Home Potato Norwood women who love too. Women who love too much. If "love" means "suffering" to you, this book will change your life. Robin Norwood Women Who Love Too Much

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Norwood women who love too. Women who love too much. If "love" means "suffering" to you, this book will change your life. Robin Norwood Women Who Love Too Much

Asya/ 01/26/2016 The book is wonderful.

Inessa/ 17.10.2015 This book changed me from the first day. I read a lot of literature on these topics, mostly when I was desperate from endless love failures. In those books, I was looking for an answer or a clue to improve / return / start over as soon as possible. With all my external activity and desire to first provoke and then save and make happy, my true essence was deeply buried. That is, questions about what I love, what I myself like, how pleasantly they introduced me into a big stupor. Therefore, I turned all the information presented so that I would again play the same role: as if I were only when I can evoke emotions in others. I now understand that because of my internal freezing, my hyperactivity for others, I have been moving away from recognizing this illness of mine all my life. I still read this book every day. It's funny when you start to see the games that people play and their desire to hang your old role on you so that they themselves do not have to change and take responsibility.
So, dear psychological masochists, read and highlight with a marker.

Julia/ 8.08.2015 Thank you for the book. long on the road to recovery. This book is another step towards recovery. you can't change another person. we are responsible only for ourselves, for our mood, condition, and so on. we cannot solve the problems of another person, especially if he does not ask for it himself. it's all from the fact that a woman does not feel worthy just to be loved, just to be. feels important only by saving someone. these are all signs of "Victim". Give us more strength, courage in this difficult task of finding and accepting ourselves!!!

Olga/ 4.08.2015 Many thanks to the author! I am 53 years old, married 3 times, the third marriage was and is still very strong (my love for my husband). And all my life I have been looking for an answer - why do I attract male alcoholics, what is wrong with me? A low bow and gratitude that I finally read this book (4 years hung in bookmarks), the time has come and now I am recovering, like many women! The book, as if written about me, thank you for showing me the way to recovery.

Olga/ 06/22/2015 The book is very strong and valuable. There I saw myself, my position. The author is absolutely right: what was laid down in childhood affects the future life, character, relationships. I also classified myself as a woman who loves very much and understood that this is not a virtue, but a harm to oneself if people who are unintentional live nearby. Thanks to the author and God that my eyes were opened. I am also recovering, understanding how to live now

Galina/ 04/08/2015 dear girls! if you haven't found a way out for yourself thanks to these books!? then either your situation is not as bad as it really is, or you are not completely honest with yourself, or you have not read the book very carefully. but so or otherwise, this is your decision and your path. on my own behalf, I want to say that thanks to the book "women who love too much" I reconsidered everything! on some chapters I really sobbed, how it was a shame for myself and in front of me! now I overcame myself and my stupid arguments that he is the BEST (and doesn’t deserve more), that he can’t do without me and only I can make him better. Now, I remember all this as a bad dream! I’m happy like never before! girls, dear, fight it! to the last! the main thing is to want! I wish you good luck!

self made woman/ 3.10.2014 The book saved me. I am getting better. Thanks to the author

VALERIA/ 09/19/2014 For me, reading this book was a turning point in my life. I also didn’t understand for a long time what was happening to me, why the relationship didn’t work out ... It seems that I try my best ... to be good, to be loving. Only now I realized that I considered love what is addiction, illness, psychological personality disorder. Now I'm recovering! Although it is very difficult... But I want to go forward! The old patterns of behavior are too expensive and I don't want to go back to them!

Tatiana./ 07/1/2014 Many women who wrote a review here simply did not read the book or read it fluently. You know, those who have not experienced this disease themselves will not understand. Thank you so much Robin Norwood. Just set me on the path of healing and soul-searching. A wonderful book.

