you've got four kids now you got a thing on your hands so I'm going to ask you to take that seriously and see if you can catch yourself you know if you want to also go to CODA or Al-Anon 2 for that whatever you need to do you have the alcoholic mom you know I did 28 years in Al-Anon I recommend it highly to start understanding the pattern the difference the energy that one gets you know you sound like an Al-Anon to me and wherever you find there's really strong fellowship and you resonate and ultimately the test of whether you're in the right 12-step Fellowship is are you able to help other people there are you able to sponsor them which would come in time so yeah I hear you kind of minimizing her drug use I hear you minimizing your addiction I hear you saying they're too out six together I it sounds a little bit like three addicts to me so you get sober you get sober and you be the dad your kids need right now regardless of what she does and you know what when you clear up your own problems who knows you might be a magnet for her you might find you don't want to be with somebody who's that lost and not dealing with themselves or who knows I'm not trying to take an opinion or judge her or say that I know what's going to happen I can't read her mind and I can't read your mind but from what you've told me your life is crying for your attention right now and that's what we do as kids of Alcoholics who have this tendency we will tend to have a hard time seeing our own issues or weighing how serious they are or solving them we get very very interested in what are they doing you know what's their problem what are they doing and then thinking that if you could get her to change your life would be okay and I'm sure that feels true and there is some truth in it but actually you're in a sole crisis of your life and your choices are falling apart you can't remember who you are you've fallen into all these behaviors and you left behind your faith which you can do if you want you can go where you want to go that book No More Mr Nice Guy really emphasizes being friends with men and learning to start developing your own interests in life and not have that driven by the woman in your life all the time and you know I'm a woman and there's been times I sure wish my husband would just run his whole life by what I want but that's not actually what I want it's not attractive it doesn't work for him and it doesn't work for me I love that he has boundaries I love that he does his own thing so you can be like that too about a year ago I met a woman I'll call Angela we entered into a relationship pretty quickly and it was very intense by my standards we've been broken up now for several months and I'm still suffering the relationship was only good for about three months but I think I'm experiencing a trauma Bond and the relationship has the markings of emotional abuse and perhaps narcissism though I'm hesitant to label or diagnose and I hoped you could help before I met Angela I had a feeling about the kind of relationship I wanted to have I wanted a partnership with someone who wanted to grow together and this was kind of new for me in the past I used to just approach relationships with us see how it goes attitude but there was never a goal and for the record I'm a divorced father of two and my past relationships even though they didn't work out in the end were pretty good with Angela I went into it knowing I wanted a lasting relationship and she let me know pretty early that she was on board there was a lot of synchronicity it felt magical we were texting all day every day having video chats and spending a lot of time together where we talk about the future within three months we were talking about collaborations on business ventures and perhaps even moving in together in the near future about this time we went on a trip together and everything suddenly changed practically overnight we had been at a big festival and I had to leave and go home and she stayed longer before I left she said that she could feel herself withdrawing and something about sabotaging the relationship and that I would be more hurt than she would be I asked her what she meant if she meant we should break up or something and she deflected and talked about plans to move in together in the future after I got home I got a call from her and she said she didn't want to be in a relationship anymore she said she wasn't relationship material I said so we're breaking up then and she said Whoa stop thinking in such extreme terms she said that is linear thinking she went away to her folks place for a while and I thought well we're not broken up yet let's just see what happens now this is where I get mad at myself the whole dynamic went on through the summer where we weren't broken up but we weren't in a relationship her communication at this time was cold the total opposite of the first three months I knew it wasn't healthy for me but when I would start to pull away she'd want me back she called me from a cafe and blamed all of this on her avoidant attachment disorder she said I was the love of her life and apologized and said she wanted to heal and grow together again so then I'd take her back thinking well if she's aware of this attachment issue maybe we can work with it and then as soon as I'd get back into it the cold communication started again for example when we were at the festival she had uploaded a lot of photos that were taken of us together there she put them on her Facebook page it didn't really bother me except that there was no communication with me about it and then when she had that flip happen when she turned cold again she took all the photos down then later she'd put them all up again still not communicating with me and then take them down again and through all of this there was no communication and I asked her at one point why did she take the photos of me down and she said well they gave the impression that we're in a relationship and we're not another time over the summer those photos came up again and she denied that she ever put them up and took them down again the worst thing