Tag Archives: personal

Dream a little dream…

Posted on by l0velyjune
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Last night, I had a dream…

D and I were at my house and we were trying to have sex but we couldn’t because we were nervous about moving in together. Instead, we were just hanging out and watching TV on the sofa. Then D walks over to my office and sees that all along the walls I have old photos of every one of my ex boyfriends. Hundreds of them (this, of course, is not true; and yet, I do have over 100 journals in a bookcase, each one filled with next to nothing but stories of romance or some guy I was dating or interested in). Anyway, he tells me flat out, in an angry tone (something he doesn’t actually possess), “If we’re going to be living together, you need to remove all these photos from your walls.”

When he says this, I go into a panic. What do you mean? I say. It’s not like I’m in love with any of these guys anymore. They’re just pictures on my wall! It’s just art now. They don’t mean anything to me. And yet, in the dream, I feel as though a part of me is dying. A part of me is tragically being swept away. I feel like I am the sum of all my old boyfriends because they are what I built my whole life on.

I start crying in the dream as D takes one of the photos and rips it off the wall. “This one needs to be the first to go,” he says. And I continue to cry. I feel like I am being forced to change. That my essence is being ripped from me.

And then I woke up.

But I woke up wondering if in fact I do hold on to old memories, and if it isn’t time to let them go. The virtue of this site necessitates that I do hold on to those memories, so that I can remind others that I was right where they are at one time. But it also keeps me anchored to a past that I’d rather not remember. But aren’t those who don’t know their history doomed to repeat it?

The flip side of this is that I kind of agree with the dream in the sense that I did construct my entire life on boys and men, and to deny their existence is to wipe out thirty-some years of who I was. This is frightening.

More frightening still is being honest with D in confessing who I was and hoping that he accepts it anyway. And this brings me to why I had the dream in the first place. Yesterday, we had a big long conversation over the phone about who we were back in high school, who we dated, who we took to the prom etc. We’ve had this convo before, but this one seemed to have a little more juice. D was popular and girls were asking him to their proms and Junior proms, he was good looking, athletic and got good grades. He had his steady little cute, cheerleader girlfriend and then he went on to college and law school and got married. I, on the other hand, was a “bad girl.” I had a reputation. i got rotten grades. I hung around degenerates at the local bowling alley, smoking cigarettes and despite the fact that I was cute, I didn’t believe it one bit due to massively low self-esteem. I never went to my Junior prom and for my Senior prom, I went with a guy friend who ended up getting angry with me the day before the prom because I put too much pressure on him to be my “date” as opposed to just accepting him as my “friend.” In college, I couldn’t be pinned down. I dated all over the place and traveled the world and dropped out of school. Eventually when I did get married, it was a premature decision based on simply wanting to be taken care of.

WHen I told D this history, I laughed about it, of course. Always one to tell funny self-depreciating stories! And he laughed too. But inside, I was a little embarrassed and had my regrets. And I guess I hoped that after hearing all that, D could love me anyway.

Where is your confidence, girl?

Posted on by l0velyjune
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So, I’ve cut sugar out of my diet this week, which means I’m a little less perky than usual. But more importantly, I cut my hair SHORT and I have been feeling horribly ugly. I saw that stupid movie Hemingway’s Garden of Eden where the main character keeps cutting her hair shorter and shorter and then begins an affair with a woman while being married to a man. Not that I planned to start dating women, but I thought the change to short hair would be fun. I was so wrong. I’ve been nothing but down about it. And what’s worse, I’ve been fishing for compliments and validation from D that I’m still pretty. It seems that no matter how much he tells me he still thinks I’m beautiful, I simply don’t believe it.

Yesterday, in fact, I kinda snapped at him and said, “I feel as though you don’t compliment as much anymore.” D doesn’t like being “accused” of anything and so he kinda snapped back, “Aren’t you being a little unrealistic?”

Not that the discussion culminated into a fight– it didn’t– but it did culminate into me feeling even MORE insecure for mentioning my insecurity. And then I realized later, after he left, that I have been slowly spiraling downward in all aspects of my life: my confidence, my self-esteem, my recently acquired work ethic, etc. I never go to the gym anymore, I haven’t worked on any of my short stories, I’ve postponed (ugh, let me be realistic, I quit) grad school, I’ve made D and his moving in my whole world.

