Crickets chirping in the Romance Addicts section

Oh, what the hell. Here goes. Feel free to ignore (or scorn, for that matter).


My name is Little Nemo, and I’m a Romance Addict.

God, that sounds so naive. But it’s true, and it has messed up my life and the lives of some very important people whom I love, and who loved me.

I used to brag about the fact that I have rarely been without a girlfriend or lover for as far back as I can remember. It was hard for me to write “brag” just now. That’s a word I associate with men who brag about their sexual exploits, which is something I’ve always been contemptuous of. But “bragging” is the long and short of it. By “joking about” or “shyly confessing to” that aspect of my life, I am essentially bragging: “Women find me attractive, and always have.”

And I guess that is what I have always needed to have confirmed. That women love me. Not that women will have sex with me. The distinction is important.

Come to think of it, it may be the fact that I tried to convince myself recently that it was about sex that actually made me realize it had very little to do with sex.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was born the sixth of six children in a Protestant family in the sub-suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My parents had both been married before. Two of my brothers had been adopted by my father in his first marriage, and another had been born to my mother in her first marriage. My two sisters and I were the natural children of my mother and father. My father was a tax lawyer, although he had tried his hand at a variety of ventures, none of which succeeded, and at least one of which failed fantastically. My mother was a housewife who originally had only a high school education, but attended a community college when I was quite young. I don’t believe she ever received a college degree. She was (and remains) an avid reader, though, and was particularly fond of Agatha Christie and other “old school” mysteries.

We originally lived in an enormous old farmhouse, built in 1790. It had three floors above ground, plus a basement and an attic, for a total of five floors. We lived here until I was about six or seven. I have scattered memories of life in that house, some good, some not so good. The not so good memories are of conflict between my parents and my brothers. My mother finding my oldest brother (my father’s adopted son) drinking liquor in the basement, and angrily whacking him with the vacuum cleaner. (Heaven knows why I was there, or why my mother didn’t think to remove me from the room before going ballistic on my brother.) My father getting into a fist-fight with his other adopted son in front of the whole family. My mother’s son pulling up to me on the side of the road in his convertible and telling me he pitied me for having to remain, before driving off for good.

Were we dysfunctional? In some ways, definitely, but I never thought of it that way--at least not until much later. After my brothers all moved away and we moved into a more manageably sized home, my father had an affair (probably not his first, and possibly not his last), and my mother took my sisters and I to live in a townhouse a few miles away. I was certain she would divorce him, and, unlike my sisters, that would have been hunky-dory with me. I disliked my father (a typical WWII generation “emotionally distant father”), and I particularly disliked the way he treated my mother. He never hit her, or even yelled at her, but he belittled her and spoke down to her. My mother, on the other hand, was always kind and gentle, and as easygoing as a mother of six could be expected to be be. But after at least a year of separation (it seems like several years in my memory, but time moves so slowly when you’re a child), my parents attended Marriage Encounter, and came back reunited, and--heaven help me--“born again.”

But I don’t feel like writing any more about my family background just now. I suppose I really need to think about that more carefully, but not just yet.

My first romantic memory may not be terribly romantic. Actually, I don’t remember experiencing it with any feelings of romantic attraction. It’s a fragment of a memory from nursery school. Girl A and Girl B are shouting at each other. They are arguing, apparently, over which of them is Little Nemo’s girlfriend. I am watching this with no emotion that I can recall, as if it is happening to someone else. For what it’s worth, both girls are quite cute, and eventually grow into lovely young women.

I have no memories of my one year of kindergarten. Where did that go? All I remember is making “crafts” with that ubiquitous and edible paste.

In between kindergarten and the first grade, me moved to that more manageable (but no less troubled) house, which entailed a change in school districts. So in the first grade, I was “the new kid.” And here’s another incident that I still brag about. No more than a few weeks after I transferred to the new school, one day, on the playground, a bunch of boys (all first-graders) decided they were going to “get” me. Happily, “getting” someone in the first grade did not entail beating him to a pulp, but instead involved chasing him around the playground. I was a fast kid, which probably worked out for them, too, because I don’t think they had planned what to do in the event that they caught me. The reason the boys decided to “get” me, I was later told (or maybe I invented this memory--Who knows?) was that they were not happy that the girls seemed to like me. This is probably a trivial (and somewhat misremembered) memory, yet somehow it looms large in the story I’ve written in my head, and it may have been a presentiment of my difficulties later in life bonding with other men.

