Emo-deration

Posted by fxckfeelings on February 24, 2014

Like Middle Eastern oil and cronuts, love may lose its value if it’s treated as an overly available commodity or if it’s made too scarce to sustain its market. Whether you’re someone who loves love without regard to quality or finds it too hard to get from someone with little to give, knowing what goes wrong doesn’t mean you can make it better. If you think you can improve market conditions, present your proposals positively. without triggering the fear and anger that cause extremes. Otherwise, do what you can to preserve the value of the love you offer, regardless of market influences.
–Dr. Lastname

I’ve been in several long-term relationships, and am in one currently. Each time, I’ve started out very in love with the guy, but eventually this goes away. Then I get bored, I start looking around, and I cheat on then dump the person. I’ve had friends tell me that I need to “just say no,” but I can’t seem to do it. I just go with impulse without thought of consequence. In my current relationship, I started the same way. I became a little disenchanted once I really got to know him, and then one night while I was out and kind of pissed at him, made out with a mutual friend of ours. I felt really guilty, but not bad necessarily. A week later, I broke up with my boyfriend. Usually in the past, I break up and never look back. This time, however, I found myself completely torn up… and a few days ago we got back together. I know I really love this guy, and I hate that I can’t seem to remain faithful to anyone. Am I just a completely selfish, shitty person at my core? Why do I feel the need to explode every good relationship I have? I ask myself these kinds of questions, but what I really want to know is, how can I stop getting bored, cheating, and living in guilt and self-hatred?

You’ve made progress in your relationships if you can truly say you still have feelings and care about your latest boyfriend, but your awareness of your boyfriends’ feelings, assuming that they run deeper than yours, is still a bit lacking. Not lacking is your ability to get frustrated with or hurt by someone you love without having to have sex with someone else.

If, as seems probable, you’re the kind of person who is sensitive to the excitement of love and new relationships but doesn’t form deeper attachments easily, or resonate to those feelings in others, then it’s natural for you to get bored and restless with your lovers. Hating yourself won’t help; it will only make you more self-centered and likely to do the stuff you’re least proud of.

Now that you know you can have long-lasting feelings, decide whether a long-term relationship is what you want. Ask yourself whether the advantages of a long-term relationship are worth the cost, i.e., losing your desired sense of excitement and new love. Sometimes you’ll even be bored, restless, and angry, but when you want something more exciting, you’ll need to learn to roll with it instead of roll around with someone new.

If that’s what you want, find yourself a therapist/coach who can help you identify ways to strengthen your control over your behavior as well as triggers that undermine your ability to do so. Therapy probably won’t make you feel less restless, and knowing why you’re restless probably won’t change your feelings. If you want to change, however, and you’re ready to put up with the required frustration and suffering, a good coach can help. If you don’t want a long-term relationship, there’s nothing wrong with fooling around, but only if you let your lovers know what you want and what’s going to happen.

If, however, you want to make a long-term relationship work, as your recent feelings suggest, then it’s time to learn new skills, give up old habits, and build your ability to manage restlessness, boredom, and libido. Then the only thing you’ll be lacking are a bunch of bad habits, guilty memories, and possible STDs.

STATEMENT:
“I love being in love and have little patience for relationship drudgery, but I’ve discovered that some caring feelings don’t go away. It’s time to decide whether I want a long-term relationship, knowing that it won’t be easy for someone with my temperament and habits.”

My father is third-generation military and a career officer, so he’s not what you’d call a warm guy. I’ve mostly made my peace with it, although it wasn’t easy on me, my sisters, or my mother, a very sweet woman who, for some reason, decided to marry a robocop. Now that my mother is gone, my father is the only local grandparent my kids have, and unfortunately, he isn’t any less stern with them than he was with his own kids. Now my kids are old enough to express how much they dread spending time with him, even though they’re young enough to still be a lot of fun if he’d give them a chance, and it breaks my heart. My goal is to get my dad to relax a bit to maybe enjoy his family for once.

Usually, people with distant dads have at least one attempted heart-to-heart talk with him before they decide to write here for help. That’s because we live in a society that believes in the value of talk and communication, and you’ll get lots of advice on what to say from therapists, friends, movies, and even the occasional humorous bottle cap.

Just in case it hasn’t happened already, however, limit your verbal sharing when you urge him to change, confining yourself to words that are positive and carefully chosen, rather than passionate, authentic, and cleansing. That’s because negative words have a way of making people defensive and bringing out the bad behavior you wish your father could overcome, which could then deepen your impasse.

A positive approach begins by expressing respect and appreciation for everything good he’s done as a father, shows acceptance for his tight-ass style, and then suggests that some of his well-intentioned but negative and stern statements have unintended consequences and need to be re-considered. The goal of your statement isn’t to correct your father’s faults (correcting other people’s faults is the goal he has mistakenly embraced), but to see if it’s possible to motivate him to change.

If your dad doesn’t understand or agree with your proposed changes, don’t keep on trying; the whole point of having done your best to get through to him is freeing yourself from having to do it again. Instead, accept your father as he is and create plans that will protect your kids from his critical demeanor while creating some positive contact. Structure your time together so that you control the agenda, location, and duration of visits, and help your kids understand that their grandfather’s negative emotion is his problem, not theirs.

Your father’s words may continue to cause pain, but you’ll know you’ve done right by him and given your kids the benefit of knowing him, respecting his contribution, and taking comfort from the boundaries you’ve created.

You may not be able to create a happy relationship between your father and the rest of your family, but you can create a meaningful balance in the amount of time you spend together that reflects and teaches your values, not those of the pop psych universe.

STATEMENT:
“I may not be able to stop my father from being a critical, overbearing jerk, but, now that I’m a parent, I can manage his involvement with my family to give him support and respect while protecting my kids from his faults.”