How do I break this cycle?

I don't want to go crazy with details in the first post here. To summarize as much as possible, I have been in a handful of serious relationships in my life, and they have all ended the same way (with some slight variation). I think things are going great until suddenly, whether it's a few month or a few years in, she breaks off ties with me because she has met someone else. I don't just mean breaks up, I mean cuts me out of her life completely, with not so much as an explanation or even a discussion of what went wrong. And, yes, there is always someone else in her life immediately.

I have been engaged twice. My first fiancee flat out told me she was cheating on me, and "if you were a real man, you'd have known it." The second, I caught cheating when her (then) 4 year old son was playing with her cell phone, and when I got the phone away from him, on the screen was the text conversation between her and her ex-husband. In addition to references to a night they had spent together (when I thought she was working), they were talking about her wanting to leave me for him, but needing to keep me around because she couldn't afford to pay the bills on her own. (He had no job.)

The last relationship I was in was with someone I knew from online She was the one who pointed out that many of my prior experiences actually qualified as emotional abuse. She had nothing but disparaging things to say about the women I had been involved with in the past, and told me that if we were together I would finally know 'how a woman should treat a man'. (This was before our friendship developed into a relationship.) We were involved for about two months when she unexpectedly told me she wanted to back off because she had a lot of stress in her life already, and a long-distance relationship was too much at the time. I was understanding and tried to take things back to the level of friendship... until I discovered she was already seeing someone else. This after many reassurances (from her and her best friend) that she would never do something like that. When I confronted her about this, she admitted it, but when I asked her why, the closest to an answer she ever gave me was "I can't tell you because I don't want to hurt your feelings." This was the very same behavior she herself had called abusive.

So my question is this: How do I break this cycle? I have been through three therapists in the past year, and the only advice I get there is I need to learn to be okay with being alone. Well, I'm not. I cannot accept that being alone is my only option. I cannot accept that numerous women from various backgrounds and various walks of life have all cheated on me and lied to me, and there is no explanation for this and nothing I can do about it. I see other "men" in long-term relationships every day, "men" without jobs, "men" with prison records, "men" with kids they don't pay child support on, "men" who abuse and mistreat the women they are with. What are these so-called 'men' doing right that I am doing wrong? Or what is so d***ed unacceptable about me? But, most importantly, how do I change this? How do I break this cycle? How do I ensure that I don't get treated this way again?

Sometimes insanity is a perfectly sane reaction to an insane situation.

Hi Richard. I read this and you mentioned it is not okay to be alone. You are the type of person who needs to be with someone. Sometimes that can come across as desperation and we tend to settle for anyone who is available at the moment. And often times women will go for men while on the rebound until someone else comes along.
If you can take these things i have mention and read up on them, why people do that and how to change that then i think you will find another women in right timing and one that will trust and love you as much as you do her. And these are things you might want to mention to your therapist. blessings and tc

Thanks for your response and advice. To clarify about my not being okay with being alone, the therapist who I had that discussion with told me that most men on the spectrum are incapable of having relationships, and that I need to accept that being alone is my only option. So we're not talking about taking a break from dating, or learning to love myself, or similar post-breakup self-care. No, she meant I could probably never be in a relationship due to my being on the spectrum. When I pointed out that I know men on the spectrum who have been married happily for years, she said, "I don't know how."

I stood up and said, "Humans are social animals, and you've just told me I am less than human. Thank you for you time, but I won't be scheduling another session".

Sometimes insanity is a perfectly sane reaction to an insane situation.

I am currently going through something vaguely similar, though the men never cheat on me. My think is that I seem to attract men who are emotionally unavailable to some extent, who all like me a lot but at a point they back off and/or bolt. Even when I've been in a serious relationship, they will withhold affection to the point that I feel like I'm pushing and nagging just to get my needs met. I just broke something off with a man with whom I felt that same pattern beginning. And I have been doing some reading and it turns out I have a degree of emotional unavailability as well, and just like in real life chemistry, like attracts like. But my unavailability is a fear of rejection, while I'm attracting men with a fear of engulfment. So I eventually get needy and come on too strong and that's when they retreat. I don't know if this is what is happening in your relationships--women retreat in totally different ways than men (and I feel like women would have the rejection thing more than the engulfment thing, but it's definitely not gendered).

I bookmarked this link. Maybe it will give some insight, I don't know. But it is worth a read:
Why Do I Keep Attracting Unavailable People?

Thanks for the link. Yes I have notice this pattern of attracting emotionally unavailable women. I tend to not think of myself as emotionally unavailable, but I know that I am in a sense... I have asperger's and that makes it difficult for me to process emotions in the same way most people do, but that does not mean I don't have emotions... quite the opposite. And this does seem to be part of the problem, even though I explain it up front.

You see, with me, the more intensely I feel an emotion, the more difficulty I have with it. So as the relationship progresses and my feeling for the other person deepen, I do tend to withdraw... not because of any fear of intimacy, or engulfment, but in order to process the emotions I'm feeling. So as I fall for a person, I do grow a bit distant, but this is only for a brief time, and I make it full known what is going on and even warn them ahead of time.

Also, it's not like I cut off ties or stop talking... in fact it helps me to process if I can talk through it with someone. Maybe my somewhat clinical approach of what is supposed to be some magical, romance movie thing kills the romance. Or maybe I seem to be questioning what I'm feeling and therefore questioning the relationship or the person I'm with? This is why I try to explain how I process emotions up front, so that whoever I am with will understand that this is how I feel things and how I have to work through things to avoid becoming overwhelmed and going into complete shutdown mode.

Sometimes insanity is a perfectly sane reaction to an insane situation.

I would also like to add that I have asked a couple of close friends and the sister I am on speaking terms with for advice, and they all say I'm a great guy and they don't know why women keep doing this, and there are plenty of great women out there who don't cheat... so I ask if they know anyone they could introduce me to, and they've all said they don't... even though they have set other friends up (with varying degrees of success).

It is starting to really feel like there is something about me that people view as... i don't know... unworthy? I'm almost 40, and I don't want to die alone... let alone spend another 40 or so years alone and never knowing why.

Sometimes insanity is a perfectly sane reaction to an insane situation.

That is nonsense about men on the spectrum not having relationships.

Really sorry these women have treated you that way, just because they treated you that way does not mean everyone will view you as unworthy - there must be lots of women who would love to meet you.

Richard one thing I've learned over time, having been through a lot myself, including bad marriages and ending up in what you would call the "cycle" of the same types of women. what I have found not only in my own life is that we tend to for whatever reason end up with the same types of people for (my analysis) the simple reason we ended up with that type the first time. If it keeps happening it's likely we haven't figured out what it is that makes us drawn to the type of women we end up with. I think that part of this learning has to be self awareness and introspection of what we've been through and why.

I agree with the person that mentioned being alone needs to be ok. at this point since my last relationship end (about 4 yrs) I have accepted being alone and actually am quite happy with it even though I do feel that being in a relationship is still something I'd enjoy, it's not a need and I think the period of being alone has taught me a lot about myself. I don't know if I'm ready or if I'd pick a better person when and if I do, but I do believe that the chance of that happening is much better now too.

hope this helps.