And it was in the first grade that I got my first girlfriend (setting aside the possibility that Girl A or Girl B may have been the first). I’ll call her Alice. I remember our first kiss, quite clearly. There was plenty of giggling involved. Alice was of Korean background, and adopted. (I just learned quite recently that her biological father was an African American G.I., so she’s actually biracial.) Of course, at the time, I had no concept of “race.” (I’m a European American, by the way. “White.”) Alice was my girlfriend from the first grade through the third.

And then I fell for someone else. Brenda. This was my first experience of experiencing a new crush as an old one was fading. That special tingling sensation. Even though we were just fourth graders, there was some bad blood, and an awkward and unpleasant transition. There was a period of overlap, captured with sad hilarity in my choice of Christmas presents (or was it Valentine’s presents?) for the two. To the “new” girlfriend, I gave perfume. To the “old” girlfriend I gave...soap. Yes, I gave a girl soap. It was pretty, scented soap in a nice gift box. But, for crying out loud, it was soap. But Alice was a sweet girl, and if she was hurt, she did a good job of hiding it.

This was probably also the time I became aware of the fact that I could make a girl happy by doing or saying certain things, and this made me happy in turn.

Somewhere around the end of the fourth grade or the beginning of fifth grade, I had my first quasi-sexual encounter with a girl who was one year older than me. Alice and I, as far as I can recall, only kissed that one time, and I don’t think I ever kissed Brenda, but this girl took me straight to “French kissing” and even “second base.” Strangely, I can’t recall her name, but I’ll call her Christine, just to keep things alphabetical. It happened one evening when, if I recall correctly, she was supposed to be “babysitting” me. In my neighborhood, it was common for older children to babysit younger children for a modest fee, and I did it myself when I got older. I don’t know if this was the arrangement in this case. If her family was home, I don’t remember, and obviously they wouldn’t have been in the same room. This was not a girl I had played with much before, and I don’t think we did so again. She later grew into a “troubled youth.” In retrospect, I suppose it’s possible that she had been sexually abused herself, and was trying to assert some sort of control over her own sexuality by taking the lead with a younger boy.

In the fifth grade, I found another girlfriend, Debbie, who, as it happens, was also an adopted girl of Korean background. Debbie was the first girl I ever “necked” with. We did a lot of necking. What was odd about the situation is that we had two other friends--a boy and a girl--and the four of us would sneak off to an empty hunting hutch in the woods and just neck. It took a turn for the stranger when, at some point, we swapped partners. This was all very playful, and if anyone’s feelings were hurt, I wasn’t aware of it. We were all still friends. We had just swapped necking partners. Before I had been necking with Debbie, now I was necking with Ellen. But it was Debbie I liked. I liked being with her, I liked the way she looked, I liked the way she smelled. And she was really, really funny. (Well, funny by the standards of fifth graders.)

It just occurred to me--and I should probably write this down now, before I forget, even though it’s a bit of a non sequitur--that one of my fondest memories of childhood is lying with my head on my mother’s lap in a pew of the big, elegant Methodist church. She would stroke my hair, pushing it behind my ear. That was a feeling of comfort and peaceful ecstasy (if ecstasy can be peaceful) that I don’t think I have ever experienced since. The next closest thing to that is the thrill I would feel--literally a shiver down my spine--when an adult or older child (usually a woman or girl, but not always) would help me when I was in a vulnerable state. The most obvious example would be having a cut or sstuffe cleaned and bandaged. There would be a quiet moment when the caregiver was concentrating on the task, and I was concentrating on the caregiver, and I felt as if I would melt.

I can’t remember the last time I felt that thrill. I think I occasionally experienced it even in early adulthood, but I don’t recall. I may have felt it once or twice with my counselor (an attractive but married young mother) seven years ago in Boston.

In the sixth grade, I experienced my first “charity crush.” That’s a word I literally just made up seconds ago. I’ll call her Francis. She was “the new girl.” Writing, this, it occurs to me that I fell for “the new girl”--a transfer student--at least three times in my youth. Not much mystery about that, I suppose. This girl was smart and funny and had a strong personality, but she was by no means a beauty. I genuinely liked her, but the “crush” aspect was forced. I liked the idea of me--the good-looking popular boy--liking her--the plain-looking nerdy girl. We got along well, exchanged Christmas and birthday presents, but we went on to different junior high schools, and it faded out. Such arrogance on my part. And this was not the last “charity crush” I experienced. My marriage may have had that aspect to it. But I’m jumping ahead.

