Am I stupid or is it just love?

[Lola55]

Am I stupid or is it just love?

 

When someone who you care deeply about hurts you more than once and you keep forgiving them are you letting them walk all over you? or could it be just because you love them and know that they never truly meant to hurt you.

 

My ex has hurt me a number of times. Everytime I know he was being careless. He was only thinking of himself. He would never deliberately hurt me. But sometimes the fact that he was not thinking at all hurt me more than anything. Yet here I am and he is still in my life. Not as a boyfriend, but as a close person to me. And he we are again facing another incident. He hurt me again in a big time way. I don't know what to do. I know I need time away from him to let this heal and blow over but I don't know if I should write him of or slowly forgive all over again. I am only human and I can only take so much...but I do love him and care. I feel like he needs to learn from his mistakes but I don't know how that can happen. I am just so confused and fed up of always being back in this place. Everything could be great if he would just be as considerate and caring as he says he is. I would never hurt him in any way, and I think that's why he can hurt me so much.

[addictedblue]

generally, i think, people don't hurt people that they love. not deliberatly anyway. do you know if whatever he does/did to hurt you was on purpose or was it just careless thinking due to his personality? i know saying the ordinary advice "get over him" is pointless, so in this case i think your best bet is to try and make yourself less vulnerable, somehow. if he has hurt you so many times you've got to have started building up some sort of resistance by now right? also, and this is another thing, make sure he knows when he has hurt you. i've made that mistake in the past. if you don't tell someone you're mad for something they did, they don't know it was wrong, so they just do it again, not to hurt you on purpose but because they didn't know it hurt you. i dated someone who would blow off dates all the time and i'd be like "oh its fine, i don't care!" when i really really did care. make sure you aren't hiding the feelings. if he knows he's hurting you but still does it then there is something wrong and he doesn't love you. i don't think thats the case though.

[Juliana]

I'm going to say something that's going to sound horrible, but I've been in the same sort of relationship. Now bear in mind, I'm extrapolating from my own experience, but if I'm right, he hurts you because he has contempt for you. It simply isn't important enough for him to value your feelings and not hurt you, so he just says or does whatever he wants, and expects that you'll forgive, because he simply doesn't care.

 

So, no, I don't think you're stupid, I think he's not entirely fit for civilized company. Being tolerant of other's faux pas and shortcomings is supposed to be a good quality. Not an invitation to be walked all over.

 

You can try to make yourself less vulnerable, but why bother changing yourself for someone like this? There are plenty of people out there who will appreciate and value you, and you will never have to go through that kind of treatment.

[Siriana]

When you love and care about someone, thats a great thing. But that person has to feel the same toward you.

 

If you're not being treated right than you need to say to yourself how the love and appreciation toward that person aren't important anymore, because you love yourself even more so you don't want to be treated badly anymore.

 

Basicl make a choice to love yourself first.

[Mamasita]

Sometimes love makes you turn a blind eye and put up with more then u really should. If he hurts you unintentionally well thats one thing, but if he does it constantly and without regard for how his actions are impacting you, then he definitely isnt worth your love or understanding.

 

Hold out for someone worth your heart, being with someone like this will only destroy you.

 

xoxReese

[Crazyaboutdogs]

I'm right, he hurts you because he has contempt for you. It simply isn't important enough for him to value your feelings and not hurt you, so he just says or does whatever he wants, and expects that you'll forgive, because he simply doesn't care.

 

That may be true in some cases but I wouldn't make sweeping generalizations. There is an expression, to the effect "we only hurt the ones we love". A wise woman once told me that "sometimes people don't mean to be unkind, it is often their problem not yours". In other words, sometimes people have their own hangups and insecurities and end up hurting others because of it. Love is about accepting people for their faults, but also making sure they don't walk all over you. A lot of people have selfish personality characteristics which renders them unable to think about another person's point of view before acting. Sometimes you have to keep spelling out their hurtful actions. How long you continue with the person depends on your feelings for the person and whether or not you can accept the person's personality failing while still making sure your needs ultimately get met. It is a personal choice that nobody can make for you. Ultimately you will know when you have had enough.

[itsallgrand]

Well, with someone we love we have the tendency to usually believe that 'they didn't intend or deliberately hurt us'.

A lot of the time, if that person has shown to be a genuinely decent lot and shown caring overall about our well-being, that is true.

 

Sometimes, it is not. Hard to accept, but also the truth sometimes.

 

To me, repeated 'carelessness' is a deliberate action. It is deliberately 'forgetting' how much what we are doing will impact the other(s).

When the history is there, like, "Oh, I did this, and it hurt Lola55", well, there is experience there for him to know that action X causes reaction Y in you.

So it becomes a choice and not just not knowing. He can no longer claim ignorance.

 

I agree a lot with Crazyaboutdogs.

 

Still, I think that in order to make that decision it is best to go in with full self disclosure about what is happening.

If the person is being consistently thoughtless, that IS a deliberate action.

 

And me and my slightly cynical mind tends to agree with Juliana: in that there are usually negative emotions driving that stuff. Resentment, anger, contempt, whathaveyou.

Which is not nice to deal with. Hurtful and painful especially since it is a really underhanded way of communicating that stuff.

 

(yeah, this is overanalyzing for sure) Good luck. Take care.

[Joneysnai]

u r letting him walk all over u because u care too much about him to realize that he doesn't care about you or your feelings.

 

i was in a relationship similiar to yours where my x boyfriend did many things to hurt me, every time i tell him how it hurts me he would say he is sorry he wasnt' thinking it will never happen again but it happens.

 

yeah i agree, one can only take so much, it won't get better.

[Lola55]

Thank you all so much for the input. I feel that he does have very selfish tendencies, not just with me, in general. When it comes to me I take things very hard cause I am the opposite (always trying to please others etc..). I care for him deeply and I know him on a level like no other. So when he does things like this, I can't wrap my head around it. When I tell him he has hurt me (and I always do), he is sincere in his apology and I know he always regrets what he has done. There have been times when he has cried cause he can't understand why he keeps on doing this to me. I know that I could just brush off a lot of things that people do to me, but with him I simply cannot. I don't feel that he has the right to claim ignorance anymore, but I just don't understand what could be behind all of this. If he has resentment or contempt for me I don't know why. He was the one who broke up with me, and he was the one who always pushed and pushed to keep me in his life. There were times I accepted the fact that he would no longer be a part of it but he would always come around and push me some more.

So I don't know what it is. He has told me that he cares about me more than anything. I am the first person he goes to to talk about things and when we do fight we communicate so well that we can always talk it over. I just can't keep getting hurt like this though. I am at a loss when it comes to this situation. I always take time away and then find myself back in the same spot somehow. It is a cycle.

[Siriana]

I had similar experience. But the fact is that person needs you in his life because that way things are easier for him, he's not thinking about you.