We are all damaged... we have all been broken... we all have baggage... and many of us have been to hell and back, sometimes multiple times. I understand how you feel. There have been many times where I thought I was unlovable and resigned myself to a life of being alone. For me part of it was the new self-acceptance of being trans.

Sometimes you have to be broken down to build yourself back up. If you are starting new or starting over, love yourself, take care of yourself, and respect yourself first. Let go of any expectations of perfections. No one is. Let go of anyone else's ideas of normal. You are your own normal.

Also look at the patterns in your relationships... the people you dated/fell for... is there something similar? For me it was going for the first person that showed me any sign of affection, because I never got it from my family, and I craved it. So I gave my time and attention to people who used me and people I didn't really fit with. Recognize bad patterns, and challenge them. Replace them with new healthy actions.

Not sure what's going on in your life right now, but you know you are not alone, and you have a whole community of people here to talk to.

Hang in there...

I have gotten some great advice by posting this, and I do think that I have a lot of stuff to work on, so maybe its not that im too screwed up to be loved, its just I need some work before anyone could be ready to love me, I have done a lot of thinking in the past weeks for various reasons, and yes things always did end the same, but now I am more so thinking as to why they ended that way and I have found the problem now how to fix it I dont know but hopefully I will get there, but for now I am just going to take things as they come and see what happens when I focus on me for once.

I think that we all have to love ourselves, first, before we can truly accept someone else's love for us. Keep hanging in there, and keep doing your best to work on yourself, and your life.

I know that it is very, very hard to leave family, even if they are bad for you. I've had to do it in the past, simply to be able to save myself from a horrible fate. It took a lot of help from my friends, before I could realize this, however.

We are here, if you need to vent, or just need to talk. hugs

my *opinion*
 

all the stuff i highlighted in blue is something that i've thought myself, on my worst days. then i pull my head out of my youknowwhatsis and get a grip. that's *my* take on it when *i* do it and i finally recognize that i'm doing it. i'm NOT saying you have your head there per se or that you want to feel this way or that you're copping out. i'm saying that we all get mired in our own sh*t and it can be hard to feel our way past it. i say 'feel' because no amount of logic can carry you out sometimes. sometimes you just gotta feel it and feel it and f*cking feel it until you realize that the actual pain is coming from a part of your lovingmind that is whispering 'you're a brilliant and beautiful soul and you're exactly where you need to be in order to learn what you need to learn and you are infinitely lovable.' it hurts because you KNOW your lovingmind is right but your misermind is screaming 'you're a pathetic unlovable f*ckwit' so loudly that it's all you can access sometimes. here's the worst part. i think it's the unwillingness to acknowledge that we're NOT actually unlovable that causes the pain. sounds like a sh*t ton of meshugas i know but i'm thinking alot about this recently and the more i think about it and pick it apart the more i'm convinced i'm on to something, even if it's only the tip of the iceberg.

i think we get stuck in repetitious cycles because they're familiar and so they seem right. we get habituated to patterns, feelings, behaviors and we shift into tunnel vision. you know the tunnel right? the one with the signs that say 'it's gonna be different this time. just be positive! focus on what you want to believe and not on the last time you jumped the shark doing this same damn thing. just keep moving forward! you can make it work if you try hard enough or want it bad enough!' oy. it can be never ending that tunnel. it's the 'i think i can' mentality gone horribly horribly wrong.

so we do the same thing over and over for whatever reasons we have and expect the results to be different which is the definition of meshugenah. might as well have our mail forwarded to crazyville. do the same thing over and over and next thing we know we feel too broken to be lovable because we break ourselves over and over again with our lack of self-love and self-respect.. it's not the other person's fault if they cant give us a chance if we wont give them our honest truest selves to have a chance with!(that's for the red part above) i'm guilty as f*ck of doing this. 100% guilty. not because i wanted to hold back but because i was wrapped up in my "i have demons" mentality. not even consciously. and that's part of the problem too. when i'm in that place where i've determined and declared that i'm unlovable then i'm sorta "living" unconsciously if you see what i mean. if we're mired in that sh*t then how can we be our "i'm a brilliant and beautiful soul" selves? we do the same damn "i have demons" thing over and over because it was all comfy and familiar in the beginning and humans love to gamble. we'll play the slots forever, never win and then walk away broke trying to figure out why the world didnt cut us a break every time. and we'll go back again and again with the same mindset. but at some point the pain we cause ourselves is more damaging than the discomfort of changing what we do, so we change what we do or we die trying i guess and it's the die trying part that's important and here's why.