Elena/ 03/26/2014 I read the reviews, got excited from the Guest. City apartment, TV, books, magazines, superficial social contacts - is this the world? How does not having a TV relate to not caring about other people? Some kind of sensible semi-phrase about the family and loved ones, as well as another one about the golden mean, is said, however, with a terrible amount of “no” and “necessary” (as if someone other than the person himself can decide here). And about fictional stories ("Norwood herself said") - so that the heroines, recognizing themselves, do not fill their faces. To give the heroes of their stories a chance to dig into the violation of confidentiality - you won’t pay off any fees for the violation later.

Maria/ 11/20/2013 Norwood is sitting in a country house, turned off the TV? So what? did it lessen the usefulness of what is written in her book? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. I found my benefit in her book.

Nastasya/ 11/18/2013 A book from the category of those that should be banned. First, look at how many marriages the author has, then is she happy in love? What does she teach? How to change a bad man. Forgive me, of course, but if a man is unlucky, then he will remain so. It's not for you to change it. It is much easier to meet someone who will love and appreciate you, and not someone who will humiliate you, but you will stubbornly look for the reasons for his behavior in yourself. Change yourself to be better.

Venus/ 27.10.2013 I sincerely hope that the author Robin Norwood will find happiness in his fourth marriage) The book opened the door to a new life for me. Thanks to the author - I advise everyone, even men!

Elena/ 13.03.2013 The book really turns life around! How much I searched and thought what was wrong with me, with me, in my life ... The book helped! I'm on the way to recovery... Low bow to the author!

Guest/ 12/23/2012 I don't see any problem with the fact that the stories are fictitious or what happened in the personal history of the author. Each book is like a transmission from above and the author's vision of how it should be in the best possible light. This is for the author himself, as well as the height to which he aspires and may not reach. Perhaps the teachers transmitted this knowledge through her, but she herself did not fully master it. although having heard that she lives alone - I am of the opinion that she has comprehended even more than in the book.

Women who love too much

When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He,ll Change

* * *

Foreword

We love too much if "love" means "suffering" to us. We love too much if most conversations with close friends revolve around him, his problems, his thoughts, his feelings and almost all of our phrases begin with the word "he".

We love too much if we justify his bad temper, indifference or rudeness with a difficult childhood and try to take on the role of a psychotherapist.

We love too much if, while reading a guide like "How to Help Yourself", we note all the things that we think can help him.

We love too much if we do not like many of his character traits, values and actions, but we put up with them and think: more attractiveness and love - and he will want to change for us.

We love too much if the love endangers our emotional well-being and perhaps our health and safety.

Despite all the suffering and disappointment, for many women, too much love is such a common condition that we are almost sure that close relationships should be just that. Most of us have loved too much at least once in our lives, and for many, this has become a familiar state. Some of us are so obsessed with our lovers and our love that we have little energy for anything else.

In this book, we will try to understand why many women who are looking for a man who would love them inevitably find a partner who does not love them and is generally completely unbearable. We will see that love becomes too strong when our partner does not suit us, does not appreciate us or does not pay attention to us, and yet we not only cannot part with him, but, on the contrary, the attraction and attachment to him only intensifies. We will understand why our desire and need to love, our love itself, turns into addiction.

Addiction is a terrible word. It conjures up images of heroin victims plunging needles into their veins and clearly on their way to suicide. We do not like this word, we do not want to use it in relation to our relationships with men. But very, very many of us have been victims of love, and like other victims of addiction, we must acknowledge the seriousness of this disease in order to embark on the path of recovery.

If you have ever had to obsess over a man, then perhaps you suspected that the root of this passion is not love, but fear. If love borders on obsession, we are tormented by fear: the fear of being alone, of being unloved and unworthy, the fear that they will lose interest in us, abandon us or destroy us. We give our love, desperately hoping that the man we are obsessed with will allay our fears. But instead, fears, and with them our obsession, deepen, until the habit of giving love in order to receive it in return becomes the driving force of life. And because our strategy doesn't work, we try our best and love even more passionately. We love too much.