Junior high school was a hard time for me. My parents were separated, my sister and I were surreptitiously crossing district lines in order to attend the school where the house my father occupied was located, I encountered bullying for the first time… It was pretty bad. On top of that, my grades had begun plummeting ever since my parent’s marital problems first came to light, and I was barely squeaking by in school. For a while, I pretty much refused to go to school at all. But because I was never openly rebellious towards my parents (perhaps because I didn’t want to add to my mother’s worries), I would feign illness rather than just say, “I don’t want to go,” and of course I never told her about the bullying. I preferred to sit in my room reading the encyclopedia and science fiction novels, as well as general works on philosophy and science. There’s was no romance in the seventh grade for me. (On the other hand, knowing me, there were probably a variety of crushes. I had a crush on my homeroom teacher, for example.)

Now comes a major turning point in my life. As I think about it now, sorting out the time line, and seeing how various aspects of my life were aligned, it seems to take on new significance, though I may be “retconning” here. (Geek jargon. Google “retcon” and you’ll find it.) First, my parents were reunited, and we moved back into the house. My parents started dragging us to the whacky neighbor’s basement church, where there was much waving of arms and speaking in tongues and teary eyes and fiery rhetoric. My grades were awful, as usual. I overcame the bullying problem (there was just one bully, a “head” from a bad family) with the help of a kind-hearted, football-playing friend, and a bit of courage on my own part. (The bully was alarmed when I punched back for the first time, and left me alone after that.) And then Ginny came to town. Ginny came from an affluent suburb in northern New Jersey, though her father was a not-so-successful salesman (which may be why they had to move). She was smart, funny, cute (to my eyes, anyway), and she seemed to like me. She may have been the first girl I saw as a “savior.” Romance addicts have probably all fallen for a “savior” or two or three at some point. She was the light in my darkness, the oasis in my desert, blah, blah, blah. But I was very much in earnest. I fell for Ginny like Wile E. Coyote falling from a cliff, and spent the next six years or so chasing my Road Runner while repeatedly stumbling into my own traps and having my Acme safes fall on my head.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: Ginny eventually turned out to be a lesbian. Yes, pure comedy gold here just begging to be mined.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell Ginny about my feelings for her right away. It’s not as if I had been reticent about such things in the past. Maybe it was because she was my first mega-crush. Maybe because it was the first time I did not feel in control. Maybe my other experiences with school and bullying had taken away the confidence I had in elementary school. Or maybe there was some quiet voice in my head telling me, “Dude, she’s just not that into you--or dudes in general.” Anyway, before I knew it, Ginny had a boyfriend. He was a “head.” (That’s what we called “stoners” in those days, in that region. It was short for “motorhead” or “pothead.” We didn’t really distinguish. They were the kids who went on to tech school and came from the wrong side of the tracks.) I was mad with jealousy, and at one point, while camping with friends and drunk on wine, I made a feeble attempt at drowning myself in a creek, only to be pulled out by a friend (as if I wasn’t expecting to be). They broke up soon enough, but before I could muster my courage, she had a new one--a friend of mine who knew I was crazy about her. Imagine my delight. Ginny was no fool. She knew I loved her, but we went on being “best friends.” And we really were best friends. I felt closer to her than to any of my boyfriends.

Strange as this may sound--and it sounds very strange to me--I can’t remember if Ginny and I ever “hooked up” (romantically, not sexually) during junior high. You would think I would remember something like that very well. I suppose we didn’t.

I should also point out that, though I was madly in love with Ginny, I did not “only have eyes’ for her. I have never been in that situation. An endless stream of girls turned my head, and still does. No passion, no wild crush is enough to blind me to the countless alternatives out there.

I had one pseudo girlfriend in junior high. I think it may have been in the ninth grade, and she was a seventh grader. To be blunt, she was homely. But someone told me she liked me, so I asked her out to the school dance. She sat on my lap. That was about it. She was a sweet girl, but she had nothing to say, and that only served to remind me of how interesting Ginny was.

Hmm. Interesting how writing everything down, in chronological order, helps me see things in a new light. I said at the start that I have always bragged about rarely being without a girlfriend, and yet in three years of junior high I briefly had one kinda-sorta girlfriend, and spent most of my time carrying a torch for a girl who just wanted to be friends. I suppose junior high school was such a depressing time for me that I have blotted most of it out of my memory.

In high school, my romantic side came back with a vengeance. By luck, I happened to fall in with the “cool” crowd on entering high school. (The cool crowd at that particular moment was the “new wave/punk” crowd. They ruled supreme for two years, until our basketball team pulled off a miraculous championship, and then suddenly the jocks were back in vogue.) Although I was in a junior position in this crowd, I was, frankly, a pretty boy, and, perhaps thanks to having two older sisters and a stylish mother, I was a sharper dresser than most of the boys you’d find in semi-rural Pennsylvania.