about all of this is the confusion yeah that's just one example of back and forth but it went on for months and that's why I get angry at myself I feel like I betrayed myself and I enabled her if she saw me pulling away again she'd send me a playlist with love songs she told me once that she was afraid I'd leave her and so while she was away she started a journal of her uninhibited thoughts and promised to send them to me or to give them to me when she got back into town and of course that never happened she came back but never spoke about the journal again by this time I felt like any attempt to communicate with her was going to just be confusing I never knew who was going to show up I told her I needed time alone and I made that clear the word breakup did come up it was brought up by both of us but first by me she said is that's what's happening and I nodded I Circle things that I want to come back to when I I'm going to read the letter again and we're going to come back and talk about parts of this so she looks sad and I asked for no contact and for her to just let me be to let me be in my power to let me be grounded to not be confused to connect with My Soul again to connect with the feeling I had before we met the next morning she sent me a selfie because she was starting a new job and I texted her to say you look good they're lucky to have you but please no more contact she waited two days and said I'll wait for you to contact me then she sent a little sad face emoji and another and another and within a couple more days she just started flooding me with texts incessantly and trying to call using guilt it was all about her she said I'm trembling inside please have some compassion she wanted to meet to come get some kind of closure with me when I didn't respond at all her tactic went from guilt to anger and then rage she started smearing me on Facebook it may be going on still but we've blocked each other after a couple months though I sent her a letter explaining my timeline how I understood what happened between us that it seemed like she felt entitled to me and she didn't have to respond but I wished her the best she didn't respond for more than a week and when she did she said I received your letter and I will answer it soon I didn't expect anything but maybe a month later she called and said I'm just calling to tell you I will not be answering your letter but the texts started again come on we're friends show some compassion and be there for me and my problem is I want so badly to answer her texts it's like an alcoholic who wants to take a drink if I text her I'll be hooked again I've come so far getting over her but if I connect again it'll be like starting from day one what I really want is that feeling that I had before we met I know how I want it to feel and I've learned what to look out for I was Stronger in my boundaries in the beginning and then it all got lost but I'm getting stronger now I'd love to meet someone really wonderful and live our lives together but I haven't quite gotten free of the pull of this woman I know is out there I can't get over it I don't even know what to grieve the woman I thought I loved the relationship I thought we had or the person I was before she met me how can I heal and get free so that I can move on with my life and never get pulled down like that again Martin oh so this letter it this is a hard one just reading this I feel my energy like sucked out of me that's how this story affects me and I think this might be something like what you're feeling Martin uh and why you're having trouble disengaging from this because it feels like you ought to be able to get your energy back like it got taken away from you from this woman and maybe you could somehow get it back let's go through what you wrote about a year ago I met a woman I'll call Angela we entered into a relationship pretty quickly all right for people who have had trauma as a kid and I know you had a separate story about that which I didn't cover here going quick is one of the fastest ways to have a relationship that sort of brings up all of our stuff and so if you've watched any of my videos and I think you have you know that I'm always advocating like slow it down slow it down but by the time I'm getting letters from people they've they're usually in something that brought up all the old stuff and so here we are and that's fine so you got in quickly and it was very intense and now you've been broken up for several months but you're still suffering the relationship was only good for about three months and you think you're experiencing a trauma Bond I think so too and the relationship has markings of emotional abuse I think so too and perhaps narcissistic traits I think so too I don't know if we would diagnose anyone here we don't have to we can just say that the traits are there so before you met her you had a feeling about the kind of relationship you wanted to have so you were in touch with yourself you say I wanted a partnership with someone who wanted to grow together and this was kind of new for me in the past I used to just approach relationships with us see how it goes attitude so you used to just kind of cast it to the wind and that's kind of a cptsd thing too the the pattern that I notice in your letter is that in a lot of what you're going through you have given away the power and your fate to another person and a little bit I could just hear there's a there's sort of a fog of denial that actually you're the one with agency you're the one who decides so you would see how it goes but that sort of in this case knowing what I know from this letter I would say you're waiting to see like how does the woman feel about it so when you lose your power like that it's an extremely vulnerable place a lot of people say oh I attract narcissists and I always say well it doesn't really matter who we attract what matters is who we end up getting together with and so for somebody who's very selfish and wants to use somebody to fill in some Gap in their life but not actually care about them as a person which is kind of the story I'm hearing