Marrying your Horror

I recently had a girlfriend who was a lovely person but had a lot of childhood issues, that in 40 years she had not managed to get the upper hand on. Her life was ruled by the issues her life had given her. I found I was continually shocked by new revelations and how life was being moulded by the past and not the future. I have not had the traumas she has been subjected to but I am fairly empathetic to events beyond people's control. Don't mis-understand, I have had business setbacks, injury and difficult relationships amongst the normal course of life. It has not all been plain sailing, but I have met some fantastic people, had fabulous girlfriends and enjoyed some great experiences. I felt I was stretching my empathy to the maximum, not showing shock at her traumas, not holding the past against her, but a point was reached where she presented some of her counselling worksheets which talked about Imago. I had seen this before in a book I read. Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) is a form of romantic relationship and couple therapy that focuses on relational counselling that transforms a conflict into an opportunity to grow and heal. Now if I had been married to the love of my life and we felt we were falling out, then this might be of interest. But if someone with whom I am not even sure, I would like to have a relationship with yet, presents a program to overcome conflict, then I am deeply worried. I have no unsolved past issues that rule my life, so my impression was that I was somehow going to adapt my psyche to make her feel good about being together. Some of the differences we had were; I enjoy regular sex while she thought it was for birthdays, I enjoy relatively good health most of the time while she has more medical issues than I could name and is regularly taking drugs and visiting medics, I have a very busy daily schedule with a lot of responsibility while she has one hour a week of work and an inordinate amount of free time, I enjoy tramping while a walk with the dog is the most she aspires to, I like to sleep together with a partner while she thinks this is intolerable, and then of course the topic of conversation is often illness and overcoming trauma while I enjoy science, design, photography, humour, adventures and achievements. So she asked me what I thought of the relationship therapy pages? As it was I had to read each paragraph about three times to even get the gist of it. Also I have more pressures on me to learn and understand other new things than I have ever had in my life, so I was not interested in adding a new topic. From when I read about Imago a decade ago, with interest and devotion to learn something, I found that there may have been one applicable sentence in the entire book, so this labour of self improvement was rewarded with nothing. So my answer was "Been there, done that, not interested, too busy to even consider it". I think that was a trigger for her to ask me if I'd like to join the "friend zone" although the message I was told was "You socialize wrong". We had spent, for the first time, Friday, Saturday and Sunday doing joint activities together so I have no idea which of many activities this comment related to. So what was my answer? Well to be honest, why do I need a friend that is needing to drain me to fill up her life? But on consideration I said "It is not fair on the next girlfriend to have past girlfriends as friends". In a message the next day, couched with no offence intended, I said "People have to change themselves, you cannot change others". She took no offence, apparently, but responded in a highly judgemental way. There is nothing to save, no desire to continue, not a friend I need, a challenge I am not inclined to adopt and I am not inclined to arguing for the sake of it, so I did not reply.. I have experienced a circle of friends that includes past partners before, both myself and vicariously from friends. It generally does not work. People get jealous, suspicious and start blaming or complaining and it just becomes a handbrake to beginning a fresh relationship. It's OK if you rekindle a friendship from say 10 years ago, after you have moved on, forgotten each other for a time, had new relationships, etc. Although even then some women can still create issues. Perhaps even men as well. So that is the pre-amble to a snippet from somewhere that I saved decades ago, that includes the title of this blog. I had thought of this in relation to the woman mentioned above, but never got to locate it and communicate it to her. So now I will write what I originally intended to share... Dying For Love WE ARE ALL, EVERY ONE OF US, FULL OF HORROR. IF YOU ARE GETTING MARRIED TO MAKE YOURS GO AWAY, YOU WILL ONLY SUCCEED IN MARRYING YOUR HORROR TO SOMEONE ELSE'S HORROR; YOUR TWO HORRORS WILL HAVE THE MARRIAGE, YOU WILL BLEED AND CALL THAT LOVE. Michael Ventura, "Shadow Dancing in The Marriage Zone" Not that I felt I had a horror, and I certainly had not contemplated marriage, but the feeling I was getting was that because I was a nice guy, I could devote myself to making her feel good about herself. I felt the relationship was going to be based upon a way for her horror to go away. Warning, warning, warning - given that I recollected the above quote. I felt if someone had not dealt with their horror over 40 years, then they had not yet accepted the responsibility that it was up to themselves to deal with it. They even told me that their relationship history had been sabotaged by their childhood trauma. I tend to be self reliant and not rely on others to keep me sane. Sure, I may seek advice or help with job-seeking, business coaching etc, but not advice to allow me to feel I have a valid place in the world. In closing, my advice to you, if you have a horror in your past is to NEVER expect a relationship to be the solution to resolving that horror. Resolve the horror yourself first with help from professionals, and then you will be in a new realm for good relationships, even with people who have now resolved their previous horrors, but do not rely upon you to fix them. You will find a different class of relationship, because you are no longer that person whose horror is ruling their life. Now that is something different for a Nudist oriented website. Mind you, the full gamut seems to exist here and we all have relationships. Live for the future, make the future, be the future.