Kkristine Posted August 30, 2017 Posted August 30, 2017 I've been wronged in the past. Also, I'm a very sensitive person and my moods are all over the place when it comes to trivial things. For example, if my boyfriend is late to come home, he is cheating. If my friend cancels plans, I take it to heart and think I did something wrong and will obsess all day about what I could've done for her to cancel. I have a huge fear of abandonment and normally push people away before they can hurt me. If I feel like they are going to hurt me, my walls go up. It's safe to say, I pretty much avoid dating. I'd like to consider myself a kind person, but I've got issues. I know when I get in these moods, it's not really me. I know when I think certain things, I'm being ridiculous. So, I give myself alone time. I know I need someone who is calm, laid-back, and confident in themselves enough to not take my actions personally. My question is, how do I go about dating? I'm so scared of getting hurt. So scared. I feel like these "issues" escalated after being cheated on for the first time. I've dated once after that bad relationship, and I broke it off because I pushed the guy away because I wasn't ready. I'm ready now. I do go to therapy, and it does help. However, I feel like it's more of a personality thing, or so I've been learning.
d0nnivain Posted August 30, 2017 Posted August 30, 2017 Keep working with your therapist. Learn to stop projecting & catastrophizing 1
BaileyB Posted August 30, 2017 Posted August 30, 2017 (edited) I know when I think certain things, I'm being ridiculous. So, I give myself alone time. I know I need someone who is calm, laid-back, and confident in themselves enough to not take my actions personally. I agree with Donnivain, keep working with your therapist. And, if I may, you don't really need someone who is going to enable your insecurities and anxiety. What you need to do is change your thinking and learn how to manage your anxiety, it will serve you well in all aspects of your life. Dear girl, I understand that you have been burned. But, everyone has been hurt and everyone is afraid to trust. Every relationship is a risk and it is unrealistic to expect that you will be able to move through life and never be hurt. What you must learn to do is trust wisely and develop the self-confidence to know that whatever happens... you will be fine. Edited August 30, 2017 by BaileyB
olivetree Posted August 30, 2017 Posted August 30, 2017 Part of the equation is you and working on yourself, as you recognize. Another part is finding someone that makes it easier for you to trust them. They should be: -Honest and transparent -Making you feel completely loved -Not afraid of commitment and putting work into a relationship (so they won't just bail when times get tough)
coolheadal Posted August 30, 2017 Posted August 30, 2017 (edited) I've been wronged in the past. Also, I'm a very sensitive person and my moods are all over the place when it comes to trivial things. For example, if my boyfriend is late to come home, he is cheating. If my friend cancels plans, I take it to heart and think I did something wrong and will obsess all day about what I could've done for her to cancel. I have a huge fear of abandonment and normally push people away before they can hurt me. If I feel like they are going to hurt me, my walls go up. It's safe to say, I pretty much avoid dating. I'd like to consider myself a kind person, but I've got issues. I know when I get in these moods, it's not really me. I know when I think certain things, I'm being ridiculous. So, I give myself alone time. I know I need someone who is calm, laid-back, and confident in themselves enough to not take my actions personally. My question is, how do I go about dating? I'm so scared of getting hurt. So scared. I feel like these "issues" escalated after being cheated on for the first time. I've dated once after that bad relationship, and I broke it off because I pushed the guy away because I wasn't ready. I'm ready now. I do go to therapy, and it does help. However, I feel like it's more of a personality thing, or so I've been learning. I wish I know you in person I could help you. Sorry you were cheated on that means the guy never really loved you as you think. Now you have to seek professional help and really can make you feel more down. I think you shouldn't take anyone else until you can see yourself as for who you are inside. Your all over the place. When you were growing up how was the family structure in your household. 1. Loving 2. Scary 3. Unstable 4. Abuse See something happen to you and the cheating BF made the tin can in your mine get kicked around in your head. I was like you once I learned on my own how to cope my fears and etc..Heal from within. I try to help others other out too. I know a few at work suffer from this as well. There is a girl at work took me a while for to trust me. She goes home sleeps all day until work and doesn't really do much in fixing up herself. Like a lox coming into work. Today she's cheerful and happy.. But more on her own than anything. I do not want to get into someone life but if I can help I will.. No charge.. Edited August 30, 2017 by coolheadal
