It wasn’t only that I was afraid to commit to relationships – it was also the fact that I self-sabotaged by committing to the wrong ones. I put all of my efforts into relationships that were doomed to failure – because I was on some level certain of the outcome. I believe that the root of this is a matter of poor self-esteem and the girl that got away.
In my teens I had a friend who was a girl. We were really close and I loved her, but was too shy to do anything about it. Finally she did something – she told me that if there was anybody she would like to be in a relationship with it would be me. She waited for an answer – I said nothing. That’s not the worst of it – while we were walking, and I was saying nothing, she told me that she loved me. What can I say? I choked and said ‘Thanks’.
A few weeks passed and I introduced her to a lad that I knew. I even hinted that they might make a nice couple. Yeah, I know – WTF was I doing? I guess maybe I was testing her commitment.
A month later she asked me if I would have any problem with her ‘dating’ this lad. She was still giving me chances to tell her how I felt and still I choked. “No problem. You guys are well suited.”
They dated and we drifted apart. I was so hurt – and sadly for me, I blamed her for hurting me rather than accept that I had caused my own pain. Almost 3 decades later I finally understand how this lack of emotional maturity and poor self-esteem have shaped and haunted my relationships ever since.
I was still shy and found it difficult to approach girls – alcohol became my social lubricant. But the problems would occur when I would meet girls sober. If I was pissed on a night out I was funny and outgoing, but when I met somebody for a date afterwards I would be choked up again – struggling to recreate whatever it was that I had been doing when I was drunk – and very self-conscious about it. So for my teens and early twenties, the only relationships I had were ones that revolved around alcohol.
I crossed paths with the one that got away on occasions over those years. When she was between relationships, we fell back into that easy comfortable place – but I would resist telling her how I felt in case she was just on the rebound or you can pick any of fifty excuses – I was still just plain scared. When she started another relationship I blamed her again. I all but cut her out of my life.
In my later twenties, I met the girl who would become my wife. We met pissed and stayed pissed for a fortnight. I was raw, having missed love so many times, she was in a vulnerable place too. I was determined that another chance at love wouldn’t pass me by so I asked her to move in with me.
I was more interested in being in love than who I was with – I was ridiculously overcompensating. I made myself believe that there was something I was doing wrong – and that once I had figured it out – the relationship would be fine. I kept doubling down on commitment. We got pregnant within 4 months[1]. I bought the house, proposed, we got married. Each new target we set seemed to unite us, we were both looking outwards for the solution – but as each thing was achieved it brought us back to the reality that we really didn’t like each other very much. I introduced my wife to ‘the girl who got away’, and afterwards confessed that I had loved her. This became a ghost in the marriage and a regular focus of arguments.
When it came to my marriage, there was an easy solution – end the relationship. But this would have involved my admitting that I had been wrong, and in my warped belief structure, that would have demonstrated an unwillingness to commit to my relationship.
A friend in prison had worked as a trader / broker and he described the actualisation process that can cloud a dealer’s thinking. If they buy £1,000 worth of shares on Monday and on Tuesday see that the shares are worth £900, what should they do? Even if a trader knows that the shares are likely to fall further, there is unwillingness to sell them. In their mind they still have £1,000 worth of shares and it is only when they sell them for £900 that they actualise their loss. Some dealers will hold on to bad shares rather than take the first loss and learn from the mistake. Some gamblers will keep slogging until they lose every single penny rather than walk away with a small loss.
In my case, the longer I spent in a relationship, the harder it was to walk away. If I had spent years working on the ‘investment’ it would be even harder to break it – not only would I be admitting that my judgement had been wrong, but that I had been unable to see that it was wrong. So I stayed in my marriage until it became toxic, abusive and ended explosively.
I had two subsequent relationships that were healthy. But in both cases I didn’t fully commit. I cited my bad marriage break-up as the reason – but the simple fact of the matter was that I really liked the girls involved and was either afraid of being hurt or still feeling undeserving of love.
Then I met my victim. I was back to type. We met pissed, stayed pissed and within a few weeks I asked her to move in with me. But this time, when she met the ‘girl who got away’ among my friends I was careful not to repeat old mistakes. I treated my old flame with disdain and contempt. I was like Peter denying Jesus, when I was asked about my feelings I denied them thrice and more.
I believed that this had been the mistake I had made in my marriage, so having remedied it I made the same huge gestures that bought temporary reprieves. The relationship became toxic, abusive and ended explosively. I had literally repeated the same pattern, if the two abusive relationships were DNA profiles they would have overlaid perfectly.
All of my relationships have been haunted. I didn’t acknowledge it at the time, but the girl who got away was my first and true love. While I may have been outwardly angry at her, subconsciously I knew that all of the hurt I felt was my own doing. She has forever been on a pedestal in my mind. No other relationship can compare to this idyll – because we never dated she had never done anything wrong.
I can’t apologise to my victim. I can only apologise to the partners that I have hurt. I have realised that I have always been the author of my own misfortune – none of my partners is to blame for my unhappiness. Each and every one of my ex’s deserved better than I gave them.
As for the girl that got away, I hope she’s happy.
[1] My mother had always commented that my high-flying lifestyle would be brought crashing down to Earth just like my uncle. He had lived it up until he met a ‘Country’ girl, i.e. not a Dubliner, got her pregnant and had to give up nights out and fancy shirts to ‘do the right thing’- talk about Oedipal Freudian beauties. I was a subliminal self-fulfilling prophecy!
