David H
2nd April 2007, 07:57 PM
Regular readers may remember that my g/f of 18 years walked away from our relationship just after Christmas (moving with our 10-year-old son, to a nearby town where she owns a pokely little 1 bed ground-floor flat) saying that she was "seeing somebody else" and giving me a big list of all my deficiencies that justified her doing this...
Making the comment to me "I think I am having a mid life crisis..." Telling me "he makes me feel so good about myself..." etc, etc. About as selfish and as self-centred as you can get..
Having had therapy since the end of January, reading loads of the right books, doing the right kind of keyword searching via Google I was able to establish that I had a codependent personality (an emotional disorder caused by having a very unloving and miserable childhood, having been abandoned by my mother when I was 4 years old..). I.e. A Giver or Caretaker
I was also able to establish that my g/f took the role of counterdependent i.e. a taker
This was all confirmed by my psychotherapist... who knew this all along but needed me to find this out and to accept it..
However I also identified a lack of empathy in my g/f and a fear of intimacy and I wanted to find another word to characterise her so that I could use that word as a keyword in Google as "Counterdependent" wasn't yeilding much of any insight for me...
I had a book delivered from Amazon by Susan Peabody called "Addiction to Love -- overcoming obsession and dependency in relationships" and I found the characterisation of my g/f I was looking for...
I now have to go into a painful recovery program because I am a love addict like a drug addict or an alcoholic. After the Recovery chapter in Susan Peabody's book, there is a chapter "Starting over again" and there is a caution to avoid certain "personality types that trigger addictive behaviour"
"The worst personality type for love addicts is the narcissist. Narcissists are unavailable because they are terrified of engulfment (intimacy). Pia Melody in her book, Facing Love Addiction, calls these people 'avoidance addicts'. Because they are unavailable, narcissists always trigger the love addict's fear of abandonment, which then trigger's the love addict's addictive thinking and behaviour. These two types of people bring out the worst in each other."
She then gives two tables -- one matches me as a codependent and the other clearly characterises my g/f as a narcissist.
Futher research last night gave me much, much more about narcissists and I can recognise many characteristics of my g/f there.
A narcissist is totally selfish, lacks empathy and is in permanent denial -- 75% of them are male -- the females (non-cerebal) use sex to rope in a suitable dependent man into a "relationship"... Just as I was 18 years ago -- the sex was great, though!!
Again, this has been confirmed by my therapist today, and I realise that a narcissist cannot be cured or changed.
So, I did entertain the notion that I could sort myself out and my g/f and myself could reunite, but in view of what I have learned, I have had to accept today that I can never again have a relationship with my g/f..
That is a very hard thing to accept -- but I have obtained the insight -- come to understanding -- and based my decision on that understanding with insight -- a decision made without any emotional input. I know I am doing the right thing here.
In fact by doing what she did, she has actually set me free from a very unhealthy relationship where she was essentially an emotional vampire feeding on everything I was able to give her. If only I could have come to this realisation 15 years ago -- I could have walked away then..
In a later follow-up to this post I will describe how she has "traded down" and found another person in the town she has moved to use as a dependent.
David
More on Narcissists:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/FAQ/1804
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/narcissism/faq_index.html
Making the comment to me "I think I am having a mid life crisis..." Telling me "he makes me feel so good about myself..." etc, etc. About as selfish and as self-centred as you can get..
Having had therapy since the end of January, reading loads of the right books, doing the right kind of keyword searching via Google I was able to establish that I had a codependent personality (an emotional disorder caused by having a very unloving and miserable childhood, having been abandoned by my mother when I was 4 years old..). I.e. A Giver or Caretaker
I was also able to establish that my g/f took the role of counterdependent i.e. a taker
This was all confirmed by my psychotherapist... who knew this all along but needed me to find this out and to accept it..
However I also identified a lack of empathy in my g/f and a fear of intimacy and I wanted to find another word to characterise her so that I could use that word as a keyword in Google as "Counterdependent" wasn't yeilding much of any insight for me...
I had a book delivered from Amazon by Susan Peabody called "Addiction to Love -- overcoming obsession and dependency in relationships" and I found the characterisation of my g/f I was looking for...
I now have to go into a painful recovery program because I am a love addict like a drug addict or an alcoholic. After the Recovery chapter in Susan Peabody's book, there is a chapter "Starting over again" and there is a caution to avoid certain "personality types that trigger addictive behaviour"
"The worst personality type for love addicts is the narcissist. Narcissists are unavailable because they are terrified of engulfment (intimacy). Pia Melody in her book, Facing Love Addiction, calls these people 'avoidance addicts'. Because they are unavailable, narcissists always trigger the love addict's fear of abandonment, which then trigger's the love addict's addictive thinking and behaviour. These two types of people bring out the worst in each other."
She then gives two tables -- one matches me as a codependent and the other clearly characterises my g/f as a narcissist.
Futher research last night gave me much, much more about narcissists and I can recognise many characteristics of my g/f there.
A narcissist is totally selfish, lacks empathy and is in permanent denial -- 75% of them are male -- the females (non-cerebal) use sex to rope in a suitable dependent man into a "relationship"... Just as I was 18 years ago -- the sex was great, though!!
Again, this has been confirmed by my therapist today, and I realise that a narcissist cannot be cured or changed.
So, I did entertain the notion that I could sort myself out and my g/f and myself could reunite, but in view of what I have learned, I have had to accept today that I can never again have a relationship with my g/f..
That is a very hard thing to accept -- but I have obtained the insight -- come to understanding -- and based my decision on that understanding with insight -- a decision made without any emotional input. I know I am doing the right thing here.
In fact by doing what she did, she has actually set me free from a very unhealthy relationship where she was essentially an emotional vampire feeding on everything I was able to give her. If only I could have come to this realisation 15 years ago -- I could have walked away then..
In a later follow-up to this post I will describe how she has "traded down" and found another person in the town she has moved to use as a dependent.
David
More on Narcissists:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/FAQ/1804
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/narcissism/faq_index.html