I first realized that the phenomenon of “too much love” is a special syndrome of thoughts, feelings and actions after several years of working with alcoholics and drug addicts. After conducting hundreds of conversations with victims of alcohol and drug addiction and their loved ones, I made a surprising discovery. Some of the patients I spoke to came from dysfunctional families, others did not, but their partners were almost always from extremely dysfunctional backgrounds, where they had to endure stress and suffering far beyond the usual. While trying to get along with their addicted spouses, these partners (who are called “co-alcoholics” by alcoholism specialists) unconsciously recreated and relived key childhood memories.

Mainly through conversations with the wives and girlfriends of dependent men, I began to understand the nature of too much love. From their stories it was clear that in the role of "saviors" they needed to feel both their superiority and suffering. It helped me to understand the depth of their dependence on men, who, in turn, depended on alcohol or drugs. It was clear that in these couples both partners needed help and that both were literally dying, each from their addiction: he from alcohol or drug abuse, she from the effects of extreme stress.

These women helped me understand the profound impact their childhood experiences had on how they built their relationships with men as adults. To all of us who love too much, they have much to say about why we have developed addictions to dysfunctional relationships, why we perpetuate our problems, and, most importantly, how we can change and recover.

I don't mean to say that only women love too much. Some men "fixate" on love with the same passion, and their feelings and actions are due to the same childhood experiences and driving forces. However, most men who have had a difficult childhood do not develop relationship addiction. Through the interaction of cultural and biological factors, they tend to protect themselves and avoid suffering through activities that are more external than internal, impersonal rather than personal. They are prone to obsession with work, sports or hobbies, while a woman, under the influence of cultural and biological factors affecting her, “fixes” on love - perhaps just for such a flawed and closed person.

I hope this book will help anyone who loves too much, but it was written primarily for women, because too much love is primarily a "female" phenomenon. It has a very specific goal: to help women who are prone to destructive patterns of relationships with men, realize this fact, see the source of these behaviors and try to change their lives.

But if the woman who loves too much is you, I must warn you that my book is not for easy reading. If this definition applies to you and yet the book didn’t move you, didn’t excite you, bored you or made you angry, or you failed to focus on its content, or you just thought how useful it would be for someone else, I advise you to reread it. over time. We all want to deny those truths that would be too painful or scary to accept. Denial is a natural self-protection tool that works automatically, without any request from our side. Perhaps, returning to this book later, you will be able to bear the meeting with your experiences and hidden feelings.

Please read slowly, try to understand these women and their stories with your mind and heart. The stories given here as examples may seem out of the ordinary to you. I assure you, it is quite the opposite. These personalities, characters and incidents, borrowed from hundreds of women with whom I have had the opportunity to communicate personally and professionally and who fall under the definition of "too loving", are not at all exaggerated. Their true stories are even more complicated and painful. If their problems seem to you more serious and serious than yours, let me tell you that your first reaction is typical of most of my clients. Each is sure that everything is “not so bad” for her, and even treats with sympathy the fate of other women who, in her opinion, are in “real” trouble.

Ironically, we women are able to empathize and understand the suffering that befalls others, but are blind to (or blinded by) our own suffering. I know this very well, because for most of my life I myself have been a woman who loves too much. But then it became such a serious threat to my physical and mental health that I had to closely examine the pattern of my relationships with men. Over the past few years, I have done a lot to change it, and these years have become the most fertile in my life.

I hope that for all women who love too much, this book will not only help to better understand their true situation, but also inspire them to start changing it. And for this, you need to no longer focus all your love and attention on obsession with a man, but direct them to your own recovery and your own life.

And here is the time to issue a second warning. This book, like many self-help guides, has a list of steps to take in order to change. If you decide that you really need to take these steps, then, as with all psychotherapeutic changes, it will take years of work and dedication on your part. The model of too much love that you are bogged down in will not get rid of quickly. We memorize this pattern early and repeat it diligently, so fears and constant trials await you on the way to liberation from it. I am not warning you about this to intimidate you. After all, if you don't change the pattern of your relationship with your partner, you will have to fight a grueling struggle for the rest of your life. Only in this case, the goal of the struggle will not be development, but only survival. The choice is yours. By choosing to embark on a path of recovery, you will change from a woman who loves too much to one who loves herself enough to stop suffering.