Where did I go wrong? What happened to all that confidence I had two years ago? One year ago? Heck, a year ago, I was in grad school, writing feverishly, teaching Basic Writing, training for a triathlon, losing enormous amounts of weight (Hello size 4 skinny jeans!) and felt damn good about myself.

That’s all kind of gone out the window and the less confident I am, the more I am aware of how that may appear to D. And then the worry starts. Will he see through me? Will he stop loving me? Will he get bored with me?

Thing is, with him moving in and with us redesigning the whole house, it’s taking a hell of a lot out of me. It’s practically a full time job.

Excuse?

Maybe. More than anything I’m simply coming down off a two-year high. Now the trick is to either get that “high” back (not likely) or accept the reality of my life as it is. To continue to face my dragons. To forge a life for myself not dependent on D. Easier said than done.

So, there is no upbeat ending to this post. Maybe next week when I’ve detoxed from all this sugar something will come to me.

recovery vs. addiction

Posted on by l0velyjune
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Choose your path today…

In active addiction we want to possess and control

In recovery, we recognize the power of relinquishing control, and we are OK letting go

In active addiction we want answers

In recovery, we learn to ask questions, even though there may be no answers

In active addiction, we want immediate gratification

In recovery, we finally understand the meaning of deferred gratification

In active addiction, we want guarantees

In recovery, we know life is a mystery and there are no guarantees

In active addiction, we want what we cannot have

In recovery, we appreciate what we do have

In active addiction, we are starving

In recovery, we’ve learned to pace ourselves through each meal and thus, we are content…

In active addiction we feel pain and hide from it. We numb ourselves with love and sex and torchbearing.

In recovery we feel pain, and face it. We find the tools we’ve learned for survival and use them instead of acting out and running away.

In active addiction we hope the other will change and love us

In recovery we recognize that people don’t change that easily and if we are to be content someday we need to move away from tension and conflict and find people and situations that are more loving and peaceful.

In active addiction we try desperately to figure out the PoA. We analyze, focus and try to figure him or her out. We believe if we understand who he is, we will understand why we were attracted to him.

In recovery we realize that nothing the PoA does or says has any bearing or relevance on knowing who we are. That focus needs to be placed on us for true healing and health…no where else.

In active addiction, we are children whose growth has been stunted and so we act immaturely

In recovery we are not afraid of growing up and taking on more mature responsibilities like taking care of ourselves and not depending on others for our happiness. We recognize that with self growth comes freedom.

In active addiction we think and act with our emotions alone

In recovery we have learned to control our emotions and thus, we think with our logical minds and use our hearts sparingly

In active addiction, we have no identities. We see ourselves through the lens of the PoA

In recovery, we have finally put denial and avoidance behind us and we are able to look at ourselves for who we really are and we’re OK with that

In active addiction we want Hollywood romance; we want a life of fantasy and perfection

In recovery, we come back down to earth and have accepted our reality and start to work to improve it or make peace with it

Awkward situations & compromises

Posted on by l0velyjune
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So yesterday, D’s parents wanted to celebrate his son’s birthday out at a restaurant before they went on vacation. I’m not so sure his parents personally ever invite me to these things as much as D just “tells” them that he’s bringing me along. And of course, the ex is invited. I’m not all that great under these types of circumstances. His parents tend to treat me like the “other woman,” as if I stole their innocent son away from his loving wife. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The ex left D for another man, divorced him, got engaged to this new guy, threatened to move the kids to another state, and then suddenly broke up with the new guy after realizing it was just a crush, and had the nerve to ask D to get back together (I met D six months after his divorce; six months into our relationship, when she said she wanted him back, I said, “go back to her” and meant it, but he had no intentions of ever doing that.) Still, D’s parents invite her over for Christmas dinner (and not me) and sit him at the table beside her as if everything is just the way it used to be.

Anyway, so I go to say hello to D’s dad out in front of the restaurant, and go up to kiss him on the cheek, and he’s looking stone cold straight ahead. By that point I had entered his personal space and couldn’t back out, so I said to him, in a kind of funny way, “I’m trying to kiss you.” He awkwardly leans down and gives me his cheek and after a quick tap, I went inside, mortified.

