Attention Addict

Posted by fxckfeelings on August 13, 2012

We’re not the first to say that love is a drug, strong enough to either addict you to the wrong person or to keep you chasing one new person after another. Your friends will attempt countless interventions, but the only way to get clean is to figure out what’s good for you and seek the strength to pursue it. Otherwise, you’ll be a bitter ex who has trouble letting go of past dreams, or a compulsive cheater who leaves a trail of bitter exes who call you liar, always longing for your next fix.
–Dr. Lastname

After three years with my boyfriend, everything went in a downward spiral in the past week. He was talking to a girl who hated me and was bent on breaking us up for a while. When I talked to her about it to get answers, she replied that my boyfriend no longer loved me and liked her. That made me suspicious, so I started snooping around—I found messages to girls where he would give a compliment and then ask for their number, a secret twitter where he only followed female friends, a secret Facebook where he had only female friends (a couple of which have tried to get with him) and messaged them asking for phone numbers. I also found on that Facebook that he had went with a female friend to the movies the same day he told me he was broke. He admitted that he had female friend numbers in his phone under male names, but he said they were all just friends and he didn’t know why he hid everything, just that he was scared of how I would react. I know that I should just let him go—at least I think I should—but I don’t know how I’ll cope. I feel like there was something wrong with me for him to hide everything from me. I don’t understand why he created this other life for his female friends. I know most people would read this and say he was trying to get with someone, and maybe that’s true, but I don’t think so. I know he is extremely insecure about his image, I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I know I’m over thinking but I feel like I can’t have closure until I know what was going on in his mind, but he says he doesn’t know.

You say you need to understand what’s wrong about your compulsively lying boyfriend before you decide whether or not to dump him…which, unfortunately, is just one more lie.

Of course, the two of you would like to understand why he’s a liar (you probably more than him), but you also know by now that there are no answers to questions like this that ever make a difference. Whether he got his lying habits from being abused, misunderstood, or beset by impulses, he’s got what he’s got.

The truth is that your quest for understanding, in a situation like this, avoids and postpones hard choices that you don’t want to make. In order to avoid the pain of losing him, you’re stifling that part of your personality that is supposed to protect you from being screwed and help you find a good, honest partner.

There are rare exceptions to the rule that liars are liars, and most involve illness. If your boyfriend was lying because his brain was in a medical state of overexcitement caused by mania, or experiencing the weird, paranoid thoughts of schizophrenia, then medicine might help. Even when mental illness is causing bad behavior, however, people have to want to change or no one can help them, including shrinks.

So it usually comes down to the same questions, which is not why he’s a liar, but whether he wants to change, how far he’s willing to go to get his forked tongue under control, and whether his actual performance as a recovered liar will meet your standards for partnership. If he needs to feel more secure before he can begin to clean up his act, or understand the reasons for his lying, it’s not going to happen. Change hurts, and lying feels better than not lying, at least until you get caught. In the meantime, lying gets him lots of attention from lots of girls, giving him lots of reasons not to change a damn thing.

Like an addict, your boyfriend will always feel the urge. You can’t trust what he tells you, of course, but you can judge his progress by how openly he talks about his problem, how diligently he stays away from temptations, and how readily he owns up to his mistakes. If he goes for help because he wants to feel less like cheating, rather than because he wants to get straight, it won’t do him any good. Like an alcoholic, he needs to want recovery for itself, not because it will make him feel better in the short rum.

Just as he’s got the habit of lying, you’ve got the habit of loving him, so you have your own work to do. Start by pushing yourself to rebuild your independence, and keep asking yourself whether you see signs of real change in his behavior.

Remember, reliability is a necessity in a good partnership, and you’re not the one responsible for his reliability, just for your own, so don’t waste time blaming yourself or trying to change him. Believe in your own standards, stand up for them, and see if he can make the grade. If he can’t, you need the strength to move on and find someone who can.

STATEMENT:
“I think my boyfriend is sincere when he tells me he loves me, but, even if that’s true, I can’t live with his lies. I’ve got to work on my independence so I can decide objectively whether he’s boss of his inner liar and do what’s necessary if he’s not.

I love my husband, but I can’t help flirting and dating when he isn’t around (like when I travel for work, which is often, I probably spend too much time at the hotel bar without my ring on, looking for guys to hook up with and never see again). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a nympho, I just like the way guys talk to me when they’re interested, so, when I’m traveling and a long way from home, I like the excitement of picking up a guy, having sex, never seeing him again and going back to my normal life. I’ve always had a weakness for that kind of thing, but now it’s threatening to break up my marriage with a guy I really like, although he doesn’t excite me any more, sexually or otherwise. I wish I understood why I was like this and what I can do to be normal.

Your natural urge to understand your dilemma strikes me as evasive as the woman above who won’t leave her boyfriend until he understands his. You’ve been wrestling with the issue of your need for excitement for many years, and if there were an explanation that would give new meaning to your life and better control over your actions, you would have found it by now.

You’re pursuing a false hope rather than accepting the fact that, whatever the reason, you are the way you are, this is a problem you’re going to have to deal with, and so far you haven’t.

Given the demon of your inner restlessness, ask yourself what the risks are of allowing it a place in your life. Obviously, it could cost you your marriage, but you seem to be looking at that as a matter of making your husband unhappy, when it’s really much more; you may break his heart and destroy whatever you’ve built together in terms of kids, in-law relationships, and financial stability. And, in case you didn’t notice, you’ll have damaged your honesty and integrity.

If you’re cheating, you’re a cheat, and that means you can’t be trusted by anyone, including yourself. Yes, you can rationalize to yourself that you can’t help it because your husband is no longer exciting, you have healthy sexual needs that are much better satisfied elsewhere, and that getting them satisfied is what allows you to stay with him. You don’t create marital partnerships, however, by promising sexual fidelity only as long as it feels good. That would push the divorce rate to around 90%.

Now that you’ve added up all the risks involved with your hunting expeditions, it’s time to decide how hard you should try to stop. If you do, expect a struggle; you’ll feel an upsurge in frustration and rationalization and become fantastically creative at inventing reasons for returning to the chase, perhaps to gain an even deeper self-understanding. You’ll do better if you have a coach or a support group of fellows-in-would-be-transition (again, the 12 steps of recovery benefit addicts of any stripe).

If excitement is more important to you than partnership, expect trouble ahead. Your husband may not sign on to the deal, even if he knows you want to stay married and doesn’t take your flings personally (unlikely until many tears have flown and many therapy hours have been logged). At that point, he may still dislike the risk of STDs and never knowing when he can trust you.

So don’t try to be normal, because that’s not an option. Instead, decide whether pushing yourself into a dull life of monogamy when you don’t feel like it is worth the effort and, if it is, you’ll find many tools that will give you strength. Which is good, because you’re going to need them.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like marriage has made me unhappy and restless and the only way forward is to find an outlet for this restlessness, but I know that’s not what’s most important to me and that I’m at risk of losing my partnership and my integrity. I can find the strength to make sacrifices if I believe they’re for a good cause.”