Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:You are afraid of intimacy, real intimacy that is. You can fool yourself into thinking you want a real relationship with real intimacy and you just have bad luck falling for married men. But it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you and your issues.
As long as you are with someone who can't be 100% present in the relationship, you will never be challenged by true intimacy. Being 100% open and intimate with someone is scary. And even the best of relationship can involve pain as you both work through issues and get closer. The closer you are the more buttons get pushed. But also the chance to heal old wounds is there. But that takes bravery to face the scary things inside ourselves.
Being with a married guy means you get all the fun with none of the work. But also none of the rewards either. You can waste your emotional energy bemoaning not being with him. Which feels like you are doing emotional work. But in reality protects you from the real, scary stuff inside.
Op here - thank you for this! It makes total sense and I think it's one of my issues.
So why don't you go to a therapist and work on your issues?
Is that too scary for you as well?
PP who wrote this. I didn't date married men, but I did date equally unavailable men. And you don't realize the problem is about you because it feels like you are in the dating/relationship game. you are using so much emotional energy that it feels like you are working hard on your issues and trying to growing intimacy. And you get stuck in the weeds bemoaning your bad luck meeting great guys who happen to be (married, long distance, not over their ex, etc).
It wasn't until a many years long pattern emerged that I was able to see that I kept picking guys that I would never ever be able to have a true relationship with. So I went into therapy, learned to deal with my ambivalence about relationships and fear of intimacy and avoided all men who showed up with situations that would limit our ability to be in a true relationship (even if there was crazy chemistry. In fact I realized, the more intense the chemistry, the more likely they were bad for me)