Part one - Yen

To understand a lot of the problems Ive gone through romantically you first have to understand what love is to me. You see I'm attracted to innocence. It all started when I was young and would watch shows like Zorro or the old Batman and Robin and in my mind I became the hero who was going to protect the innocent damsel in distress. As I grew older I had my first sexual experience at 14 though it wasnt quite the fairytale romance I had grown up believing in. It was me three girls and one of my guy friends. I had never dated at that point and this experience was also my first kiss first intimate moment first everything. There wasn't emotion though. There was no love. I moved to the Florida later that year to live with my maternal grandparents. I was a bit of a trouble maker and had been kicked out of the school narrowly escaping charges of vandalism for accidentally kicking a table through one of the walls. I convinced the officer and principal I was just having a hard time and would behave myself if I was given the chance to start over. I even had the place picked out. After arriving I had a hard time with attendance. I felt I was hideous because of my recent entry into puberty and the red bumps I wore across my face caused a lot of distress for me. In that time I began using the Internet often and met a young girl in Hong Kong named Yen. This would be my first love and maybe the most painful I ever experienced. We became very interested in each other and would talk daily. Once it became clear that we were each others entire life outside of school we caught on that maybe we weren't just friends. In the next three years I would go through some of the most painful and noncommunicable experiences of my life. See the girl was taught what every young person who gets on-line is told... don't tell people you don't know your real information. She told me later on that by the time she realized she loved me and wanted to tell me the truth she was scared I wouldn't want anything to do with her for lying so long. Its strange how love works. Maybe just knowing that seed of deception was always there allowed her to do some of the things she would or maybe it was just a lie every time she would tell me how she felt for me. It was maybe a year into our relationship when we were playing on-line one day with remote assistance. I forgot exactly how it happened but I clicked into another message she had. I had never felt jealous. I had never even thought of her being with someone else. Before this one message I had never felt insecure in love. Someone told her they loved her. I wasn't sure what I felt. Who was this guy? Wait why did he say that to her? I had lost my virginity in an orgy and had read pornography since I was nine but yet... I felt it was at that moment when I truly lost my innocence. I reacted angrily and demanded she delete the guy. She said he was just a friend and I was being paranoid but I didn't care. I was 16 and my emotions were boiling with pain and anger. I wrote him a message swearing him out expecting him to say I was mistaken. I wanted so bad for me to have overreacted. He told me she was dating him too. He told me she must have been playing us for fools. I didn't want to believe it and I threatened him. Told him if he ever talked to her again Id go to New York and kick his ass. I should have ended everything there but I didn't want to lose her. I wanted it all to be a lie. I wanted her to be mine and just mine. I regained my calm and told her she was mine. Inside I knew I had to be in control.... if I could just show confidence and authority she would see me as the alpha and want me. I had been reading a lot into psychology at the time how attraction works. How women work. It was all so depressing so shallow. I didn't want ti to be this simple I didn't want women to be so simple. I had to prove it was wrong. I had to test her and show myself she wasn't that manipulable she was innocent and strong willed I had to prove it. A lot of things happened over the next couple years. Betrayals from both of us. Lies and games. I became a different person. I wasn't the infatuated innocent kid anymore. I was obsessed with understanding how women worked and changing her into what I wanted. I became a very dark person at times. I was angry and would get in fights regularly. At the gym one of my fathers friends were joking around about cheating on his wife and I pushed him and wanted to start a physical confrontation. My dad tried to stop me and the two of us ended up going at it for a bit. Eventually I left. A few blocks down the road I began to cry. How could people betray the ones who depend on their love? How could they all stand there laughing at it like some kind of joke? I was torn apart. Why couldn't the world be what I wanted? Over those three years I felt more secluded and alone then I had ever felt before and yet an irrational desire to stay with her and make everything OK wouldn't let me give it up. I drifted away during that time and lost touch with those I knew before. I died inside. By the end of the saga with Yen I had no energy left to fight. The final year I became very silent and cold. Eventually I got tired of hurting I couldn't accept the ways we continually found to break each others hearts. I told her goodbye.... and this time it really was. I was beat down and exhausted from a fight no one else understood.

No probs Jadic, take your time and get your post how you want it to be.

