Therapy Take 3 - This Time it's Personal

November 7, 2024

    I'm back in therapy.  Something happened that caused me to spiral.  This was a good, very good something, but spiraling none the less.  It's a weird place to have made peace with the cold hard truth that pretty much none of your dating or marriage was a healthy relationship.  The kicker is, when you are faced with the potential for a healthy relationship unlike anything you ever imagined, you have no idea what to do.  You spiral.  You self-sabotage, you worry, your what ifs are absolutely out of control and you start grasping for the unknown.  It's a pretty horrific place to be, and to admit that makes you even more screwed up right?  Healthy relationship should not make you want to self-destruct.  How did I get this far in life.  I would not have encouraged a close friend to stay in such a place, so why would I?  I am a smart woman.  Because I did not know any better.  From the outside looking in, it was perfect, he was perfect, we were perfect, but in all honesty, exactly what lens was I looking at it all?  The one that didn't even exist.  The something ended with me being told, "I don't think I am capable of being who you need right now, I wish I could be, but I just don't think I can." Well no, because I honestly need professional help right now.  I would have run too.  Hell, my flight had already kicked in, now I wanted to fight.  I had to ask myself, "WHAT is wrong with you!?!?"  I truly thought I was going crazy this time.  I found a counselor and made an appointment.  

    I had never had a first therapy session that left much of an impact on me.  This time it was very different.  She asked me if I was really over the divorce and how I knew that.  Both of us were satisfied with what came out of my mouth.  It was just how I was left feeling about myself and the possibility of having anyone else in my life that I actually cared about.  Now, since the separation, I had dated, even been exclusive for 3 months with someone and was involved in one very poorly thought out situationship, but genuinely caring for someone I could see being an important part of not only my life but my girls' I had not even thought about, yet.  

    She asked me to think back to when I was a little girl, and the boxes I had created for what I wanted in a husband someday.  Then asked how many my ex-husband actually checked off.  In what I thought would happen did not match up to the reality at all.  At this point I owe this lady a box of tissues.  Then she asked about the someone.  I cried more.  I was in no way ready for that question.  But the truth of it made me very calm.  It meant I was already breaking the cycle of choosing another person to be in my life that had no business being in it.  Breaking the cycle of choosing wrong.  Had I always chose wrong guys?  No, and I can pinpoint where everything fell off all notions of healthy relationships.  College.  Away from home, home being a small town where most of my friends were already married or engaged.  The first serious boyfriend I had there, asked me to marry him, mistake number 1.  That led to chaos in every sense.  Next guy was so hellbent on not wanting to be loved that we broke up more times than I have ever known two people to.  I think he was just supposed to be a summer rebound, but that went off and on for a year or more.  Then the next guy was all wrong, ALL wrong, but he also wanted to marry me.  My behavior and actions at the bars on the weekends screamed to me that it was not what I wanted.  Then comes the guy to save me from it all.  The stable one.  Looking back it was a game to him, he won.  We broke up once before his senior prom, and then again maybe a year later.  By the time we tried it for the third time we thought we had both grown up and were ready to marry.  No, no we were not.  Back together in October, engaged in December.  We even did the required Catholic pre-marriage courses and counseling.  Why didn't someone stop us?  Would we have listened? No, because one mutual friend DID say something.  We rushed it.  Our friends were married and at 23 my friends were ready to put me on a dating reality show, I was getting old.  All of this is absurd.  When you grow up in a small town were rarely anyone leaves, this was the expectation, this was the norm.  I even apologized to my best friend right before I walked down the aisle.  I told her I was so sorry we never got to move to NY and share a tiny apartment.  I should have stopped and turned around at that point.  I cared far too much what everyone else would think.

    Where does that leave me now?  Well by the end of the session I could clearly ask, "what if I'm never going to be enough for someone to love me the way I want to be loved?" Then I got my homework.  This is going to be a whole lot to unpack here.