February brings Valentine’s Day—a trigger month for many women who want to just ‘slip back into the fantasy’ of everything we associate as a culture with Valentine’s Day. It’s one of those trigger months, like November and December (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve), where women want to ‘look the other way’ in order to have a nice day or time with him. Just for 24 hours she wants to pretend he really isn’t pathological. She wants the chocolates, the flowers, a dinner out, dancing, a little romance—and 24 hours of normalcy. But at midnight, the Cinderella dress turns back to what it was and the carriage that carried the handsome prince is once again a pumpkin with field mice.
Pink and red hearts do not make his pathology ‘turn off’ for the convenience of a lovers’ holiday. Women get frustrated and want to know, “Will I ever find MY love? When will it be MY turn to find someone worth loving?”
I don’t know… can you:
- Stop focusing on him?
- Be willing to manage your intrusive thoughts of him?
- Redirect your obsessions from him to your own self-care?
- Create a full life so you aren’t lonely?
- Build a foundation of support that doesn’t include ‘having to be’ in a relationship?
- Learn to find fulfillment in activities that don’t only include intimate relationships?
- Treat your symptoms of anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
- Heal your sexuality?
- Embrace spirituality?
- Learn to be attracted to guys who aren’t proverbial bad boys?
- Dig deep to see what all your relationships have in common so you don’t repeat the pattern?
- Memorize what pathology is, and stop looking for loopholes?
- Take a year, or maybe even two years, OFF from dating to nurture all those places in you that are wounded and broken?
- Take time to learn what your trait proclivities are (read Women Who Love Psychopaths) so you know how to safeguard yourself in the next relationship?
- Seriously UNDERSTAND how your traits and his traits are a magnet to each other?
- Most of all… can you LOVE yourself?
Realize YOU ARE ENOUGH FOR YOU! If another relationship DOESN’T come along… you WILL survive. If you’re really determined, you’ll even THRIVE. Get grounded—sink your feet into the earth of your soul and declare you’ll never be uprooted again… no matter what. You’re grounded in you and reality—not fantasy. Be willing to challenge old belief systems, old assumptions, old patterns, and old preferences.
This month is Valentines Day… you’ve fallen in love with all sorts of things and people… you’ve fallen in love with illusions, dreams, hopes, and pathology. It’s time to fall in love with you! I know who you are… you know how? After all that research we have done, we know EXACTLY who you are—you deeply attach and love, you are loving to the Nth degree, loyal, trusting, sensitive, and very invested in relationship happiness. You’re a TERRIFIC woman that any NORMAL man would be blessed to have.
No one is alone during the ‘month of love.’ We stand hand in hand, bridging the gap for each other—connected and bonded by a sorority of shared experiences, pain, and yet, hope. If you need a hug for Valentines Day, there are plenty of cyber hugs floating through here.
Learn to love YOU. Nothing happens and no one else does until you do. Give to the world that part of yourself that is so rich and deep. There are lots of ways to be loved—be loved by giving back, by reaching out to others. Valentine’s Day is for lovers. Be the lover of your own soul. We celebrate that with you…
(**If we can support you in your recovery process, please let us know. The Institute is the largest provider of recovery-based services for survivors of pathological love relationships. Information about pathological love relationships is in our award-winning book, Women Who Love Psychopaths, and is also available in our retreats, 1:1s, or phone sessions. See the website for more information).
