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Post by sexlessw on Jul 5, 2010 13:20:01 GMT -5
T/J KnowLove's thread - you guys are on to something. The need to know all about the POA - and in Trout46's case, the POA's need to know ALL about him.
I've learned - and it's taken me a long time to learn this - all information is not GOOD information for us. Years ago I would have looked into every little detail about my POAs - questioned them endlessly, and yes, I'll admit to snooping thru some of their papers (DH comes to mind, but I didn't get anything out of it).
It finally hit me. I was wasting my time. If the person wanted me to know something, they'd tell me. If they didn't want me to know, then they didn't want me to know. And if they didn't want me to know, was this information helpful or hurtful to me?
I am a believer that if there were important information about a particular person that I wanted to know, sooner or later, I'd get that information. Thru other channels and by NOT looking for it. Prime example: 1st AP's engagement. Which cut me to the core. Years could go past and that person may not mean anything to me - yet the information found me.
Back to KnowLove, on this subject:
You've got some contrary posts! Which is good.
ONE PESKY QUESTION. If the POA tells you he's told his GF about you, how will that make you feel?
Another PESKY QUESTION: If the POA tells you he DIDN'T tell his GF about you, how will that make you feel?
I for one hate being an unknown in a relationship. Which is why EMAs are detrimental to us in the long run. Secrecy kills honesty. IMO.
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Post by knowlove on Jul 5, 2010 13:49:33 GMT -5
Thanks for everyone's feedback. We do get so much insight from each other! Funny that, I really am not all that interested in Poa's past or present GF. I do not ask questions at all really. feel it is his business and he never asks me questions about my M either. I've shared how I feel and what led me to him but other than that we dont discuss much there. Trout, I agree, why does your ex need to know anything from a previous relationship? I personally do not call what you did lying and feel we all deserve some privacy. I do not share all my feelings with my H (are you kidding???) and feel I am entitled to my own private feelings. It should be that way and your ex prying into your most personal stuff is NOT ok (in my book). To me that is really crossing a line. Sounds like your X had some very deep issues of trust before she came into your relationship. I usually do as well but weird, I dont worry about POA's relationships. Felt he was single and who am I to tell him what he can do? Yes Prim, working on this all the time and know there will be progress, answers and hopefully some resolution.
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Post by primrose on Jul 5, 2010 14:11:25 GMT -5
Hi Knowlove, don't know if it's the same thing you have with your POA, but I didn't give a hoot about my POAs life. I met a mistress, knew there was another, met his wife. None of it mattered especially to me. I thought "He's a player and can take care of himself" and I never asked him a thing about his life and talked only of mine. It suited him as I entertained him and it meant he never had to reveal anything about himself, and it suited me as I was utterly selfish in my feelings and got all the attention. Why would I be interested in asking him about his life? He was an escape from reality. The less I knew, the better. P.
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Post by knowlove on Jul 5, 2010 14:43:50 GMT -5
Sexlessw-I admit I have wondered IF he told GF or what he has done since he didnt think he would be do anything more with me. I would rather he DID say he was seeing someone else but I feel that is his business. Prim I only care in the sense of my health and have asked if he has sex with anyone and he has told me who, if anyone, he has been with. I wouldn't want him seeing many girls but I feel I have no place telling a SG while I am married he cannot see anyone. It just wouldn't be fair. I do not care if he sees a GF but many or several, that would not go well. I would not be seeing him if that were the case. I usually am looking for the attention and not avoidant although as you know can become that way at different times. Am learning so much about myself as I plod along here. I do not like dishonesty in general but that is exactly what I am doing. Sounds so hypocritical but have discussed this at length with POA on how I was cheated on, how it destroyed a big part of me and led me to where I am now. He too has had that happen to him with a girl he was planning to move away with. So, I am spending more time with H, less time waiting for POA and more time on MYSELF. Would love steps to continue and slip Q's!!! I love thought provoking questions and love responses from everyone because we all see things from different perspectives.
