I can't bring myself to do something I need to but will hurt another

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

It's quite the epiphany I've had.  It's why I end up in these situations in my relationships.  When I know I need to end a relationship, I won't do it because I'm afraid of facing the woman's hurt reactions.  I always have this unconscious, habitual, feeling of "I can't do that to her."

But the reality is that I'm not hurting them.  They are hurting them.  In my marriage to uPDxw, my next uBPDxgf, and now my current xSO, there were moments where things happened and I knew it was in my interests to leave the relationship.  And in each case, each woman was having some kind of waif moment, having issues that they of course had no part in creating for themselves, and I felt like I'd be kicking them when they were down.  But they made the choices that led to their predicaments.  I didn't have to stick around, like I felt at the time.  I made a choice to do so, and that's on me.

Also, in each case, there was never a recovery for each woman to a point where leaving wouldn't have been at a convenient point for them.  In each case, it got worse.  And in each case, I've let things get out of hand to the point where the crazy bottle really got dumped out.  That crazy bottle gets dumped when their self-made predicaments escalate so bad that they turn on me.  It's happened 3 times now.  They turn on me because I can't meet the impossible demands they create.  And it's on me for letting the situations get to that point to start with.

I don't fear being alone, I don't fear being left, I don't fear abandonment.  I actually rather enjoy my solo time.  I've really enjoyed my extended solo time after my divorce, I've loved solo trips I've done, whether overnight or not. 

But I care about other people very strongly, and I fear hurting people so much that I think I'm gonna hurt someone sometimes when I'm not really, they are hurting themselves and I'm unnecessarily assuming responsibility to save them from themselves and their own bad decisions.  And when they start to turn on me, and hurt me, I always think I can stem the tide so to speak and get them to see reason.

I'm just too nice.  I need to learn and develop a new habit of not being too nice to people that are screwing themselves up.  Especially when in romantic relationships.  I've had a habit of not holding them accountable for their own in the name of trying to be nice.  I need to learn to recognize it and stop doing it.

[Waddams]

It's quite the epiphany I've had.  It's why I end up in these situations in my relationships.  When I know I need to end a relationship, I won't do it because I'm afraid of facing the woman's hurt reactions.  I always have this unconscious, habitual, feeling of "I can't do that to her."

But the reality is that I'm not hurting them.  They are hurting them.  In my marriage to uPDxw, my next uBPDxgf, and now my current xSO, there were moments where things happened and I knew it was in my interests to leave the relationship.  And in each case, each woman was having some kind of waif moment, having issues that they of course had no part in creating for themselves, and I felt like I'd be kicking them when they were down.  But they made the choices that led to their predicaments.  I didn't have to stick around, like I felt at the time.  I made a choice to do so, and that's on me.

Also, in each case, there was never a recovery for each woman to a point where leaving wouldn't have been at a convenient point for them.  In each case, it got worse.  And in each case, I've let things get out of hand to the point where the crazy bottle really got dumped out.  That crazy bottle gets dumped when their self-made predicaments escalate so bad that they turn on me.  It's happened 3 times now.  They turn on me because I can't meet the impossible demands they create.  And it's on me for letting the situations get to that point to start with.

I don't fear being alone, I don't fear being left, I don't fear abandonment.  I actually rather enjoy my solo time.  I've really enjoyed my extended solo time after my divorce, I've loved solo trips I've done, whether overnight or not. 

But I care about other people very strongly, and I fear hurting people so much that I think I'm gonna hurt someone sometimes when I'm not really, they are hurting themselves and I'm unnecessarily assuming responsibility to save them from themselves and their own bad decisions.  And when they start to turn on me, and hurt me, I always think I can stem the tide so to speak and get them to see reason.

I'm just too nice.  I need to learn and develop a new habit of not being too nice to people that are screwing themselves up.  Especially when in romantic relationships.  I've had a habit of not holding them accountable for their own in the name of trying to be nice.  I need to learn to recognize it and stop doing it.