I attracted the attention of an older cheerleader, Heather. She was a great girl. She was funny and generally kind, and had a rather loud, husky voice. She was the first girl I went to “third base” with, but she gave me the impression that she had had an unpleasant earlier sexual experience, and I certainly did not want to pressure her.

In fact, by this time, some of the boys had begun to “lose their virginity” (what a naive concept), and I found that I was repelled--physically repelled--by other boys bragging about sexual “conquests.” I would think, “Do you like her? If you like her, why would you talk about her that way in front of other people? How do you think she would feel if she heard what you’re saying?” I may have actually said these things out loud. I’m pretty sure I said them to a boy I was pretty close with, and he spent the rest of our time in high school going from one girl to the next, and making excuses to me in anticipation of my contempt. My opinion apparently meant a lot to him. (I actually wrote a short story about my relationship with him in college.) He was a sex addict in the making. I wonder how he’s doing now.

So I drew a very clear line in my mind at that time regarding sex. It had nothing to do with Christian morals. For me, it was about mutual respect. (I would note that this kind of jargon had yet to appear in the American sex ed curriculum. I was pretty much making it up as I went along.) I determined that when I did eventually have sex (beyond the third base), it would be with someone I loved, and it would be something we both wanted. There was a bit of pride involved here, too. “Getting laid” was, to me, far less important than having a girl want to have sex with me. (By the way, after those scary experiences with alcohol in junior high, I stopped drinking entirely in high school, and didn’t start drinking again till my third year of college, so “plying a girl with drink” was beyond the pale to me.)

So I didn’t go all the way with Heather, but my experiences with her taught me how to pleasure a woman sexually, with my hands. (Sorry if this is inappropriate, but it seems to me that these early sexual experiences probably shed a lot of light on our later habits.)

Again, I can’t imagine why I don’t remember this important detail, but I can’t remember if it was she he dumped me, or I who dumped her. It’s possible that we talked about and decided to end it. If nothing else, the lack of a clear memory suggests that even if it was she who dumped me, I was not devastated, and the only reason that could be is… You guessed it! I already had another girl lined up!

This is where the serial romance goes into high gear. The pattern is pretty familiar. The initial interest (or noticing her interest in me), the subtle manipulations intended to make her like me more, without making it obvious that that was what I was doing, and, just when I knew I had her, the “confession of love.” Okay, maybe I didn’t use the word “love” back then. By the time I would ask a girl out, I was already 99% certain she would say yes. Maybe this was a matter of pride, too, or at least a desire to avoid getting hurt. I would not ask a girl out without being fairly certain she would say yes. And I can’t recall being turned down. There was Isabel, the younger sister of a “new wave” friend. She was smart and pretty, but also insecure and clingy, so I softly dropped her for Jennifer. Jennifer was stunningly beautiful--she’d already participated in a local beauty pageant--but conversation was non-existent. I was not disappointed when that relationship faded out (I later heard she was disappointed that I didn’t try to go all the way with her!), because I was already interested in Katie, who was more mature and super-bright (valedictorian!). And I was able to amiably break with Katie (who had gone on to college), because I had a thing for New Wave girl Linda.

I should pause and note here that throughout these relationships, I was honing my skills with my hands. But I will also note that in the course of my high school romantic career, I never once experienced an orgasm with a girl. They would touch me, and that was nice, of course, but it was...well, it was never enough to do the job. So this became a pattern that continues to this day. I am much more concerned with giving my partner pleasure than seeking pleasure for myself. I used to think that was a good thing. Now I’m not so sure.

Anyway, Linda. Linda was cute and smart, but, like Isabel, she was insecure and clingy, and somehow I didn’t like that. Is this common among Romance Addicts? Well, I suppose it’s practically part of the definition. We want to be loved, but when we are loved, we become bored or nervous or both. So the situation was ripe when, unexpectedly, Ginny reappeared.

Remember Ginny? The girl I carried a torch for all through junior high? Well, I certainly hadn’t forgotten her. Not for a minute. At this time in high school, I was at the peak of my popularity, both generally and with girls. Ginny, meanwhile, had joined marching band (drums) and worked on the student paper, and was something of a wallflower. But for me, she was the fish who got away. I still had enormous respect for her, and was very quietly continuing to carry my torch. I suppose it was around the end of the eleventh grade that we were in the school play (Oklahoma!) together. I was Farmer No. 6 (or something like that) and she was Cowboy Wife No. 2. We had started chatting again, for the first time in well over a year, and I would drive her home after practice. One night, on the way home, she asked me to pull into the junior high parking lot. I did, and then she started crying. She told me she liked me, and how she regretted spurning me all those years, and she knew I had a girlfriend, but she couldn’t go on like this anymore and she just had to tell me…

Wow. I was blown away. Vindication! I just thought of that word now, as I wrote this. I certainly didn’t think of it as vindication at the time. I just thought it was a long-held dream come true. Ginny! Ginny loves me! (Yeah, there is that tragic punchline yet to come, but neither of us knew that then.) What, Linda!? Forget about Linda! I’ll take care of Linda.