Steve51 Posted August 30, 2017 Posted August 30, 2017 I believe in a healthy dose or mistrust in everyone. My ex fiancé cheated on me after 4 years and while I was in combat overseas. The girlfriend after her cheated on me after a year. Both cheated with good friends of mine. I learned that when it comes to the sexes, no one can be 100% trusted. I have had wives of my best friends hit on me and had sex with a few married women in my younger days when I felt that monogamy was promised with a wink and a nod. Sort of like saying that you will never lie and yet we all do sometimes. When I met my wife I decided that relationships and marriage as structured by society just did not work well. 50% divorce rate and higher percentage of those who cheat, both men and woman. I did a lot of research and even added some relationship and sex courses to my computer science program since I was married when I was in college. I learned a lot. I learned that we are not genetically designed to be monogamous. That monogamy was developed by society to bring order to the world and I can understand that. Imagine the cost to your employer to provide medical benefits to 5 different woman dn 15 kids. What do you do if you live with a woman with kids from 3 other men as well as yours and the other men do not pay child support. Do you let them starve or go bankrupt trying to care for them? What happens to the women who men just walk away from? I think you get it. The church saw monogamy as a way to control the population by their purpose for living, to pass along their genes. We are all here solely because a long line of our ancestors successfully passed along their genes. Not because they worshipped the Sun or other god. Not because they discovered the wheel. Solely because they used successful strategies to pass along their genes. Men can impregnate several women a day as that is a great strategy to ensure not some of their offspring will survive in ancient days. Women had sex with many men so that they had genetic variety that not only was more likely to produce a child to live until it too could pass along her genes but also have improvements to make our species better too. Think of ancient times. No society and people did not live long. Maybe to 30 if they were very lucky. No cures for diseases we cure with a pill. Women needed a man for protection and to provide food. They needed to be jealous to keep their man from running off with someone who looked like a better mate. Men had to be jealous to make sure that they did not raise a child who did not carry his genes. That would be the end of his line so not of us would be from him. All of those reasons do not exist anymore and yet no changes have been made to marriage or monogamy. We are designed to seek out mates that we feel have good genes. Why would a man or woman want to keep mating and producing kids that bear their inferior genes? In the old days it was suicide to pick a mate with bad genes. Little chance of the offspring of surviving. These days despite people with inferior genes being able to survive, our genetic design is to seek out better mates. Enough of the lesson. The point is that we will always be attracted to others and our brains and moral teachings sometimes cannot defeat our emotions. We have become a world of serial monogamist. We believe that if we want to have sex with someone other than our spouse, the moral thing to do is to first destroy the life you made together, learn to hate each other, split the property and go broke with alimony and child care. Then and only then are you morally correct in having sex with someone else if only for one night. That is our moral teaching, which we rejected. We were monogamish. We did not go looking for others to have sex with and we did resist others when we could. However, if one of us gave in for whatever reason, and it was the exception rather than the rule, it was not a deal breaker in our marriage. We accepted reality and did not build our marriage on a foundation of monogamy. That is a very unstable foundation to build anything on. Our foundation was the certain knowledge that we would put each other and our marriage above all else. 45 years of a great marriage have proven us right. We eliminated the whole sexual trust issue because we never required it. My wife and I shared the same girlfriend for much of our marriage and swapped with some friends. We indulged our need for sex with others in a safe and sane way as a couple where we could see what the other was doing. There is a big difference between having sex and making love. While we both loved our girlfriend, we just had sex with anyone else in our bed. My wife and I both agree that had we insisted on monogamy and made it the the biggest sin one could commit, we would have divorced a long time ago and not had the wonderful life we have. I do not recommend our type of marriage though. None of our friends in any type of non monogamous marriage lasted long. I think we did because unlike them, we shared others and did not form relationships without the other as part of it. We also put our marriage above all else, including monogamy. Why do I tell you this? Good question. The point is that you do not have to trust everyone or expect others to be monogamous, to be happy. If you do not expect something, then you cannot be disappointed when it happens. We left ourselves a little wiggle room and despite our hall passes, the combined total of others we had sex with is less than 10 in 45 years. I know married women and men who would call that a slow year. Take the taboo out of it and it no longer is exciting. Knowing that you can but don't seemed to be more desirable. I spent 3 months of each year overseas and I could have had sex with many women. I controlled millions of dollars of contracts and companies offered me the company of the most beautiful women in the world but I always said no. I dressed and had the trappings of a successful man so I attracted a certain type of women drawn to alpha males who could afford to keep them in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. I said no. One stalked me and a few got very mad when I rejected their beautiful charms. Two angrily told me to stop talking about my wife while they were trying to seduce me. It is OK and even prudent, not to expect too much of people. You really cannot trust anyone 100% and there are thousands of examples of that in marriage and the world. Just expect that they will try and always keep you and your relationship above all else. Like kids, adults sometimes want what they cannot have. The parable of the garden of eden is the starting point for many religions and it starts off with a breach of trust. You cannot trust anyone, even if they are the only woman in the world.
