Competiition

If your father was not physically present you may have attached to another male figure (teacher, brother, uncle, pastor) and competed with your mom for their attention.

Another theory is that women are born to compete with each other. In prehistoric times a woman needed a man to take care of her and she had to compete to get her man away from the other women. Carl Jung believed in what he called the "collective unconscious." This is a cellular memory of what mankind has been through since the beginning.

Any other ideas about this?

My father abandoned me before I was born also...
The triangle I was just in, I only knew about briefly before the whole world explodes for me.
I THOUGHT I could handle it, be his weeknight woman so he could then go spend every weekend with her.
but I couldn't.
It was just too painful
I was not up for the competition
But I am not very competitive, I think my self esteem is so low that I figure I would lose, so why bother...
(As a child I was always in competition for love with my two perfect brothers... I never got it, love. It made me give up ever even trying. I opted for negative attention instead.)
Besides, she has money and status and I have nothing but my heart.
Not good enough... to someone like him anyway.
And I knew this.
So I tried to be just a friend thing, but that was impossible as well.
He kept wanting sex.(from someone he said was not as good in bed as the other one... interesting)
BUT...Not attracted to a guy who gave me an STD... didn't work.
Turns out my instinct to "just give up" was the healthiest one I had in this relationship.
Funny huh?

I had a horrible triangle in my childhood with my mother and father. My father drank, I used to be his minder at weekends. I went out with him wandering around our city going to galleries, bookshops, pubs. I'd try to get him home in time for our evening meal. I'd always fail (well he was an alcoholic!) I'd get home and my mother would be furious with me. She was angry that my father prefered my company and bought me books and took me out, and she used the excuse of me not being able to get him home to scream at me. I was 12 and stuck in the middle of their horrible marriage.My father told me to lie to my mother about how much he'd had to drink, so if I lied for him I betrayed my mother. If I told the truth, I betrayed my father.

That feeling of not EVER being able to be safe even if I told the truth has haunted me. It makes triangles very frightening for me, and also of course, very compelling.

I just had a situation with a friend where her terror of triangles and my own meant that we got very scared and quite angry with each other, but am grateful that we were able to talk through our fears. And I was able to be honest about all of my feelings, good and bad. Am quite amazed. I realise that when I get close to those feelings of fear about a triangle I start to feel very anxious and I feel very weak and overwhelmed. My friend feels very anxious and starts to get aggressive and controlling. Between the two of us, that's not a great combination! But it is a gift of recovery that we were able to talk it through and come to a good conclusion.

I have such a deep fear of always being wrong and ending up in the middle and never being able to escape that, but that is a projection from my childhood. I am very happy that I've had the chance to resolve some of my fears about triangulating. I am not really weak and powerless in a triangle. I can assert myself and be honest and also, being in a triangle is not always unhealthy. Just because my childhood triangle was unhealthy doesn't mean to say they all are. P.

Your first triangle is you, your mom, and your dad. If a parent is missing look for a stand in. There are elements of competition, jealousy, being the chosen one etc. etc.

Look to some childhood configuration.

My first triangle was incest with dad, abandonment and competition with with mom. Mom and I fought over dad and it destroyed our relationship which I needed more.

This is also the origin for our attraction to unavailable people.

I have a strong, overwhelming attraction to unavailable people -- my mother put me in a complex sexual situation (think covert incest, which I had never even heard of before I worked with Susan P.) and I was coerced into being with a boy with whom she paired me -- he was interested only in the sex and spent quality time with his legitimate girlfriend. I was his (and my mother's) dirty little secret. I competed for his affection; I was too young and innocent (15 and a virgin at the time) to know how sick, sick, sick this all was.

It headed me down the road of sex/love addiction, which included triangles, competition and all the anguish that goes along with it. A nightmare for me -- the words 'competition and triangle' are repulsive to me.

HaveFaith

HaveFaith.......I am amazed. I had something like that happen to me at the age of 16...........was paired with my woman caretakers' son (by her) so that she could control him more. It was Sick, very very sick. My parents came once to visit me and possibly see if I was ready to come home (I was there voluntarily) and her son restrained me in a room with hand over my mouth so I was not able to tell my parents that I was there and wanted to see them.

He was wicked and was laughing while he did it. I think they wanted to keep the money my dad paid them every month to keep me and they wanted me to continue being their slave cleaning their house, weeding their garden and taking care of all those foster kids they had bringing in more money. My parents went away and I was very confused and sad.

This woman bought a ring for me to be from him. He didn't even give it to me......she did. Sick. This woman always had toxic and mean things to say to me and then would turn around and praise me in front of the community. It was confusing. I ended up marrying this crazy guy and within 10 months had my dad come and get me. It burnt me bad. These people were EFFing with me just because they could, I guess. I have to forgive them but it's hard. I leave it to HP to forgive them.
I have been ashamed of this for all of my life and have told barely no one but I don't care to keep secrets any longer. I know what happened was not my fault but it ruined me and has been hard to overcome the feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness.

