I want to discuss what I’ll call for the moment, ‘The Spectrum of Infidelity’ for want of a better term. Having taken a pick to the surface of this iceberg over the last nine months or so, it has become increasingly clear to me that ‘infidelity’ means different things to different people, different things at different times to one person and has a spectrum as wide or narrow as you wish it to be. What has occurred to me more recently however, is that the factors leading to this type of behaviour are frequently unrecognised by both the instigator and the recipient. In my case at least, it has become obvious that a multitude of events commencing early in life and extending well into adulthood have added to the complex layers of maladaptive responses to life stressors. The result consistently being the evolution of issues with workplace, romantic relationships and personal wellbeing.
The reason I keep coming back to this whole infidelity thing, is that it has been a mechanism used to sabotage romantic relationships with the most recent of these events being the precipitant for initiating this blog, for deconstructing myself and rebuilding, for instigating change. Better Late Than Never. No more. Enough is enough. Importantly, in my case, the infidelity wasn’t necessarily physical. Most recently, it involved having a dating app on my phone and contacting previous partners by text message to express my undying love or to maintain some form of emotional engagement with them. The thing is, that’s not even what I was desperately searching for. What I was seeking, more than anything was to feel safe inside, safe and secure in a loving relationship and to destroy the fear of abandonment that had contaminated my entire life. I think the engagement with texts and app content was little more than a tool to prove to myself that I am worthless, to seek boost to a faltering and virtually non-existent self esteem and to prepare for the perceived inevitable departure of someone I loved dearly.
The entire mindset is f@$ked. Like really f%$ked. But it has only been recently that I’ve been able to examine events and memories from the past that instilled and reinforced that fear of abandonment. Reading around this, it is clear that I am not alone, and that many, many people exposed to early life emotional insecurity or neglect enter adulthood with persistent and dysfunctional coping mechanisms that compromise the establishment of healthy, secure and loving relationships. Briefly, in my circumstance, a detached and emotionally disengaged parenting style on the part of my mother has been a significant factor in the evolution of this pattern. Plagued by significant mental illness from as far back as I can remember in early childhood, my mother experienced symptoms of major depression, anxiety and even obsessive-compulsive behaviours. For much of my life it was unclear what, if any precipitants had led to this outcome. This would become crushingly apparent at the age of 17 when I accidentally came upon a document that would instantly explain much of my mother’s functioning. It would also provide a penny drop moment of recognising why I had experienced many of the things I had over so many years. I’d like to expand on some of those memories another time. Not so much for your sake dear reader, but selfishly to get them out of my own head and onto paper, so that I can for the first time, process and organise them and hopefully move on to a happier place.
Before I go further, the dating app situation is worth a little further discussion. As I’ve analysed this repeatedly over time, I’ve noted that the app was not always present, in fact most of the time it was not. Its appearance however, correlated with the sporadic flurry of text messages to women and these inevitably occurred at time points where I was feeling at an absolute low, where I was at my most stressed or felt most incapable at work. To be clear, none of what I write here is intended to minimise the significance of these interactions, in fact the aim is to clearly outline what I perceive to be the underlying causes to prevent this type of behaviour from ever occurring again.
What I’ve realised during both self reflection and reading is that this type of activity was driven by deeply engrained dysfunction with intended impact being to sabotage the safety and security of a happy relationship before my partner arrived at the conclusion that they wished for the relationship to end. Always be on the front foot. Sabotage and end the relationship before it was done to me. The saddest part of this mindset is that the safety of a healthy, loving and bonded relationship is everything that i ever wanted, yet I was plagued by a sense of insecurity, lack of worth and emotional avoidance so as to not get too close. Just in case. The inevitable breakdown of the relationship on a now cyclical basis then confirmed this mindset of expecting loss, expecting failure, expecting abandonment. Prophecy fulfilled. Mission complete. Confirmation of exactly what I said would happen. And so the cycle continued. More insidious, is the feeding of a deep intrinsic sense of shame, guilt and self hatred in response to these actions that has been much more difficult to identify and to attempt to reverse. I suspect the process of doing so will be ongoing throughout life’s journey. I doubt the job will ever be done. Deeply engrained descriptions of self, established early in childhood and solidified through an adulthood of repeated confirmatory behaviours and outcomes are simply not resolved overnight.
It’s work. It’s a second job. It’s nightshift. Dayshift. I actually think its a fulltime job. Resolving this needs constant and unfaltering attention to self care, self appreciation, a little bit of self love and a lot of patience. Maybe one day, someone will walk beside me to see the fruits of that hard work.
That would be good.
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