I need your advice with what has happened to me recently.I met a girl 6 months ago at church, and we started seeing each other. She kinda pursued me at first and I was tentative, just because I was getting over a hurt of a few months earlier. But we took it slowly, eventually started having sex after about a month, slowly, and saw each other through Christmas.We were apart a week at Xmas and talked a lot on the phone and had really pleasant conversations. When she came back she told me she loved me. It was going really well. But as we got closer and spent more time together after the first of the year, she began to back away a little.She had told me the very first night we went out that ‘wherever this went, she needed her space’and I knew this. So I tried to calm down a little bit. We continued seeing each other, but then she started having a problem with her period-she hadn’t had one for ten months, she said.I tried to support her through this and it ended up ok. But as my feelings grew, hers didn’t. She told me one night late in January that ‘she couldn’t reciprocate the feelings I had for her. ‘That she wasn’t ready for a relationship, and we agreed to not speak for a few days, which I honored.As time has gone on up until now, she’s never really shown her feelings returning, although she’s pretended to and I’ve thought she was feeling something-through a nice Valentine’s Day and a few weeks after that. We’ve taken things kinda slowly since, but she just told me that indeed her feelings had stopped growing. She didn’t know why, when, or how. They just had.Especially lately, we’ve had fun when we’ve been together and talked. I’ve never felt she wasn’t physically attracted to me. Her parents love me and I’ve been very good to her-helped her out of some jams both financially and emotionally. But what is the problem?She says she can’t explain it. Everyone, including her, tells me it’s not me. She told me that I’ve been great, awesome, fun, everything. I asked her if she wants somebody else and she said ‘probably not, that if she can’t fall for someone as great as me, she doesn’t see how she could go out with someone else.’Here’s a few things. . . first, this has happened to me before. I’ve been more into relationships than the other person. That’s what makes me really wonder if it isn’t me, if there isn’t something about me being too nice or whatever that prevents a girl from falling for me.But also, this mirrors something that ‘s happened with her parents-her mother loves her father, but isn’t ‘in love’ with him. Could this girl be mirroring this into her own relationship? Also this girl told me when she was little, a male neighbor sexually abused her. She says she’s dealt with it, but I wonder if this isn’t a scar-covered wound?As a guy, I want to try to understand what’s happening in my life, especially the bad stuff, so as to not repeat the same mistakes, if indeed I am making any. It’s easy to write this off as her issues, but what do you think? I’d really like some honest opinion of what influences feelings, and what doesn’t, and do feelings just stop? Thanks
You ask, ‘Is there something about me being too nice or whatever that prevents a girl from falling for me?’ You are on the right track in asking what you are doing. There is something that you are doing that is making your relationships not happen.But, here’s the amazing thing. It’s not something that you are doing something wrong within the relationship. Your girlfriend told you herself that you are amazing and awesome and that she’ll never find another guy like you. So what are you doing?You are overlooking very clear red lights that are being given to you even before the relationship begins.Remember, this girl told you, before you got involved with her, that she needed space and distance. In other words, she told you all you needed to know about her. That she had mixed feelings about being involved.At this point you need to understand why you overlooked such clear signs and forged ahead with her anyway. You are very insightful and are able to see how she is repeating the patterns in her family. Can you see what aspect of your first family life you are repeating?You must trust that your unconscious is intentionally choosing women who push you away. If you’ve been reading my columns for a while, you know that we all choose partners who will help us relive, and heal, the wounds of childhood.Our first step in the healing is to choose a partner who resembles the parent that let us down. Then we try to work for a happy ending with that person. If we can get our lovers to give us the emotional goodies that we didn’t get from our parents, then we will feel healed.So, as you can see, the reason why your mind doesn’t see that you are choosing a person who is going to push you away is because that is exactly the type of person that your unconscious wants to choose. And, if you can succeed in winning the heart of this distant, conflicted lover, you will feel like you won the love of the parent that was distant with you.Despite all your great efforts to endear yourself–your girlfriend even admitted how great you are–your plan never works, because the partners you choose can’t give you the love you desire any more than your parent did.So, you break up, but soon find yourself in the same loop again. See my Advice Archives under: repetition compulsion and unfinished business for a thorough understanding of this mechanism.Knowing all this, where do you go from here?First, be conscious of the urge to recreate the wound of your childhood by choosing distant women. Then, consciously make the choice not to go there. This will be a hard pattern to break, because there is an actual compulsive, addictive quality to the urge to recreate the wounds of the past and work for a happy ending.You deserve to be loved for who and what you are. And, you don’t need to live your life jumping through hoops, only to find that there is no love waiting on the other end.