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Post by g on Jul 5, 2010 14:47:27 GMT -5
P, I was the opposite. The more I knew the more I obsessed about him. I'm on my bberry and not sure if this is same thread but what Trout described regarding his ex wife? Well that's me. My POA could not believe how jealous I was of his past. The sane me knows that kind of behaviour is irrational ad completely unreasonable. But just try telling my addict that. She's an emotional vampire. Bloodshot eyes, looking thru cyber 'pockets', looking at pictures in his picasa album and green with envy. As she looks at the woman smiling as my poa took a pic of her. That woman, probably a total stranger at a rock concert he was at, to my mind was the woman he slept with 5 mths before me. He never said so but my addict believes it. You just try to convince her she's wrong! I can't know anything about my poa cos I obsess like crazy. NC keeps me SANE. What I don't know can't trigger or hurt me. Even if we're talking about someone he thought about having sex with... I still wanted to scratch her eyes out. Confession of sick OLA G
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Post by primrose on Jul 5, 2010 14:57:15 GMT -5
G, I know I said this before, but in a way I envy you your real feelings. Jealousy is very hard for me to access, I eroticised it so early in my life. I have felt it at times and it's been overwhelming so I know I do have a lot to feel, but it's not often it surfaces. P.
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Post by g on Jul 5, 2010 15:08:39 GMT -5
The intense soul destroying jealousy I suffer from when I'm addicted to someone is not feeling real feelings IMO. I'm terrified when I'm in that state. That's a childhood wound without a doubt. My little girl just cannot and will not accept that she is NOT the prettiest sweetest most intelligent princess in the whole kingdom. In her POA prince's eyes at least. I'd be whacking heads off like the Queen of hearts if my POA were to dare to look another woman or use his charm or wit on her. I never let anybody see that side of me because I know it is an insane way to think or behave but is what I'm like. I haven't been addicted to a man often but I have to control that little girl 24/7 when she's in love.
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Post by g on Jul 5, 2010 15:20:33 GMT -5
Ok, I've seen now that it is the same thread. Trout, if your POA is ANYTHING like me, she wants to know she is the most important woman in your life. That means telling her every other woman in your life paled in comparison. That nobody was as good as her. Nobody looked better, loved better, cooked better blablabla. Even if she was hopeless at something if you loved her you would never put her down. My one night with my PoA? He gasped as he said ' You are one of the most sensual women I've ever been with ' ONE OF??? ONE OF??? How dare he!!! (Imagine me throwing my head back and cacklinginsanely as I type)
OMG if only he knew how small and worthless that comment made me feel. Sorry if that was triggery G
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Post by kelleyboy on Jul 5, 2010 15:36:20 GMT -5
I would give a LOT to never feel jealousy again in my lifetime. Symptom of an extremely huge ego.
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Post by g on Jul 5, 2010 16:22:11 GMT -5
I don't think it's a huge ego thing with me either. I've always felt I was never good enough or 'less than' all those around me. When I'm addicted it's clear that regarding my POA, I want to finally feel I'm good enough and hopefully better than anyone else in his eyes. Once the man I'm in love with proves he deserves my trust, I calm down. Maybe that's when my ego gives me a false sense of security and I put myself on a pedestal. That's what I did with my h anyway. The only really long term r/s I've been in in my life so I don't actually have anything to compare it to. Three years ago my jealousy was triggered when my h appeared to be very interested in a woman who entered our social circle but who my h had known since he was in his teens. After my jealousy was triggered tho I got involved with my POA. Was I eroticising the jealousy I felt towards my h by acting out with my POA? The fact is that I've grown away from my h and things are getting worse not better between us. I'm not jealous of him at all. Never check up on him at all. Haven't for along long time. And not because I feel secure. Its because I don't care any more. At least I don't feel as if I care. G
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Post by trout46 on Jul 5, 2010 16:25:37 GMT -5
Greta: Didn't trigger me, but thanks for your concern. (Some indication that I am making progress!) Just want to say that when we were together, I constantly (daily) affirmed my ex-w as the most beautiful, smartest,...you name it, she was numero uno! Yet, from the very beginning of our relationship, she was convinced I still loved my first ex-wife. I was a jealous man in that relationship, but she gave entirely new meaning to "jealousy!" Her insatiable need to snoop was, from my experiences in relationships, absolutely unparalleled. Later in our relationship, when I was a pretty out-of-contol alcoholic, I gave her good reason to be untrusting. Lying, hiding, and other problematic behaviors are pretty typical of active alchoholics who experience someone trying to control their drinking. So, I contributed to her "insatiable need to pry and snoop," but it was there from the beginning.
Prim: Thank you for helping me to see that her behavior was itself an addiction. I just never understood that, but it makes all the sense in the world.
