I was just perusing some other sites dealing with relationship advice and I stumbled on a letter to a ‘Mr. Relationship’. It was someone in a similar situation as I.He gave terrible advice. He actually told the person ‘your screwed’! And he even spelled it that way!! I thought I would give you a try becuase HE seems like a moron.Anyway, to get to the point, I recently have been dumped by my girlfriend because she’couldn’t handle’the relationship I have with my ex. I told her we were just friends, but to tell the truth I still love her. She still means a lot to me and I think I will always want her to be a part of my life. I can never seem to let go of my past relationships and they end up ruining others.Does this mean that I am not mature enought to have a serious relationship? I love both of them, and now I have nobody. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to be with, and I don’t want to lose either one of them. Being friends is difficult. I find myself wanting whoever I am with at the moment. I feel as if I’m a terrible person, leading them on and them letting them down eventually.What can I do to stop this from happening again? Any advice you have I would greatly appreciate, thank you.
Your situation is quite complicated. The pattern you describe consists of finding yourself in love with a previous girlfriend, while your current girlfriend feels like second fiddle and dumps you. Then, you go on to the next girlfriend, and the pattern starts all over again.What you need to do is understand why the pattern exists and what purpose it serves (realize that no pattern exists unless it meets an emotional need, albeit an unconscious need, of which you may not be aware). The outcome of the pattern is that you end up feeling like a terrible person who lets everyone down. Ask yourself why you need to put yourself in this position.The fact that you always end up feeling this way makes me wonder if you are actually familiar with this role. Did your parents make you feel like a terrible person who always let others down? Or is it possible that you grew up with a parent who let you down? If this is so, then you may have patterned your behavior after that parent, which could explain why you let others down the way you were let down. In doing so, your unconscious mind actually purges itself of the pain you suffered as a kid.Now, you are the one who does the letting down; you deposit onto your girlfriends the bad feeling that you felt as a kid, and you feel freed from the pain. In the end, you still suffer. While your unconscious mind may think that it is freeing you from being the one who is let down, you are constantly feeling let down because you can’t create lasting love. You are alone and miserable all the same.While we are exploring, also examine how not being able to let go of an ex relates to your history. Did someone leave you when you were young? A parent, perhaps? This might explain why you find it hard to let go. It would also explain why you keep replaying the pattern. Repetition of a trauma is a means of working through the feelings attached to that trauma. Each time a relationship ends, you find yourself yearning after someone who is gone and who you can’t have.Sound familiar? Did you live this as a child? While the repetition is designed to help you work-through the pain, it also prevents you from enjoying the love that is available to you in the present, meaning that you are never free to experience love. I think you need to figure out what piece of your childhood is being played out through this repetition. Remember, when the mind backs you in to a repetition, it is trying to heal a childhood wound (see my Advice Archives under repetition compulsion).When you understand what wound you are trying to heal, and you work through the feelings tied up with that wound, you will not need to keep recreating this pattern over and over again.
