An introspective moment, if you please....

As part of a general overhaul of my life I've been examining my relationships with women to see if there's anything I can learn from past experiences to maybe meet someone I actually like at some point, and out of that I've realised some fairly major things.

The main thing is that for the last decade or so I've made the same mistake over and over again, too many times for comfort really. I guess it just goes to show that repeating behaviour simply increases the chance of you repeating it again.

It seems that all the women in my life (some my age, some younger) have been flawed, deeply flawed (maybe that's the attraction, or maybe my previous experiences make me more likely to be their new target - who knows?) - with some it's been something physical, with one she was raped aged 12, with another she was abused by a family member in her childhood etc. We're not talking 'had an unhappy childhood and became a goth', we're talking serious mental issues. Strangely the entirely normal women who've been interested in this time I've rebuffed. Go figure.

I talk to anyone really and like to think I'm a good (and sympathetic) listener, so I hear their problems and - and here's my repeated mistake - I get pulled into their life (what they've all had in common was lots of 'friends' but none they feel they can talk about this stuff with, as they're scared they'll drive them away once their 'friends' realise what they're actually like). Whether it's my flaw or their manipulation is irrelevant really, it just happens. I naturally care about people and I find myself getting sucked deeper and deeper into their life, to the detriment of mine, in an entirely misguided attempt to 'save' them. You see, for most of these women I didn't even like them very much as people but saw something in them, some small spark, of a decent person buried under all their problems. Quite why I choose to do this I've now realised (it relates to someone I could've saved a long time ago and didn't, and I suppose subconsciously I blame myself for it) but it's not a healthy thing. For a start, you can't save someone from themselves.

Inevitably when you spend that much time caring about someone's life the lines blur between objectivity and emotional involvement and that's when it all falls apart, mainly amicably but occasionally in a blaze of bitterness from the woman involved (because another thing all these women had in common was a pathological desire to be a victim or a martyr).

And then I dust myself down and go do the same again with someone else. For over ten years now :-S

Well, no more. Now I know what I do I'll be trying my best to stop it happening again. And then maybe I'll meet someone mainly normal ;-)

Okay, back to the animated gifs tomorrow, honest *rolls eyes*