The Trouble with Love for an Introverted Codependent
or Reflections on the Problems of Living as a Serial Monogamist
I know it has been a very long time since i have written anything in this journal, much less anything of import. But i am thinking this could be a good space for me to both vent some of my frustrations and give my swirling thoughts more substance and flesh.
Going through the ending of what has been a very important relationship to me and dealing with very serious heartbreak, obviously i have been dealing with some very deep emotions and a lot of thoughts, some of a more self-harmful, recursive, depressive nature, but some others of the more exploratory variety...the second set being obviously more of a good thing than the first set.
I have always been the type to love very deeply. With almost every relationship i have been in, very passionately, very fast, maybe too soon. While i believe ultimately love is a good thing, i believe falling in love too fast without restraint has proven to be in the long run a bad thing for me. That being said, i don't regret the relationships or loves i have had, but rather just recognizing that my personality type causes me to eschew logic and self-preservation at certain times when maybe it should have been more of a priority.
Let me start off with a little bit of history about my past relationships. Even in highschool, though i had plenty of gaps when i was not in a relationship at all, i believe i started off having relationships that were more serious and longer term than some of my peers...that being said, they were still similar to other highschool relationships you might imagine kids that age having...nothing super serious, nothing over a year, however several of my relationships were several months to a year whereas the kids around me had ones that lasted a couple of weeks to a month at most. They were confused but exploring, i was attaching myself in a more tangible but perhaps clingy and unhealthy way, even at times with people who i knew were wrong for me. In college i had the longest gap of being single that i've had in my adult life so far, lasting a little over a year before i met my college love that i ended up staying with for about 7 years. I wasn't really in love with him anymore for probably around 3 years at the end of that 7 year time span, and i didn't mean to string him along, but i had never been in a relationship THAT long before, i never really knew what falling out of love felt like, and i think the combination of introversion and codependence drove me to stay with him longer than if i had had a different or healthier outlook on life. After that i had a small gap, in which i got to experience a bit of what it is to be adult out on one's own...even if i had roommates and it didn't end up lasting very long. I think it was about 3 months between ending the 7 year relationship until i started to become enamored with and then subsequently fell deeply in love with the one who i was latest with, with whom things are now drawing to a close. We were together 4 1/2 years. The time was overall pretty amazing, but there were some very deep, engrained difficulties which persisted throughout most of the relationship, and though some of that is likely a combination of personalities thing, i fear that likely many of the persistent issues may have been unavoidable just because of the way i am and the nature of the relationship itself. Now i am in a situation i have never dealt with before in my life, where i still deeply love that person, but i know pretty definitively that things just won't work. That love is good, but it isn't enough to fix the problems that exist. And that is deeply, painfully, gut-wrenchingly, heart-killingly sad.
Many psychologists have explained introversion in simple easy to understand layman's terms which i will attempt to paraphrase here: Introverts require more personal space and time, whereas extroverts require more social interaction in general. That is not to say that introverts do not require social interaction, on the contrary most do require social connection and friendship, it is just that some find it to be complicated, confusing and sometimes "draining". Especially large social gatherings can feel draining. Conversely extroverts feel drained and saddened by too much alone time, even though alone time can still be necessary to some degree for them. Many people state that one can tell whether you are an introvert or extrovert based on what helps you "recharge your batteries", for example i adore social interaction and parties, but often times i feel the need for a lot of personal space either before or after the event, which suggests to me that i am a socially high-functioning introvert who loves people. I do tend to feel less drained/more recharged by one-on-one time with people, which certainly informs the way i deal with relationships, both romantic and platonic. I tend to get frustrated at extroverted people who are social butterflies and tend towards flakiness, because from my introverted perspective it looks to me like they have too much on their plates, are neglecting more intense one-on-one relationships, and are in over their heads...forgetting that some people thrive that way and feed on those sorts of interactions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion
Codependence is another issue that i believe i have but have been in denial about up until fairly recently (when it became much more apparent over the past few years). Many times psychologists link codependency to a past of family dysfunction, neglect or abuse...some form of unhealthy negative stimuli or lack of stimuli that comes from outside one's self and therefore alters the way one deals with relationships and intimacy in the future. Codependents can suffer from a wide range of symptomatic problems, and i find the ones that i deal with the most are low self-esteem, dependency, obsession and poor boundaries. Well, what if, like myself, you had a relatively textbook healthy childhood and family? Where do those things come from? How could someone who had a fairly perfect childhood become codependent? Well, i'm not a psychologist but i would like to posit that some of these symptoms could have arisen from my Introversion and also possibly from my clinical Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2012/symptoms-of-codependency/