So I took care of Linda. I had been somewhat manipulative and cynical in dumping some earlier girls, such as Isabel, but this was the first time I did it so consciously and with such careful planning. Over a period of days, I eased her in that direction, and when I finally broke with her, I made it seem as if it was inevitable, and, while it broke my heart, I would always have great memories of her, blah, blah, blah. It was dishonest, condescending, and unfair. I thought I did a great job. Of course, it wasn’t as great as I thought it had been. I had to visit Linda one more time to retrieve some records I had lent her. She presented me with a drawing she had made. It was a drawing of the dozen roses I had given her just weeks earlier--but they had withered and died! In my mind, I’m thinking, “Gee! Not one for subtlety, are you!?” but I feigned obliviousness and said, “Wow! This is so good! Can I really keep it? Thank you!” I took it home, steaming, and immediately threw it into the fireplace. Nasty, yes? But wait, there’s an epilogue. A year later, she asks for the drawing back. She’s putting together a portfolio for art colleges, and would like to include it. I turn white as sheet and fumble my way through a lame excuse about having misplaced it and having no idea where it could be. Real slick, Little Nemo!

Ironically, once I had Ginny--the girl of my dreams!--this Romance Addict turned into an Obsessive Love Addict. Come to think of it, I may actually have been a Codependent Love Addict, since Ginny was gradually coming to realize that she really, really liked girls (not an easy thing to come to grips with in semi-rural PA in the 1980s), and she took a lot of her angst out on me.

Now I was the clingy, insecure one.

Ginny would always have One Special Friend. She would obsess over that friend, try to spend all her time with that friend, become upset if that friend snubbed her or--heaven forbid!--became involved with a boy. She went through five One Special Friends (that I witnessed firsthand--there were probably more in the year or so we were out of touch) over the course of six or seven years, before finally realizing what it all meant. I was always playing second fiddle to the One Special Friend. I substituted when the OSF was unavailable, I comforted her when the OSF snubbed her, and I was the target of all her pent up, unspeakable frustrations. She would psychologically abuse me one moment, then want me to pleasure her the next.

Remember that friend I mentioned who was a budding sex addict? Well, he was one of the few friends who recognized that my relationship with Ginny was unhealthy, and he let me know that he didn’t like it. I took his words partly as jealousy (He always seemed to want attention and affirmation from me) and partly as ignorance of the profound nature of my bond with Ginny. Hah! Sorry, Bob! You were right!

*****

Well, I’ve already gone through the alphabet up to “L,” but I’m not even a third through the whole story. I just did the math. I still need to go all the way through “Z,” start over at “A” again, and work my way up to “P” once more in order to bring the story completely up to date. I believe that makes for a total of 42, or an average of about one per year for every year since I got my first girlfriend back in the first grade.

How pathetic.

Will “P2” be the last? Perhaps she won’t even be the next, since I haven’t even kissed her yet.

But P2--I’ll call her Pinoko--is the person who recognized and made me realize the seriousness of my addiction. She’s too smart for smooth talk, and, unlike me, she seems to see the world for what it is. She tentatively accepts me for who I am, but she has no intention of just becoming P2, the one who preceded Q2. Fortunately, I have managed to reduce my euphoria levels vis a vis Pinoko to manageable (?) levels. I can think about becoming her partner, but I can also think calmly about not becoming her partner.

What I need now is No Contact.

At least several months of No Contact.

I need to make some male friends. I need to learn how to have fun on my own without a romantic partner on my arm or around the corner. I need to learn to look at women not as potential romantic partners, but simply as potential friends or colleagues. I need to stop sending out signals, and to start deflecting signals sent my way. I need to rebuild my relationship with my son.

Finalizing my divorce would be good, too.

Thankfully, Pinoko lives in Tokyo, three hours by bullet train from where I live.

So it's Step 9 I'm aiming for? Got it. Step 9 it is. I would like to think I've gotten to Step 4, and maybe now I'm at Step 5.

Thank you, leadbelly! I was sure I was just talking to myself here. I sort of make my living by writing, so I figure if I'm going to go on and on about myself, I should at least try to make it readable and minimally entertaining.