That shook me up a little, and yet, there was no recovery in sight. At the table, I end up sitting next to D, but across the table from his ex, who, I have to say, was being friendly enough, complimenting me on my hair, etc. But really, just chattering on about superficial things like money, clothes, make-up and so on. She’s a vibrant, dramatic Italian girl, very beautiful, but, a little shallow, and I have to say it, stupid for not being so grateful for D when she had him. So, she starts chattering on about D coming over and eating leftovers out of her fridge, and asking him to take pictures of her and their son, calling him by little affectionate terms like “Hey D-boy, would you pass me the salt?” At one point she mentions a couple instances when D got sick in the past, (“Did he tell you about the time when he broke out into hives from eating lobster?” and then there was,  ”D doesn’t like spicy food, in fact, he’ll never eat garlic, and I put garlic on everything…” I actually felt like saying, “D actually loves food with garlic on it, as long as he doesn’t know it’s there.” But I kept my mouth shut.)

One hour later it was over, everyone said their goodbyes and we left, heading over my brother and sister-in-law’s house for yet another birthday party. But by this point, I felt completely beat up. I felt uncomfortable, awkward, unwanted, and alien. All my old insecurities came out (I don’t belong here, these people don’t like me, the ex is so much more beautiful than me, I’m a failure). I wanted to bury my head in the sand and hide. I wanted to run away. I certainly didn’t want to stay a second longer than I had to.

I was pissed off that D was over his ex’s eating leftovers. Where were his boundaries? I don’t go over my ex’s house and go scavenging through his fridge. OK, so it’s still D’s house where she’s living (they haven’t been able to sell it yet), but still…

Then, I thought I might be overreacting. Not looking at the bigger picture and being grateful.  Most of our life together runs smoothly and no relationship can be perfect, right? The trouble is, when you remarry, or date a divorced man with kids, part of the package is having to deal with his parents AND his ex wife. As much as I would love it to be “just us,” that will never happen. I’m in a relationship with her as well. And every kid party or family gathering, I have to deal with her whether I like it or not.

The issue of discomfort here is coming from my own level of immaturity. The kid in me is saying, “No! No! No! I don’t want to ever eat my veggies or tie my shoes or put on that party dress! I want to do what I want, when I want, with whom I want. Period! Now leave me alone.”  The adult in me, however, has to have compassion and has to be able to compromise and weigh the scales and enter into a few awkward situations for the sake of her partner. A healthy relationship takes having to bite the bullet sometimes. It’s very important to D that I accompany him to these family events. He feels as though it is support for him and acceptance of his family (despite that they don’t accept me 100%). And here’s the important thing: none of my core values are being jeopardized or relinquished in this situation. I am still intact. My values are still able to come first. The problem isn’t really occurring between D and I either (although he really needs to stay out of his ex’s fridge!). So….as much as I am bitching here about having to put up with tips from the ex on what D does and doesn’t eat, and socially awkward moments between his parents and I,  I DO see the bigger picture. I don’t like it, but I am willing to let it drop.

And on that note, here’s my unsolicited advice: write down an example of how you have compromised in a situation and done something you really didn’t want to do. Did you go to a party with a friend when you really didn’t want to? Did you get drunk with your PoA even though you hate to drink and it makes you feel like crap? Did you have sex with your PoA even though you swore you wouldn’t? Examine if that “thing” you did went against your CORE VALUES or not. If it did, that’s a pretty good indicator that it was the wrong kind of compromise. If it didn’t go against your core values and YOU stayed intact, how did it make you feel? Awkward? Uncomfortable? Bitter? Angry? Do you think the “child” in you is overreacting and that maybe, like me, you simply need to tell yourself “grow up!”? Just because something feels awkward or uncomfortable doesn’t mean the entire relationship is “wrong” or bad. But knowing your values will help you recognize the difference.