Dodgy and Kelleyboy: Gotta say I'm with Dodgy on the source of my jealousy. I came to see (early on) that it was a function of my deep insecurities and low-self esteem--which I hid from the world in many ways, including professional successes, advanced degrees, all kinds of external markers that had nothing to do with the real problem.
Much of the therapeutic work I have done the past few months (and earlier in my life) has focused on what I would call unresolved childhood pain and abandonment. That has been, for me, the ultimate source of all my insecurities, as well as many dysfunctional adult behaviors, including substance abuse, and now, LA. As I have pursued this work, I have come to understand that LA is the core issue in my adult life, and all the other obsessive-compulsive problems were actually collateral issues and "methods" I used to numb or hide from both historic pain (unresolved childhood crap) as well as relationship issues the caused me pain and further insecurity.
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Post by g on Jul 5, 2010 16:35:37 GMT -5
And yes I agree with Primrose. I was addicted to prying and snooping. It is compulsive behaviour that you become powerless over. You know it's disrespectful and very harmful but you just cantt stop yourself. A vicious circle that will lead to the end of a r/s more likely than not. G
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Post by primrose on Jul 5, 2010 16:46:41 GMT -5
One Christmas when I was, I think 11 and my brother was 10, I got 4 books as my main present, my brother got a motorbike. My uncle had made him a perfect tiny motorbike out of a lawnmower engine. It was a beautiful thing. I watched him unwrap it and inside I was tearing up my heart I was so full of jealousy, but I knew I MUST NOT show it. It was absolutely taboo in my family to show any jealousy. It was probably worse than murdering a policeman to show that you were jealous. I repressed my jealousy very very thoroughly. I was not allowed to have it. When my mother was furiously jealous of my relationship with my father, she repressed that very thoroughly too. Although my mother was so angry and hurt that my father prefered me that it came out in every direction other than straight. Later when I was green with envy that my sister turned out so picture perfect pretty, I repressed all of that and eroticised my sister's beauty. So jealousy is just far far out of my conscious mind mostly. It's been triggered rarely, but when it is it's HUGE. It gets triggered especially by girls who are my sister's age. I hope that eventually I'll get in touch with the untapped well of it and process it. Having such a blind spot around a feeling means I don't see it very easily in others as well as myself. Women who are jealous of me often baffle me and I just don't get it. I'm the same with men being attracted to me who I don't consider the sort of men who "should" be attracted to me. I just don't see it, and that got me into lots of trouble with my POA. Repressed feelings are a devil to come to terms with. P.
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Post by kelleyboy on Jul 5, 2010 18:20:35 GMT -5
Guess I should have spoke for myself
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Post by kelleyboy on Jul 5, 2010 19:20:29 GMT -5
I agree that an insecure person gets jealous. Insecurity and low self esteem(for me), stem from a fear of being unworthy, un-loveable. Jealousy is a fear of being abandoned, unloved, unneeded, unwanted. As an addict, I already know I have an inflated ego, and that my main source of coping is control (control is what I use to manage my life). Managing my life without a higher power is what caused much of that fear I have. Finding this out through doing a fourth step. Quoted loosely from big book of A. A. fourth step: 'We had to ask ourselves why we had "fear". Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?' So I might need to to ask myself, when I am jealous, what is it that I really want to have happen here? I want to have total control over that person! Or at least enough control, that I don't have to feel this way. Why? because that is what I need, to be ok. Is that person really making me jealous? Only speaking for myself. None of my beliefs(for me) are based in reality when it comes to jealousy or any other "deadly sin". If I really look deep, I am playing God, when I try to control others, which I do out of fear. Sounds like a pretty big ego to me. I am not sure that insecurity and low self-esteem can be equated with having a huge ego. They seem to me to be results of having one. Just another way of saying I have a LOT of fear. For me, the bigger the Ego, the more fear. I think it is possible that if I have that big of an Ego, I am more than like suffering from some kind of inferiority complex, compensating for my own fear of being unworthy, which I could also call low self-esteem, and or insecurity. I'm also not saying that stuff which happened in my childhood and affected me negatively didn't make me afraid, uncertain, and un-trusting. It did. But I have still held onto that fear, and used my will to cope with it, and run away, or use substances, or people or whatever to make me feel better. Just my two cents. KB
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