When I was in my late teens the guys I tended to go for were players. I was drawn to their charisma, their charm, their sense of humor, their social ease and the grandiose declarations of love and improbable promises.
Who doesn’t want the moon and all the stars?
After a few weeks of dating I’d find out the guy was promising the moon to others with equal fervor and we’d break up, him contrite riding off into the sunset, me in a river of tears.
It’s really hard to feel wronged and find blame in your own behavior. I wasn’t doing the cheating. I was in fact vigilant, ever suspicious, in an effort to reduce the chances of this happening again.
Except the way out is never in controlling another person’s behavior. The way out is inside myself.
Why did every guy I date cheat on me? How could this possibly be my fault?
Blame at first can feel liberating, but it’s a trap.
If something is not your fault, it’s not your responsibility.
If it’s not your responsibility, there is nothing you can do.
If there is nothing you can do, you secure your own powerlessness.
If you are powerless you delude yourself into thinking there is no way out. You are then destined to make the same mistakes.
If I find a way to make myself responsible, I find the key.
And I need that key because I really don’t want to do this anymore.
What do the guys cheating on me have in common?
Me.
Who chooses them, is attracted to them?
Me.
Can I figure out a way to not be attracted to them? Or, be attracted to them but not act upon that attraction, choose instead equally attractive men more compatible with the fact that I am monogamous?
Of course this changes if something happens to me that I truly have no control over (such as being the victim of a crime.)
But in a general sense finding responsibility within you (what am I missing? How am I contributing to this?) instead of pointing the finger at someone else is the only way to find out how powerful you are, how free to change the patterns you are convinced hold you captive.
Change the patterns, change your life.
Read other answers by Dushka Zapata on Quora:
- What is something you get wrong, every single time you try to do it right?
- What is the worst feeling in a youngster's life?
- How do secure people view and approach life, people, and things?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2fp6SUv
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