"Little Nemo" was the protagonist in a wonderful American newspaper cartoon, "Little Nemo in Slumberland" (later changed to "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams") which ran from 1905 to 1914. Every Sunday, Little Nemo would have a fantastic dream, but in the final panel, he would invariably awake by falling from his bed with a rude bump.

Sound familiar? It's sort of the story of my life, and I'm guessing most members here would feel the same way.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo

Thank you Littlenemo....as you heal we all heal as 'they' say....somehow you've given me permission or the go-ahead to recount my life in a way that makes me see that I have actually existed :-)....I'm not a great writer, but the more I write out my junk in a way that forces my brain-wiring to organize itself, the better I am feeling....seems I put a lot of stock into people who bring me agony rather than ecstasy. I am also learning how manipulative I can be just to 'get' people to love me...and I never 'feel' it anyway...even if they did or do?

Do you think it's greed?? to want more and more and more and more....in an attempt to fill us up...I'm not even sure what that means anymore....but I know when I have a 'buzz' on for someone...a lot is never, ever enough....it's like I just don't STOP!!!

Looking forward to more of your great tales and healing.....and healing will happen...we all can't turn back now. I think we've seen too much now.

Hi Littlenemo,

I'm an ALA and back in the day..a Romance addict..I feel I have flipped into all forms of LA depending on the relationship I was in but I'm mostly a ALA. My prefrence in friendships have always been men. In my recent past I felt that I simply cant relate to women. The reality was that I was craving something else from men but not the men from my present...from my past, my childhood. Childhood was where I needed to go to understand why I was this way....I was never an overly emotional type and actually all the emotions in relationships is what I RAN from. As soon as a relationship began to get too intimate or the newness wore off or he would heaven forbid mention LOVE....I RAN...but then play a game of push and pull. I settled in a comfortably uncomfortable with someone who was an emotionally unavailable drug addicted and then scapgoated him as the problem in the relationship. When the real problem was with me. I would never ever talk or get into my emotions in any relationships...well, only ANGER. THAT emotion, was easy to express but sadness, allowing myself to be vulnerable and expression of my emotions WAS difficult for me. I can easily use intrigue, charm, laughter to pull someone and keep them but that was my mask. The mask I shed recently but rely on it for other areas in life. I consider it a gift but I dont need to rely on it anymore. I needed to reveal my authentic self in relationships. What i noticed in your beautifully written and very detailed story above is very little mention of your emotions. In the past, I would have told it the same way....I'm going to give you more of my story as an ALA but gotta get to work. Again, keep reading and looking through others posts. See what comes up inside you from them. I learned a lot from simply reading through others stories, problems and their emotions ect...it helped me see some of myself. The parts I kept hidden...

bklynrn, hmm, now that you mention it, I hardly mentioned my own emotions at all, did I? I suppose I was trying to "present the evidence objectively." I think I'm the opposite of you, at least in the sense that anger is probably the one emotion I have trouble expressing. I cry fairly easily, I excess affection and love easily (probably too easily), but I show anger rarely. I would show it to my wife when she would persistently push me, but I tended to take my anger out on myself. I used to hit myself in the head. Hard. But at that point, I suppose I was a Relationship Addict, in a loveless marriage, afraid to take the initiative to end it, and possibly trying to sabotage it through affairs.

The situation with Ginny hurt, a lot, despite my joking. I was obsessed with her, and would probably have been a burden to her even if she hadn't turned out to be gay.

I suppose I'm not talking about my emotions here because I feel I've been too self-indulgent and self-pitying in the past, and am trying to look at myself with a more critical eye.

leadbelly, good question. I am apparently stunningly slow on the uptake, because I don't think I became aware of the extent to which I scapegoat until just weeks ago. Rather than a single clear tap on the shoulder, I think I got a series of taps, the full significance of which I failed to recognize, over the past five years or so, and then recently I got a bit of a healthy jolt from the person who was becoming my latest PoA, but who was too smart to let that happen.

The solid right hook I got from the woman I broke up with after a five-year relationship last week helped, too. My left cheek still smarts from that.

I've got ugly to spare.

Hmm. Well, going into my whole marriage would require another 5000 words, but just to give some idea of how badly my addiction screwed it up…

I married my wife (who is 15 years older than me) right out of college. In the year-and-a-half prior to that, while we were engaged, I went to school in the U.S. and she worked in Japan. During that period, I had romantic or sexual relationships with six women. Most were college classmates, but one was an older woman who worked for the university. These ranged from two-or-three-night-stands to pretty intense relationships of several months. At the time, I rationalized this as "sowing my wild oats." After all, my wife had been married twice before (She was married when our relationship began!), and had had a pretty "rich" love life, but I had been a "virgin" (in the strictest sense of the word) before I became involved with her.

