I spoke to a client today after her boyfriend left her, ran off and married another woman. Her last words to me before she hung up were, “it’s the story of my life.” At some time in our lives, I know many of us have felt this way. So are we destined to replay the roles in our romantic lives over and over?Astrologers will point out that there are certain markers in a natal chart, that could leave us reacting in certain ways. I will suggest this definitely has an influence, but your love life is determined more by nurture than nature. Meaning that we have choice in how our love life goes. That the choices we make romantically have more to do with our views of ourselves and how we were raised, than a predestined fate. That is not to say I do not believe in destiny bring to soulmates together. I absolutely believe in that, and you still have choices to make. I am also aware that in some cultures parents choose mates. So I am not addressing other cultures. I have not experienced it and would be uneducated about the process.
We can never control fully another person, we can control how we come across, how we handle our lives, how we look (at least to some degree) to our romantic partners. I have a saying that is true for me. In my life, it is not the men I have treated the best who have loved me the most. It is the men that I have been willing to be myself around and not be concerned how they saw me. Those are the men who have stood by me. I say this mostly because it has taken me lots of dating and many years to understand this.
For years, I drank, I drank every day. I did not do drugs really (pot being the exception), I just loved a good disco, then dancing, then parties, then just liquor. As I drank, my relationships got progressively more dysfunctional. Why wouldn't they? I was using "bad" bait. I attracted more dysfunctional people, and romantically I seemed in pain a lot. Later I just did not care. Any hopes of real love were gone, I was just looking for relief and some kind of companionship and sex.
By the time I got sober, I blamed my love life on the people I was involved with. Guess what? I brought those people in my life and involved myself with them. I was the common denominator. However for a time I continued to see myself as a victim. Luckily for me, I had good people in my life who practiced tough love. I began to see I was a volunteer not a victim, and I was at times a perpetrator of a bad relationships. I did it in all kinds of ways. I did not honor myself. I could not set boundaries with people, if I wanted to date you I would do anything to date you, including changing myself into a pretzel, spending monies I did not have, skip work to be with you, ignore the way you treated me, and encourage you to comeback knowing all those things. In the end, I picked people I did not even respect to fill the void.
I have learned so much in the last 22 years. It happened gradually, and I was at my healthiest when I met my husband. I could say no, I was independent; I took care of my body, my money and spirit. I had friendships with others. At that point I was more a whole person than I had ever been. I was firm with my boundaries to the point of almost letting go of him. He altered what he was doing, I did not.
I tell you this because it is a universal truth that anyone can apply. There is nothing special about me. In fact I would go so far to say if I can put forth that effort, anyone can. I am queen of mistakes. The process starts with us. If he says he doesn’t want a commitment, and you can’t negotiate something you can be comfortable with, believe him. If it turns out different, you will know, because he will change it. If you want to catch a better fish, use better bait. We have a choice from how we carry ourselves, to how we let ourselves be treated, and the 1000s of small things in between. So indeed it is my belief now that we are co-creators with God in our lives. We are not destined to repeat our past romantic mistakes unless we choose to. There is another choice.
So help yourself to recover, there are a myriad of ways from 12 step groups, to therapy both group and private, to books, and support groups. A lot of these are low or no cost. Even church's have groups that meet in their parishes. So the choice is up to you, what kind of a relationship do you want?