Flora said:
That feeling of being unattractive and not loved is just disgusting.
You're right. And in my personal opinion you shouldn't have to feel that way. I ask, is there anything you can do for yourself to change these feelings?
I wonder all the time what I did wrong in my life to deserve that.
You did nothing. No one deserves to feel unattractive or not loved
I know I have my mistakes and flaws but I always thought that I was a warm and good hearted person who has lots of love to give.
But I don't believe that anymore. I feel like I am a horrible person who is responsible for what my partner does to himself and to me. If I was a good influence he wouldn't need to blow up, be flat or depressed or have negative thoughts about himself and others.
You have a lot to give, but let me insert a mantra of mine here.
You can only help others (best) by helping yourself first. What I mean by this is that what you have, you rebuild from your own supply. Let's use seeds as our example. If you help yourself first by planting the seeds you have, you are able to yield crops that can produce everything you need to make more seeds. Once you have an abundance of seeds, you can share knowing that you have taken care of your own needs, and are also able to take care of other's. If you give your seeds to someone who seems to need them now, then you have nothing left (or very little) for yourself to rebuild your supply with. You are left depending on another person to fulfill a need.
Just are you are responsible for your own actions in giving of yourself to others before meeting your own needs, others are also responsible for themselves and their own actions. There is nothing that you've done to make your partner choose the path that he's chosen. Even if you feel like you can influence his actions from hence forth, you are still not responsible for them.
I wonder why he is still with me if he feels umcomfortable with my past and if I annoy him so much that he feels the need to become angry and frustrated while "dealing with me".
I can't say, I can only postulate. This is one of those situations that you've mentioned that really hit close to home for me. I was the first person my husband's ever been with, but he wasn't for me by far, though he thought he was only the second person in the beginning. Eventually I told him the truth because it was something I thought was important to be honest about since I felt so sure that we'd be together forever. He was disgusted, and lingered on it for years. He would tell me all of the time that he was resentful because he didn't know that was what he was getting into. It hurt so bad because he never left me over it. Instead he held it over my head for so long. It took years of tears and breakdowns for him to finally get it out of his system I guess, because he hasn't brought it up in at least 4 years-if not more.
I feel like this scenario has a lot to do with fear. And also some to do with emotions they don't quite understand yet. I think that for these guys, they know they like what they have and they fear loosing it. So they "deal" with it, though it bothers them. I think it bothers them... well, I don't have a really good reason for why it bothers them, but rather an idea of why it bothers them so much. I think it bothers them so much, and that they linger and ruminate about it because they don't really know how to put the ways they are feeling into words. It doesn't fit into a neat little box because they don't understand. Not understanding an emotion is frustrating.
I am grateful that you, toofat, think I can go through this but I am actually not sure if I want to go through this. I do not know if I am strong enough. I lost my direction in any possible way. I don't know what to do with my life anymore because I've been focusing so much on my partners needs.
Stop. Focus on yourself. By focusing on his needs, you are taking from yourself, and you should be the most important thing to you. If you don't nourish yourself, you will shrivel up.
Also... I feel very strongly that by putting so much of your attention to his needs, he's relying on you to "help" him deal with his own emotions and turmoil and he's not figuring things out for himself. Think of a child dealing with other kids not sharing. If as a parent, you constantly step in to say, "sharing is caring and we all need to share" every time your child whines about someone not sharing their single truck with them, then that child will never learn for himself that not everyone
has to share or how to deal with the hurt feelings that come along with not getting what they want or expect. Your partner is going have to work out all of his pain, frustrations, various kinds of emotions on his own. Otherwise he will never full grasp them for what they are and how they affect him, but rather only have a vague and uncertain idea of what he thinks others feel about how to deal/handle them.
We don't go to bed at the same time, we don't sleep in the same bed, he needs lots of time to himself because he claims himself to be an introvert. He is not as much a physical person as I am.
Again... this could have been something I wrote myself. There were always excuses as to why we didn't sleep at the same time, such as work schedules. And they were valid too. We did work at different times in the day. We slept in different beds so as to not disturb the other's sleep when it did over lap. As valid as these reasons are, it don't really matter when there is a much harder underlying truth behind these actions. Yes, I slept in a different bed because I didn't want to wake him up with tossing and turning or snoring because he had to be up in a few short hours. It's true. But I also went to bed in a different room every night because I was resentful of the lack of intimacy in our relationship and I didn't want to allow myself to be in the position to be vindictive and purposely cause him to get a poor night's sleep. I also couldn't face the pain of going to sleep with him and being so close yet feeling like we were so far away.
I love him because I can see all his positive personality traits too, but it becomes more and more difficult for me to see them when he thinks so lowly of himself. I just lost myself, I don't know what I want for myself and my life. I feel alone. And sometimes I think everything would be better if I just disappeared.
Our situations are different. We are at different points, and have different biases and cognitive dissonances. I'm still with my husband, and I'm (usually) very happy about that. Yes, we've had extremely rough patches, but I'm very proud of the fact that we're still fighting the good fight. But even now... sometimes I feel like I would be much better off just ending things now, and making my own way for myself. Finding myself, and the things I love... and just generally working on me. When I think like this I often daydream about what life would be like "if". It's only because I haven't been able to imagine a scenario in which I don't come back to my husband with hopes that either 1: he's a changed person with whom I can finally be happy with or 2: I'm a changed person that can find happiness with myself, even if things aren't perfect.
In the end, it all comes down to "what do I need to do for myself, so that I can be whole?".