in this letter that that's how she treated you well that becomes possible when they find someone who's just going to sit around and wait and see what they do and it doesn't really have a boundary or a set of standards for themselves you have standards but they got wobbly here around her and I can only guess she must be very dazzling I don't know beautiful talented Charming fun so a lot of great things happened there to sort of draw you in but then you were it's a foggy world where you have no defenses that's the feeling I get about this relationship so you didn't have a goal in previous relationships and for the right your divorced father of two cool um having kids puts extra premium on having a healthy relationship if you have one at all because it's so important for the kids right to model that for them so fantastic that you're not in this relationship anymore and that's not going to influence the kids any more than it may have already and that your past relationships have been pretty good even if they didn't work out but with Angela you went in knowing what you wanted she let you know she was on the same page she wanted a big future big you know long-term committed relationship that you would grow together sounds really good and then you got really enmeshed you were texting all day every day that's I mean when people fall in love they do that when it has a sort of dark side to it that's when we call it enmeshed and so even the most pure love when it doesn't have any oxygen from the outside world when you're just completely into each other texting all day every day video chats talking about moving in together getting together and always being about the future that's really vulnerable and so Martin I know that you're you know hoping to meet somebody great and so just as I go through this one tip I'm going to give you here is when you are dating be very careful about talking about the future the future is something you could really you know I always suggest to people like if you have a criteria like I'm looking to get married I have kids and you would be their step parent those are things that kind of need to be floated out there fairly early in the dating relationship but talking about the future and trying to imagine it and construct it especially if you have attachment wounds or trauma or one of your parents or both of them we're very neglectful to you it can be a really vulnerable thing it can be prone to Fantasy and limerence so even though you're sitting with a real person right in front of you you're interacting with a fantasy person and I would say this person was interacting with some kind of fantasy of her own I don't know her and she hasn't written in and she can't speak for herself here but something's going on there some people call it future faking you know I want to move in with you it turned out very quickly that wasn't at all where she was coming from but that's one of the reasons why going slowly because you know just because we have cptsd we will often find ourselves kind of having a romantic involvement with someone who who doesn't have those boundaries who leaps into the future who's not really capable of of building a relationship and building commitment and building a real true friendship where deciding to live together would happen at an organic time after you actually knew if you were compatible and wanted a future together I think you know when you get to be north of 40 um and younger really moving in together becomes you know you many of us have had the experience that it's it's not easily undone it's something to take extremely seriously some people just don't even do it they either get married or they live separately it's a complicated kind of commitment it's it's it has a certain open-endedness to it and yet your livelihood your home everything becomes like wrapped up in the relationship and if you have that wound inside and you have that fear of Abandonment going on having your home wrapped up with an unreliable person and your money and your Social Circle and all that stuff it's just too much to lose and you could end up clinging to a bad relationship much longer than you should or losing it all together because the person leaves you well we can tolerate a certain amount of that in life but if you've had a traumatic life I really wish for you to have a slowly unfolding romance where maybe you date several people to see who the one is and then a slow unfoldment of one who turns out to be like a really good person for you to be with which you could discover in certainly no less than a year usually more like a year and a half three years would be a normal healthy time to be dating somebody before you decide to stake everything on them and especially because your kids what's great about kids is you can think about what's good for the kids what's good for the kids is good for you so just as they uh it would not be good for them to have some partner of yours sort of come in and leave or a bunch of drama it's not good for you either so this is where the story gets gets odd and hard for you about this time you went to a big festival and everything suddenly changed it was like overnight just boom so you were gonna move in together everything was so great then when you had to leave and she stayed and she said some weird thing about feeling like she was withdrawing and maybe it was over and you're just you know and then she denied when you said are we broken up she's just like what are you talking about no we're moving in together very confusing very you know right there the red flags are just starting to like it's a red alert okay after I got home I got a call from her she said she didn't want to be in the relationship anymore she said she wasn't relationship material uh By the way when people say that even though sometimes that's a cover for something else that they don't want to tell you like perhaps what might be the case here if she met somebody else um but it means they're not when somebody wants to be with you how you'll know is because they are with you because they don't want to risk losing you okay and they