As an introvert i find my meaningful one-on-one connections to be incredibly important and emotionally valuable. I hold those few and far between close friends very dear in my heart. Similarly if i begin to have feelings of closeness and love towards a person in a non-platonic sense i also hold them very dear, but sometimes in a way that is unhealthy for me. Interestingly, i am much better at keeping strict and healthy boundaries with platonic friends than i am able to with romantic partners or potential romantic partners. Because i am an introvert, if i have feelings of romantic love towards someone i tend to think or believe that due to my socially awkward nature this sort of deep, intense connection is harder for me to find. Whether or not that is actually true i am unsure of...me being an introvert might make me a less suitable partner for those of the population whom are more extroverted. However there hasn't been a shortage of love in my life thus far, which would seem to counter the idea that that sort of connection might be harder to find. Even if it is slightly harder to find, and despite a low self-esteem, i know that i am lovable at the very least. Depression, which can fuel low self-esteem, can fuel the codependent symptom of clinginess and lack of boundaries, in that if i feel that i am less or somehow lacking in comparison to other people i find myself dealing with on a daily basis, i may cling to those positive feelings of love and desire using them in a very unhealthy way as self-validation (basically temporarily stuffing gauze in the gaping wound of my low self-esteem). Not that love in of itself isn't good for me, just that not dealing with those underlying problems seems to have contributed to the way that i misuse love as a bandaid for them...but the bandaid won't heal those things if the infection is deep and going systemic...
How do i deal with these issues in the future? Rationally, i am at an impasse over whether or not LOVE is something i can handle right now. Of course, love is good, but do i have the capacity to be rational in the face of love? Do i have the internal tools to deal with love in a healthy way? Can i even LOVE RIGHT if i don't possess the needed rationality and boundaries at those times that i fall in love? And what can i do about it?
I've been a "Serial Monogamist" most of my adult life and i don't think that is working for me. I have never "dated around" as much as other more extroverted people seem to...even at times that i have had multiple interests on my plate i tend to fall for one and dismiss/get over the others/eschew them in favor of the one i'm falling deeply for. However, i have thought a little about poly (which i feel the need to mention is something a bit more complex than just "dating around") and while i don't know if it would work for me i definitely do think it is possible to be in love with multiple people at once. After all, i think even many people that have had very loving monogamous relationships might be able to remember times when they had loved someone deeply, broken up with that person, started a relationship with someone new but still being at least partially to completely in love with their ex, sometimes even devastatingly so. I think the only difference for a monogamous person and a poly person is that the monogamist often holds those feelings inside/in secret/eschews them, whereas the Polyamorist has them more out in the open. However i could be downplaying the complexity of poly relationships there. Do i think poly would work for me? I don't know. On one hand, i think it might help me to not be so codependent on one person, it might help me figure out what i am *really* looking for once i eventually settle down, but i don't know that emotionally i would be able to handle it. It is not a positive trait, but i can be a jealous person in the face of perceived competition.
I really tend to want to take care of people, which is something that comes up for me in relationships a lot, and that ties into the lack of boundaries and dependency aspects of codependency, as well as wanting acceptance. In any future relationships, whether serious or non-serious, i need to remain more aware of this need i feel to "Mom" people. Not that deeply caring for someone and trying to take care of them is a bad thing, but i need to draw lines. I need to take care of myself as much as i attempt to take care of other people. I have to stop putting myself on the back burner. This includes working on my hobbies, doing arts and crafts, even basic chores and housecleaning, and maybe the hardest of all for me, taking enough personal alone time AND BEING OK WITH THAT instead of always wanting to spend time with a partner.
How will i deal with love in the future? Will i be ok with it? I don't know. It is so hard for me to come out of a relationship that I thought was near-perfect, with someone whose ideas and ideals were so in line with my own, someone who also is a skeptical Atheist/Agnostic and DIDN'T WANT KIDS but was also SWEET and KIND as the day is long, a wonderful musician and lyricist, humorous and punny, nerdy and cute, who over time has shaped what i find beautiful in another person both physically and internally...if something so close to perfect can't work out it makes me doubt the permanence of love. I don't know that i trust in love, or that i believe it can heal you, or that it can cure all ills. Some of my idealism about love has been stripped away, maybe that will recover, maybe it won't. Still not sure how i feel about that.