Chapter first. Love for a man who doesn't love you

Victim of love
Your heart is broken.
Sing a simple song to me.
Victim of love
Your role is so beaten
In it you have already succeeded quite well.
... I see everything, be quiet.
You're walking on a tightrope
Hiding tears from everyone
And still looking for love.
Glen Frey "Victim of Love"

It was Jill's first session, and her expression was one of doubt. Petite and fresh, with blonde Orphan Annie curls, she was frozen on the edge of her chair, looking at me. Everything about her seemed round: the oval of her face, her slightly plump figure, and especially her blue eyes. She glanced around at the framed diplomas and certificates on the office wall, asked me a few questions about the school I had graduated from, my license as a consultant, and then, with obvious pride, she announced that she was in law school.

There was a brief silence. The girl looked down at her folded hands.

“Perhaps it’s time to move on to why I came here,” she rattled off, as if she hoped that a quick run of words would help her gain courage. “I did this—I mean, went to a therapist—because I feel really bad. Of course, it's all about the men. That is, in me and in men. I'm always doing something that scares them away. Every time it starts great. They run after me and all that, and then, when they get to know me better,” she visibly tensed, trying to overcome the boiling pain, “everything falls apart.

The girl looked at me - now unshed tears shone in her eyes - and continued, more slowly:

- I want to understand what is wrong here, what needs to be changed in myself, and I will certainly do it. I will do whatever it takes. I'm very stubborn.

Here she began again.

It's not that I don't want to change. I just don't know why this happens to me all the time. I'm afraid to love again. Because every time I get nothing but pain. Soon I will be truly afraid of men.

Shaking her head so that the ringlets of curls bounced, she explained with vehemence:

I don't want this to happen because I'm very lonely. I have a lot of work to do in law school, plus I have to earn my living. Therefore, I am constantly busy. In fact, for the last year, all I did was work, go to classes, study, and sleep. But my life lacked a man.

She hurriedly continued her story:

“Then I met Randy when I was visiting friends in San Diego two months ago. He is a lawyer. We met one evening when friends dragged me to a dance. It turned out that we were just made for each other. We had so many topics to talk about…but I think it was mostly me who did the talking. But he seems to like it. And it was so great to communicate with a man who is interested in what is important to me.

Her eyebrows twitched.

“He seemed to be drawn to me. You see, he asked if I was married (and I have been divorced for two years), if I live alone, etc.

It wasn't hard to imagine Jill's excitement as she chatted with Randy to the blaring music that first night. And with what delight she received him a week later, when he, traveling on business, turned to Los Angeles to see her. At dinner, she invited the guest to spend the night with her, so as not to embark on a long journey back at night looking. He accepted the invitation, and on the same night an affair began between them.

- He was great. He let me feed him, he obviously liked the way I looked after him. In the morning I ironed his shirt - I love taking care of men. We got along great. She smiled thoughtfully.

But from her further account, it became clear that almost immediately Jill developed an irresistible obsession, the object of which was Randy. When he returned home to San Diego, the phone was already ringing. Jill tenderly told him that she was worried about how he had come so long and was glad to know that he had made it safely. She thought her call startled him a little. She apologized for the concern and hung up, but she began to be tormented by growing anxiety, fueled by the thought: she again loves much more than her chosen one.

“Randy once told me not to put pressure on him, otherwise he would just disappear. I was terribly scared. After all, it's all about me. I have to love him and at the same time leave him alone. But I don’t know how, so I was getting more and more scared. And the more I panicked, the more I clung to him.

Soon Jill was calling him almost every evening. They agreed to call each other in turns, but often; when it was Randy's turn, time passed, and she was so worried that she couldn't wait for his call. She still couldn't sleep, so she called him. Their conversations were long but of little substance.

