Relationships

In my family,on my mother's side,  almost every single person has been divorced.  My parents, my mother's parents, and my mother's siblings.   Most them remarried successfully...as in they are still married to their second spouse.   When my parents split up, my mother dated for a while and then that stopped.  Years later she told me she stopped dating because every time a man came over I thought he was going to be my new daddy.  How embarrassing for her! I spent most of my childhood with a lonely, depressed mother. Shortly after I married my first husband, my mother got remarried to a man who controls her every movement, and she is enjoying her misery 37 years later.   My mother, being a depressive person, had few friends, and seldom socialized.  She came to life when my soon to be stepfather would come to visit (it was a long distance relationship for many years) and shut down as soon as he left.

My father's mother married a man 40 years her senior, when she was 18 years old.  They stayed married till my grandfather died and my grandmother never remarried.  She had spent most of her life taking care of an elderly husband.  My father was the only child.  He disappeared from my life shortly after he left our home, when I was 10.  There was no warning of his leaving (I was doing dishes at the kitchen sink while he was walking by me carrying his clothes, saying he was going on a a business trip), and no reason for his abandonment of my brother and I.

I am writing all of this to give some background as to why I have been an absolute failure at relationships all of my life.  Not because I am a bad person, I am not any worse than anyone else. Having had virtually no role models for healthy relationships, I choose inappropriate partners for all the wrong reasons.  They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  I have determined that when it comes to relationships, for me, insanity is the name of the game.

I have had three husbands (one was common law).   My three children all have the same father.  They have had to endure the loss of three male figures in their lives.  When they were adults, I came out, and I have had three long term girlfriends.   So my children  have endured the coming and going of a LOT of people, as well as having to cope with a pretty fucked up mom. I was a good mother, don't get me wrong. My kids were cared for, and loved. There was a lot of togetherness, and humour, and meaning in their lives.  But my issues are a source of deep shame and guilt for me that has coloured my relationship with my children and still does even though they are adults.

Now I am in another relationship, and it is very much like the others, but there is no abuse this time.  My girlfriend is a sweet and decent person, with enough emotional baggage and issues to warrant years of therapy which she is not getting.

And that's what draws me.  Emotionally unavailable men, and emotionally unstable women.   I want to rescue them, I want to be the person that makes them happy.  To love them when no one else does.  I choose women with no family, or estranged families. I come to the rescue and they are grateful and appreciative. I am kind and compassionate, and loving and selfless.  And then because I don't think anyone can love me if I don't sleep with them, I sleep with them, and then after a few months,  I realize I have made another mistake and I am stuck. The neediness that drew me in, makes me irritable and impatient.  

At least this time I didn't move in with her.  At least this time we have agreed to be friends before we destroy the relationship beyond repair.  I am a MUCH better friend than a partner.  I cannot live well with others.  I feel I have to fix everything, and be responsible for everything and I burn out after a year or so.  And then I stay while I try to salvage something that was doomed to begin with.   And my children pay the price for that.

My daughter doesn't want me to bring around any new women around if I can't guarantee that it is going to be permanent.  I can't do that.  I always intend for it to be permanent, I always have the best intentions, every one of them has been "the one" and it's always "different this time".  They are understandably skeptical.   My daughter has a baby, 16 months old that my current partner loves dearly.  But because we have decided to have a friendship instead of a partnership my daughter has told me she no longer wants my girlfriend around the baby or at family functions because she doesn't want her daughter to go through what they had to go through because of me.  In her words "parading people through our lives that aren't going to stay".  I tried to explain, to no avail, that the chances of my "friend" being in my life long term is much greater than my "partner" being around long term.  I am still in touch with all but two of my exes and we have very civil relationships.  But she is scared, and she is protective of her child, and  unable to let go of the past.

And I don't blame her.  And it hurts me to the core.  And I know it's unfair, and I know it's not my decision because it is her child.  And I know I totally deserve this. And I don't know how to fix it.