An Evaluation

I've been doing a lot of self-reflecting lately on the places I screwed up in the past with this relationship I'm attempting to salvage. On the off chance that this email accomplishes what I want it to accomplish, and she agrees to talk with me, these are things that are going to need to be addressed. So, here I am, working the problems in my head out on paper.

Why wasn't I a math genius again? *Eyeroll*

Anyway. This is what I've been able to come up with.


I was wrong to protect him from the consequences of his actions. He's no better than anyone else in the world to have to face the music, and, after a while, it turned into me enabling his behavior. That was my fuck-up.

Not to mention the fact that even though I kept his secrets and covered for him, he never did the same for me. (In fact, there were a number of things--words, not actions--that I asked him to keep between us, and he didn't.) I'm a little tired of him putting my head on the chopping block to save his own ass.

It also damaged trust all the way around. I talk about him being a coward, but I guess in this instance, I'm not a whole lot better. *Sigh*


Another thing that I can think of that I did wrong was pushing for too much, too soon. I shouldn't have pressed it so hard. Part of that was *my* insecurity, my fear of the other shoe dropping. I don't like feeling like I'm always on edge, always walking on eggshells, always on the verge of being put out on my ass. So I pushed for reassurances that it wouldn't happen. The other part of that is that I hate having my freedom curtailed because OTHER people can't get their shit together. So I just said, "Fuck you," to the "rules" (because I despise "rules) instead of trying to explain where I was coming from.


The last thing is that I didn't have the proper boundaries. I set up an expectation that I would always let other people dictate to me my own behavior. I let them think they could make decisions FOR me rather than WITH me, and when I rebelled against it, everyone was surprised that, because I let it happen in the past, I'd be so pissed off about it now.

The boundaries thing wasn't just a problem there. It's an ongoing problem in my life, something I've never been able to do properly. I give and give and give and GIVE, and then people start to take advantage of me. Then, I get angry about it and have a meltdown. But while it's mostly other people's faults for being RAGING FUCKING ASSHOLES, it's also partly mine because I train that behavior. I reinforce it by giving in to unreasonable demands to keep the peace, and then I refuse to do it anymore, and then I give in again, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

And any psych major who graduated from my heavily-behavioral department should know that behavior that's reinforced using intermittent reinforcement is the hardest to extinguish. It's damn near impossible. The bird will peck itself to death, on the off chance that hitting the button will get him a bite of food THIS TIME.


I have my thoughts on how to fix these things if I'm given the chance, but I won't waste my time delineating them here. No point in it if I'm not given a shot, is there? *Sad smile*