something like 175,000 people die every day (dont quote me on that number). so approx 175,000 people died yesterday and guess what? they all were broken at one time or another, maybe even yesterday. and they all also had dreams and hopes and plans. they were all going to go someplace special one day and learn to speak another language one day and fall in love again one day. they were all going to go back to school one day or travel the world one day or learn to cook Indian food one day or whatever. alot of them were going to go to therapy one day and learn how to love themselves better one day or take the time to figure out what was really important one day. but they're dead now so too bad for them. and at the end of today 175,000 more people just like them will be dead. you're part of a random group of 175,000 people and you never know when your day is. so dont be the mayor of crazyville. stop limiting your view of your life to sh*t. i'm here to tell you that you're a brilliant and beautiful soul and you're exactly where you need to be in order to learn what you need to learn and you are infinitely lovable.

so knock that 'unlovable' sh*t off. people love you. hell i probably love you. the whole freakin Planet loves you. ok maybe not the whole Planet but who cares? serious. (((hugs)))

I had massive relationship issues, which were compounded by the fact that I was always in a relationship. All my relationships ended in one of three ways. Either I broke up with them as they refused to commit, only to end up getting back with them. Or I broke up with them after a looong period of time in which I was very unhappy. Or they broke up with me as they felt I was distant and uncaring.

I eventually realised I had 3 major issues - Anxiety/insecurity, abandonment issues, and fucked up ideas of what a healthy relationship was. These 3 problems led me to date people people who either exacerbated my anxiety and abandonment issues or people who I felt emotionally 'safe' with (ie: people I wouldn't fall in love with or were slightly crazy).

This led me into a clearly messed up pattern - Fall in love with someone emotionally unavailable, only to leave with a broken heart. Then date someone who could never break my heart, only to end up unfulfilled and unhappy (or make them unfulfilled and unhappy). I put up with so much rubbish from my partners, and in my relationships, as I didn't know where to draw the line, I didn't know where the boundaries were.

Eventually I dated someone who was scarily mentally ill... and somehow that woke me up and helped me to find my darling husband.

My point is, that I can write all this now with the benefit of hindsight. 5-10 years ago I didn't know all of this. I knew my partners loved me as they fought for me when I walked away. I knew how much I loved my partners. Deep down I knew none of my relationships were giving me what I really wanted, but I didn't know why. I can look back now and think 'My issues with -- and -- and -- caused my partners to struggle in their relationship with me, but also my issues caused me to choose partners who were not good for me because of --- and --- and ---'.

A book that really helped me as I was first getting involved with my husband was - Attached, The New Science of Adult Attachment by Dr. Amir Levine, M.D and Rachael S.F. Heller, M.A.

Thank you very much everyone I am grateful some of you understand where im coming from.

It's been my experience that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy........you get what you expect in a relationship..........

every person deserves to and can be loved and love...

damn if that aint the damn truth. damn it.

Yes, you can.
 

Yes your right every person does deserve love. Sometimes its just not the right time for some I guess. Right now it's me time. As far as family thats an even harder one , people suggest therapy but I did that for so long and it never worked,but maybe ill try again

I work in the mental health field and will be the first to say that not all therapists are good or have worked through their own issues.

Sometimes it is just not the right fit even if they are highly skilled. If you truly gave it your best and feel like you never got anywhere, it really is time to find another therapist.

