The Ladies’ Bitter Club

Posted by fxckfeelings on June 10, 2021

Since loneliness and a string of bad relationships can make you feel like a loser, it’s not surprising that most people assume finding someone new is the path to victory. And if you could order a perfect new partner through an app with free delivery, that would be fine. Instead, the search for someone new mostly requires luck—also not available to order—so making a good relationship your goal just makes you unfairly responsible for achieving the uncontrollable while pushing you to make bad compromises to avoid loserdom/loneliness. Instead, remind yourself that you’re never a loser if you do your best to be a good person and live independently with whatever loneliness is unavoidable. If you can do that, celebrate by ordering yourself something nice. 
-Dr. Lastname

After a nightmare divorce and a shitty abusive relationship following that, I’ve been alone for three years now. I want a companion but I don’t know how to find one, or at least know how to find one that sucks less than the last two (I also don’t know how to change my attitude). By the way, I have three kids, which makes finding someone that much harder since single moms are, well, an acquired taste. My goal is to figure out how to overcome my past and, in some ways, my present in order to find a good partner. 

F*ck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship

As hokey as it sounds, all bad relationships teach good lessons. (It should be embroidered on a pillow, assuming you wouldn’t just cover the pillow in puke.) Those lessons, however, don’t come directly from your feelings, especially if those feelings are painful; the more you’re hurting and the more needy you feel, the more you probably want to make the same mistake you made before and the less you like and respect yourself. Through the prism of heartbreak, you think the lesson is to give up and strap a back of peanut butter-filled pretzels to your face. 

The real wisdom comes from knowing what you want and why you can’t have it, and realizing your failure to get it was not because you did something wrong, but because what you wanted, or the kind of person you wanted it from, was probably wrong in the first place.

In fact, deciding you should be able to find a good companion is a bad goal to begin with; there’s nothing wrong with wanting one but it’s a dangerous obligation to place on yourself. That’s because bad, attractive companions are much more common than good ones, a bad one can make life much, much harder, and you never fully control your ability to find a good one (or have good luck in general). So don’t make yourself responsible for finding a good guy, just for becoming more independent and more selective while you keep on searching.

Don’t wait until you feel independent and selective; with three kids to care for, and strong needs that have already proven their power to blind you to red flags and push you towards bad choices, those feelings may never come. But don’t let that stop you from acting independently and selectively. Simply draw up a list of the character qualities a good companion must have, i.e., ignoring the superficial to focus on someone who’s a reliable, honest, decent person. Then make a list of the facts you need to know about his present and past life that would tell you whether he actually has those qualities and you’re ready to do effective screening.

Once you’ve got your selective actions covered, find independence by pushing yourself to work hard and find ways of meeting friends while still applying those criteria for basic decency and reliability to the way you screen and choose them. If your unhappy and needy feelings make you forget your game plan then you should also find yourself a therapist who can be a good coach (most medical insurance will pay for it) and a psychiatrist if persistent depression is a problem.

Break-ups and unhappy kids can make you feel helpless and out of control. In reality, you have three kids you love, escaped from two bad relationships, kept yourself out of trouble for the past three years, and, in the process, graduated from the college of rotten companionship. Congratulate yourself, embroider yourself that pillow, and use what you’ve learned to build a better life while protecting yourself from the bad old instincts.

STATEMENT:  

“The hangover of bad relationships and the neverending fatigue of parenthood tell me I’m a loser, but I haven’t let myself be trapped, I’ve learned a great deal, and I know what I have to do to lead a meaningful life, even if happiness is far from guaranteed. And as long as I keep trying to be a good mother and keep assholes out of my life and away from my family, I can never be a loser.”