- He said that he forgot, and I asked: “How could you forget? Because I never forget." Then we began to discuss the reasons, and it seemed to me that he was afraid to get close to me, and I wanted to help him. He kept saying he didn't know what he wanted out of life, and I tried to help him figure out what was most important to him.

So, trying to get more emotional openness from Randy, Jill found herself in the role of a psychotherapist.

She flew to San Diego twice to spend the weekend with him. The second time, he paid no attention to her all day: he watched TV and drank beer. It was one of the worst days of her life.

- Did he drink a lot? I asked Jill.

She was clearly alarmed.

- No, not really. Actually, I don't know. Never seriously thought about it. Of course, the night we met, he was drinking, but it was quite natural. After all, we were at a bar. Sometimes, when we talked on the phone, I heard the clink of ice in a glass and teased him about it - well, what does he drink alone ... To tell the truth, there was not a single day with me that he did not drink, but I thought, he just likes to have a drink. After all, this is normal, right?

The girl paused, collecting her thoughts.

- You know, sometimes on the phone he said rather strange things, especially for a lawyer: he chatted something incoherent and unintelligible, forgot and got confused. But I never thought it was the booze. I don't even know how I explained it. She probably just didn't allow herself to think about it.

She looked at me sadly.

“Maybe he really drank too much, but it must have been because I was bothering him. Probably, I didn’t interest him enough, and he didn’t want to meet with me. She continued excitedly. - My husband also never wanted to communicate with me - it was obvious! Her eyes filled with tears, but she tried to overcome herself. - And my father too ... Why do they all treat me like that? What am I doing wrong?

As soon as Jill realized that there was a problem between her and the person dear to her, the girl longed not only to solve it, but also to take responsibility for creating it. She believed that if Randy, her husband and father failed to love her, then it was all about what she did or failed to do.

Jill's moods, feelings, actions and life experiences were typical of a woman for whom to love means to suffer. She had many of the characteristics of a woman who loves too much. Regardless of the specific details of their stories and efforts, whether they had experienced a long and difficult relationship with one man or a series of unhappy affairs with many men, they had one thing in common. Loving too much doesn't mean loving too many men, or falling in love too often, or sinking too deeply into genuine love for another person. It means being truly obsessed with a man and calling this obsession “love”, letting it take over your feelings and much of your actions, realizing that it is harmful to health and well-being, and yet not having the strength to get rid of it. It means measuring the extent of your love by the depth of your anguish.

As you read this book, you might find yourself identifying with Jill, or one of the women in these stories, and wonder if I, too, am a woman who loves too much? Even if your problems with men are similar to those of these women, you may find it difficult to put on labels that fit their situations. We have strong emotional reactions to words such as "alcoholism", "incest", "violence" and "addiction", and sometimes we are not able to realistically look at our lives, because we are very afraid that these labels apply to us or to to those we love. Unfortunately, the inability to use the right words when they are really appropriate prevents us from getting the help we need. On the other hand, these scary labels may not be relevant to your life. Maybe there are more subtle problems in your childhood. Perhaps your father, providing the family with material well-being, deep down did not trust women and did not like them, and this inability to love did not allow you to love yourself. Or, in relation to you, mothers could show jealousy and rivalry, although in public she praised you and put you in a favorable light. As a result, you developed a need to be a good girl in order to earn her approval, and at the same time, you were afraid of feeling the hostility that your success caused in her.

