Reader’s Question

My girlfriend of 8 years just broke off our relationship, saying that she wasn’t happy and needed a break from me. For two weeks she tormented me because she couldn’t really decide what she wanted.

Now, I know I haven’t been the best boyfriend to her. I cheated on her and “used” her for many years. I’m a recovering drug addict, but I’ve been sober for about 2 years now. Despite everything, she stuck with me until about one year ago when her grandfather died and she completely shut me out of her life. I got mad because of that and then we grew further apart.

I want to work on our problems and go to counseling together, but she doesn’t want to. She says it won’t help. After she broke up with me I had panic attacks, and I just can’t let go. She was there for me for six years, and now that she needs someone she is shutting me out. We have a six-year-old son together. I also wanted to try to make a happy family, and I keep telling her this. I want to work on our problems. I had all these dreams of when I started to get my life together, and now I feel like they are over. I know I have my own problems, and I’m going to go to counseling next week, but I need to know what I can do to keep her. I can’t let go of her. She also keeps telling me she still isn’t sure what she wants to do, and this giving me a little hope but it hurts. Now I have trust issues even though I know I shouldn’t. I constantly think she is with someone else even though she swears she is not. I think I’m pushing her just to see if she’s really with someone else or not. I’m also trying to make her hate me so she’ll tell me, and I think I’m making it worse. I think somehow that if she is with someone else it will make it easier for me because then I’ll know there is no hope. Any advice would be appreciated.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

You frankly admit to serious problems and that you have “used” and cheated on your girlfriend for years. Now that you’re under some pressure, you are seeking counseling, despite the fact that you’ve had years to get clean up your life. You also cast yourself as quite the victim, blaming your girlfriend for shutting you out when she was hurting and “tormenting” you by not firmly closing the door on your relationship. Meanwhile the only real “victim” in this whole, sordid story is a young boy whose father engages in a lot of twisted thinking and whose mother still can’t decide with absolute certainty what kind of man she wants in her life. Playing the victim and blaming others (as well as “possessive thinking”) are hallmark features of a character in need of much reconstruction.

My advice: Get off your pity pot and get busy tending to your own issues. While you’re thoroughly cleaning up your act, be a better parent and role model to your son, whether you end up in a committed relationship with his mother or not. Stop focusing on your girlfriend and what you think she needs or what she’s done to you. You have enough to handle just tending to your own problems. You describe yourself as a “recovering” drug addict. Because I’m familiar with recovery dynamics and the guiding principles of most programs, I also have a sneaking feeling that if you had been really been “working” a solid “recovery” program all these years, this feedback would be totally unnecessary. So, stay clean and get going. You have lots of work to do. You should find considerable support available in your counselor or recovery group. If you want further information on possessive thinking, playing the victim, and blaming others, I have some prior posts on those subjects in the main site blog.