You are entitled to something better than scraps

Posted on by l0velyjune
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  • When I was a teenager, I let a very unattractive kid, with brown broken teeth kiss me because I thought I could do no better.
  • When I was in my twenties, I went to a community college, not because I couldn’t afford better, but because I believed I couldn’t academically do better.
  • When I went out in the world to get a job, I worked as a waitress because I didn’t believe I was smart enough to work anywhere else.
  • When I was a woman, I married a man I’d only known for six month. I married him on the side of a highway, no white dress, no wedding reception, no gifts because I didn’t believe I was worth a big, beautiful wedding or a man who would love me after six months.
  • And when I was divorced and newly dating, I fell in love with a diner cook who never showered or brushed his teeth, who smoked pot, wore dirty clothes and never wanted to have sex with me because I though he was the best I could find at my age.

When you believe you have value, when you believe you are worth not just a little but A LOT, you do not accept dirty, broken teeth, waiting tables in a beer and shots joint, or people who never shower or want to make love. You do not put up with neglect, disrespect, abuse, mind games, cruelty or anything else from someone who is dishing it out.

When you believe in yourself, you teach people how to treat you with respect. When you do not believe in yourself, you teach people that they can treat you anyway they want.

Curing love addiction is as simple as this: having a sense of entitlement. When you believe you are entitled to better treatment, you get it. Something in you changes and you no longer accept less. A perfect example of this is food. Even at my lowest, I would never eat food from a trash can because firstly, I can afford fresh food. Secondly, eating food from the trash doesn’t even make sense unless I were homeless, and might possibly die if I didn’t eat it. But lastly, and most importantly, I feel entitled to healthy, fresh, good tasting food that not only keeps me alive, but keeps me healthy and happy too.

So, if I can feel entitled about food, why not the people I allowed into my life? Why not feel entitled about work, education, income, friends, and so on?

Here’s one reason why: “entitlement” has had such a bad connotation to it. The rich have a sense of entitlement. Famous people have a sense of entitlement. Proud people have a sense of entitlement. We imagine individuals with their hands out, expecting more, more, more. And quite frankly, that is an ugly picture. Even in Christian and other western religions, it’s frowned upon. According to some religious teachings, we’re supposed to be humble and grateful for whatever we’re given. We’re supposed to be happy with scraps.

But I think that’s a detrimental belief, especially when it concerns close, intimate relationships. When we lack a sense of entitlement to who we should meet and fall in love with, when we have no clear sense of what we deserve, we accept darn near anything! We end up with scraps.

And let’s face it, scraps don’t taste good. And eating them is embarrassing. And being seen eating them is even more of an embarrassment. And so, you suddenly have this huge disconnect. At first you were grateful to have scraps. But then, when the scraps left a really bad taste in your mouth and left you feeling ashamed and worthless, you suddenly started to suffer and feel pain. You were torn between your belief in being humble, and this instinctual need in you to have better for yourself.

Love addiction is when we are at this point, we recognize we are eating scraps, it makes us sick to our stomaches, but we stay anyway.

Or, conversely, love addiction is when we do not realize we could be eating something better than scraps, (because we’ve eaten them all our lives) and so we keep eating them, thinking they’re great sustenance , but every time we take a bite, we want to vomit. We have no recognition that eating is not meant to be like this.

So, how do you create a sense of healthy entitlement? Well, you start by creating a set of values for yourself. Start to define what hurts you and what makes you happy. Make a list. And place boundaries around yourself. Let the good in; keep the bad out. The more you know yourself, the more you stick to your values, the more you begin to demand better for yourself. It’s a natural progression that comes from within and changes your whole life.

Someone on the forums recently posted this amazing quote: How empty of me, to be so full of you. So, my advice today is to fill yourself with a new sense of entitlement. Focus on your worth. Grab a copy of The Self-Esteem Workbook and start working!

Taking off the masks

Posted on by l0velyjune
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Fear of closeness. Fear of losing my identity. Fear of intimacy. Fear of being too exposed. Fear of commitment. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of losing me.

D and I are celebrating our two year anniversary on Saturday, and I can honestly say, I have never had a more peaceful, loving, passionate and profoundly happy relationship with any man than I have with this one. I have never had such stability of emotion with anyone else over a significant period of time—two years is a long time in the world of LA. And I have never had such certainty as I do with D, that he is the one for me, and that I wouldn’t ever want to lose him. Likewise, he feels the same. It’s a good healthy match.

