RedIrish73 Posted June 22, 2012 Posted June 22, 2012 Okay, I am putting this here because this is about me and I am looking for a way to overcome this. If its the wrong place, well, hopefully an admin will move it for me. I am in a relationship with a wonderful girl, she is sweet, kind, talented and brilliant. Seriously. She can sing incredibly well, she can belly dance, she is a seamstress, a gamer girl, loves to be out doors, builds websites, is beautiful and is just fun to be around. We complement each other well, we are moving in together soon and have talked about marriage. Even ordered the ring... so yeah, that talk about marriage is pretty serious. Me? I am confident. I am decent looking. Love the outdoors. I am a full time student and my skills supplement her website needs. I game (So we play games together when we find the time). I sing horribly and I can't sew for crap. I am learning how to drum for when she dances. Whats the problem then? I have this deep seated fear. I know what its from. In my previous relationship of over 8 years, my ex cheated on me numerous times and I can't tell you how often I was up all not worrying about what is going on, how to fix it and what to do. I mean, gut wrenching, sometimes in tears, worry that is hard to ignore. On top of that, she on a yearly basis changed why she married me and why she wanted a child. One year it was because she was a lesbian so she married a nice guy to have a child with. Another year she married me because she was running away from someone else. And another was because she felt like she had to, that something made her do it. No joke. She firmly believed these things for a time then she would come around to a level of normal. She is Bi Polar and for most of our marriage she was not on medication. Even when she started medication it took years before they found something that kept her stable. This is not meant to be a slam on her, she and I have parted ways and she is happy with her new guy and I with my life. I am explaining because I still walk on egg shells. I still find myself not able to sleep at night for real or imagined problems with my current relations ship. I say real or imagined because I get myself so worked up in the course of a few hours that my throat constricts in fear of losing my girlfriend. I come up with dozens of horrible things that could happen, all of which kill me inside. Why do I do this? I mean. I think I know why I do it... in the sense that I did it before so... I am doing it again? But why do I do it now? I can't trust my feelings when I get like this. Its silly. I know my GF loves me and there isn't anything going on. Its like I take silly crap and suddenly they spiral out of control and I can't stop it. For example. Facebook. She never says anything about me on her Facebook posts. Well, it shows we are in a relationship and there are pictures of her and I on it. But when she posts about going somewhere, she never mentions me. Why does this bother me?! Its trivial. Another example is she told me about a conversation she had with her sister. About how she wasn't sure about her path in life and her sister told her not to do anything drastic. I wasn't part of the conversation but oh my god do I worry about that. Well no, normally I don't but suddenly I find myself up all night and that is a driving thought in my head. 'Don't do anything drastic...' what does that mean!? Again, trivial. I find it hard when I get like this to trust my feelings cause they are all over the place. I have to look at things logically and hope I calm down. All I am doing is repeating the nightmare of my previous experiences. I don't understand why. I am afraid to explain this to her. I think that I just don't know how to handle something that most people take in stride. That my previous experience was not a good method of dealing with things and now if something bothers me, I revert to what I did before which only makes it worse. I am confused. I am 38 and I am confused. How freaking crazy is that.
vtgirl Posted June 23, 2012 Posted June 23, 2012 (edited) I think you need to relax, and realize that you have a great relationship. Edited June 23, 2012 by vtgirl
mickleb Posted June 23, 2012 Posted June 23, 2012 You sound like a very sweet guy who got shat on from a great height, again and again, and - for some reason - failed to address the problem at the time. Your girlfriend sounds lovely and it sounds as though you care about her deeply. Your problem doesn't sound insignificant to me. You are making yourself very unhappy here, and this will affect your relationship. You've done a good job of recognising and expressing what's happening here and so I think you could benefit from some counselling with someone. If you choose not to do that, I think you should, at least, talk to your girlfriend about what's going on. She may find it scary to hear, as it might seem to come out of the blue, in which case, the two of you could consider couples' counselling, possibly. I think the key to this is trying to figure out why you let your ex walk all over you. Who did you give too much time to, as a child? What stopped you from recognising the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and addressing the latter? And why have you been afraid to speak up about your current fears to the person who loves you?
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