Aftereffects List #22

22. Disturbances in attachment, abandonment issues; desire for relationships with no separateness; avoidance/fear of intimacy.

There was a time in my life, in my early twenties, when I wanted a fusion relationship. I wanted someone who wanted me so much that they would never want to be without me, that they would never hurt me, and that they would never abandon me. 

Then I had a relationship with someone who was nothing like me, who lacked compassion and empathy, and I did not want to be fused with him. That one relationship cured me of a lot of things, but it also robbed me of so much of my empathy and humanity. He robbed me of my naivete and innocence as well.

He used a lot of emotional and verbal abuse. He would break up with me all the time and I would beg him to take me back. He was breaking my heart, making me think badly of myself, and rejecting spending time with me in favor of others.

He really knew how to find and use my abandonment issues against me. I don’t know how he figured it all out, but I guess abusers are like that. They know or they know how to find out information.

He used to talk to me for hours at a time when we first started going together, acting like he was my best friend, always on my side, and I told him things that you tell someone who loves you, someone you trust. For a time he pretended to be on my side, to love me, to care.

I knew that I was nothing. I knew that I was ugly. I had not dated someone long-term before that. I was 24 and thinking no one would ever care for me. He never did.

At the end of our relationship I was so crushed, so devastated that I didn’t care if anyone ever loved me. I didn’t care if I ever dated someone again. I didn’t care if I was ugly and unloveable. I just knew I didn’t want to be with him or anyone like him ever again.

Now I avoid dating. It is pretty easy to do that. I haven’t kissed someone in years. I miss that a lot. But the rest is too horrible to imagine. Guess that is encapsulated in this item. When I think about dating I usually think in a year or too, maybe. But I keep pushing that forward into the future.

My family don’t want me. They see one another, but since I don’t see some of them that are emotional abusers, I don’t go to those family gatherings for the last four years. I only see a couple family members and even then only a few times a year for each of them. It always feels like they are abandoning me, pushing me away, a very old pattern with all of them. It is still such a trigger for me.

I am still struggling with establishing and keeping friendships. I have so many fears of being abandoned by them. I do tend to want to attach to a lot of people and most of them don’t want me. Managing that is still pretty hard.