Monday, March 14, 2011

Love, Again

I thought I was defective and incapable of love and felt guilty about being unable to reciprocate my father's excessive love of me. This followed me into all my relationships.

I'd meet a boy and enjoy the positive attention I got from him. I'd be happy that he was impressed with my "personality" and "intelligence". But then, to my horror, he'd say he liked me or loved me. I almost never felt the same way. But I thought I never would, because I was incapable of the emotion. And, again, I felt guilty and obligated. He SAID he loved me, therefore I owed it to him to become his girlfriend. Like I went through all the motions with my narcissistic father, although I never felt I could reciprocate what he SAID he felt towards me. I couldn't trust my feelings and my duty towards those who professed love for me was paramount.

This happened more times than I'd like to admit.

When I was as young as 18, I "swore off" boys, because this pattern kept repeating and I couldn't understand why, but I always seemed to lose myself in relationships with boys I didn't even like to begin with, only to lose them later.

It was then that I met my future husband. I wanted to honor my vow, but I was this time irresistibly drawn to him, for some reason. Thank God.

He's sane. He saw through the fake me from the start and wanted nothing to do with it. But loved the actual me unconditionally.

5 comments:

  1. this happened to me with my one and first boyfriend. he had this big crush on me. unfortunately he was a very needy person and i didn't like him. when i tried to break up with him, he pulled the 'i love you' card on me. so i guess his proclamations of love was really just to get his way. i did not feel the same attraction or anything back. but i felt that that was cause there was something wrong with me, and so out of guilt and obligation, i stayed in the relationship for a rocky 2 years or so. the resentment towards him starting building up immediately. i hated everything he did. but for some reason, i told myself that that was bad, i was being unreasonable, and i kept obliging him. i thought that it was very arrogant of me to not like him. i thought that it was very arrogant of me to pick and choose who i go out with and to reject him. i guess that doesn't make sense looking back, but it made perfect sense then. the resentment built up, but i blamed myself, until i finally realized he wasn't even a very nice person. the thing is, i still felt and feel guilt off and on sometimes, thinking about it. like i had failed him. he did make me feel very guilty sometimes, for not liking him as much or the way that he wanted me to.
    but like i said, he wasn't even a very nice person...in fact he harassed me sometimes and didn't respect me...but he played the pity card so well..
    wow sometimes i think jeesssh i was and am so messed up!

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  2. oh wait, yeah i forgot. he actually said to me, directly, himself "i think you're incapable of truly caring about someone."
    OUCH. and OMG. just thinking about it makes me angry.
    i guess his tactics and attitude resembled my mom's enough that i just naturally couldn't get free from it.

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  3. "i thought that it was very arrogant of me to not like him. i thought that it was very arrogant of me to pick and choose who i go out with and to reject him"

    Me too!

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  4. You said:
    "He's sane. He saw through the fake me from the start and wanted nothing to do with it. But loved the actual me unconditionally."

    My husband was the same way. We met at 13 or 14 years old. He saw what my family was like and how badly I was treated. He allowed me to date and dump him repeatedly and even watched me date another boy for a year.

    On October 31, 1996, when we were "just friends", not even dating, he confessed that "somewhere along the way [he] fell in love with [me]". On the way home from that outing (not a date), I admitted that I did not know what to do about his declaration, but that I cared too much about him to purposefully hurt him. I asked for some time to think about it. He agreed and said he didn't expect anything of me.
    Here was a boy (we were just barely 18 at that point) who saw through my self-protective crap, and loved the real me. Suddenly I knew what was real. He was handing me his heart on a platter and telling me that I could do with it whatever I wished. That was love. The entire gift of himself, without any hint of self-consciousness or irony or mocking, was what he was offering me, without making any demands on me to reciprocate. Needless to say, I fell hard immediately (though really I had been lost in a terrifying love for him since we had met at 13 and it had scared me off several times). Within two weeks, I confessed I felt the same. Within a month, we were engaged. Within one year, we were married. We eloped on November 1, 1997, at the tender age of 19. God is so good to me. He gave me my wonderful husband, to give me a new family the very second I was legally old enough to marry.
    Sorry for such a long comment. This is your blog. But I have just found that everything you have said here resonates with me deeply and wanted to share the parallels in my life. Thank you so much for inviting me to read your blog.

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  5. Thank you for your long comment! Please share! For me, the most amazing thing about blogging has been finding out I'm not the only one. These narcs are eerily similar, and their effects on us are as well.

    Even though people will say that a partner's love won't save you, and that you need to find it in yourself, or whatnot, I do believe we need at least one person to show us we can be loved unconditionally and what love actually looks like to be able to really break free. I'm so happy your husband found you!

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