AM I NUTS OR WHAT????

I have been seeing this guy for 4 years. The first 2 we were actually dating, but he broke up with me 2 times during that time. Once because he went to some seminar about life and career etc, and we got back together that same day. Once when he thought that his family wouldn't approve. I am 12 years older than him (33) and Mom and Dad disapprove. He has never been married and I am a widow with 2 grown boys. We broke up the third time with me 3 days before Christmas. He has this rule that he has to date someone 2 years before he decides to marry them (I don't want to get married again) and we were nearing that 2 year mark and he "panicked". Needless to say, we got back together again. We were casually seeing each other when he decided that he "might" want a family so he decided to do the "online" dating thing. I told him that I couldn't continue to sleep with him if he was going to be with someone else. He agreed and I thought it was over. Well 2 months later he shows up at my house, and one thing lead to another and we slept together. When I found out that he was seeing someone I tried desperately to end our relationship. He just kept calling and coming over and eventually wore me down. We have continued to "date" and have sex the whole time he was seeing another. I hated myself for that, but I just couldn't end it. Then 3 months ago he broke it off with the other woman, and she left town. I know that we aren't right for each other. What is it that keeps pulling us together. The chemistry between us is very strong. I have dated others, but I kept coming back to him. I keep telling myself that I need to "get him out of my system" before I can move on to someone else---WHAT DO I DO????????

hi Jackkar,

no you are not nutz!! I had a relationship that followed a simular pattern for 4 years.

Every time he broke with me, i was devestated....I couldn't understand why I stayed with him , took him back even when he cheated . after a long while, i realised I was terrified of abandoment, and that if he didn't want me i was worthless. some how my self worth was inexplicably tied to my relationship with him.He was very hansome, i thought i was plain.

its really hard, but ask your self, what is it he is providing for you?? for me, my ex gave me a measure of self esteem. Maybe he represents a father that was never fully available, or he replicates a family situation that wasnever rsolved or is answering a deep need in you???

Good therapy helps with all this...having someone caringly guide you through . maybe find a therapist?

I also realised I needed that relationship, to resolve those issues in myself, of course at the time i couldn't see that!!

I know how hard it is.... be strong, you can get over him !! knowing that you need to get him out of your system is the first step!

Himali

Hello, If you are NUTS then so am I and a million others out there ,,,I think that we are OK, it's them lol ,,,,I know for me ,I put everything I have into a relationship ,I wont give up untill I feel it in my heart that it is over...I think the others are right that we are so afraid to let go and of being alone ,,,but as I always say" ONE MANS JUNK IS ANOTHER MANS TREASURE" your story sounds so familiar ..I have moved on and I still love him and we see eachother but with each breakup I am starting to see alittle more of what is out there that I'm missing,,,just take oneday at a time ...keep yourself busy that helps me ...he hates it when I'm not around for him ,,,someday we will find mr right and we will see how much time we wasted on mr wrong ...Remember that Your not crazy just human ,,,take care ,,,Bee..p.s good luck I hope you keep posting so we can see how you are doing

Hello Jackkar --

Welcome to the forums. There are many fine people here. I hope you will find what you need.

I've been out of the "dating game" so long that these tales of passion remind me how great it is not to be there for the time being.

I don't want to speculate about why you are doing this. I agree with the suggestion about what to do: Get some counseling. There are many relatively inexpensive options for this. Most places have a United Way supported Family Services counseling service. Some counties and cities have mental health services. And there are even some private services that offer sliding scale fees.

You also might want to check out Al-Anon. Even though you haven't mentioned alcohol as a factor in the situation, Al-Anon offers a good 12-step program for helping us when our emotions are out of control and to help us restore sanity.

Good luck withis this.

Hi Jackkar,

Your post really struck a chord with me as I am/was in a relationship which has many similarities to yours. My guy is also 12 years younger than me and also 33 years of age, we didn't have parental disapproval but we did have the disapproval of several of his male peers (which really opened my eyes to the total double standard out there for women who date younger than themselves as opposed to men who date younger than themselves....but that is a whole other can of worms..), and he also broke up with me over the Christmas holidays too...although mine was the day before New Years Eve....yours was even worse being three days before Christmas. I know exactly how bad that must have felt. It still bothers me that he couldn't wait till after the holidays to break up with me. It was also on my two week vacation which makes it even worse I suppose.

My relationship is so long and involved I don't want to get into it too much because I could be typing forever. I will try and summarize though. I met him at work when I was married and ended up leaving my husband of 17 years for him. Right from the beginning he was controlling and possessive. I should have run the other way rather than stay with him but I didn't. I know I have major self esteem issues and having someone like him pay attention to me, take an interest in my life, pay me loads of compliments, want to handle all the tough things was what I needed. It took me a long time to realize that what he was doing was controlling me, trying to run my life, make me into the person he wanted me to be. He is basically a control freak, highly critical, very disrespectful, emotionally abusive, non supportive, etc, etc. If I thought my self esteem was low before I got involved with him....I had no idea how low it could really go.

