And in that one moment of clarity, just before,
finally, exploding in total frustration, I asked
myself a simple question.

I asked myself - what am I angry at?

And a whole slew of words and reasons went
through my brain, so many that I grabbed a piece
of paper and wrote them all down.

And everything I wrote had to do with another
person or a circumstance.

Until, finally, I wrote:

I'm angry with MYSELF for allowing this to
HAPPEN.

And that was it.

I'd put myself between a rock and a hard place.

I'd made it so that I felt so bad about myself
on such a deep level (I couldn't even get to it
until I started asking these kinds of questions),
that I couldn't be comfortable being SUCCESSFUL,
either in my work or in my marriage.

And so I was almost automatically holding
myself back, and then even MORE angry at myself
for letting that happen.

I made it so that every time I even THOUGHT
about WANTING success in work and in love, I'd
swat myself back down.

I'd say to myself, "Who do you think you are,
you angry person, you?"

I'd say to myself, "Who are you to want all
that?"

I'd say to myself, "You can't have what you
want, so you'd better work REAL HARD to get it
from HIM."

And then, of course, I WOULDN'T get it from
him.

But I WOULD FEEL BETTER!

How can that be, that I would feel better when
he wouldn't give me what I wanted?

The answer is: "Because I'd worked it out that
way."

I'd made absolutely sure that he couldn't and
wouldn't give me what I wanted - just because of
the way I'd asked for it - so that when he didn't
give it to me (as I could have predicted), I could
be angry at HIM instead of MYSELF!

This is all a very odd and weird kind of
psychological game we all play with ourselves, and
it really helps to know this is how we work when
low self-esteem has us by the throat.

We go back and forth between blaming ourselves
and blaming our men for the situation we find
ourselves in.

Well...the moment I caught on to how I was
working this, and how it wasn't helping me at all
to have what I really wanted, I was able to start
figuring out new ways to relate to my husband.

The truth is, since this whole wretched thing
is a cycle, there's no one particular place to
start.