I know it has been a very long time since i have written anything in this journal, much less anything of import. But i am thinking this could be a good space for me to both vent some of my frustrations and give my swirling thoughts more substance and flesh.
Going through the ending of what has been a very important relationship to me and dealing with very serious heartbreak, obviously i have been dealing with some very deep emotions and a lot of thoughts, some of a more self-harmful, recursive, depressive nature, but some others of the more exploratory variety...the second set being obviously more of a good thing than the first set.
I have always been the type to love very deeply. With almost every relationship i have been in, very passionately, very fast, maybe too soon. While i believe ultimately love is a good thing, i believe falling in love too fast without restraint has proven to be in the long run a bad thing for me. That being said, i don't regret the relationships or loves i have had, but rather just recognizing that my personality type causes me to eschew logic and self-preservation at certain times when maybe it should have been more of a priority.
Let me start off with a little bit of history about my past relationships. Even in highschool, though i had plenty of gaps when i was not in a relationship at all, i believe i started off having relationships that were more serious and longer term than some of my peers...that being said, they were still similar to other highschool relationships you might imagine kids that age having...nothing super serious, nothing over a year, however several of my relationships were several months to a year whereas the kids around me had ones that lasted a couple of weeks to a month at most. They were confused but exploring, i was attaching myself in a more tangible but perhaps clingy and unhealthy way, even at times with people who i knew were wrong for me. In college i had the longest gap of being single that i've had in my adult life so far, lasting a little over a year before i met my college love that i ended up staying with for about 7 years. I wasn't really in love with him anymore for probably around 3 years at the end of that 7 year time span, and i didn't mean to string him along, but i had never been in a relationship THAT long before, i never really knew what falling out of love felt like, and i think the combination of introversion and codependence drove me to stay with him longer than if i had had a different or healthier outlook on life. After that i had a small gap, in which i got to experience a bit of what it is to be adult out on one's own...even if i had roommates and it didn't end up lasting very long. I think it was about 3 months between ending the 7 year relationship until i started to become enamored with and then subsequently fell deeply in love with the one who i was latest with, with whom things are now drawing to a close. We were together 4 1/2 years. The time was overall pretty amazing, but there were some very deep, engrained difficulties which persisted throughout most of the relationship, and though some of that is likely a combination of personalities thing, i fear that likely many of the persistent issues may have been unavoidable just because of the way i am and the nature of the relationship itself. Now i am in a situation i have never dealt with before in my life, where i still deeply love that person, but i know pretty definitively that things just won't work. That love is good, but it isn't enough to fix the problems that exist. And that is deeply, painfully, gut-wrenchingly, heart-killingly sad.
Many psychologists have explained introversion in simple easy to understand layman's terms which i will attempt to paraphrase here: Introverts require more personal space and time, whereas extroverts require more social interaction in general. That is not to say that introverts do not require social interaction, on the contrary most do require social connection and friendship, it is just that some find it to be complicated, confusing and sometimes "draining". Especially large social gatherings can feel draining. Conversely extroverts feel drained and saddened by too much alone time, even though alone time can still be necessary to some degree for them. Many people state that one can tell whether you are an introvert or extrovert based on what helps you "recharge your batteries", for example i adore social interaction and parties, but often times i feel the need for a lot of personal space either before or after the event, which suggests to me that i am a socially high-functioning introvert who loves people. I do tend to feel less drained/more recharged by one-on-one time with people, which certainly informs the way i deal with relationships, both romantic and platonic. I tend to get frustrated at extroverted people who are social butterflies and tend towards flakiness, because from my introverted perspective it looks to me like they have too much on their plates, are neglecting more intense one-on-one relationships, and are in over their heads...forgetting that some people thrive that way and feed on those sorts of interactions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion
Codependence is another issue that i believe i have but have been in denial about up until fairly recently (when it became much more apparent over the past few years). Many times psychologists link codependency to a past of family dysfunction, neglect or abuse...some form of unhealthy negative stimuli or lack of stimuli that comes from outside one's self and therefore alters the way one deals with relationships and intimacy in the future. Codependents can suffer from a wide range of symptomatic problems, and i find the ones that i deal with the most are low self-esteem, dependency, obsession and poor boundaries. Well, what if, like myself, you had a relatively textbook healthy childhood and family? Where do those things come from? How could someone who had a fairly perfect childhood become codependent? Well, i'm not a psychologist but i would like to posit that some of these symptoms could have arisen from my Introversion and also possibly from my clinical Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2012/symptoms-of-codependency/