I remember so well my first therapist (thank you Ginny wherever you are) really was awesome as I was trying to work through my parental issues. I was 21 and still asking why my parents didn't love me. She just very firmly, each time I asked this question, said: "Because they can't".

I must have asked 20 times until the lightbulb in my head went off, she broke through the last of my defenses and I understood that they just were not able to love me. They never got the tools from their own parents.

When therapy works, it can be life and soul-saving.

Anya, your experience hit home for me and made me look up a poem I wrote years ago about a dream I had about my parents:

"Flight of Anger

I dreamed that my anger
propelled me into flight.
I was inside a store,
and my parents were waiting
outside in a car for me.
I felt so angry at my parents
that I rose up to the ceiling.
I cannot recall
why I was angry
but it was such a powerful force
that I flew around the store.
Then I looked at myself from afar
as the girl, a a teenage me,
got into the car with her parents.
I thought about how the girl's parents
did not really love her,
but because they were her parents
they had to allow her
to get in the car with them.
I felt a sense of utter fright and sadness
that the unloved girl
could have just as easily disappeared
and the parents could have driven off
without any sense of loss.
The girl was too young to know
that she was unloved,
that her parents didn't know her,
and that her family was just
an empty social construction."

Thank you both for sharing, it all means so much to me in figuring out everything

The one thing I have figured out is we can subconsciously push someone away. I do this all the time, I start dating someone everything is great and then I find little unimportant things to drive me crazy until eventually it ends it. I have also figured out that I have the ability to turn my heart on and off when I choose too. I was always afraid that I would get hurt, so it was so much easier to end it on my terms, even if it wasn't supposed to end. I still struggle with these issues, but when I find someone who truly cares about me, they help me work through it. We all have our issues, big and small. It completely depends on the person you are with and how dedicated you both are to making that relationship successful.

I'm not sure what your family issues are exactly, but YOU going to therapy is going to help to some degree, but that isn't going to change THEM. They are probably not going to change either, so, you have to keep in mind that sometimes keeping a safe distance and limiting your exposure to the negativity is the ONLY way you will find a healthy medium.

If your family is making that much of an influence on you, then you really do need to sit back and find out why. They are not living your life, you are. Keeping a distance doesn't mean you don't love or care for them, but that you love and care for yourself more.

YEAH NJ ~~ ((((( cb ))))) listen to NJ :)

It has always been a rough road with my faimly, since as far back as I can remember, but I just keep on staying , I am seriously thinking of just taking the baby and leaving to another town, Not like kidnapping her, I mean legally,but just getting away because I dont want her growing up like them at all.
And I guess now thinking about it,the baby loves me no matter how screwed up I am,So I guess i know at least someone cares

I'm going to shoot from the hip here.

First step is to stop saying how screwed up you are. You are not, and will never be, the only one with issues. It's almost as if you convinced yourself you are this way and there is no turning back. We ALL have issues and crap to deal with in our lives - the trick is HOW you deal with it and what you allow to take over your life. There are a lot of people walking around out there not saying how screwed up they are, when in fact, they are certifiable. If you know you have issues, really work hard to get through them - and change the way you feel about yourself.

You really have to change your own outlook if not for yourself, but your child's sake. Getting the child away from a dysfunctional family is one thing, but if you are still carrying the dysfunction - what good is that going to be?

Your very right thank you

I know im to fucked up to love. My past is what made me. I dont hardly let anyone in ever cuz ik as soon as i do they will see for what my past has done to me and not the real me. Its why im so quiet on this sight. But as everyone that has had rough past it is what makes us stronger in some ways and weaker in others. looking back on the past is a good thing but try not to stay stuck in it to much cuz thats what will bring you down. I have learned from most of my past theres a lot i still dont understand but im glad im still here today to make a go at life and meet some really great ppl. I wouldnt of said as much about 5 years ago when i couldnt escape what i was feeling cuz i wouldnt deal with what had happen to me most of my life. But for what ever the reason that the crappy stuff happen i am better and stronger for it.