Self Love and Loathing:
I hate myself because He hates me. It is a normal state of being - he hates me. I see his point of view before I see mine.
Why?
Because:
1 - I generally put other's needs and wants before my own just by my nature
2 - (This one is not simple and the following explanation is an attempt at providing insight to begin to understand the impact of several years of emotional and verbal abuse on my psyche.)
I spent 17 years in an abusive marriage.
Meaning I spent 17 years taking responsibility for another person's unhappiness and disappointments and was manipulated and trained to believe that:
- my number one priority was to make someone else happy
- No matter what I did I never succeeded at this and probably never could
- Therefore, as a human being, I could never be good or even justify my existence since I was constantly failing at my number one reason for being.
CONCLUSION: UNWORTHY
So... predisposed now to taking the responsibility for any and every relationship issue
Those I believe are the relevant points. The results are that when I left my marriage it was a natural progression for me to find someone else to dedicate myself to. After all the majority of my adult life had now been spent being told how selfish, useless, hopeless, and lazy I am if I'm not making one man happy.
So to find any kind of worth - justification for living - I had to find someone to please, serve, who could provide that for me - who I could make happy.
Enter rtm. He wanted to help. But mostly, like many Dominants, he was attracted by my training - by my intense need to please a man and by my extreme vulnerability to his feedback which gave him immediate power over me.
At first he was very careful with this power. But over time he became disappointed in my multitude of imperfections and I was once again in the situation of wanting desperately to please one man and having that man continually disappointed in my efforts.
CONCLUSION: UNWORTHY
My skewed point of view - always looking at his point of view and never giving the proper validation to my own - made everything very confusing to me.
For example, after getting pregnant (I was being prescribed large doses of antacids for severe stomach pain caused by stress which unknown to either of us counteracted the pill I was taking to prevent pregnancy) and losing the baby naturally - and almost dying in the process (it took three units of blood to stabilize me - that's almost 3/4 of the total volume of blood normally in my body) - and with all of the hormones involved, the depression, the fear, the disappointment (this was my first and only pregnancy at the age of 45), with all of the physical and emotional turmoil I was going through, rtm left me in the hospital alone overnight (during which I had an emergency D&C to stop another bout of uncontrollable bleeding) because he was in so much personal turmoil and my take on this - during the time and for a long while afterwards - was that I was being whiney and needy to want him there with me. After all it was my own fault that I was in the position that I was in and he had so much work to do and must be so disappointed in me - and I had killed our baby with my poor health and irresponsible behavior of not eating right so that the baby could develop properly - and on and on... I was wracked with guilt. It was not until over a year later when someone said something to me about him being equally responsible for the situation that I realized that for the past year and a half I had never considered my own point of view in that situation - had never allowed myself to be angry about being left alone, about being dumped two days later, about being blamed later for the whole thing and accused of having tried to manipulate him into staying with me by purposefully getting pregnant in order to trap him into a commitment.
To this day rtm has never apologized for his behavior, opinion, leaving me alone in the hospital. He has never acknowledged any responsibility for the pregnancy or for my hospitalization. He still believes that he was my victim and that I manipulated him into any guilt he may have had or has.
And that is one example of how skewed the relationship was - much like my marriage - to me being fully responsible for another person's happiness.
REALITY:
*No one can 'make' another person happy.
Taking on the responsibility of making someone else happy is a fool's endeavor. We are responsible for our own happiness and if making someone else happy is what makes you happy than great. If having someone else focus on you makes you happy great. But making another person solely responsible for your happiness is not great because it is impossible! They are doomed to fail.
*Believing that someone else can make you happy or solve your problems puts an unfair burden on them and on your relationship. It is doomed to fail.
*This whole thing is so fucked up...
LET ME CLARIFY:
I DO NOT BELIEVE that this is what a D/s relationship is meant to be like. This is any unhealthy, damaging example of a certain dynamic - a dysfunctional D/s relationship if you will. It started out great but in the end it was devastating to all parties. TOXIC - LUCKY I'M NOT DEAD RIGHT NOW DEVESTATING
I write this to gain clarity. To try to regain some reason for living since mine now hates me. To try to regain some kind of self love when I'm despised by my everything.
If you've read the whole post then I can only hope it helps you find clarity in your relationships in some way. Maybe it can be helpful to someone.