As an introvert i find my meaningful one-on-one connections to be incredibly important and emotionally valuable. I hold those few and far between close friends very dear in my heart. Similarly if i begin to have feelings of closeness and love towards a person in a non-platonic sense i also hold them very dear, but sometimes in a way that is unhealthy for me. Interestingly, i am much better at keeping strict and healthy boundaries with platonic friends than i am able to with romantic partners or potential romantic partners. Because i am an introvert, if i have feelings of romantic love towards someone i tend to think or believe that due to my socially awkward nature this sort of deep, intense connection is harder for me to find. Whether or not that is actually true i am unsure of...me being an introvert might make me a less suitable partner for those of the population whom are more extroverted. However there hasn't been a shortage of love in my life thus far, which would seem to counter the idea that that sort of connection might be harder to find. Even if it is slightly harder to find, and despite a low self-esteem, i know that i am lovable at the very least. Depression, which can fuel low self-esteem, can fuel the codependent symptom of clinginess and lack of boundaries, in that if i feel that i am less or somehow lacking in comparison to other people i find myself dealing with on a daily basis, i may cling to those positive feelings of love and desire using them in a very unhealthy way as self-validation (basically temporarily stuffing gauze in the gaping wound of my low self-esteem). Not that love in of itself isn't good for me, just that not dealing with those underlying problems seems to have contributed to the way that i misuse love as a bandaid for them...but the bandaid won't heal those things if the infection is deep and going systemic...
How do i deal with these issues in the future? Rationally, i am at an impasse over whether or not LOVE is something i can handle right now. Of course, love is good, but do i have the capacity to be rational in the face of love? Do i have the internal tools to deal with love in a healthy way? Can i even LOVE RIGHT if i don't possess the needed rationality and boundaries at those times that i fall in love? And what can i do about it?
I've been a "Serial Monogamist" most of my adult life and i don't think that is working for me. I have never "dated around" as much as other more extroverted people seem to...even at times that i have had multiple interests on my plate i tend to fall for one and dismiss/get over the others/eschew them in favor of the one i'm falling deeply for. However, i have thought a little about poly (which i feel the need to mention is something a bit more complex than just "dating around") and while i don't know if it would work for me i definitely do think it is possible to be in love with multiple people at once. After all, i think even many people that have had very loving monogamous relationships might be able to remember times when they had loved someone deeply, broken up with that person, started a relationship with someone new but still being at least partially to completely in love with their ex, sometimes even devastatingly so. I think the only difference for a monogamous person and a poly person is that the monogamist often holds those feelings inside/in secret/eschews them, whereas the Polyamorist has them more out in the open. However i could be downplaying the complexity of poly relationships there. Do i think poly would work for me? I don't know. On one hand, i think it might help me to not be so codependent on one person, it might help me figure out what i am *really* looking for once i eventually settle down, but i don't know that emotionally i would be able to handle it. It is not a positive trait, but i can be a jealous person in the face of perceived competition.
I really tend to want to take care of people, which is something that comes up for me in relationships a lot, and that ties into the lack of boundaries and dependency aspects of codependency, as well as wanting acceptance. In any future relationships, whether serious or non-serious, i need to remain more aware of this need i feel to "Mom" people. Not that deeply caring for someone and trying to take care of them is a bad thing, but i need to draw lines. I need to take care of myself as much as i attempt to take care of other people. I have to stop putting myself on the back burner. This includes working on my hobbies, doing arts and crafts, even basic chores and housecleaning, and maybe the hardest of all for me, taking enough personal alone time AND BEING OK WITH THAT instead of always wanting to spend time with a partner.
How will i deal with love in the future? Will i be ok with it? I don't know. It is so hard for me to come out of a relationship that I thought was near-perfect, with someone whose ideas and ideals were so in line with my own, someone who also is a skeptical Atheist/Agnostic and DIDN'T WANT KIDS but was also SWEET and KIND as the day is long, a wonderful musician and lyricist, humorous and punny, nerdy and cute, who over time has shaped what i find beautiful in another person both physically and internally...if something so close to perfect can't work out it makes me doubt the permanence of love. I don't know that i trust in love, or that i believe it can heal you, or that it can cure all ills. Some of my idealism about love has been stripped away, maybe that will recover, maybe it won't. Still not sure how i feel about that.