Over the past 14 years, my ex has kept in touch, sometimes as a friend, but often as more. Afterwards, I am as devastated as the first time. Then he contacts me and we start the affair again, only for it to end when he moves or meets someone new.
My husband has always been there for me and we have been happy. Even when he found out about my ex, he took me back.
It is cruel to treat someone you love this way, and I don’t understand why I do it again and again. My ex doesn’t want me back, although he says he loves me. Why don’t I have the self-respect to say no, and why do I risk so much for so little?
A. You don’t use the word love once about your ex. It sounds as if you don’t even like him. He is like an addiction — toxic, destructive and utterly compelling. As you say, “I don’t understand why I do it again and again.”
One of the definitions of addiction is “doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result”. Think of the way that somebody who is dependent on alcohol uses drink, trying to get back to that first feeling of warm and powerful confidence. Or the way a drug addict keeps going back to crack, to get that first sublime high. They know it destroys their life and the lives of the people around them. But they still keep doing it. Why? They are trying to get back to the original feeling. They think that this time, it will be different. It has nothing to do with the alcohol or crack. They are the messengers, not the message.
Try to think of your relationship with your ex in the same way. Your compulsion has nothing to do with him as a person. It has absolutely nothing to do with love. You have attached yourself to a feeling that you keep trying to get back. First love is incredibly powerful — so is first pain. It never really leaves us, but with most of us, it fades to a manageable regret. In you, it hasn’t. You have to ask yourself why.
I doubt there is anything missing from your marriage. The lost part is in you. Somewhere along the line, perhaps long before your ex came along, you developed a powerful emotional need that you attached to the first person who inspired an overwhelming feeling in you — your first boyfriend. Every time you see him or even think about him, that emotion is reactivated.
It is not about him, though. It is about a need in you. In some therapeutic models, the origin of addictive relationships is thought to be something called attachment disorder. In simple terms, it means that if we did not attach sufficiently to our primary carers (our parents), we are always left with a gaping emotional need. As adults, that need can be activated by an intimate relationship and become so overwhelming that we mistake it for love or for an “it’s so powerful, it must be right” relationship. We need to remember that it is not the relationship that is powerful, but the need — which can lead us to behave in ways that we do not value or like.
I know some people sneer at the idea of love (or a person) as an addiction. Think of it simply as convenient shorthand for an obsessive compulsion. Ask any addict what they truly want. They want, they say, “to change the way I feel”. Drugs, alcohol or food allow them to do that, at least until the effect wears off, when they feel worse than ever because they are filled with guilt and shame. The shame makes them feel so bad that they want to escape from it, so they go back to the thing that they believe makes them feel better. And so a vicious circle is formed. Does that sound familiar in terms of your ex?
You’re not crazy or a bad person. What you suffer from is surprisingly common. Try to recognise it for what it is, and understand that it has nothing to do with your ex and everything to do with an old, unresolved emotional pattern. You need to look hard at yourself and work out what that might be. Honest self-examination is difficult, which is why we ask therapists to help us. Therapy is about understanding ourselves. It is particularly helpful when we are so confused about our own emotions that we feel compelled to act in ways that we know, rationally, are destructive.
My suggestion is that you get help from a qualified relationship therapist. Once you see yourself clearly, you may be able to see your ex clearly too — as just another messed-up human being with no more power over you than a dead light bulb.
Helpful reading: How to Break Your Addiction to a Person by Howard M Halpern (Bantam Books). To find an accredited therapist in your area, contact the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (0870 443 5252, www.bacp.co.uk)
If you have a relationship question for Sally Brampton, e-mail sally.brampton@sunday-times.co.uk. In case of publication, names
will be withheld. Regretfully, no correspondence can be entered into