so they don't mess around with scaring you or saying they're not relationship material they're gonna put on their best behavior and try to impress you so then you said so we're breaking up and she said Whoa stop thinking in such extreme terms and she said I was linear thinking okay this is Hallmark everybody gets mad when I say this there can be all kinds of ideological and spiritual abuse but accusing you of linear thinking is a kind of ideological abuse or maybe spiritual abuse like you know when monogamy is expected and had been promised and you're accused of being too much in your head or thinking too linearly it's like more red flags Red Alert you're not too linear of a thinker by asking are we broken up when she says she doesn't want to be in a relationship with you so this is just like all out gaslighting here and saying you're too linear you're too extreme and it sounds like I'm just going to read between the lines here well I'll read about the next part here about the Facebook pictures then she went away to her folks and you thought well we're not broken up yet so let's just see what happens and I Circle that Martin because you said that in the past you used to have this let's just see how it goes attitude and no goal so what so this is the point where you really surrendered your goal and you're just like well let's just see if she wants to if she comes around and wants to be with you and at this point I think if you were stronger and more healed inside you'd be going F this person we're just they're being awful and inconsistent and blowing hot and cold and saying terrible things and accusing you of being too linear that you want to know if you're in a relationship or not at that point I think that would be it's a pretty obvious time to break up with somebody but you think let's just see what happens and I and maybe you mean like let's just see what your heart tells you but how this story plays out I just see you getting tossed around on this stormy sea of this other person and her whims for you and that her whims for you have everything to do about what's convenient for her and never anything to do with how you might feel and I'm guessing that there was a precedent for that in your childhood that people did not take seriously what you needed and things were all about them all right so then you said this is where you get mad at yourself good healthy healthy anger the whole dynamic went on through the summer where you weren't broken up but you weren't together how convenient for her right her communication at this time was cold the total opposite of the first three months I knew it wasn't healthy for me but when when I would start to pull away she'd want me back surprise surprise yep she wanted you not here not gone she wanted you right about here you know probably for not evil reasons but that's just kind of where she wanted you and she knew that wouldn't work for you and so you know she just kept saying she just fed you what you wanted to hear so that you would stick around it's nice to have somebody kind of waiting in the wings for you it sounds very much though like she wanted to appear single for for one or more other people and just keep you kind of as a backup insurance policy and that's very harsh to say but that is that is definitely what I'm sort of detecting here all right you knew it wasn't healthy for you no it wasn't but when you pull away she'd do it again just pull you back in and she called you from a cafe and she blamed all of this on her avoidant attachment disorder you know maybe that there's certainly signs of that but it sounds like it's something even worse um and I'm not a therapist or a clinician of any kind but what I know about avoidant attachment disorder is you know it's it's all about avoidance so this like you know getting all enmeshed and pulling together that suggests that there's something else going on so she said you were the love of her life and she apologized and she said she wanted to heal and grow together those are like the magic words for you right I want to heal and grow together because that was your ideal and she knew that and so that you'd you'd take her back and you did and you were thinking well now if she's aware she has this issue maybe we can work with it and I totally get it you know I was um in a relationship with a guy who had a terrible drug addiction and he said I'm so sorry I'm going to go to treatment and he got into treatment and I thought see so as long as he's actually in treatment there's hope for us but like just you know obviously our two cases are very different but in that case when I look back I just say even if he was utterly sincere which he wasn't he was doing it just so I wouldn't leave even if he had been utterly sincere it's a long road for somebody who's that dysfunctional to actually heal enough to become a person who would be good to be in a relationship with whether it's drugs or whether it's this just like crazy back and forth deception and um in consideration and selfishness so let's just say it's not like some kind of a personality disorder or anything it's the facts this is how she acts and I just wouldn't recommend to anybody and I don't want for you you're just like a dear person you want love I just don't wish this on you at all for somebody to treat you like that but I get it how the trauma bonding as you mentioned for anybody watching trauma bonding is it's like a psychological phenomenon it could happen to anybody not just traumatized people where when somebody's like I love you I love you I love you and then they're like I'm not talking to you and then I love you I love you I love you and then I'm not talking to you it it like hooks something in our brains it just gets us hooked in it gets us obsessed with when am I going to get the next you know cookie of affection of of acknowledgment of touch of talking and contact it can make a person obsessed it can make a person addicted okay okay so then you give us the example of the cold communication which is that when you were at the festival she put a bunch of pictures of you guys up on Facebook