Women Who Love Too Much - doesn't sound bad until you know what it is

I've been thinking alot lately about men and women and relationships and relating. Anyone who comes here often enough knows that I relationship-watch. About 5 years ago or so, I read a book by a woman named Robin Norwood titled Women Who Love Too Much. The book is a self-help book for women who make bad choices when picking mates to engage in relationship activities. It was one of those things that came along and changed the course of my life. It deals with relationship addiction and offers women a very precise solution to managing the addiction (because anyone who knows anything about addiction knows that they can be treated but not cured).

One of the core beliefs of women who love too much is that they can take a broke man and fix him up and make him shiny and good for her. There seems to be some kind of prize or reward in her mind for fixing a broken man. Kind of reminds me of taking a scrambled Rubix cube and restoring it back to its original state. You can sit back and look at your work and marvel in your skill and accomplishment. But the central problem in this train of thought is that a broke man can't be fixed by love or hard work or anything else that comes from outside himself. Most of the times, they don't acknowledge or won't admit that the are broken so the woman's work and efforts are in vain. And the thing about this is, women who love too much have the gift/curse of being able to see a man's full potential. They can see how far he could go if only he tried and/or was loved the right way by the right woman. And the problem with THAT is the man doesn't see, acknowledge, or wish to fulfill that potential. He might not be ok where he is, but he's ok enough with it not to make any drastic changes. He's not gonna rock his broken boat but so much.

Women who love too much choose mates who are unavailable and then complain that they are unavailable to them. Women who love too much choose mates who abuse them and seek comfort and solace from other people about the abuse they choose to endure. Women who love too much will date the same man with a different name and face over and over and not understand why all the love that she offers is not reciprocated. She wonders, "Why am I not good enough?". She doesn't understand that it's her choices that bring her to the brink of pain and leave her hanging there. She blames him. If ONLY he'd act right. If only he wouldn't lie. If only he wouldn't hit me. If only he did what he said he would do, my life would be what I want and need it to be. Women who love too much don't understand that changing HIM is not the solution to the love problem. But they insist on it. They refuse to accept him for who he is. They refuse to see their choices as the root of their problem.

I always say, it much easier to look at another person and tell them what's wrong with them and what needs to be fixed with them. It's easy to judge you and tell you how I think your life would be if you did A B and C. It's easier when you're not used to looking at yourself. It's easier when you decide to relinquish responsibility for your emotional well-being so that you can make the man your project. Yeah, it's easier, but the cost of easy in this situation is your sense of self-worth, self-respect, and sometimes your life itself. Women who love too much use broken men as a means of avoiding dealing with the pain in their own life. As long as I have YOU to focus on, I don't have to think about me and what I need to do to become a whole, healthy individual. Let me fix you first and then I'll get to me because your health, your well-being, your mental stability, your job, your children, your this and your that are much more interesting and much more important than anything I have going on in my own life.

-To Be Continued-

I'll be back with more insight a little later. I've been wanting to blog about this for so long and tonight, it just came out!

Peace

B E Z