[OutOfEgypt]

Awesome, Waddams

So, like most of us... .you're a rescuer  Been there.    That tendency is still there and a hard one to break, but I'm doing much better.

I was actually talking to someone about this recently.  I don't know if this pertains to you, but in her situation, she noticed she was surrounded with bad relationships -dependent people she was always rescuing and feeling too guilty to say goodbye to.  In her case, it was because she really doesn't believe she is worth receiving real love.  So, it is easier for her to take the role of a rescuer... .always giving one-way love and feeling too guilty to believe you deserve to receive it back.  It's really a perfect way to make sure you never receive mutual love... .the love you want but don't believe you are worthy of so you simultaneously protect and punish yourself by making sure you never get it.

[Ihope2]

Hello my name is Ihope2 and I am  also a co-dependent, rescuer, over-enmeshed person with an overdeveloped sense of responsibitlity. 

On a more serious note, it recently dawned on me that it all started when I was about age 7 or 8 and my parents went through a very bitter and acrimonious divorce (they never spoke to each other again after that, until my father died when I was 25yrs of age twenty years ago).

I realise now how bereft it left me to lose my father, and have my mother suddenly become emotionally unavailable to me.  She launched herself into a new relationship with a man, who became our 'stepfather', who I am convinced had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  My mother has always sought out these larger than life, "strong and capable" men with bombastic personalities and a negative, angry outlook on life.

I ended up wanting to "rescue" my mom in her rollercoaster 15 years of marriage to this man.  I became completely estranged from my real father, as the stepfather instigated a smear campaign against him and managed to turn my siblings and I against him, not to mention escalate my mom's angry feelings towards her ex husband.

So, who did I really have to be there for me, other than my mom?  I rescued her and became emotionally enmeshed with her, and became almost this adult-child confidante to her whenever she was emotionally upset, which was often.  I learned that in close relationships, I need to keep myself available to the other at all times and put my own needs to one side, so that I never lose that person, because then who else will be there for me!

I learned an unfortunate dynamic (maybe it was repetition compulsion behaviour to grapple with my childhood issues) that I could/should attract weak, cardboard cut-out type people into my life, and that I would support them and back them up and make sure they would not fall down so that they would always be there for me.

Perhaps this dynamic similarly underpins some of your behaviour?  Essentially it comes from a place of deep loneliness and sadness and woundedness - "Who will be there for me?". 

[Ihope2]

I also still wanted to add, it doesn't mean that we can't be alone or be content in solitude. I am quite the loner and have always tended to be this way, with few friends and doing my own thing, living in my own place and being ok with that.  But this loneliness I am talking about comes from a deeper, existentialistic place.  A betrayal/abandonment wound perhaps. 

And my sense of self-worth became deeply rooted in how I could be the "strong" one and help people, rather than have them help me.  It is also a type of a "control" thing, I guess. Because my childhood was so out of control.  So I learned that if I could rescue and "control" others, things would be ok.

[Lucky Jim]

Hey Waddams, You hit the nail on the head!  I've done the same thing.  Sounds like you have, too, OutOfEgypt.  The reality is that postponing the inevitable only makes it that much more painful further down the line.  As the song says, sometimes you have to be "cruel to be kind, in the right measure."  I'm a gentle person, too, and avoid hurting others, but have ended up hurting myself in the process.  Robert Bly, in his book Iron John, talks about a "native brutality" in nature that sometimes we lack: the tiger chases away the cub, the eagle pushes the eaglet out of the nest.  Sometimes I think we need to tap into that energy.  LuckyJim

[empathic]

I've endured a lot of unnecessary abuse by staying in bad situations for too long. I think it's a self esteem issue in that I don't feel like I deserve better, something coming from my upbringing and early abuse in school I suppose. I get images of the other party getting sad from what I would be doing, and I get paralyzed instead of taking action.

That's basically why I'm here. I should have reacted much sooner to being taken advantage of, and taken a firmer stance against improper behaviour. The other person gets conditioned to treating you badly, a hard cycle to break once it's set.