without asking you and I'd say in a new relationship yeah you're supposed to ask it's a very public thing to do and especially if you tag them you know it goes on their page and it's like announcing like hey I'm the girlfriend of this guy so you know what some people might call a pissing match and um and you but you it didn't bother you you were okay to be public except it was weird that she didn't talk to you correct then when her whole personality flipped when she turned cold again she took all the photos down then she put them back up there again and then take them down again and through all of this there was no communication you asked her at one point why she did it and she said well they gave the impression that we were in a relationship and we're not okay so Martin this is the like hardest tough love moment of this why would somebody at a festival take pictures down it's so that they can appear available to somebody else I am getting a strong sense there was somebody else or many people I doubt it was like the love of her life or anything worked out great because she's very erratic with this stuff but putting you up there without talking to you is you know lots of people do it it's normal but that thing where she doesn't talk to you and throws it up there and wants to create an impression it's all about how other people see her that's what it's that's what I'm saying how you feel about having the pictures put up how you feel about having them taken down don't matter to her they would matter to anybody both things putting them up taking them down it speaks a lot and anybody would have feelings about that that she doesn't care and that she later denied that she ever put them up and down okay that's uh that's BS okay that's not cool um that's a utter self-centeredness and she seems to be completely driven about how other people see her and doesn't want to appear to be in a relationship and there's only one reason why people do that okay the worst of it you say is the confusion that was just one example of the sort of back and forth and back and forth of hot and cold it went on for months and that's why you get angry at yourself which I understand you feel like you betrayed yourself and I understand I mean yes but I understand how that happened you know it could happen to any of us really it has and you enabled her um I guess so yeah you could call it that if she saw you pulling away again she'd send you a playlist with love songs she told you once she was afraid that she'd get left and so while she was away she started a journal of all her uninhibited thoughts I'm guessing that's some sort of sexy thing and promise to send it to you or give it to you when she got back into town man what a manipulative hook basically like if somebody was an alchemist and tried to take a man's brain and just put a giant gaffing hook in it and go just yank it but then just throw it aside I'd say that's how to do it you know that would be how to do it so it never happened she came back it was never spoken about again but this time you felt like any attempt to communicate with her was going to be confusing and you were right Martin you never knew who was going to show up and so that's interesting yeah just like a totally unstable personality there I'm sure not going to be surprised if she was traumatized too but just because we're traumatized doesn't give us the right to trample all over other people it may give us difficulty in relationships it may cause our personalities to go out of control I know lots of people struggle with mental illness but that still doesn't make it okay to abuse people emotionally everything that you suspected here narcissistic traits emotional abuse and Trauma Bond I think you're right I think your perception is accurate and I just want to validate that sometimes sometimes just having that validated by someone who gets it is enough to just help you go okay uh you know and wash that person out of your hair I love that song I'm Gonna wash that man right out of my hair and that's there's a time for that isn't there so get ready get that shower warming up Martin it's time it's just coming time let's read the rest of the letter okay I told her I needed time alone and I made that clear I'm going to circle because what I think is part of the part that you might be able to adjust about this for your next relationship is your concept of what is clear and what is not clear you say the word breakup did come up it was brought up by both of us but first by me it's weird how you use a sort of passive verb on that the word was brought up it's like I you don't say I broke up with her I made it clear that I was breaking up with her that's not what you say you say I needed time alone and the word came up like it had a life of its own and it came in and it flew out of my mouth it flew out of her mouth I'm not really sure what to make of it but she said is that what's happening and you nodded okay nodding instead of going yes Angela it's over babe that's it you know that's that would be clear but I nodded that's ambiguous all right and I get it but this I just you know the picture I have of this and the way that I feel drained reading the letter I just think you are dealing with a vampire and yeah even coming close to the story it's very draining she she looked sad when you nodded and and when you asked for no contact you asked not told when you want no contact you don't ask for it you declare it all right that's I'm just I'm just telling you here I'm I'm hearing the passivity in what you're doing here and I think that's what it is that spell that this whole relationship has cast over you it's like drained your power to the point that you're like please can can you just give me no contact and not just pulling down the wall yourself and then you asked for her to let you be to let you be in your power so if it's your power nobody has to let you be in it your power is your power and you you generate that power you hold that power regardless of what she wants or allows right and you want it to be allowed she said you asked her to let you be grounded you