We were together for over a year before he broke up with me for the first time. That breakup lasted for a couple of days. Then we got back together and started into this weird cycle of him being happy for a couple of months and then right around the three month point he would start questioning everything in his life again: his job, his friends, his life and of course me. I could always tell when we were at the stage when he would want to break up again as he would become increasingly critical of me, disrepectful, dismissive of any viewpoints I had, argumentative and downright condescending. I learned not to argue and never to give my opinion if it differed from his (unless I wanted a huge argument to start)

The breakup in December did last for a couple of weeks before he came back into my life again. At first he said he just wanted to be friends. We tried just seeing each other as friends once or twice a week but it evolved into us sleeping together again. That by the way is the only thing that really "worked" for us. We always had great passion and chemistry and that never seemed to change.

So we went into a new phase from January till the end of August this year where we were technically "just friends" but what that really meant was I was there for him whenever he felt he wanted to see me and sleep with me. We would go through weeks where he felt close to me and we would spend a lot of time together, go out all the time, etc, etc. Then he would go through a time where he would push me away. Over and over this happened till the "final push" in August. He started pushing me away and not being there, not calling, etc. I told him I had had enough of it. If we were going to just be friends that is all we could be. He seems to have handled this very well but I on the other hand had such a hard time letting go. I probably deep down though that he would always be there in my life in some form. Now all it is is an occasional email. He did come over to have coffee one night and of course we ended up in bed. That just made me feel cheap the next day. What a mistake.

It has been a couple of months now and I feel I am well on the way to being over him now. I can recognize how bad he was for me emotionally and I am going through a phase right now where I feel very mad at myself for letting him walk all over me like he did. There are so many instances of him being disrespectul of me that have been haunting me lately.

All I can say to you Jackkar is if you really want to get him out of your system you probably need to stop totally seeing him, talking to him on the phone or even in email. I haven't totally gone the NO CONTACT route but I know to completely get over someone you need to do that. Because if you let them keep coming back into your life and mixing you all up that puts you right back to the beginning of your recovery from the relationship. I can see so clearly now that I needed to initiate NO CONTACT with him right back in January instead of being "just friends" which was a stupid thing to do. How low does one's self esteem have to go in order to let a man come in and out of your life, sleep with you when they want, date you when they want while never having to have a commitment with you. If he doesn't want you enough to do more than just have a half time relationship forget him!!

I hope I have helped you in some little way with my long story. Keep in touch with me if you like. I think we could both help each other out in getting through these "wrong men".
Take care!

I'm glad you are getting some good insights from people in similar circumstances. What stands out for me is a rather trivial element -- men breaking up with us at holidays.

I had a BF years ago who went out on Christmas Eve for a few hours -- and didn't show up again until afternoon the next day. I had to go alone to a dinner while he slept.

My most recent partner of 15 years left 5 days before my birthday. I truly believe that it was a passive aggressive act, trashing my birthday, bec. he knew this was an important anniversary for me.

Why do men do this? Is it the stress of the holidays? Passive aggressive behavior (which is unconscious and unplanned, BTW) -- ruining the holiday --creating a negative anniversary that one can't ignore. Oh, yes, Bob left me 15 years on Xmas. One can't ignore the date, can one?

Or are they just selfish morons?

Let me qualify that. There are many sensitive, kind, loving, compassionate men. "They" refers to those who ruin holidays -- and would apply to females who do this, too.

Samantha--
I know all about the double standard. I also know that it is hard for women in their late 30's to 40's to date men their own age because those men are all looking for younger women. So when we decide to date the younger men somehow that is not accepted. As for my relationship--my "friend" is out of town until Thanksgiving, I know that he will call the day he gets in. That is always what he does--and then I always agree to see him. I have heard from others that you have to acknowledge the problem before you can fix it. Well I know all to well the problem. I just can't seem to fix it. Believe it or not, I am not afraid of being alone. After 20 years of marriage it is rather nice. I have been out on other dates with men who want to continue to see me, but I am not interested. I also know that my friend and I will never make it, but for some reason we still try. There seems to be some connection that keeps us going. I also know that I need to break things off all together with him, but that is so hard because when I say I don't want to see him and I feel good about it as I did the last time, he calls, I don't answer, the e-mails, I don't answer, but then he shows up at my house unexpectantly. I have closed my garage door and turned off all the lights just so he thinks I'm not here and STILL he manages to worm his way back in. He was never abusive, or delibertly mean. He is a good person. A little inmature and he is a lousy communicator. I never know what he is thinking. When I ask he just hangs his head. I have been strong enough when he breaks up with me to tell him off--all things I didn't like and how he hurt me, he always says "your right" and I'm sorry" and he manages to wear me down. Like I said, I do know what to do--it is just so hard to actually do it.

I never had that probelm before now, but I know many women who have. I hear that for some it was--didn't want to spend money on a present for someone I didn't want to date anymore, --for others it was that holidays are times for family and friends and parties where you take your "significant other" and the guy just didn't want to take the girl to those parties. I hate to pick on just the guys, but I don't know of any women who have done that--sometimes guys don't want to take the girl home to mom and dad for the holidays as is expected when "dating" after awhile. Some guys are just insensitive and don't think about how much it hurts around the holidays--I feel sad around the holidays sometimes because of what he did, I tell myself not to let him ruin my holiday, but it is hard. It really hurt alot, and I had to face my family (he was supposed to come to CHristmas dinner)