[quote=“jdsmith, post:12, topic:194473, full:true”]
That’s the saddest thing I’ve read in a while.
Who knows? People don’t want to be alone. Lonely people even more so. Love for your kid is a very strong bond, quite honestly, it is stronger than the spousal bond. That may not be why people get together, but it certainly is one reason they stay together. [/quote]
Amen to that, brother.
Different people live different realities.
I’m sorry for your loss, JimmyP.
I have theory that some of us walk around with our neediness advertised on our foreheads. I have a friend who’s father left the family when she was young and left the to suffer poverty and drifting through crap housing and hungry summers until they grew enough to try to make their own way. She did better than her brother and sister in that she got through university and was able to make enough to support herself.
But she never would accept that her father left her, too. If you asked her, they had a great relationship–they just hadn’t spoken in 20 years.
And then she dated every jerk who asked her out looking for someone, somewhere to make her feel loved.
And the ones she fell hardest for were always the jerkiest of the jerks. These were guys who needed. Someone to bail them out. Someone to pay the rent. Someone to scream at because life just would never give them a g-d break. Someone to push into a wall every now and then.
And they never did seem to need to be with anyone willing to stand up to their crap, or throw their gas-lighting bs right back at them.
And she’d actually say things to them that amounted to, “It’s okay, lie to me! I’ll believe you! Just don’t leave me!” And then they’d leave and she’d be devastated and find a crappier guy next time.
And then there are the men/women who need the needy people. Those people who no sense of self, but only seem to find their place according to who they’re able to dominate and how much they’re able to manipulate other people to get their own needs met. They’re really like two sides of the same wound, I think.
My friend is divorced twice. Would be three times, but this time the creep wasn’t legally marriageable: he’d jumped parole (he’d been jailed for domestic violence), so he wouldn’t do anything that would leave a record of where he was. And she’s not mad at him. No, she’s mad at ME because I didn’t warn her strenuously enough that he was a bad choice. Yes, she was aware of the domestic violence, long before I was. Makes no sense. She needs her neediness. They both do.