Is a healthy relationship impossible for some of us?

[Adamridge79]

Also, kudos for the fast responses

 

[Adamridge79]

Oh, and apparently you're much smarter than I

 

[Adamridge79]

Or that

 

[M00se]

I can relate so much to your post. Just this weekend I was asking a friend why is it so hard to be happy, as if it's unattainable for some regardless of what we do.

Your line "So here I am, single again, and wondering if maybe healthy relationships are an unreachable dream for some of us" - I feel the same way. I keep trying, keep failing. It makes me wonder if it's just not in the cards or what is wrong with me.

Age doesn't help because I know I feel like a I get older I get further away from that healthy, happy relationship.

 

[Colster]

Hi everyone. I am new here.

I am not the kind of woman who believes that "all men are the same", "all men are liars" or anything like that. But unfortunately I am a magnet for deeply troubled men. This comes from my own issues: a very difficult childhood (codependency) and this kind of thing... So I click again and again with men who have deep traumas too, just like me.

The frustrating part is that I have been really doing my best for the last 7 years, starting from my birthday number 34, after I got separated and divorced, and yet I have still clicked with a couple of very troubled men during the last few years. By doing my best I mean that I have been getting closer and closer to God, trying to cultivate better and better habits, being very careful not to get caught up in unhealthy relationships (and thus being totally single most of the time), and I have been in therapy with a good therapist for 3.5 years. Actually thanks to the therapy I have seen several areas of my life get better and better: work, family, friendships... But not romantic love. It's just an area that seems to escape me in its healthy version. Like an impossible dream, an unreachable star.

So I have just had this experience where I thought I had finally met "the one" to have a healthy and beautiful relationship with, for a lot of reasons. For instance, he considers himself a very spiritual man. So I made the mistake to assume that he had strong ethical principles because of it. Well, it's not exactly the case because there's an ethical principle he doesn't value very much: the fact of being honest. For him it's more important not to disappoint his partner, than being honest. But at some point he ended up confessing several things very difficult to assimilate about his past, like the fact that his longest relationship was an exceptional secret relationship with another man. Now the troubling detail for me is not exactly this relationship being a same-sex relationship, but the secrecy, and the fact that despite this long relationship, he insists that he considers himself straight (this relationship allegedly being a total exception, a very unhealthy one)... So he's full of contradictions like this all the time, that drive me crazy, and it also drives me crazy to see the high amount of lies that he had told me in order to hide this kind of things about his past.

So here I am, single again, and wondering if maybe healthy relationships are an unreachable dream for some of us. It really frustrates me that after so many years of putting everything in God's hands, of doing my best to heal, to be a better person, to choose a partner in an extremely careful way, I still clicked with a very troubled person again.

Do you think that people like me should rather give up and stop hoping to have a healthy relationship one day? Maybe I should just accept singleness for the rest of my life. I'm already 41 after all...

I really do not have answers. The issue here could be debated until the end of the earth. And then, one day, someone might come along to change that.

My suggestion, and it is merely a suggestion. Stop looking toward God for answers, and begin looking at yourself.

 

[Finished]

Yes. A healthy relationship is impossible for some of us.

 

[Naizo]

I've already made the decision myself to never inflict the emotional breakings I experienced in my life upon anyone else. I flirt, because I like to make people smile and it makes me feel alive. I do not imagine I'd ever be a very good partner, nor parent. I like being by myself, so I can think about life and why things/people work the way they work.

If you want my honest answer, no it's not impossible. Did I give up on it cause I got tired of being secondary as those I somehow met moved onto others usually without mentioning it to me whatsoever? Kinda. It's hard to feel important sometimes. There's more to life than love though. Figuring that out took me a long time, as I am a somewhat shallow man that is quick to fall for what I see as beauty.

 

[ardour]

I'd be afraid of taking out bitterness on whoever I ended up with. Having to compromise and arrange time around someone else doesn't seem doable at this point. End of the day we probably couldn't have kids, add to that I'm already old and unable to experience relationship 'firsts' at the typical age they occur, so there's a lot less motivation.

 

[Finished]

But, is a health relationship possible for any of us?

 

[Sarah G]

But, is a health relationship possible for any of us?

I was going to say that!

 

[ewomack]

Healthy relationships are possible, but it involves compromise, equal portions of give and take and openness. So many people have insurmountable problems with these concepts that they become incapable of having relationships. Don't waste any time with a person who isn't honest with you. You will never have a happy relationship with someone who lies to you. Likewise, if you lie to others, you will likely never have a happy relationship with anyone else. People have a hard time not lying to one another. For example, how many times do I hear someone in a relationship use the eye-rolling cliché "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." Does anyone consider that manipulative behavior that they wouldn't like done to themselves? Apparently not, it seems so widespread. Individualism has taken a massive chunk out of the concept of healthy relationships. If you're only thinking what you'll "get out" of the relationship, or you're performing some kind of cost benefit analysis, there is little chance of a healthy relationship forming. It's possible, but people often need to be honest with themselves about the dysfunctional stuff that they bring into a relationship. Both parties always do.

