The Wellness Edition No.57 // Breakups

Breakups are awful and I have to confess this one is a tough one for sure. It hurts to see that someone who you thought you used to know turns out to be a person with toxic character traits that get activated when a certain type of woman shows up in his life, hits on him and makes him believe that with her everything will be better than what he had with me. It led me to the more than painful realisation that I subconsciously repeated my parents unhealthy relationship pattern and that I spent the last 4 years with a man who is pretty much exactly like my father.

I suppose I now learned my lesson through repeating my parents relationship and through facing the abandonment that my father did to us when I was a baby now through experiencing it by myself because of committing to someone who can’t commit, who can’t deal with love and intimacy and instead takes the emergency exit through cheating and leaving with a certain kind of masculine, intrigant and self-centered woman and while doing that becoming a self-centered egomaniac as well.

My father also walked out for another woman and let’s face it, he is also a Mr. Unavailable who could not commit to my loving mother, and instead decided to leave us for someone who is cold as ice and where the dangers of love and intimacy were certainly not coming up. The man I was with did exactly the same thing, twice because I gave him a second chance. So it was not a mistake, it is a horrible behavioural pattern, as soon as there was too much intimacy and love between us he escaped for a place of superficial illusions where he certainly won’t find it with women who are the complete opposite of me.

I subconsciously repeated my parents and my childhood trauma of abandonment and committing to someone who is unable to commit through choosing a man who was exactly providing me with this experience twice. I did not realise the parallels to my family history when he first left me for some random stranger but now when it happened the second time there is no more denial in recognising into which kind of emotional disaster I got myself into.

The worst part is that whenever someone treats me bad I fall back into horrible self-destructive patterns and treat myself in the most horrible way as well. I greatly improved being better and more loving and caring to myself ever since I left my old job, started this blog where I focus so much on self-care since it is an issue I greatly struggle with, since I was with him who treated me with so much love, care and respect (except for the episodes when he panicked and left me for random ugly strangers) and him loving and supporting me also helped me a lot to heal and to treat myself better. But after horrible breakups like that I fall back into old self-destructive patterns of not eating, not sleeping enough, drinking too much wine - all of that I thought I left behind but certain events trigger and and then the self-destructive behaviour led by self-hate is back and that seriously makes me sad.

The other night I was flirting with a guy on Instagram and I completely screwed it up when I noticed he was flattered by flirting with me, I guess I was so shocked by the fact that a guy I could be interested in was not put off by me flirting with him, that I immediately had to screw it up in order to make sure nothing good could ever come out of it. Yea, pure self-sabotage here once again even though I got a lot better at not self-sabotaging myself anymore for most of the time. OK, on the other hand it is a good test to become kind of bizarre and to test their interest levels, I did the same thing with my now ex and it never repelled him from wanting to be together with me. Even when I was the most unlovable person he was still there giving me love. That online flirt thing of course is nothing serious but it shocked me how it made me fall back into being the insecure woman filled with self-doubt and self-hate who feels no sympathetic guy would ever care about her. Note to myself, don’t attempt flirting when you self-worth is below zero and when you are completely out of alignment. Bummer I screwed it up but on the other hand it was just messing around with a guy who lives on a part of the world where is an ocean between us.

Breakups are horrible but they provide the opportunity to solely put the focus on yourself and to redefine yourself. I had not realised that I still did not get over this whole abandonment and growing up without a father thing. Now I know that it is something I have to work on. Also I did not realise that I still struggle with feeling unworthy because why the fuck did I stay with a guy who was clearly unable to commit and only feeding me crumbs…well because I felt love between us and because I hoped that he would work on himself and commit at a certain point. Ironic that I being a total self-development junkie spent so many years with someone who is not doing any inner work at all and just escapes once things with me got too close and intense for him.

So, in order to heal old wounds and to overcome self-destructive patterns I have to do lots of inner work to make sure my self-confidence and the ability to treat myself with love, care and trust (hey, like I treated him) goes up and that I don’t fall into the trap anymore of choosing men who are like my father or letting them choose me. One of my favorite relationship and self-care bloggers NML has a subscription program where you can actively work on leaving your emotional baggage behind and healing your destructive patterns and trauma. So, I became a member last week and start working myself through her awesome material.

Also I will focus on being creative and writing because that really feeds my heart and soul. I have to put the focus back on myself instead of obsessing about him and the ugly skank he left me for. She is a bitch for sure but still he is the main problem because every normal man would not have been flattered in that situation and would not have gone for her. I am now finally doing the illustration portrait course that I bought one year ago and still have not done to this day. I want to greatly improve my drawing and illustration skills so I can also sell gorgeous illustrations in my shop. Also I will put all my energy into designing for the shop, learning to create jewelry and launching the shop in September as I planned it before this horrible breakup. I will get back on my feet, I will run a successful online-shop selling design goodies made with love and I will fall in love again sometime but this time with a man who wants to commit to me instead of running away once we get closer.