It is impossible to cover all the many varieties of dysfunctional families in one book - this would require several volumes. However, it is important to understand that all dysfunctional families have one thing in common: the inability to discuss indigenous Problems. Such families may have other problems that are discussed, often to the point of nausea, but behind this often lie deep secrets that make the family dysfunctional. It is the depth of the secrecy - the inability to talk about problems, not their severity - that determines both how dysfunctional the family becomes and how much damage it causes to its members.

dysfunctional they call a family whose members play rigid roles, and communication between them is strictly limited to statements corresponding to these roles. Members of such a family do not have the right to express the full range of experiences, desires, needs and feelings, but must be limited to the performance of their roles, which are consistent with the roles played by other family members. Roles are present in all families, but in order for the family to remain prosperous, its members must change with changing circumstances and adapt to each other. Thus, maternal care, appropriate in relation to a one-year-old child, is completely inappropriate for a thirteen-year-old, so the role of the mother must change to correspond to reality. In dysfunctional families, basic aspects of reality are denied and roles remain rigid.

If no one has the right to discuss the issue of what affects each member of the family individually and the family as a whole, moreover, such discussions are forbidden - implicit (the topic of conversation changes) or explicit (“We do not want to talk about such things! ”), we learn not to trust our impressions or feelings. Our family denies our reality, and we begin to deny it too. And this seriously disrupts our normal development when we learn to live and interact with people. It is this fundamental disturbance of normal development that is inherent in women who love too much. We lose the ability to see when someone or something is hurting us. Situations that others would consider dangerous, unpleasant, or harmful, and would naturally try to avoid, do not repulse us because we are unable to assess them realistically or guided by the instinct of self-preservation. We either do not trust our feelings, or do not use their prompting. On the contrary, we are attracted to precisely those dangers, intrigues, dramas, and trials that other people with a healthier and more balanced past would naturally shy away from. Because of this attraction, we cause even more damage to ourselves, because much of what attracts us is a repetition of what has already been experienced during the period of growing up. We get more and more injuries.

Such a woman - a woman who loves too much - none of us becomes by chance. If a girl grows up in our society, and even in such a family, this can create some predictable patterns of behavior. These are signs that are typical for women who are too in love, like Jill, and maybe like you.

1. You typically grew up in a dysfunctional family where your emotional needs were not met.

2. You yourself have received little genuine care, and therefore try to compensate for this unmet need by becoming a nanny, especially for those men who, for one reason or another, seem to you to be flawed.

3. Since you never succeeded in changing your parents to give you the love and affection you sorely lacked, you overreact to a familiar type of emotionally unavailable man who you can try to change again by giving him your love.

4. Fearing that you will be abandoned, you are ready to do anything to keep the connection from breaking.

5. Almost nothing is too troublesome, time-consuming or expensive for you if it can "help" the person you are attached to.

6. You are used to the lack of love in intimate relationships, and therefore are ready to wait, hope and try even harder to please a man.

7. In relationships with men, you are always ready to take on a large share of responsibility, guilt and reproaches.

8. Your self-esteem is at a critically low level, and deep down you do not think that you are worthy of happiness. Rather, you think you should still earn the right to enjoy life.

9. As a child, you did not feel secure, and therefore feel an urgent need to be the mistress of your men and your relationships. You pass off this desire to control people and situations as a desire to be useful.

10. In relationships, you rely much more on the dream of what they could be than on the real situation.

11. You suffer from dependence on men and emotional pain.

12. You may have an emotional and often biochemical predisposition to abuse drugs, alcohol and/or certain foods, especially those rich in sugar.

13. You are drawn to people who are weighed down by problems that need to be resolved, or you get involved in confusing, uncertain and emotionally painful situations, and this does not allow you to focus on the responsibility that you bear to yourself.

14. You may be prone to bouts of depression and, to prevent them, try to take advantage of the excitement that unstable relationships provide you.

15. You are not attracted to kind, reliable, balanced men who show interest in you. Such nice guys seem boring to you.

In Jill, to a greater or lesser extent, almost all of these signs were clearly present. Given that she embodied so many of the qualities listed above and what I learned about Randy, I assumed that he might have a drinking problem. Women of this emotional nature are forever drawn to men who, for one reason or another, are emotionally unavailable. One of the main manifestations of emotional unavailability is the presence of dependence.

