dragon_thoughts

One of my ex boyfriends really messed me up. He acted badly, and I stayed with him long enough to believe that it was normal behaviour.

I thought I had dealt with a lot of the fallout from that relationship pretty well. Unfortunately, I'm still uncovering the damage.

I found myself reacting to behaviour which was the same as my ex's and believing the consequences or the meaning of the behaviour was the same currently as it was in the past. Sorry that was difficult to put into the right words. My current boyfriend is a considerate kind person. My ex wasnt. However sometimes because they do the same things or say the same things, I forget that the meaning is different.

To give a better example... It would be Friday night, both me and my ex were working full time during the week. We would usually always spend Friday night together. I was living with my mum at the time. She used to go out on a Friday night, leaving us with the house to ourselves, what more could two young twenty somethings want? Apparently he wanted the pub more. He would tell me he was just going for one drink after work, and would get the 6pm train/bus down. He'd maybe call an hour later and tell me he missed it. I would expect him on the next one. More time would pass. I'd call when he was about 15 mins or so from the house (by my estimations) - he would still be in the pub, promising the next bus home.

On average he would get down to me by about 10pm. Too late to really do anything together, like go to the cinema. He knew I was waiting on him, yet he didn't seem to want to spend time with me, or care about my evening or my feelings. One night he phoned me at 12:30 and told me he was getting a taxi, and I told him not to bother. He showed up at 1am and I was furious. He was drunk and wanted to sleep beside me. That happened more than once. I hated it, and I hated feeling underappreicated and used. What was worse was my mother the observer in all this.

I will never let myself be treated badly again. Unfortunately when my boyfriend tells me he'll be with me at 10:30pm, it triggers all these feelings, and I start feeling like my current boyfriend is an immature inconsiderate selfish bastard. I'm more than happy for him to go off and do things without me, I'm actually very happy on my own, or doing my own thing. However its the process, its telling me he'll be back at a certain time. Its everything which reminds me of my ex.

This triggers feelings of panic, because I promised myself I'd never allow myself to be hurt again and I really love my boyfriend I don't want to lose him, but if he's bad then he's got to go. Which triggers feelings of misery and loss and anger.

I didn't realise this was all going on in my head when I would feel uncomfortable with him saying "I'll do x" its taken WEEKS for me to have these thoughts verbalised in my head (and my belief for why this is, is a locked post for another day).

However what I wanted to say in this post is we have a solution to this problem. Having identified what the issue actually is, I can now work on developing some more positive core beliefs about my boyfriend. So when I feel panic, I will remind myself with examples of how he is considerate, and cares about me and my feelings. I will remind myself that when he say's he'll do something or be somewhere at a certain time he always is (or at least calls). I will remember he is not selfish and he does want to be in a relationship and be a boyfriend. I figure after a few times of this, I will settle down again and be more like the person I was before I got messed up with my ex.

There is hope, behaviour can be changed. You just have to be willing to overwrite your old beliefs.