And so, we have been meeting with contractors regarding an addition that we’ve been planning to build onto my house, so as to take the next step: moving in together. We need enough bedrooms for all the kids and enough space—albeit cramped space—temporarily, until we decide whether to move to a bigger house or build a second story onto this one. We’ve been talking about this for a good long year. We’ve had eight contractors come out and give us estimates. We have finally decided on one. And with that finality, all the fears I’ve listed above have suddenly decided to creep out of the woodwork and surround me in my dreams and waking life.

I’m scared.

I’ve been on my own for almost seven years now. Almost as long as I was married. And not only that, but in the past, I ONLY dated avoidant types. What does that mean? It means that despite the fact that I had been married for seven years, I was married to an avoidant—someone who hid in his back office while I had full reign of the house. Someone who never really placed any emotional or physical burden on me. Let’s face it, when you’re married to an avoidant you’re really not married at all. You’re still single, you still have most of your freedom, you still have full control over your life (and theirs—at least you think so because you’re bossing them around all the time) and you can still be immature, shallow, alone, narcissistic, and unconnected. You have all the time and space you think you don’t need. Of course, the price you pay for all that time and space that you are condemned to experience with an avoidant is that there is no emotional intimacy between the two of you. There is no real bond. You are existing parallel to each other, but not moving any closer, not only because he can’t handle intimacy and closeness (which, of course, you are incessantly begging him for), but because YOU can’t handle it either.

We align ourselves with avoidant people because we cannot handle intimacy ourselves. As odd as it sounds, even though the lifespan of a relationship with an avoidant is spent begging them for more intimacy, and pleading with them to open up and connect and spend more time with us, the truth is, we wouldn’t know what to do with intimacy if we had it. The struggle for intimacy is what we are interested in. The search for intimacy is what we are capable of. It’s the closest we can come; it offers just enough intimacy to give the illusion of normalcy. And that’s enough for us. But the fact of the matter is, this is not intimacy and it’s not commitment. It is a defense mechanism we use to protect ourselves from deeper intimacy and vulnerability.

You see, real intimacy demands that you expose yourself fully to another human being. It requires that you are vulnerable, defenseless. And to LAs, who have been raised believing that defense mechanisms and protection from others are the key to survival (because, let’s be honest, we didn’t have the best of childhoods), vulnerability doesn’t make sense to us. It is our inherent nature therefore, based on being abandoned, neglected, harmed or abused, to survive in this way. Dating avoidant people, thus, allows us remain safe and insulated from harm.

But it also leaves us suffering, cold, alone.

Eventually, we recognize that keeping “safe” isn’t all that conducive with happiness and connectedness to another person. And so we set out to become healthy and to find a healthy partner who treats us well, and if we are lucky and put a lot of hard work into it, we achieve our goals. And for the first time ever, we are truly happy that we have found someone that finally treats us with love and kindness. But with that, we realize the crux of the problem. That with healthiness, kindness and love comes a demand for intimacy that we are simply not accustomed to. If we want healthy love, from a healthy partner, we must know how to give it. To do that means exposing ourselves and tearing down the walls that previously protected us.

I hate that I have to admit this, but I am still in “protection” mode. I do not want to be fully exposed. I don’t want him to see me without my “masks.” I don’t have many anymore. I have been taking them off one by one, but it’s been a slow process. And well it should be. The “old me” is still in there healing from a lifetime of havoc. When he moves in, I will have nowhere to hide, I won’t be able to go at my own pace, taking my masks off slowly, when I’m ready.

Will he still love me if he sees the real me with my very real, very ugly issues?

Will I love me, despite my own vulnerability?

I’m not sure. It’s like having sex with the lights on—I can’t feel sexy when I can see that he can see all my physical flaws. At least with the lights off I can pretend I’ve got the body of a twenty-year-old. Or at least I can pretend that he can imagine I have the body of a twenty-year-old.

Despite the fact that he sleeps over sometimes four nights a week, I am still able to recover from his visits once he goes. I can take my masks off and be myself. I have that time to relax. I don’t want to lose that. I think I still want to do it with the lights off.

