Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Doctor’s Note: Today’s letter involves discussions of emotional abuse.
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
In recent years I have grown increasingly aware of my failures to find a partner of any sort, and it has begun to eat at my confidence and happiness.
I have read every generic article and blog I could find. Single is good! Single is a wonderful way of life! Single too long can lead to xxx negative or positive results. If you want to date be confident. If you can’t find a date you’re not treating yourself right, you’re not going after the right person, you’re not thinking of others, you need to dress to impress, change your routine. Ect. So on and so forth.
I have TRIED.
Here’s my back story.
I’m 10 years single. Mother of two wonderful not so Littles any longer. The relationship I left had been bad. Not I was bruised every day and being beaten bad. Bad as in the minute I became happy he had to find a way to knock me down bad, then would work to build me back up after making me feel guilty for being down- wash rinse repeat. He had been the only guy I had been with and it had been nearly 10 years of us doing our unhealthy on again off again. You now that Eminem song with Rihanna? I think it hit the nail on the head. Cuz that was my relationship with my ex basically. He would cheat on me. I would feel bad get mad. He would feel guilty for 5 min. It would happen again but he would become more sneaky until I got to the point of always second guessing. We got married, briefly, and then an annulment when he was very openingly cheating with one of my friends from the wedding.
[…]
Throughout the years since I got my GED, went to court with him which was a nasty ordeal in itself since I nearly lost my kids due to the inability to afford a lawyer until my foster mother stepped in and the lawyer she hired saved my bacon. I went and became a paramedic, an astonishing difference of a person since I now am perfectly comfortable denying people things and voicing my thoughts and wishes. I even have a bachelor’s degree and am returning to school while trying for nursing. I have 2 cars, own my own home, a cat dog and even chickens. My kids seem very happy and becoming strong young people. I picked up hobbies that were loves I had given up years into our relationship.
But dating has been empty.
At first I wasn’t ready to date. I knew it then as much as I do now. I was so depressed and full of self-hate I couldn’t look in the mirror even . The first 2 or 3 years I wasn’t even trying to date.
Thing is. I was on such an upward momentum that it just stopped. I got my wish to work in my local e.r, got a house and a good car and a degree. And I think it’s what’s hit me hardest. I haven’t been able to make it into nursing school, which here is hard to get into since there aren’t many programs. I haven’t been able to find someone to date. The previous 2 crushes I had ended up with other people though I am friends with them – and their significant others. I had been pulled along by another guy who, when I confessed kindly turned me down due to his being too religious and my atheism. Only to flip moths later and flirt endlessly with me so much as to state he was jealous when I was with a work friend who was a guy- we all work at the same hospital. I quickly became disinterested at the immature flirting and inability for him to even approach me with his intentions or interest. I refuse to ever be a back burner again only receiving attention when it fits their agenda or if they think they can get me to chase after them. I want someone to want me for once.
Now that I have fully severed any attraction to that guy, and he knows it too darn it- I can’t seem to find someone.
I don’t know what to do. I live in a small secluded town without much access to any other communities. Online dating feels too fabricated and when I tried it I couldn’t figure out how to converse or get to know anyone much less had the disgusting feeling as if I were shopping.
I have nothing against people who online date or have open relationships or whatever they please. I just wish to form connections with people because I can’t form an attraction before that. On weeks I don’t have my children I have made a strong attempt , especially this past summer, to attend as many music festivals and community events as possible. Not to mention I’m out with my kids as well but I tend to focus on them, even now their 10 and 12.
I’m not going to lie, I have a strong fear of not being datable. I know some find interest in me and reach out but there are also people who like me because I have a “spicey personality with awesome long hair and tattoos”. They don’t even know me and their interests are so materialistic that it is telling to me what a relationship would have entailed.
[…]
I’m going to be honest I was at a high point and the past year I have started to crash down and be down on myself again. I am far more aware of my thoughts and work on it. I try to be somewhat active since I have gained weight in paramedic school which hasn’t much left me. I wear dresses in the summer and cute coats in the winter that I like. I even began to listen to affirmations last winter when I got to a really, really low point.
But the crushing feeling that such basic easy people find me while their looking for someone they can walk all over makes me think sometimes the universe means for me never to experience a healthy relationship.
I see my friends have them and it is so alien to me- though I want it. I actually want to experience someone wanting me for more than just sex or to show to friends to impress. To actually support me as much as I do them. And probably to make me not feel bad I want to be comforted and, at least from my relationship with my ex, am a bit of a sexaholic and don’t want to be shamed for that.
While earnestly I sometimes can’t even envision myself being able to move forward with anyone. To let them meet my bio mom – since my bio dad died within recent years and my ex had used my family against me to try and act as if it made me a bad person.
I don’t know what to do but I do know I am terribly lonely and wish I could just fall into something easily. It’s upsetting and I fear every tactic I have tried to use has become less effective from me becoming self-destructive. Which doesn’t help any. I fear winter this year since winters are harsh and cold and dark.
Also. Counseling in my town sucks. I tried for a couple years to get in with someone. No luck. Saw a school counselor once at uni during paramedic school. Was told it sounded as if I had everything under control and knew what I needed. Just because I am in the medical field and understand depression doesn’t mean I have it under control.
How do I date? How do I meet someone and just go about it easily without having to get to know them for months on end first? I wish I could easily form relationships but it’s hard after everything.
