How do you react when people start backing away? I tend to freak out. Even if I make no outward sign of being traumatized, my thinking becomes obsessed with solely the looming abandonment. My work and writing suffer. I can’t sleep. Each new loss is like directing a fan on a desk of my loose papers, arousing all my past fears of abandonment (Stephan Poulter).
I grew up repeatedly abandoned by my parental figures, so I tend to fall in love with women who abandon me. My deepest most passionate loves and heartbreaks have been for women who cheated on me.
You can’t just cut fear of abandonment out of your system. It’s more like diabetes. You have to manage it. Set boundaries. Get therapy. Understand your part in staying healthy. If you don’t, your abandonment issues will take you to bad places. There’s no solution.
I don’t sense that most people are ready to make meaningful change until they’re at least 40. Earlier than that, they think they can get better on their own without making painful change.
There are no victims in marriage and affairs (short of criminal acts). These are opportunities to work on yourself.
People with abandonment issues bond deeply with their partners. They’re willing to go through more hell than most people, but when it ends, for both people it’s like ripping the heart out. Two primitive people joined at the hip, you have to take a chainsaw and cut them apart. (Mark Smith)
If you’ve got fear of abandonment, your inner GPS system is faulty and it will send you to bad places. I tend to freak out when those I love back away, and either I make crazy demands (rare) or run away for insufficient reason and against my own best interest. In love and relationships, you’re going to seek out your worst nightmare. (Mark Smith)
“The brutal thing about abandonment issues is that you will be attracted to somebody with the disguised worst qualities of your parents.” (Mark Smith)
If your mother was a psychological terrorist, that’s the type of woman you’re going to date. You’ll pick her out of a room of 50 nice women.
I grew up in some abusive homes, so I seek out employers who treat me like dirt. I’m used to that. I’m a beaten dog (in much of my work and love life).
Recovery is not about techniques and tools, but feeling and knowing. (Mark Smith)
Your best therapy sessions might be when you say not a word and simply cry for 50 minutes.
You’re gonna marry the parent with whom you have the most unresolved issues. You’re going to seek the type of love you got in your childhood. If you grew up in a family filled with aggression, you’re going to seek that in a partner.
If your parent/s loved playing bridge more than you, religion more than you, work more than you, you’re going to grow up with toxic shame. You don’t fix such shame or fear of abandonment. You only learn to manage it. Recovery begins with knowing painful truths about yourself, but self-knowledge without change of behavior avails nothing.
* My Chinese GFs never appreciated it when I pretended to speak Chinese. Harrumph! Not only did I give these sheilas a plentiful helping of my troth, I offered to make them honorary whites so they could live in Australia and cook and clean for me. In this case, two Wongs could make a white.
