Best Online Bingo

I originally came to the ENA boards after a break-up, but I keep finding more & more about my life that I'd like advice on, and want to be able to share with others. The last several months have brought about a tremendous amount of changes.

As a brief summary: I'm 21 years old. I'm finishing up my undergraduate degree, and recently decided that I would like to attend law school in the next few years. I broke up with my boyfriend of 9 months in June; we briefly reunited in August & September and are now talking again about reconciling. My mother, who has never been formally diagnosed with but exhibits many behaviors of borderline personality disorder, has finally become such a burden on my life that I'm taking steps to alter my responses to her. I want to have a healthy relationship with her, with my boyfriend, and most importantly, with myself.

I've recently come to the realization, through therapy and my own reflection, that most of the unhappiness in my life and a huge problem in all of my relationships is that I am not happy just being alone. As a kid, I only would have one friend at a time, and at the end of every school year, that friend would usually abandon me for a cooler crowd. My boyfriend works very long hours and I rarely get to see him, especially as much as I'd like to see him. My mom, on the other hand, suffocated me a lot of the time. The bottom line is that when I'm alone, even if I'm having a nice night out with friends, or a nice evening in reading a book, all I can think about is much happier I would be with another person -- this became my boyfriend once we got together.

This is strange, because I'm not an extremely social person. I much prefer nights in to partying. But I find that when someone takes the time and energy to get to know me and perhaps even love me, I immediately sink my claws into them and make them my everything.

So I suppose I'm looking for some people who can tell me that they've felt similarly, and any books or methods or anything of that nature that helped them learn to not repeat this behavior. I hate doing this. I feel like I am smart and confident, and have finally learned to start loving myself in a lot of ways -- but I still feel like I rely on others far too much to make me happy.

One thought. Try nurturing some of your friendships, one-on-one. Do you hang out with your friends one-on-one or as a group?

It's really a mix. Since the (first) break-up, I've spent most of my weekends with friends. Most of the time it's me and maybe 2 other friends, but I've also been catching up with some old pals with one-on-one dinners. I think a lot of the problem is that my two closest friends are my roommates; we've lived together for almost 2 years now, and we're honestly getting kind of sick of each other. Most of my other friends are either in committed relationships which take up a lot of their time, or they're busy with school and extracurriculars. It's also tough because I know this time next year most of these people will be gone, and I'll be left with no one again

had your problem and sometimes still struggle with it.
What helped me reach to that point where I was happy with myself, was that I started setting goals for myself that I could work on everyday to achieve, you could also call them hobbies.
I wanted to lose my extra pounds around my waist and that basicly really took alot of focussing, to change my diet and find what workouts I had to do etc everyday at the gym. So I just got totally absorbed into that and every night before bed I would plan for the next day what I needed to accomplish to realise my goals.
You have goals but long term ones like getting your degrees, but to be happier you need ones which will keep you busy every single day and keep you seeing progres.
You could also find maybe an instrument you want to learn, or any any other interest. I noticed that when you find something you have a passion for (not a person) you tend to be happier. I have seen this is so many guys I dated. The most common passion was musi. For me it was fitness and really learning alot about it. For you it may be something diffrent. You just need to find it and emerse yourself in it.

School can be tough that way, believe me I know. Noone ever seems to be looking to make new friends when they're about to graduate and leave. Also, I think we get used to friend-making being easy early on in school. Then we don't realize that we needed to be more proactive in that area until its a little late.

I would suggest trying to expand your activities. Engage in a new hobby? Join a new club? Start going to a gym regularly? You'll be doing something good that will make you happy. Plus you'll probably make new friends.

It is hard, you are putting all of your hope in others to give you what you need instead of giving you what you need. I know it's a struggle to realize this and to try to force yourself to accept and embrace your alone time. You have to first love you before you can live independently from others and not feel that "need" to be w/ someone, boyfriend or friends.

A good book to read would be "Co-dependent No More" by Beattie. It is all about the fears and insecurties that shape us early on, and cause us to want to cling to other's in order to get those "good" feelings we are lacking from them. But we will always be disappointed and must realize that we are the ones responsible to give ourselves what we need.

you sound a lot like me. I am, by nature, a person who enjoys her alone time. But, I am very loyal to my friends. When I was younger I had that same sink-my-claws in approach that you say you have. First of all, the fact that you recognize that is a step in the right direction.

For me, a huge help has been pursuing my own interests. I spend most of my free time doing theatre and I've made a lot of friends that way, but I don't demand a lot of their time. I've become a very independent person, even in my last relationship (so imagine how surprised I was when he said he sensed I was the one who wanted more commitment!), and I wouldn't have it any other way. I live alone, will go to the theatre on my own, and plan on going to the National Gallery of Art this weekend on my own to see the Edward Hopper exhibit. And I'm fine with that. I enjoy my own company and have learned that I don't need someone by my side to enjoy those sorts of activities.

And this alone time makes the time spent with my friends more valuable. I appreciate them more and want to know what's going on in their lives.