NexttP Posted September 1, 2017 Posted September 1, 2017 Work on yourself first, until you almost never project or over-analyze. It's unfair that you require someone to love you with all your weaknesses and faults while he should already be weakness/fault free. I know, I know... If he can prove that he loves you then obviously you will love him back, with risk of you still blowing up on him for no reason. Well, what if he blows up on you? Do you cut the string when that happens? Pretty unfair if you ask me. You opening up to others, trusting them, is a risk. But someone trusting you is also a risk. If you think that you're not like the others, that people CAN trust you because you'll never hurt them, then obviously there are others that you can trust too. You can't be the only one.
Miss Spider Posted September 1, 2017 Posted September 1, 2017 (edited) I had trust issues too because my ex bf gaslit (manipulated) me often to control me plus being bullied in high school. I fixed them by giving in and accepting I can't control everything. Anxiety is mostly about about that lack of control. I feel so much freer now that I've accepted I can't control. Realizing I'm gonna hurt in life, but I'm strong and gonna get better. I just read some self help books nd did some work by myself, but that isn't helpful to everyone. You definitely might want to look into CBT or other types of therapy and mindfulness to overcome obsessiveness and anxiety. Best of luck !! Edited September 1, 2017 by Cookiesandough
Caramelpopcorn Posted September 1, 2017 Posted September 1, 2017 I've struggled with this and I still do, but the way to protect yourself is to just look at their actions, not their words. Also don't shy away from asking the big questions, that how you're not wasting your time or your feelings on the wrong man. I try to trust until they give me a reason not to. Trust takes a while to build though, but it's lost so fast. If you choose to believe in the good of people it'll make you a beautiful person, you'll be the exception to the rule and I think that's lonely. Also, people are just people, they'll make mistakes, be understanding when they do, even if you can't put yourself in their shoes.
kazen Posted September 1, 2017 Posted September 1, 2017 I don't trust easily either but I don't let that stop me from dating. I just sleep with one eye open.
act00 Posted September 1, 2017 Posted September 1, 2017 It's not an easy task, but you have to retrain your thinking patterns. You are aware you have problems, and you are aware that you tend to catastrophize and you project your insecurities onto people. Any time a thought crosses into your head, "he's cheating" when he's running late, tell yourself you have no reason to believe he's cheating. He's just running late. It is very hard, but as time goes on, you should find yourself having a more positive attitude and not stressing over things unknown and especially unwarranted. You'll focus more on the big picture and less on little things. We all have our insecurities and "what ifs," but we learn not to let them consume us. You won't get out of dating unhurt and unscathed. It is what it is. Guys can be jerks. They chase and get bored and leave. Things simply don't work out. It will hurt. It's more about learning that you'll be okay. We all suffer losses. One thing I wonder is what your own actions are. I mean, have you run late because you're busy flirting or doing something with a guy who took an interest in you? When you run late, is it because you're doing something naughty (not necessarily cheating)? When you cancel, are you cancelling because you're unhappy with your friend in some way? Are you telling them you're not feeling well or you have some unforeseen issue you have to deal with, but the reality is, they made you angry? Are your reactions to their behaviors a direct result of your own actions? People who steal suspect everyone of stealing. There are no guarantees that you won't be cheated on again or left for another woman. There are no guarantees that this friend has simply moved away from a friendship and they distance themselves. Dating hurts and people come in and out of our lives. If you feel people are leaving because of your behavior, and perhaps they tell you as much, then obviously you need to make changes to that behavior. A guy will run if you constantly accuse him of cheating. He will leave if he always has to coddle your insecurities, justify, and defend his actions. A friend will walk away if having to coddle your insecurities becomes a job. If you take that much work to be with, people are going to leave. Continue working with therapy and continue redirecting your stinkin' thinkin'...he's just running late. That's all.
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