Now that I've said all this......I'm wondering if I should push the post button. Maybe this is too much info. Someone let me know, OK.

No, Margot, it's not too much info. Burying secrets is what makes us spiritually ill. When I faced and processed what had happened to me (with my therapist) only then did I start healing -- albeit slowly -- but I definitely felt myself move forward in emotional well-being.

That does not mean I shout the details of my tainted past from the rooftop, but neither do I hide, bury, or deny it. I process my pain in a safe venue (here, my therapist, my recovery group) and it is so much healthier to face and work through issues than to leave things unresolved.

HaveFaith

I don't know if this really applies to triangles or not...I think it does in a way. I have been cheated on in my last 4 long term relationships (In a row). I often sense something isn't right about their so called "friendships, Co-workers, ex's etc and I sometimes ask them about the nature of these relationships because my gut is saying something may be wrong. They ALL lied and said is platonic/friendships etc. They evenually left me for these people but I didn't fight for them or try to compete once I found out they had feeling for these other people..I let them go. I did have a vague sense of competitiion in myself when I was questioning the relationships but it wasn't anything significant. For the most part I trusted these people...so all of them were major betrayals for me. So can I be a part of a triangle when I'm not even conscious of being in one? Anyway, after the betrayal I immediately get out and feel abandoned and worthless. I am confused as to why i have this pattern over the last 17 years of my life...Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

I have a question, could there be a triangle like situation between me , my boyfriend and his adolescent daughter? He has been separated from his exwife for more than 15 years. He says I and his daughter are the most important people in his life. I didnt have any problem with that. But recently we (daughter and I )met for the first time, when i stayed with him for more than a month (we live in separate towns). And initially she seemed quite ok. But very soon, developed a serious set of issues, she was feeling suicidal. She decided to see a psychiatrist. Her father had to look after her during this period. She lives with her mother, but during this time, she was in his house, with me. He was acting quite strange and detached with me around her. Which hurt me. He was ofcourse, feeling quite pressured and upset about her situation. Because he has a lot of guilt around her. He feels very guilty about leaving home when she was 3. Ever since, he has been a very very dedicated dad. They are close.
She seems a bit spoilt. I dont know if this is the 'new normal' for adolescents. She is 19.

She seems to have plenty of reasons for her breakdown, but I wondered if it had something to do with me being there. Now she seems fine,but the two seem quite intertwined. He doesnt seem to see that at all.

Before this, I was always under the impression (since a year) that she is quite independant, living her life. And he is free to pursue a new life. Which involved moving to a new town and us living together.

I am wondering if any of that can happen now.

I am wondering if I am in a strange sort of triangle all over again.

Then again, am I over reacting?

Hi Susan, Thanks for responding.

I did talk to my boyfriend about it, and he says its more of a hiccup in the relationship. I find it hard to distinguish between hiccups and red flags, given my history of relationships.

He seems quite aware of such issues. But what can be done about it? he says, she will soon be independently living her life anyway. People do have relationships with other people with children. In this case, she is not even a small child. But at a critical point in her life.

I thought I had worked on my childhood issues, and felt quite confident about it. I feel quite able to live without this relationship. But I dont want to give up prematurely. That could be my own fear of intimacy and fear of discomfort.

Can you please offer some guidance?

Hi Sanity,

This doesn't seem to me to be a typical "red flag" in that it's not dangerous or wrong, per se. Rather, it seems it might be a red flag to you, as something you find difficult to accept and understand. Many red flags are based on personal values as opposed to general cultural taboos (cheating, for example), so they are subjective, not objective. This means that YOU are the only one who can determine if you can love a man and be in a close relationship with him, while most of his attention (or a large part of it) lands on his daughter. This makes a choice very difficult because it demands that you KNOW YOURSELF. You must know what you are capable of handling, what you can't handle and what your deeper needs are.

Some women cannot have any competition in regards to attention. And if they do have competition even from a daughter or family member, they have a very difficult time of it. At times I have trouble "sharing" my husband with his kids. And so, I need to sometimes walk away and talk to myself and say, "this is his time with his kids, you need to find something else to do." And as long as I feel well loved and paid attention to the rest of the time (I do!) then it's all good. I think, however, if he had a demanding child that took away a lot of our together time, I might not feel as comfortable and well loved in the relationship. Only YOU know what degree of attention (or lack thereof) you can and cannot handle. And your decision must be based on that. Not what is right or normal in society. They can be two different things. You must follow your heart.

Also, he may be right. You may simply have to be patient. Kids don't stick around forever. They grow up. Ask yourself if you can "share" him a while longer. Is he worth waiting for? Are all your other VALUES in sync? Or (and to be brutally honest with yourself you must ask this question), do you think his daughter is his way of avoiding closeness and intimacy with you? If this is the case, then it MAY be a red flag. You can tell the difference though. But, only if you remain present and willing to face whatever the truth is.

I am often reminded of the women who marry celebrities in the USA and who only see their spouses once or twice a month! I personally could not handle that. But some women can. Know thyself. What can you handle?