asked her so that you could not be confused you wanted to connect with your soul again and connect with the feeling that you had before you met and so here there's just like this crucial you know mind F here where you it got you believing that she had to give that to you that she held all the power and because you fell into that false belief it actually became a true situation she had all that power over you not that she could do anything with it she she sounds very unwell but the next morning she sent you a selfie so you said no contact so she sends you a picture the next day because she was starting a new job so you had said no contact but did you have no contact no you typed back and said she looked good oh you made her feel good about herself and you said they're lucky to have you but you know actually I don't think they are based on how she treated you I think that it's very unlikely that that's going to go very well for people so you but you gave her the compliment and I just you know that's a clue sometimes when somebody is emotionally abusive to you and you're like you look good honey they're so lucky to have you like in what dynamic do we do that right the dynamic would be more like narcissist and codependent again can't diagnose anybody but that's the dynamic that that looks like then you say please no more contact so again please like you're begging her for no contact and you know if you really if you're serious about no contact you can do it you block the person and if it comes to it you can get a restraining order and I don't think that would be totally out of line here because because of what she ended up doing okay and then that's where you tell us about this she waited about two days after you said no contact so no respect here and then she said I'll wait for you to contact me uh you know I could just see her calculating what can I say to break contact and try to hook him in again okay I'll wait for you to contact me uh okay but you said no contact then she sent little sad face emoji and another and another so she's just sitting there it's like a like with a fishing pole just casting out with her hook come on Martin Come on come on come back to me but with a hook you know not love there's nothing here that's love you know that right this is not love this is consumption then she started flooding you with texts incessantly trying to call trying to call you on the phone using guilt it was all about her yeah she said I'm trembling inside please have some compassion so she's trying every tactic in the book oh poor me it's gonna break me she she wanted to meet and come and have some sort of closure okay big red flag word for anybody who's watched my videos that word closure in the context of a breakup closure sure if you had a serious relationship let's say you were married and suddenly the person leaves or you were engaged you know like in a serious committed relationship that suddenly ends and one person never knew why then having that conversation eventually would be closure but in this one you don't need closure there's no closure closure is almost always a code word for the opposite of closure I just want to get together and talk so we can have some closure means I just want to get together and talk so I can hook you in again get that emotional ball rolling again right so you say when I didn't respond at all her tactic went from guilt to anger and then rage I'm not surprised because she's trying she's just trying the full like spectrum of tactics to hook you in she started smearing you on Facebook okay this is where it goes from I can't tell whether you know it's emotional abuse because I wasn't there but smearing people on Facebook yes that is abuse and it may be going on still except you've blocked her good job after a couple months though I sent her a letter you say explaining my timeline okay oops so you had a relapse that's what that is and I know that your mind is thinking okay it was a couple months and but I I'm just gonna say Martin what were you thinking would happen if you explained your timeline like what possible good could come from reaching out to an abusive unstable person so that they know your timeline like oh now I know your timeline and what you believe happened and then what happens they they say oh I'm so sorry I yeah I was a jerk I wish you know or I'm coming back to you I realize I love you you mentioned this there's parts of the letter I didn't include we had a very long exchange on it but you know this is addiction and that's addiction can sort of grab hold of your mind and make you think like okay it's been two months I can do it now like it's safe for me to have contact now just like an alcoholic will go okay I didn't drink for two months now I can drink it'll just be one it'll be fine you said she she it seemed like she felt entitled to you you're right you have very good perception about this it's just that some part of your brain gets hijacked and just keeps thinking that somehow you can make it change if you just say it and do the right thing and um so you know so the rest of her here just to go oh yeah we've done that too and it never works okay and you said she didn't have to respond but you know what that's gonna happen you said you wished her the best and she didn't respond for more than a week oh I like that tactic too like let there be a little bit of worry that she's not gonna that you're not gonna get back you know that's how you sort of build suspense suspense in a trauma Bond you can never just get back to somebody you have to delay it so that they just get all like wound up waiting for that so that when they do get a lousy text from you they're just like I got a text that's how trauma bonding works it always has to be interspersed with neglect and abandonment and just coldness and then ooh you know love bomb right when she did respond she said this is just to tell you I'll answer it soon okay then you say you didn't expect anything but I'm gonna say you did or you would never have written her and then maybe a month later she called and she said I'm just calling you to tell you I