Thank you.
– Where To Begin Again?
Before we get into my response, WTBA, I want to say that I have pared your letter down a lot, for space and privacy reasons. However, I want you to know that I read it all of it, and I’m so so sorry that you went through all of that. I’m also glad that you’re well rid of your ex. You endured years of abuse and mistreatment by someone so toxic that I’m amazed that the EPA didn’t declare him a Superfund Site.
I’m just sorry it took as long as it did for you to finally be free of him and his bullshit. You have been through the fires of hell and you’ve got the ashes to prove it.
(For those of you reading along, trust me that it was years of intense and heinous emotional abuse from a male partner and his family of enablers.)
However, there’s being rid of him… but not being rid of what he’s done to you. Now, I want to give my standard disclaimer that Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor. But I think a lot of what you’re experiencing is CPTSD or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. CPTSD is the result of trauma experienced over a long period of time, including abusive relationships. To be clear: this is something that needs to be diagnosed by a medical professional, not just going by the word of a loud mouth with an advice column. But even if I’m wrong and the formal diagnosis is something else, I don’t think anyone would argue that you haven’t undergone years of trauma and that the after effects of that trauma are still lingering with you in many ways.
It also doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten much help from the community around you, or even what mental health resources were available to you at the time. That has to be similarly disheartening.
But this is why I want to tell you, unequivocally, that you’re wrong about being undateable. You’re not undateable at all. You’re someone who’s been hurt, badly and repeatedly for years. While the wounds may have scarred over, the scars are still with you and they can still hurt too.
But scars are signs of survival. You’ve proven, over and over again, that you are unbelievably strong and resilient. You have come through some heinous mistreatment at the hands of people who you should have been able to trust and rely on. The fact that you’ve come through the other side, with a happy and strong family, making so much progress towards your goals and achieving so much is a testament to your courage, your hard work, your strength and your heart. The fact that you don’t have a callous on your soul from it is equally amazing.
The fact that you have lingering after effects of the trauma you experienced doesn’t mean you’re weak or damaged. It means that you’re a survivor. And sometimes the world can be cruel to survivors, often without meaning to.
I think what you need, more than anything else, is to find help to address that trauma, and that trauma-informed care may be hard to find in your immediate community. That doesn’t mean that things are hopeless. It just means that it may be more difficult than things would be otherwise.
There are a few things you can do on your own, to at least help in the short term. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is very good at dealing with intrusive thoughts and emotional dysregulation. There are several options out there for self-directed CBT that may help you get a handle on things and make life a little easier. There are also frequently free or low-cost alternatives that may be available to you. Captain Awkward has a couple of excellent posts (here and here) for helping people find mental health resources that I think would be well worth your time.
But I think you may need to look a little further afield to find trauma-informed care to address your needs. There are options. Psychology Today has a referral directory specifically for therapists who specialize in trauma and PTSD. So do the American Psychological Association, The EMDR International Association and The Anxiety & Depression Association of America. If there aren’t options within a reasonable distance, there are many counselors and therapists who will work with you remotely via teleconferencing services; this may be a viable option for you.
Working with them, I think, will go a long way towards helping you feel better about everything.
I recognize that this isn’t what you asked help for, but I think addressing these issues will serve you well when it comes to also addressing your dating woes.
Right now, I think you’re having a very hard time connecting with people, and for understandable reasons. It’s very hard to trust people, even years later, when you’ve been hurt by someone the way you have. It can be hard to break the patterns you developed for your own protection, or that formed from the results of what was done to you. And it can be hard to relax and be open to others and to be vulnerable in ways that you need to be in order to date.
It can also be hard to see how others could like you. The ones who were interested in you because of your spicy attitude and cool hair and tattoos? Yeah, their interest was surface level… but surface interest is often what opens the door to getting to know you and connecting to you on a deeper and more meaningful level. The shallow initial interest isn’t automatically a sign that the relationship will remain shallow; it’s just that they don’t know more about you, yet.
I mention this, not because I think you should give them a chance to prove themselves, but to show you that you’re not hopeless. To explain that what you’re seeing and how you’re seeing it doesn’t mean that this is all there is or ever will be. It’s just to remind you that there is hope, and that hope is a practice.
So no, I think you’re in a better position to find someone new, someone better and more deserving of your awesomeness than you believe. It’s just very hard to see when that pain clouds your vision and fogs the future.
You’re a paramedic, so I know you understand triage: deal with the immediate issues to stabilize the patient and then handle the rest. That’s what happened here. Getting away from your abuser and rebuilding your life without him was getting you to the place where you’ve stabilized. You’ve been given time to heal and recover your strength. Now you’re in a place where you can address the other issues that you couldn’t take care of before the wounds were closed and the bleeding had been stopped.
You’re stronger now. You know what you’re capable of when you don’t have the weight of an abuser holding you back and sapping your life away like a leach. Now it’s time to flip him the double bird by refusing to allow even the memory of him to haunt you and harm you.
Find a trauma-informed counselor or therapist. Focus on healing yourself and remembering what a warrior you are. Love will come when you’re ready.
It feels dark right now and it seems like that dark will last forever. But the sun will rise again. And it will do so because you’re a survivor, because you’re strong and because you’ve brought yourself and your family so damn far. Never forget that. Tattoo it backwards on your forehead so you see it every time you look in the mirror and be reminded.
All will be well.