Dear GirlShrink,
I’ve been in an off-and-on relationship with the same guy for about 5 years. For almost 2 years we’ve been on. We’ve had a lot of things happen in the past, and i know i have some trust issues with him still, and i suspect he has some with me. But he is basically everything any girl could ever ask for in a man. He is nothing but nice to me, and i love him, we both have said we want to spend the rest of our lives together. Yet i frequently emasculate him, and pick at him, i have a lot of frustration towards him and i can be a complete jerk to him (to put it nicely). I always try to push his buttons to make him angry and i don’t know why.
I feel myself becoming someone else, someone i hate. One of the reasons we’ve broken up in the past is because i feel like he deserves someone better than me (and i still feel this way). He deserves someone who will treat him the way he treats me. I love him, and he says he loves me and doesn’t want anyone else. And i can’t imagine my life without him, it would break both of our hearts if we broke up. I know what is going on can’t be healthy, and i’ve never acted this way with any of my exes. I feel like i need actual therapy or that we may need couples therapy or that we should end our relationship.
Dear Angry Girl,
You are dead on. You do need individual therapy, and couples therapy wouldn’t hurt, but it sounds like that you have the primary issue. You need to explore why you feel as though that you do not deserve someone who is good to you. Perhaps you are judging yourself for things you have done in the past, but that’s a terrible place to stay stuck in. You need to forgive yourself and move on. It could be that you have bigger self-esteem issues that stem from a much deeper place and that you have always played that out in your relationships.But I think this time you recognize that you really have a healthy relationship here and that you are sabotaging it with your own feelings of low self-worth. These are not feelings that you just wake up one day and say you are not going to feel that way anymore. These are feelings that need to be analyzed a bit and worked through – usually with the help of a unemotional 3rd party such as a counselor.
Do not give up on your relationship. Keep fighting for it. And more importantly fight for yourself. This is something that you need to work through before you marry this guy, have children, or build yourself a career. You need a solid sense of self to do all of these things successfully.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I like what you say about working at the issue from both a individual and couple counseling standpoint. As a psychologist, I find that often basic issues the individual has, emerge when the person gets into an intimate relationship. However, it becomes a chance to work through important concerns.
I am also a past life therapist, so when resolution of the couple issue seems especially difficult, I begin to look at the problem from the perspective of their being shared past lives for this couple. I often find that they have reincarnated into this lifetime as an opportunity to heal some past life legacies. Once addressed from this point of view, the relationship has a chance to be viable and healthy. In my blog post, STUCK IN A RELATIONSHIP, I offer some clues that past lives may be a factor.