Hi again! I have learned quite a bit since my last post to you. I'm going to share with you the ANSWER to ALL of this! Here it is:

vvFall Out of Fear & Fall Into Love
By Susan Anderson
Author of The Journey From Abandonment to Healing (Berkley, 2000)

Common Scenarios

Abandonholism: You've been hurt so many times, you’ve come to confuse insecurity with love. When someone comes along who is willing to commit, you don’t feel the "right chemistry." So you seek unavailable partners who make you insecure, leading to a cycle of reabandonment. Abandoholics are addicted to the love chemicals of conquest, of pursuing the illusion of love.

Fear of abandonment: Insecurity is your internal gremlin. It sabotages your attempts to feel cool, calm and confident when attempting to bring love into your life. It short-circuits your relationships with feelings of neediness, desperation and self-doubt.

Fear of engulfment: You feel emotionally closed in when someone is ready to commit. You pursue hard-to-get lovers to sidestep intimacy and avoid the panic of closeness.

Negative attraction: We all know someone entrapped in a relationship that is no good for them, addicted to the high-stakes drama of emotional danger. In fact, a negative attraction is often more compelling than a positive one. Recovery means learning to stay away from the "emotional candy" and choosing someone who offers emotional sustenance.

Love is invisible: Love may have shown up at different points in your life, but you weren’t able to recognize it. You were looking for another "feeling" and dodged the opportunity for a real relationship. In fact, love might be staring you in the face at this very moment, but your potential mate remains emotionally invisible to you.

Overcoming Invisible Barriers
When you are ready to break out of your patterns of self-sabotage, it is time to put your awareness into action:

Recognize your patterns. Come clean with yourself.
Commit to change.
Maintain a daily routine of self-reflection (possibly writing in your journal), focusing on changes you notice in your unfolding new self.
Share your emerging awareness with others -- friends, therapists, support group members -- to strengthen your resolve and gain support.
Practice being emotionally present, open and sharing with all of the people in your immediate life, each day extending your caring self to new people.
Step outside your usual circle of friends and activities to explore new interests and try out new roles.
Initiate contact with at least 10 new people and explore different aspects of your personality that may have not found expression before (your various alter ego states).
Come clean about your feelings and your culpabilities about past relationship failures with at least three of these contacts.
Become your higher self.
Share your higher self with significant others.
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Samantha.....also, when we like guys who are hard to get, it's a sign we are avoiding commitment. The reason we avoid true commitment, is because we fear abandonment. We pick those who make us feel insecure (which is NOT love), leading to eventual abandonment. This makes us an abandoholic. We become addicted to love chemicals of conquest and pursue the ILLUSION of love. When a guy really wants a commitment and makes us feel good about ourselves, we don't feel the CHEMISTRY due to being hurt so many times in the past. Thus, we confuse insecurity with love.

So, I'm starting to realize that it's best I stay where I'm at. You have made a mistake, just like the rest of us do, and now it's time to learn from it. Things happen for a reason. Instead of staying STUCK, it's best we learn from it and move on. The worst fall we'll ever make is the one we don't get up from!

Let me know how much this has helped you. Meditate on it so it can sink into the depths of your soul! Looking forward to hearing from you again!

Steph

Steph