From the start, Jill was willing to take on more responsibility for starting and continuing the relationship than Randy. Like so many other all-too-loving women, she was clearly a very responsible, success-oriented person and managed to achieve a lot in different areas of her life. And yet she had very low self-esteem. Achievements in study and work could not balance the personal failures that pursued her in love. Every time Randy forgot to call, it dealt a tangible blow to her already shaky self-image, which she then heroically tried to strengthen by trying to draw attentions out of him. Her willingness to take all the blame for a broken relationship is just as typical as her inability to realistically assess the situation and take care of herself, i.e., leave when the lack of reciprocity becomes apparent.

Women who love too much think little of themselves in love relationships. They devote all their energy to changing their partner's behavior or feelings, and to do this they resort to the most desperate tricks like Jill's expensive long-distance calls and her flights to San Diego (remember that her personal budget was extremely limited). In her telephone "therapy sessions" with Randy, she was far more trying to turn him into the person she wanted him to be than to help him discover his true self. True, Randy himself did not aspire to this at all. If he was interested in such a path of self-discovery, he would do most of the work himself, instead of sitting back while Jill tries to help him understand himself. She struggled with it only because otherwise there was only one way out: to accept what Randy really is and accept that he is a person who does not care about her and their relationship.

But let's go back to Jill's session so we can better understand what brought her to my office that day.

She talked about her father.

“He was so stubborn. I swore to myself that someday I'd beat him. She thought for a moment. “But I haven't been able to do it. Maybe that's why I went to law school. I like to imagine myself speaking in court and win!

She smiled broadly at the thought, and then became serious again.

Do you know what I once did? Made him say he loves me and hug me.

Jill tried to make it sound like it was a funny incident from her teenage years, but she couldn't: her voice was clearly resentful.

If I hadn't made him, he would never have done it. But he loved me. I just couldn't show it. And I could never repeat those words again. So I'm really glad that I forced him: otherwise I would never have expected anything like this from him. After all, I waited for so many years, and at eighteen I told him: “Now you will tell me that you love me” - and did not leave the place until he said. Then she asked him to hug me, only at first I had to hug him myself. He somehow cringed and lightly patted me on the shoulder, but that's okay. I really needed him to do it.

Tears welled up in her eyes again, and this time they ran down her plump cheeks.

Why was it so hard for him to do it? It seems so easy to tell your daughter that you love her.

She stared down at her folded hands again.

“Because I was out of my skin. That is why I argued and fought with him so fiercely. I kept thinking: I’ll take over, and he will have to be proud of me. More than anything, I needed his approval. That is, perhaps, his love ...

From further conversation it became clear that in the family the father's dislike for Jill was explained by the fact that he wanted a son, and a daughter was born. It was much easier for everyone, including Jill herself, to accept such a simple explanation of the father's coldness towards his own child than the truth about the father. But, after going through a rather long course of psychotherapy, Jill realized that her father did not have close emotional ties. with no one that he was practically unable to express warm feelings, love or approval to anyone close to him. There were always “reasons” for his emotional closeness: a quarrel, a difference of opinion, or the irreversible fact that Jill was born a girl. All family members preferred to consider these reasons legitimate, rather than dig into the true source of the invariably estranged relationship with his father.

It was easier for Jill to keep beating herself up than to admit that her father was basically incapable of love. While the guilt lay on her, there was hope that someday she would be able to change so much that her father would no longer be able to remain the same.

When an event occurs that hurts our feelings, telling ourselves that we ourselves are to blame, we are actually asserting that everything is in our power: if we change, the pain will stop - we all do it. In most cases, this is the driving force behind the self-flagellation of a woman who loves too much. Blaming ourselves, we cling to the hope that we can find out what our mistake is and correct it. This will help us master the situation and get rid of the pain.

This pattern was clearly evident in Jill's session, which took place shortly after she told me about her marriage. Because she was irresistibly attracted to those with whom she could recreate the emotionally poor climate of her adolescence with her father, marriage became an opportunity for her to try again to win the love she had been denied.