20th April 2008
Question
I'm a woman in my early thirties, a single parent with a young son whom I love dearly. I have a great job which I love and am financially secure. I am a very outgoing person with a large group of brilliant friends. Although I'm a single parent, I have great support from my child's father and both sets of grandparents.
My relationship with my child's father lasted 10 years. The first few were perfect, but things went wrong as I felt I was being taken for granted and was putting in all the effort into our relationship. It was a messy break-up but now we have developed a good parenting relationship which works well for us.
I have a good personality and am a very confident person, with absolutely no problem meeting or talking to guys. But for some reason I keep ending up with unsuitable boyfriends. When I meet a guy who treats me well, I lose interest very quickly and seem to fall, instead, for guys who I know aren't going to commit. Although I see this, I continue with the relationship in the hope that they will change. I ignore all the warning signs, which are there right from the start. What do I do?
Answer
Stop ignoring the warning signs? Try and stick it out with the nice guys? Fat chance? Fascinating how hard it is to do the obvious isn't it? The reason, of course, is that something far more powerful is shaping your boyfriend choice.
I mentioned to the master of seduction about you shooting yourself in the foot. That's true. You are. But that's only on the surface. Deep down you have a far more fundamental need which is entirely fulfilled by your failure to choose the right guy. You're succeeding at some emotional level by missing out on the loving and lasting relationship. Think about it. How else can you explain such deliberate blindness, such apparently perverse behaviour?
I don't know why, and neither do you. And perhaps it's not necessary to entirely understand the origins of such self-destructive behaviour. Sometimes the precise whys and wherefores elude us. It is sufficient to see what you're doing. You are leading an inauthentic existence, one that is not true to the real goodness inside you.
Maybe you're beating yourself up because of some misplaced guilt. Maybe you're living out the unhappiness of a parent with whom you over-identify. Maybe you have an agenda on men which insists that they must fail you. That's not the point. The point is that you're failing to honour your own worth.
You have to start acknowledging that self-worth. In short, you have to start acting as though you believe in your own worth. There's no point in going the full ten rounds with some commitment-phobic loser and you know it. Honour your intelligence. Put value on your dignity. Don't hand someone else the power to take it away. Set store by your competence and goodness. Drop anyone who doesn't pay it due heed.
In times of trouble, I now realise, my young son became my moral compass. Even if I didn't value myself much, I wanted to be able to always look him straight in the eye, and feel like the kind of person who deserved his respect. I used my love for him as a crutch. You love your son very much. Might a similar strategy help? Just until you love yourself a little more?