won't be answering your letter well when you're not going to answer somebody's letter you don't call them that was a hook that was another one and I love that it's like all dressed up as like you know I've got boundaries right but it's not boundaries it's it's a hook and it's a break of contact but that's okay we all do it we're all just drudging along here trying to figure out how do we love how do we live life right so you're just like everyone here and you're you're good all right but the text started again so here come the text from her and she starts saying come on we're friends show some compassion be there for me okay more of her tactics so then you say Martin my problem is I want so badly to answer the text it's like yep that's what they were designed to do and it's like an alcoholic who wants to take a drink if I text her I'll be hooked again and I've come so far getting over her but if I connect again it'll be like starting from day one so one thing that alcoholics do when they're in early sobriety is they don't go around people drinking and they sometimes live in sober living houses and they they set themselves up to eliminate the trigger and the trigger for you is contact with her it would also be thinking about her fantasizing that it could have been okay and so this is I would I would class this as a form of limerence with somebody who actually did have a relationship with but you're having um a romance with the idea with that incredible experience you had in the first three months and even though it went totally to hell you're still like in love with that her and with that you and with that couple and that possibility that you once had there and so the process of healing is going to involve just facing that and seeing it for what it was that that that was the hope of what it was but time did allow you to see what the reality of that relationship is and a lot of what you you know you can learn a lot about relationships we we're so good at compartmentalizing things because of that crap fit thing from growing up being very good at sort of compartmentalizing it's like I know that you know Mom and Dad hit each other but we're also a very nice family and I can show that to the world we get so good at compartmentalizing abusive behavior from this other part of life that it seems normal to you or is possible to you that the person who treats you like this could actually be this you know wonderful relationship and so it keeps your heart engaged with it and it's very painful to face to face reality and say this is a very disturbed and unstable person and we don't know I don't know exactly what's wrong with her but I know how she treats you and it's unacceptable and it's definitely nothing that would ever turn into a happy relationship and so one gut check in reality check is well what does it feel like to be with this person well what did it feel like to be with that person well that is how it feels to be with that person it feels like it just does not feel good it makes you feel bad it makes you angry you turned it on yourself like you're angry at yourself for putting up with it but I think as time goes by your anger will quite rightly be directed outward at the person who mistreated you so it's interesting you say what I really want is that feeling that I had before we met so you know I think sometimes people come into our lives like a tornado and they just come in and they wreck The Whole Trailer Park and we can remember how it was before that happened but really what we're going to do now is take what we learned and move forward because the one silver lining of a terrible relationship or anything bad that happens to us I wouldn't wish it on anyone but when it's happened you can begin to see what are your tender spots where is your unhealed trauma what is your vulnerability to abuse so it points you to where you can begin to heal and work on that now you know I teach these techniques the daily practice to start unpacking and and releasing the fearful and resentful thoughts and beliefs about yourself in the world that would have you you know impulsively following decisions in your life that are more driven by trauma than by what you really want or what's good for you or what is going to bring love into your life of course we want love in your life you've absolutely deserve to have a good loving person who appreciates you for who you are so this happened wash it out of your hair and I really encourage you to get extremely active and structured in your approach to Healing from the trauma that would allow this to happen to you if it happens once it kind of increases it increases the odds that it's going to happen again especially afterwards it's weird how it works like that it's it's almost like it forms a magnetic Groove in you and you very easily can fall right into the same thing or you could change the pattern but a lot of times that takes a conscious effort to change that pattern so it's conscious effort time and you you know you got in touch with me which is so brave and and is I do hope very much that what I'm saying to you can help you can help you believe in yourself enough to take action I'm going to also recommend you have no contact at all even if it requires a restraining order with this person this is just flat out toxic so you had said I don't know what to grieve the woman you thought you loved the relationship you thought you had or the person you were before you met you get to grieve that is what heartbreak is and the good news is what feels like it's about the other person is usually more about the ideal that we had and the ideal has with that person has been lost but it's been revealed for what it is and the Beautiful relationship that you crave still lies ahead of you and all you need to do to become ready for it is to heal I know easier said than done but that's what this channel is all about [Music] [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 105,433

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Id: KDu1h-pYPPg

Length: 157min 22sec (9442 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023