First of all, the fact that I would become romantically involved with SIX women just in the year and half I was engaged should have told me that I had a serious problem and had no business getting married. Some of those relationships just sort of fell into my lap (so to speak), but others started with a major crush on my part. I am prone to crushes, and, predictably, I idealize the target of my crush, and sometimes I do everything in my power to get that person interested in me and to initiate a romantic relationship. And of course that is all fueled by the euphoria of the crush. And the euphoria is what I get hooked on.

Just to reiterate, for me, the sex is secondary. It's the icing on the cake. Sometimes, there's no sex at all. It's the intense feelings for the PoA, and the imagined emotional bond. I say imagined, because, seriously, what kind of bond can you have with someone you've known for a few weeks, or sometimes just days, or even just a few hours? The soul mate you've been waiting for all your life? Hello? You don't even know if she has any siblings, for Christ's sake.

The more I think about it, the more insane I think it is that I ever thought that was even remotely normal, and that I got married despite all that. I wish someone had stopped me, though I probably wouldn't have let myself be stopped anyway.

Two years into my marriage, my self-esteem was at a low point. I had finished my master's degree, and had started working from home, freelance. My wife was the breadwinner. The community we were in was her turf, so I was seen as "Sonoko's husband." (I'll call my wife Sonoko. So, yes, there were six women in between "Linda" and my wife--and I'm not talking about the six I screwed around with during our engagement.) Then one day I met…oops. There are no Japanese women's names that begin with "Z", so I'll called her "Azusa." This was one of the massive crushes I occasionally develop in a matter of hours. I just went head over heels for her. To make it worse, I intentionally put myself in a situation where I would spend time with her almost every day for a matter of weeks.

I am not a cynical person. At least, I wasn't at the age of 22. I did not consciously try to initiate a romantic relationship with Azusa. Azusa was ten years older than me (though you'd never know to look at her), and I suppose she caught on to my feelings pretty quickly. Either that, or she just happened to react to me the same way I reacted to her. On the last day that we were scheduled to be together, we went shopping. Just grocery shopping, if I recall correctly. On the way back to the car, in the parking lot, she suddenly asked me, "How do you feel about me?" Well, that was that, right? That day my first extramarital affair began.

I was young and naively idealistic in my own way, and within days I told Sonoko about the affair. I didn't call it an affair, of course. I told her I had fallen in love with someone else, and had to leave Sonoko. This was cruel--not to mention naive. Sonoko was devastated. But Sonoko is a proud woman and a competitive woman, and she refused to give up. In retrospect, this may have been the biggest mistake of Sonoko's life. For the sake of her own happiness, she should have said, "Sure, whatever, run off with this married mother of a two-year-old who you've known for just one month; Good luck with that!" But she didn't. An ugly triangle began, almost as crazy as the triangle Susan describes in the forum section on triangles, but compressed into the space of a month. I moved out and stayed in a motel. Sonoko stalked me. Azusa asked her husband for a divorce. The husband tried to confront me, but I evaded him. Sonoko tried to win me back with sex. In the end, Sonoko just wore me down with her persistence and her endless "reasoning" (and, when that failed, hysteria). We had been planning on moving at the end of that summer, and she pretty much dragged me kicking and screaming to our new home half a continent away. Azusa and I surreptitiously maintained a correspondence for several months. (Good old-fashioned letters sent through the postal service; this was a few years before e-mail.) Sonoko continued to watch me like a hawk, and found a photo of Azusa I had hidden in a file cabinet (and which I myself had forgotten about!). Finally, I gave in, and sent Azusa a last farewell.

This was all very ugly, very screwed up, very intense, and very damaging to everyone involved. Azusa ended up divorcing her (American) husband and (I later learned, thanks to the Internet) moved back to Japan. She never remarried, and when I "pinged" her oh-so-many-years later, she had become soured on romance in general. I don't know how it affected her daughter to lose her father at that young age and be raised in a single-parent home. My relationship with Sonoko, which was problematic to begin with, was permanently damaged (as Sonoko so often reminded me over the next twenty years).

And I had become more cynical. The next time I got a massive crush on a woman and ended up in bed with her, I kept it to myself. In 17 years, I had affairs with nine different women, but it was the first and the last that did the most damage.

I don't have the energy today to write about the last one. That was a nightmare, and it practically destroyed my relationship with my son, and almost got me fired from my job.

