“Normals”

I feel a new type of insecurity in my relationship that I have never experienced before. It is not due to jealousy, rather it is because of fear. I never worried about getting my heart broken before. I knew it was a possibility, but I did not think about it much. In my last relationship, I sort of felt like I always had the upper hand because he dealt with a lot of issues, including alcoholism. That sounds REALLY terrible now that I wrote it down, but it is true, and I promised myself I would always tell the truth on my blog- the good, the bad, and the ugly. Both M. and I dealt with mental illness, but mine was much more controlled. I had my shit together and he didn’t and that gave me a false sense of security in our relationship. I knew that he loved me, but I also knew that he depended on me, too.

I recently was with two friends of mine who are a married couple. She had a lovely, happy childhood and he did not. His parents were both abusive and were very hard on him. My friends also are friendly with my current boyfriend and I was trying to explain to them how I feel about my relationship with him. I said something, more directed to my male friend, like, “he (my boyfriend) is just SO normal. He had a normal childhood and a normal life and even his divorce was really amicable and normal. I don’t mean he has never had problems or faced challenges, but his family and his life are just really functional. He must listen to the stories of my family and my previous relationships and my problems with anxiety and secretly think ‘man, she is really fucked up.’ and it makes me wonder why he wants to be with me.” My girlfriend immediately jumped in to reassure me that my boyfriend loves me and what happened to me in my childhood was not my fault. But my male friend…he got it. He said he feels the same way sometimes, which made me feel better. And listen, I know that the word “normal” is incredibly difficult to define and super subjective. In my mind, normal equates to a lack of trauma and dysfunction. Being normal might seem like an insult to some people who interpret it to be synonymous with boring and ordinary. But to me, normal has a positive connotation and means safe and secure and healthy and functional.

A good example of this just happened recently. I had to get a CT scan of my sinuses. When my ENT called to give me the results he mentioned that I have a deviated septum. When I told my boyfriend this, he asked me if I had ever had a nose injury. I know he was thinking about whether I got smacked with a basketball in high school gym class. I thought about it for a minute and was like, “no, I don’t think so….oh wait! When I was 18 my dad got arrested because he head-butted me in the face and I thought he broke my nose.” I said it so casually because honestly I don’t really think about that event much and it was over 20 years ago, but my boyfriend looked taken aback. It was sort of a funny conversation, but also incredibly sad. It almost made me feel lonely and for a second, I missed my ex-boyfriend, M., because I knew he could relate and understand to having a screwed up family and childhood.

My friend and my boyfriend- they are “normals”. I, for sure, am not. I try to have the appearance of having it all together and I am very successful in a lot of different ways, but deep down I feel broken and dysfunctional and different and less than. I know a lot of this is my own self-perception and I am working on that. My boyfriend is the most amazing man I have ever known and I pinch myself every single day that we are together. I feel so lucky to have him in my life, but the problem is that I don’t always think he is lucky to have me in his (I am certain he would beg to differ). And that is what creates insecurity for me…because if I don’t think I am good enough for him, when is he going to realize that?

Doing good.

I read a fiction novel over the summer and one of the characters had an internal dialogue that really stood out to me. It may seem strange to feel connected to the feelings of a character who is not real, but I guess the English teacher in me knows you can feel inspiration from any type of writing. This is what she thought…

“For years, I’d told myself that doing good meant I was good. That doing better made me better. Yet looking back I can’t help by wonder if family dynamics, insecurities, and jealousies had warped me to the point where I no longer knew if I did things because I wanted to or because it was what pleased someone I loved. And if the latter, then what did that mean, and who was I, really? Was I someone with the courage to do what needed to be done when it wouldn’t please others?”

I have written blogs about being a people pleaser and sort of explored why I think I am one, but I never really addressed how it makes me FEEL. Doing things to help the people I care about does often make me happy, but it also really sucks sometimes. There are times when someone mentions something they need or want and if I am not able to do it, I feel guilty. For example, if my sister complains about her house being messy and chaotic because she has two kids under four and her fiancee works long hours, I feel immediately guilty that I am not there helping her. It is almost like a compulsion to do things for people and it can sometimes interfere with my own life and time. It is almost like if I have free time, I feel bad. I push my own needs and wants to the back burner in order to be available to others. I also feel like people, understandably, take advantage of this trait. I think that many people who are people pleasers are also looking for praise and validation and many times the gratitude I receive is underwhelming for the amount of time and effort I put in. I sometimes find myself doing things for people that they never even asked for and I become more stressed about getting it done than they are. I know that I am doing this to myself, but it is really a difficult habit to break.

I love when people describe me as being “nice” because to me that is synonymous with “good” and oftentimes I do not feel good enough. I think a lot of this goes back to me never really being able to address my own needs or put myself first. It is exhausting trying to make everyone like you, to being agreeable and helpful all the time. I know that this must be linked to my (unfortunately) extensive amount of experience as a codependent. Boundaries have never been my strong suit. Saying no is REALLY difficult.

Urban Dictionary defines this as the “disease to please”. That is pretty funny and clever, but also kind of sad. I know for me that this stems from being a child of an alcoholic. In an article about people pleasers in Psychology Today, the author states that, “Many of us have experienced painful, out-of-control conflicts with loved ones. We worry that disagreeing or arguing will destroy our relationships, that others will get so angry with us that they’ll leave us. It’s understandable and common to want to avoid conflict. But it’s not helpful or possible. When we avoid conflict, we suppress our feelings, wants, and needs. And this causes us to disconnect from ourselves and from others (we can’t be emotionally intimate when we don’t express our feelings). So, the more we try to avoid conflict, the more we lose touch with ourselves (our interests, hobbies, friends, goals, and so on), which is why people-pleasers and codependents often feel like they don’t know what they want or like.”

Like with many things, I am a work in progress. I do truly believe that I am a good person, a nice person. But I also know that there are reasons that people do the things they do and that self-awareness is the first step to addressing the problem. I am trying to be more cognizant of when- and why- I do the things I do.