Dear Emily,
I’m struggling with a romantic situation that’s really triggering my self-loathing. I do the work (therapy, recovery meetings, psych drugs) and have made lots of progress, but I can’t seem to avoid turning my dating life into a vehicle for validation. I still feel like if I can’t win over the out-of-reach man, I’m worthless.
This pattern in and of itself has become a source of shame. My friends and family are tired of this nonsense, so much so that I now spiral privately. That means there’s no one to hold me accountable for my poor decision-making, and I run wild with the obsessive behavior.
My current love interest is a real doozy. I affectionately refer to him as “hot mean guy.” He ghosted me in 2022, yet I still decided to reengage a few months ago. Same song and dance with him: electric connection in person, very little contact from him in between. He oozes charisma but has questionable character. He’s prone to nasty, belittling comments that make me feel terrible, which is then offset by his impeccable manners and ability to remember the small details I share with him. It’s impossible to get a gauge on his feelings toward me, and I’m constantly afraid he might vanish again. I want an admission that what he did to me in 2022 was a huge mistake so that I can have crystal-clear assurance that it’s not me — it’s him. I want to know what inspires his outreach and what inspires his silence. I feel an all-consuming need to know what he does and doesn’t like about me. I’m stuck in a vicious cycle of reading self-help articles, stalking his activity on Threads (ha), and replaying our interactions over and over. I don’t even want to be with him; I just want to know I’m not unlovable.
I have strategies to tackle my macro mental-health issues, but I’m hoping to disrupt this behavior on a micro level. I know that healing the core-wound issues is a long-term project, but in the meantime I would like to find small consistent ways to put myself back in the driver’s seat of my romantic life. I can’t keep dating assholes who I know are bad for me, as irresistible as I may find them. I’m willing to do the work but don’t know where to start in the day-to-day.
Sincerely,
Need My Brain Back
Dear Need My Brain Back,
You mention that you attend recovery meetings. I think you should consider adding Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings to the mix. Even if you don’t end up sticking with the program or working all of its steps, you are in immediate need of a space to vent to a roomful of strangers about this particular unhealthy obsession. Since therapy isn’t working and your friends are sick of hearing about this guy, why not hit up a community of supportive fellow sufferers, especially one that’s free to anyone who walks in the door? The basic structure will be familiar to you from your other program, but you might end up getting some insight into those “core-wound issues” that will help you figure out both the day-to-day and the rest of your life.
Bad news: There are no shortcuts here. What you have to do — i.e., not call him, not text him, not replace what you get from him with something else that’s equally bad for you — is also what you have to do to heal enough that you never get into this kind of situation again.
I can’t pretend to be an expert on SLAA, but I do know about recovery, and I’ve also been in my share of idiotic and self-destructive romantic situations, so please know that I feel you. Shall we take a brief tour down memory lane to the time I started an affair with a co-worker so I wouldn’t have to drown in grief over ending the most important long-term relationship I’d had up until that point in my life? Or we could go all the way back to college, when I dated a drug-dealing frat boy whom I didn’t particularly like, just to fit in to the school’s fraternity-dominated culture. And let’s not even talk about high school, when I sequentially dated (“dated”) a younger brother and then his elder brother because I was so upset that I didn’t get into any of the colleges I wanted to attend, and so my whole self-image, which previously had been based on the idea that I was a smart person, was crumbling? There’s always some deeper reason that we get involved with people we know aren’t good for us, and you are going to have to do the icky, uncomfortable work of figuring out what that reason is — and doing something about it.
I can’t tell you what your reason is. Try the meetings. Try a new therapist. Get out of town for a little while. Start a hobby that doesn’t hurt you or anyone else and that you actually enjoy and that has nothing to do with “self-improvement.” (Sculpting miniature food out of bakeable clay did it for me for a while — but it doesn’t have to be that!) Get into plants; adopt a high-maintenance new pet; schedule Zoom calls to catch up with friends you haven’t seen in a while and only ask them questions about themselves; make a zine about an obscure band you liked as a teenager; learn to roller-skate; get into contra dancing; go see every Oscar-nominated movie, including the foreign shorts. You get the picture. Do whatever it takes as long as it’s not illegal, expensive, or related to “wellness.”
But most important, show up at an SLAA meeting and give it a real chance to work its magic. If the first meeting you go to isn’t hitting, try a different one. As soon as you open your mouth to share, you’ll feel better about this situation. You’re on the verge of changing your life forever, but you have to commit. You’ve done this kind of hard work before, and you can do it again. I believe in you. Oh, collecting tiny furniture for a dollhouse you don’t own can also work! Anyway, I’m wishing you the best, because that’s what you deserve, and that guy is the worst.
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