But even after I left my wife, even after I ended that nightmare of a relationship and found myself in what should have been a healthy, serene new relationship, I could not shake my addiction. Until last year, I did a pretty good job of suppressing those bad habits, but they came back last fall with a vengeance. Four women in the space of a couple of months. And at this point, I wasn't even bothering to end one affair before starting another.

And then a fifth woman (or should I say 42nd woman?), Pinoko, put an end to it all.

I would be lying to myself (nay, I have been lying to myself) if I said Pinoko was not my current PoA. I need to keep that fact in my mind. She has behaved like a sensible adult (we have not even held hands or kissed yet), but my feelings for her are intense, and are typical of the early euphoria of romantic love.

I'm just praying (yes, even we atheists pray, though we know not to whom) that I can get my sh*t together, earn Pinoko's respect (and love), and make her, not one in a long, long line of PoAs, but rather a true life partner. But (and this is real progress for me!), I am wiling to accept that it might not work out with her. Right now my priority is getting my sh*t together, so that I never have to subject another woman (not to mention my son and other loved ones) to any more of my addictive nonsense.

leadbelly, for what it's worth, I liked your Leadbelly avatar. "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"

Eek. Yeah, I was waiting for that one. I have met Pinoko just once, a couple of weeks ago. We have been communicating by email for about three months. She is recently divorced from an abusive husband, and has a one-year-old daughter. She is a serious career woman. (I mean serious. I will never make as much money teaching and writing as she does in the world of Big Business.) She wants to find a serious partner with whom she can build a happy home, and she tells me she thinks I could possibly be that partner--but only if I take care of my romance addiction first.

It's ironic, no? I fall for a woman, she tells me I have a romance addiction (she described it as a "woman addiction") and tells me that while she finds me very attractive, she does not want to become another in a long line of PoAs. So, logic would dictate that I break with her, since she is in fact my current PoA.

Still, I have thought about NC. At this point, apart from a couple of melodramatic confessions of love on my part (which she immediately swatted aside as nothing more than proof of my problem), our friendship has been overwhelming positive for me. I think if I were to propose NC, she would say, "If that's what you need to do, fine. Call me back when you think you're ready, if you still want to, and if I'm still available, great; maybe we can try dating then."

That's the kind of thoroughly rational, level-headed woman she is! Isn't it disgusting!? (lol)

I was just reading someone else's thread, and was about to suggest that she unfriend her PoA on Facebook, when I realized that I really needed to remove the log from my own eye before presuming to remove the speck of my dust from my sister's eye. (Yes, we atheists quote the Bible, too.)

Right now, Pinoko is keeping me focused on recovery. And my obsession with her is mild in comparison to so many I've had in the past. At this point, I think keeping in touch with her is doing more good than harm. But I will keep in mind that 1) I may be fooling myself in thinking that, and 2) that even if that's true now, it might change for the worse later.

Am I rationalizing? Making excuses?

I honestly don't know. But I'm grateful that you're trying to keep me honest with myself. Please continue to do so.

Sandra does rock, doesn't she? And it's comforting to know that even someone like her can fall for such an obvious loser. (lol)

According to my poll, most people are a combination. thelovelyaddict.com/types-of-love-addicts/

bklynrn knows of what she speaks.

Without true healing, the cycle of addiction/pain does, indeed, repeat itself. I believe Freud called it repetition compulsion.

Nothing gets resolved. It is no way to live.

HaveFaith

Well, I just sent Pinoko e-mail telling her I would not be contacting her again until my divorce is finalized and I've made concrete progress with counseling. I have no idea how she'll react, but I think it was the right thing to do. If we can really make a good couple, I should be able to judge that after the initial euphoria has faded and I am able to look at the situation from a distance with more objectivity. Until then, no women! I am actually feeling rather good about myself the past few days.

Hi Littlenemo....sounds like a really good plan!!! Great things will come from mature and rational choices. Keep us updated

The 'major work' that needs to be done results in healing.

Anything else results in ongoing addiction.

Time to take on the major work!

HaveFaith

Yeah, well, I disappeared for a month after falling off the wagon, hard. I'm still not back on the wagon, but I am trying to get there, so here I am again.

But I am posting here because I just found this and thought many of you LAs would get a kick out of it. I have no idea if it's kosher to post this anywhere else on the forums, but, hey, this is my thread, so I figure, what the heck.

The Onion Radio News: Crush Lasts Nearly Entire Bus Ride

www.theonion.com/audio/crush-lasts-nearly-entire-bus-ride,27418/

This pretty much describes every day of my life that I actually go outside and see human beings.