On the other hand, I know it’s a price I want to pay. I’ve worked hard to be here. I love him. And I trust that I will adapt to the change. In a sense, it’s the denouement I’ve been waiting for, it’s the removal of the final mask. It’s proof that I have succeeded in my life and accomplished my goals—to have a normal, loving, functioning relationship. And yet, more realistically, it’s the beginning of a new journey that will have ups and downs and ugly parts and beautiful parts. But I suppose that’s what life is about. Bruce Barton wrote in his book The Man Nobody Knows, “When you’re through changing, you’re through.” I believe that. And I believe that protecting ourselves, though it makes us feel safe, can stunt our growth. It can keep us from becoming something bigger than what we are today. Exposing ourselves, letting down our walls, taking risks, challenging our fears and changing keeps us alive. It keeps the lights on, even when we don’t want to see.

Filling the “void”

Posted on by l0velyjune
14

There’s a hole in a donut. There’s a hole in a car tire. There’s NOT a hole in you.

I need to come out and say that right from the start, because I believe it’s one of the most important lessons any addict needs to learn in order to fully recover. It’s a Hollywood fallacy. It’s misinformation. Somewhere along the line, maybe in some self-help book, we were taught to believe that we have a void inside us, and that notion is, simply, wrong.

Part of my recovery, part of many traditional recovery plans, was learning how to “fill the void,” that aching, empty, bottomless pit inside your soul, the “hungry heart,” as Susan Peabody calls it, that feeling of needing SOMETHING that if you don’t find it or get it or stuff yourself with it, it keeps you from feeling whole and complete. So, being the insecure, unhealthy people we are, we tend to fill that void with garbage—we latch onto destructive people, get involved in inappropriate relationships, take drugs, have sex, smoke pot, spend money, overeat, drink. All the while believing that if we found the right stuff to fill ourselves with, that empty feeling would go away.

But it doesn’t.

And the truth is, anyone who has ever suffered, anyone who has ever lost a loved one, there is a real, physical feeling of emptiness. If I pay close attention when I am sad, I can actually FEEL a void in my heart. And yet, I ask you to believe that there isn’t one.

What if that empty feeling was not an actual empty space inside you that needed to be filled? What if there was no void? What if that empty feeling is just part of you?

What if you sat in a room with it and experienced it instead of trying to stuff something in it, hide it or cover it up with love, sex, drugs, or food? What if you just accepted it like a flaw, like a dimple or a slight indentation in your skin? Something you cannot get rid of; something you must make peace with and accept?

I suggested this idea to someone on the boards, and the response I got was, “Thanks. That would be nice. But there really is a void there. I know it, I feel it and it’s the driving force behind all my actions.” And yet, individuals who have lost limbs still believe and feel their limb exists. Individuals who believe in God have seen and felt him, even though he cannot physically be seen or felt.

My point? If you can imagine that God exists, you can imagine that a void doesn’t.

So this is what I did. I locked myself in my room for four days straight one week and I sat with it. For the first time ever, instead of curling up and rocking, trying to avoid the emptiness, I let it in. I told myself, “This is a part of me, so I will experience it, know it and accept it.” And I did. And every time it crept up on me, that feeling of being hungry for something, anything, (and there were lots of times, even after the four days in lockdown), I said, “This is a trick.” And it was. It was and is a psychological trick. And eventually, just like making peace with a missing limb, I started to be OK with the idea that, even if it felt like there was nothing there, there really was. I started to understand that nothing, after all, was missing. There was no void. I am whole. And once I got that, I stopped trying to fill myself with garbage. Suddenly, there was no point.

‎”There are only two types of people in the world: those who try to stuff their inner emptiness, and those very rare precious beings who try to see the inner emptiness. Those who try to stuff it remain empty, frustrated. They go on collecting garbage, their whole life is futile and fruitless. Only the other kind, the very precious people who try to look into their inner emptiness without any desire to stuff it, become meditators.” –Osho

Today’s obvious advice: sit with the empty feeling as long as you can. Experience it. You’re not going to like it at first. But you’ll adapt. You’ll acclimate yourself. Human beings are resilient. Love addicts are especially resilient.

