Question:

Hi,

I stumbled on to your site by accident, or the grace of god! I have been dating a man for about a year and a half, throughout that time all he ever did is talk about his ex wife, drool over other women when he took me out and treat me like crap.

Needless to say I fell in love with a jerk who didn't love me, I decided not to stand for the emotional abuse anymore and discontinue the relationship. He calls me constantly telling me he loves me, gets laid and is gone for another week or two.

I know this, but what is wrong with me that when he calls, I listen, when he knocks on my door I open, when he's there I'm reminded how attracted I am to him and how much I love him. When he's gone I feel devastated again, I cry constantly, everywhere I go and all the people I see remind me of him.

What do I need to do to put myself in the right track, he's capitalizing on my weakness and for my sake I need to be strong, can you help?

Sincerely,

Desperate to get over it


Answer:

Believe it or not, you've almost got this problem solved. I congratulate you for being painfully honest with yourself, for accepting responsibility for the situation and realizing you are allowing him to do this to you. A lesser person would take the easy way out, blame him, and play victim.

There are four parts to solving this once and for all and preventing it from happening again. You don't just want to solve it in this relationship, you want to solve it so it doesn't happen to you ever again, in any relationship.

Part One is identifying the real problem. The real problem is you're being abused and you know it.

Part Two is accepting responsibility for it. You've done that.

Part Three is changing yourself so it doesn't happen again, with him or with any man. That's where you're at now, and you know it.

Part Four is The Test.

Since you've already figured out Part One and Part Two, let's take it from Part Three: Now that you've accepted responsibility for the situation, what do you do about it? How do you change yourself so you don't have to put up with this anymore?

Here's what I suggest: Sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and write down everything you're unhappy about in the relationship. After you've written everything down, find the common thread. By that I mean: What do all the things you've written down have in common? Once you figure out what it is, go after the common thread, change it and everything else will fall into place piece by piece.

If you write everything down, (i.e., "he just wants sex, he treats me poorly, he's a taker, he only shows up when he wants something," etc.) I'm sure you'll find his behavior all boils down to one element: Respect. Or, to be more precise: Lack Of Respect. So his treating you with a lack of respect would be the common thread.

I teach my students if there is no respect there is no relationship. Only varying degrees of abuse.

Next, ask yourself, "Why does he treat me with so little respect?" The answer is painfully simple: Because you allow him to. Why do you allow him to? Because your level of self respect is low. To correct the problem once and for all you need to work on your level of self respect. Once you do that you will insist on having everyone else treat you with the same level of respect you give yourself (Actually, that's what's happening now. He treats you with so little respect because you treat yourself with so little respect).

So how do you fix the problem?

Let me ask you this: If every time your boyfriend came over he slapped you across the face, what would you do? What would you say to him? What would you say to yourself? How long would you put up with it? What would you say and do if he said, "This is just the way I am. If you loved me you'd accept me for who and what I am. You wouldn't try to change me into what you want."

No matter what you said to him or to yourself, I very seriously doubt you'd let him continue slapping you across the face. You would draw the line and say some version of, "That's it. Get out I deserve better than this. Our relationship is over."

Every time he treats you with disrespect, every time he abuses you sexually or emotionally, it's no different than if he physically slapped you across the face. In this case the slap is emotional, but it hurts just as bad, if not worse, than a physical slap across the face.

Where do you draw the line of acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior? That's your level of self respect. By writing everything down on paper you'll be able to see in black and white what your level of self respect is and where you draw the line. How do you increase your level of self respect from abuse to a good, strong, positive, healthy, constructive self respect?

Let me answer you this way. We are all programmed, just like a computer. That programming is in your subconscious mind. We start getting programmed the day we are born by parents, relatives, friends, the church, and anyone else we accept as an authority figure. We're all slaves to the programming in our subconscious minds.

Fortunately, as an adult, we all have the ability to be in control of the programming. Once you're in touch with this concept, learn how to do it, and put it to practice it puts you in control of your destiny and you are no longer a victim of fate or a victim of bad programming.

Now let's apply this to you. For some reason you've gone through the "straw that broke the camel's back" in your relationship with your boyfriend. You've finally said, "I deserve better than this." You know it, you feel it and you believe it. But for some reason you're having trouble making this new programming stick. Why?

I think if you look back on your past relationships you'll see the situation with your boyfriend is a pattern that is repeating itself. Remember the common thread of the abuse I had you find in your relationship with him? Now we're extending it to all of your bad relationships. We're getting the weed by the roots, so to speak, so it dies rather than resurfaces somewhere else.

Since the pattern, or habit, has been there for years you won't be able to break it in a week or two. Your relationship with your boyfriend has gone on for a year and a half, plus all the abusive relationships you've had in the past. It's going to take time to break that pattern.

Here's the most effective way I have found to solve it, once and for all. Take a blank piece of paper and write on it, "I love, protect and respect myself unconditionally." Under that sentence write, "I accept the best life has to offer."

Tape that sign to your bedroom wall so it's the first thing you see in the morning when you wake up and the last thing you see before you go to sleep. Read it out loud when you wake up and just before you go to sleep.

Next, write out each sentence on a business card, one sentence to a card. Carry them with you everywhere. Take them out and read them quietly to yourself several times during the day.

What does this do? It reprograms your subconscious, attacking the negative programming, zeroing in on it like a laser beam. Please don't take this lightly. It is very powerful stuff. It works. It's worked for me and it's worked for my students.

Then will come Part Four, The Test. I guarantee your boyfriend will come back, over and over again, to see if you've done your homework. He'll say and do everything he can to push your buttons and try to get you back under his thumb so he can abuse you again. You can gauge your progress by how your respond to him.

As you progress you'll come to enjoy his attempts to abuse you because he can give you some real life progress reports. Will you make mistakes? Of course. Don't beat yourself up. Each time he tries to abuse you you'll see you're putting up with less and less of it until he vanishes from your life completely, never to return.

Eventually you'll see your boyfriend is merely a reflection of your negative programming. Once the programming is gone, he'll be gone, too.

How long will it take to see changes? If you do the homework I gave you you'll see some changes in about thirty days. Then those changes will pick up speed, like a snowball going downhill. It will affect all areas of your life, not just your personal relationships. And it will affect them for the better. In three to six months, if you do the homework, you should have the problem well under control.

If you approach this the same way an overweight person who seriously wants to lose weight approaches a diet you'll be able to keep your growth and progress in it's proper perspective. By that I mean a person who seriously wants to lose weight knows progress needs to be slow, steady and secure. One step at a time. The weight comes off and stays off as they adjust to their new self image day by day.

The unsuccessful dieter says something to the effect of, "Hey, I've been on a diet for twenty four hours and I haven't lost any weight. I thought I'd lose ten pounds by now. This diet doesn't work." Then they wonder why they fail. I don't want that to happen to you so remember: slow, steady and secure.

Another thing: You're not in love with him, as you seem to think. Rather, he's learned what you want, need and desire in a relationship. He's learned what you want to hear and what you want done, and he gives them to you only when he wants something. So you're in love with the performance he puts on, the role he plays (like an actor in a movie), when he wants something from you. He continues this role until he gets what he wants, then he leaves until he wants something again. And, as you've already learned, you won't hear from him again until he wants something.

The bottom line is self respect. If you do the homework I've suggested you will be well on your way to solving the problem once and for all.

Good luck and God Bless.

Bryan Redfield
Put the dating successes of over 10,000 single men and women and to work for you. Visit Bryan's website at: http://www.bryanredfield.com

This advice column is copyright 1999 - 2006 by Bryan Redfield.

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