 

[Just_another_one]

I do too like very troubled men and I also think that comes from being very troubled in the first place.
I don't know if it's possible to change it. I keep on making the same mistakes.

 

[Finished]

I do too like very troubled men

Hey! How you doing.........

and I also think that comes from being very troubled in the first place.

Oh... Nevermind......

 

[Just_another_one]

Hey! How you doing.........


Oh... Nevermind......

I don't think you'll ever find healthy people in here

 

[ztyu123]

I don't think healthy relationships exist. I think most people settle out of loneliness, and societal pressures. It's all about comfortability & history instead of compatibility and healthy growth. People just merely tolerate each other and settle for what they feel like they can get and perhaps keep. Everyone is damaged. Everyone is toxic. Everyone has issues. Everyone has life stamps and staples attached to who they are. I don't believe within the exception of medically & physically sometimes heal from anything. It's all about vices, coping mechanisms, and distractions Everyone has traumas. I don't believe anybody is any one's first choice. We're all each other's rebounds or placeholders. Everyone has or will have that person that they were truly in love with but "got away" that if they had the literal power to have them come back and be forever the person that they needed, wanted, and desired for the remainder of our lives, we would have that person. If we could change them regardless of the relationship we may be in, we would go back to the "one". But we can't, so eventually in order to perhaps not be "alone" we all settle eventually. Most people it seems put up fronts and fake happiness. I think settling and "pack" mentality is just part of our nature. Any body who you feel like you can tolerate or put up with will do...eventually. it's nothing that hasn't been happening since the beginning of time or close to it. Doubt it will ever change, I won't see it if it ever does.

 

[user 139760]

Hm, can't believe I never saw this. OP seems gone, so I won't reply directly to her, but in a broader sense. I've struggled with this myself. I've been single a very long time. Enough to forget more about relationships than I quite probably knew of in the past. With everything that's happen, with my reccuring lack of enthusiasm in the opposite sex in recent years, I've wondered at that too, if what's considered to be a healthy relationship is possible or not. My last relationship was with my best friend. I'm to blame for it too, if I had been a better friend, I would have pushed her away. She was in a bad way, coming off of a horrendous relationship which ended in an abortion. I was just supporting her, we spent time together, there was initially nothing romantic about it. Until she tried to kiss me. Of course, I pushed her back then. But it out something in my mind I couldn't get out, that I'd never considered before.

I got two unwavering rules in a relationship. So far I've yet to meet someone who couldn't do one or the other; don't lie to me, don't cheat on me. As I said, she wasn't quite herself and, if I had any wisdom at the time, I wouldn't have dated her. She ended up lying to me AND cheating on me, with a much older man. A doctor no less, at least she aimed high lol. Despite this being, at the time, the person who knew me best, she still broke the two things I find sacred. So, I quit. At first, it was a defense mechanism. I'm not an unattractive person I was told, but if I felt a woman was coming on to me, I'd vehemently push her back. Then, well... everyone who knows me knows that a few years after that, when I was finally starting to enjoy being single, I had other pressing matters to attend to. Relationships took a backburner.

Now, I'm thinking about it again. But after 15 years, I wonder if I still can, like anyone else. I THINK, if someone really wants it, a healthy, normal relationship is possible. It depends on who you find, as well as wether or not he or she is willing, or able, to put in the same amount of effort in it as you are willing to. I think being with someone implies change, implies growth, implies compromise. It's kind of a job. A job means hard work. People seem to have an idea of sunshine and rainbows. Maybe at first, but that passes. After that, it becomes a matter of what you're willing to put into it as well as how much the other perdon is willing to do the same. If it's a 75/25 deal, it's not going to work. It has to be a 50/50 deal and since you cannot control others, it has to be a matter of accepting things you wouldn't necessarily accept. Little bit of selflessness and a genuine interest, I don't mean here curiosity, but ACTUAL interest into who that other person is, to understand them better. That takes time. It takes spending a lot of time together to be able to determine that.

In conclusion, give up is not an option, at least to me. Everyone deserves to have someone who cares. But lots of people expect it to just happen. Won't happen or it'll never work unless you're willing to work for it or make sure the other half of your biome is willing to do the same. Devil is in the details.

Lastly, afterthought. Yeah, it can be disappointing, it can be painful, because you're opening up to some. Someone can hurt you and some don't care much about the hurting.
But, I really believe this, if you aren't willing to open up yourself to hurt? You'll never feel love again. I've struggled with that as well. But at some point, you have to go all in. So don't give up.

 

[NoxApex(N/A)]

I don't believe that anyone is "doomed to singleness," but I do know of my own personal experiences that depending on how you treat your life, what you do with it, who you get involved with, the idea of a healthy relationship seems difficult entirely because of what you have done to your own life.

 

[okidoke]

There’s an old saying - there’s someone for everyone

 

[Adamridge79]

It's really not. But it is. I think I know what I would do given the chance. But I might meet a talking first. So probably don't listen to me

 

[Adamridge79]

talking dragon...this site