Hi.My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years and a couple of months ago I gave him a gift. I gave him my permission to sleep with someone else one time.It ended up happening with one of my old friends from high school but it went wrong. When I say wrong I don’t mean he messed it up or she didn’t want to do it. They did sleep together, but I recently found out they didn’t use protection. She kissed him when I left the room before anything started and without my permission.Ever since that day I have felt nothing but anger towards both of them. I believe that he fell for her. And I wouldn’t blame him. I guess it was partly my fault for picking someone’very attractive’ for this gift.Am I wrong for hating them. . . mostly her. The worst part about it is that it happened twice. . . he became greedy and ‘blackmailed’ me to let him do it again saying that if I let him he would give me ‘another ‘ child. (I lost our first one through a miscarriage. . . . twins).I just want everything to be back to normal but I feel that nothing can ever be the same because every time I see her or him all I can see is them together on the night. I want my boyfriend back the way it used to be before any of this ever happened. . . but I feel as though I can’t move one until I get my revenge on her.PLEASE HELP
Yours is a very painful story. I’m afraid that there is no turning back for you. What’s done is done and the feelings that have arisen as a result of what occurred can’t be erased.The only way to move forward is to gain an understanding of what happened and why. When you take responsibility for your part in creating this fiasco, I think that you will feel less victimized, less angry, and less in need of revenge. So let’s look at why your unconscious mind arranged this triangle.My first thought was that your offer to let your boyfriend sleep with someone else was very self-destructive. You gave your boyfriend a gift that was bound to hurt you. You need to ask yourself why you would punish yourself like this.Let me tell what I think is the reason you set yourself up like this. People who arrange to hurt themselves are usually very angry inside. The unconscious mind has an odd way of handling buried and/or unrecognized anger. The anger will either transform into depression, anxiety, physical ailments, and/or lead to self-destructive acts.When I read that you were handing your boyfriend over to your beautiful high school girlfriend, I immediately thought that your buried anger lead you offer him this very self-punishing ‘gift.’ The pattern of turning anger back on the self usually develops during childhood. To resolve the pattern, you need to first identify who made you so angry when you were young.Think back and come up with all the memories that you can in which you were angry at one or both of your parents. Next, remember what you did with the anger that you felt. Did you lash out? Did you rebel? Then, remember how your parents reacted to your anger. Did they punish you? Yell at you? Beat you?At this point, we want to study how you learned to indirectly release or express your anger in order to protect yourself from your parents’ retaliation. Did you hurt yourself? Did you just swallow the feeling and then get depressed or self-destructive at a later time? Did you misdirect the anger back on yourself in the form of self-critical thoughts or self-destructive acts?Become very clear on the behaviors that you learned to use in order to indirectly or passively release your anger. Next, be very observant of yourself in the here and now. Watch yourself like a hawk and catch yourself before you engage in these very damaging and not productive ways that you use to release your anger.Train yourself to resist these dysfunctional forms of anger release (they only hurt you and ruin your relationships) and encourage yourself to speak directly about your anger.As you learn to communicate your anger in a direct way, you will become less and less self-destructive. You will also be less and less willing to tolerate your boyfriend’s abusive and manipulative behavior. (His blackmailing you into allowing him to sleep with this woman in exchange for impregnating you was downright abusive to you.)Do the work on yourself that I describe above and you will be able to put the past behind you and move on to a healthier relationship.