Speak soon,

Matt

Part Two - Amanda

Spring came and I began work at a local Publix, helping around Joannes, a family acquaintances, house in my free time. Enter Amanda. Joanne had a granddaughter who at 15 reminded me a lot of myself when I was her age. She was introverted and home schooled her room a mess. She had just happened to have been given a computer for her birthday that February and was having some problems learning to use it. Her grandmother would pay me to come over and help teach her how it worked and how to do different things on the machine. Amanda was really a sweet girl in my eyes and I could relate to how no one understood her. She had a problem with running way from home though. She was being abused and I wanted to protect her. She was developing feelings for me as well. As time went on I met her friends and her mine and we would all hang out together. A tight group formed between my brother, Amanda, her best friend Andromeda and myself. Before long we were spending every day together. Joanne sat me down to talk one day asking me what I thought of her granddaughter. I told her I wasn't ready for love and besides she was too young to know what she felt. I knew from before. As time went by I started to regain my immaturity. My heart was a little less cold and one day I promised Amanda if she would wait for me over the next two years while I recovered I would be hers. Two years is a long time when you're a teenager though and my promise had only encouraged her efforts more. Eventually she stopped running away to be alone and started running to me. Id awake at one or two in the morning to find her knocking on my window crying. Id walk with her on the beach through the night talking about our dreams and how one day things were going be great. Sometimes Id slip back into the old me but I could see how my depression was hurting Amanda and Andromeda so I tried to keep it to myself. It was one of these occasions when were first kissed. I had secluded myself away from everything but work for a few days as I was thinking of Yen and how things had gone so bad. Why was I so controlling with her? Why would she lie and hurt me so much? How could I have just made it better? It was around 11 at night when I heard the knocking and woke up. The two girls were outside my window wanting me to come out. I agreed and walked down to the beach with them. I felt happy. They came for me when I was all alone. I put my hand on Amanda's face and pulled her in for a kiss. She fell off the bench in shock and I ran off goofily somewhat embarrassed. I knew I had to reflect on what I did and decide if it was the right choice. Amanda was introverted creative naive and I was her second kiss. She told me she had been broken hearted before by a boy she had dated for a short period. I had done everything the opposite this time. I was the one being chased. I was the one being won over. I liked it. I told her we could date but we had to go slow. We took our time with each step not rushing into anything until we were ready. I was no longer working at Publix and had began employment at a local restaurant The Sandbar. If Id only known how this would change it all. The manager had a son named Jake who was a year younger then me. One day while my brother Jake and myself were all eating Jake brought up how he had made out with a girl named Amanda before he moved away from Florida. I laughed and asked her last name. It was the same. Somewhat shocked I verified we were talking about the same girl and confronted her about it later that day. I wasn't upset she had made out with more then one guy but it was that she lied to me. I felt the pain just like before. I knew it was the same. It was all a lie. I didn't want to look into it. I wanted to let it go. I couldn't just walk away though I had to know the truth. I started asking her friends for details about her past and found out she had slept with others and had many previous boyfriends. I was devastated. This girl who was suppose to have saved me from my pain was now the exact same as the one who had caused it to begin with. I used my knowledge of psychology to break her down. I crushed her ego and she had a nervous breakdown and had to be admitted to a clinic. I felt so much anger and hatred for humanity. Everything was the same. It was all the fucking same. Another year of my life wasted on another set of lost dreams.

Ok its during this period I start to slip a little more into darkness. I need some time to relax so Im going go watch some television and finish up the story tomorrow. Ill go back over and rewrite anything I didnt express correctly too. It feels good to get this stuff out.

I met a Master NLP practitioner and hypno-therapist and began to tell him my story as though he were a psycho-therapist. I told him every detail, and I had them all, all those important details, memorized. It was a long story. It was a complex story.

He commented that he usualy doesnt hear stories.

We had a conversation that boiled down to a unique new understanding.

I had spent an hour telling him the complexities of my heartbreak, and later during an NLP session that heartbreak I had carried for almost 10 years was gone in a matter of minutes.
During that session he asked me to think of the feelings I had during a time of greif. To picture myself alone in a movie theatre watching an image of myself on the screen. We went through a simple ten minute process and then those feelings of grief and loss were... Just... gone. The memories, good and bad, were all there in tact and fully available to me.

It was then that I realized that all of that long drawn out detail was not required.

Jadic,
I see that you are working very hard to get all the details right down where they can be seen and analized. I totaly respect your work in writing all of that out in such detail. I hope not to discourage you in your process, but I offer another way.

See if answering these questions in single sentences will help.

What do you want?

When do you want it?

How will you know when you have it? (What will it look like, sound like, feel like, smell like and taste like?)

When you get what you want, what else about your life will be different?

What resources are available to you to help you accomplish this desired outcome? (list them)

How can you best utalize the resources you have now in order to bring about the changes you want?

What can you do right NOW to get what you want?

Jadic, I wanna give you a hug, coz I've been in your situation. I know how you feel...

But at the same time, I need to give you a big strong waking-up-slap so that you realize what is going on with you...

You're too much RELYING on the outside to give you your HAPPINESS for you.

You've begun to look at other people more than you ever look into yourself. You loved Yen more than you loved yourself. Amanda loved you more than you loved yourself. That's not romantic, that's INSECURITY.

That's why when they're gone, you didn't have anything to hold on to.

And it has to STOP now.

Take some Financial Investment 101 class, and you'll be slapped probably the same way for investing in something that has a HIGH RISK.

Yen didn't tell you stuffs she felt she should've told you. Why? Let's put it in a blatant way: She didn't trust you. I'm not saying you shouldn't trust her, but I'm saying that when you did trust her, it became YOUR consequence. It became YOUR responsibility.

Psychology 101: When you invest in something, you expect return. It's not hard to understand why you held such high expectations from Yen and when you don't get it, you felt so heart broken.

You said the second case you turned things around... this time it's her chasing you. I say, you didn't turn things around. You REPEATED your mistake.

I felt sorry for Amanda. At the same time, I would have the desire to protect her and "save" her. If you were the same with me, why did you end up saying "This girl who was supposed TO HAVE SAVED ME..."?

And I find it funny that on the second case you didn't confront with Amanda anymore... you were devastated. You had the knowledge, you had the strength of a MAN. But you didn't use it to "save" her, you used it to "break her down". You didn't forgive her. You demanded return and when she can't give it to you, you broke her down out of revenge.

You didn't have a problem with love. You just didn't have love.

Sorry, Jadic, all the things happened to you... your own damn RESPONSIBILITY.

If I were you, Jadic, I would start looking into myself more. If you truly love yourself, Jadic... I really recommend that you:

1. FORGIVE yourself.

2. Start LOOKING INTO yourself, understand what's really important for you, what exactly do you want.

3. INVEST into yourself.

4. STAY SINGLE!! Don't ever look for a partner again until you're settled with yourself.

wow look forward to reading the last part, I have been through a lot of heartache too, by relying on them and loving them more than myself. Will write more when I've seen the last part. I know what your going through though.

Dan