Liberate yourself with the “unfriend” feature

Posted on by l0velyjune
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Today marks a significant moment in my own personal LA history…I actually UNFRIENDED my ex. I never checked his page, I doubt he ever checked mine. He had all his info blocked from me and I had all my info blocked from him. And yet, I don’t think either one of us had the guts to unfriend the other based simply on courtesy. No one wanted to hurt the other’s feelings.

Well, forget about courtesy at least in the realm of social networking. Why we feel an obligation to certain people is beyond me.

In the case of my ex, every once in awhile his profile picture would rotate onto my friends list and I was reminded of him. And as insignificant as that was, it still irked me. I really don’t want a constant reminder of my past transgressions. Who does? And with Facebook, you can’t ever let the past be the past. People from yore crop up constantly, and I don’t think it’s healthy.

In the good old days, if you ended a relationship, you ended it. You cut all ties, you said your goodbyes and you never saw that person again. It hurt for awhile, sure, but at least you had the luxury of time and distance between you that resolved any left over pain. You were able to heal, and more importantly, you were able to forgive yourself and move on. In today’s world it seems you no longer have that luxury. You’re tied to people through social networking sites whether you want to be or not (I’m sure I’ll see his little profile pic pop up now more than ever on “may we suggest a friend?” Heck, no.)

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to unfriend the ex for a LONG time but I didn’t have the heart. But forget about heart. This is business. I am allowed to reject people, as long as I do it kindly. I am allowed to make decisions based on my well-being. I am allowed to create boundaries and see to it that those boundaries are being respected. I hate to say it, but it’s true, people are expendable.

Certain people in this world you owe your life to (i.e. your children), but generally speaking you do not owe anyone anything but a little common courtesy. And this is part of the trouble with co-dependent and addictive thinking. We never want to hurt anyone’s feelings. We feel obligated to people, no matter how rotten they are to us, just because they’re rotten people, or because of no fault of their own. Whatever the reason, we feel accountable. After 8 months of dating, my ex broke up with me by saying he never loved me. Ouch! That was hard has heck to hear. And though I no longer blame him or feel any anger toward him and totally get that sometimes two people simply don’t work, I now recognize that I don’t owe him anything,  especially  a connection on Facebook.

So, maybe he’ll wake up one morning and decide to check my profile page and see what I’ve been up to, and when that happens, and the page comes up blank, he may feel a tiny shred of rejection. I would feel a little bad about that. I still have a heart. But maybe, just maybe, he’ll feel a sudden sense of relief himself that the relationship has finally come to its proper end. Who knows! Whatever the case may be, I feel a little freer today, like I just experienced a really relaxing, de-stressing massage at a five-star spa.

My unsolicited advice today? Do a little spring cleaning. See what you can throw away, who you can kiss goodbye. How does that make you feel?

Revisiting the past

Posted on by l0velyjune
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I’m very excited. After two years, Pernille Rose Grønkjær’s new documentary “Love Addict” will be released in 2011. If you’d like to watch the trailer, I’ve posted the youtube link below.

I haven’t watched it in quite a while and it’s very DIFFICULT to do so. The girl crying on the bench is me about two and a half years ago. The guy sitting next to me was my PoA. It’s all very yucky to remember where I was and what I was going through. And yet, it is a very large part of who I am and who I’ve become. And I feel as though I need to remember from time to time, so that I never go back.

I will be meeting Pernille and the producer in NYC this week for a private screening, all expenses paid. I will be one of the first to see the 80-minute documentary. And despite being quite excited, I am a little nervous to see what Pernille has done with all the stories and how she has portrayed us all. What’s more, I am hoping she has not created only the ugly side of love addiction, the drama-driven side, for the sake of ratings. There is a completely conventional, boring, unentertaining side to it all and it’s called RECOVERY. People do get better. People do change. Will that be portrayed? Will that even be mentioned?

When I watch the trailer, I look like a completely hopeless case. And yet, this film was shot after I had had the courage to leave my PoA and no longer “date” him. I, of course, was still friends with him. I was still depending on him emotionally. But the relationship was pretty much over. I was alone when they filmed us. I’m certain my “personal” story will not come through entirely. But a collective story of love addiction, of which I am one small part, will hopefully come through tastefully and as realistic as possible. I’ll let you all know next week!

xo