ChavWivaLawDegree

Haha thanks everyone, especially Azul! And I quite like the fact that I get BB's second hand therapy for free, I always love a bargain. This has been a very interesting thread and now I'm gona get my arse off to the pub for a bit of liquid therapy!

PeckhamRose - what was wrong with it? I thought it was a very helpful contribution myself.

BB - that was a really helpful post. I wouldn't have thought about looking at the physical stuff and I am a very physical person. Just having thought and talked about it has helped a lot, and my ex-BF also has jealousy issues so we have been boring the crap out of eachother trying to work out what our triggers are and what strategies we can use to deal with stuff. I love the idea of looking at what the emotional pain feels like physically - it's basiclly an adrenaline response, so as to answer the what do I get out of feeding the fantasy - I was always an adrenaline junkie, so maybe I'm getting some kind of distructive postitive feedback from the adrenaline rush without realising it. I also think that I feel the need to control my world, which includes my partner and I know this is down to having an extremely bullying mother who totally controlled my world as a kid making me feel powerless. So I understand my control freakery and have gone a long way to address a lot of that, but the other stuff hadn't occured to me before. Group hug people, I'm feeling all loved up!!

I once wanted to be an air hostess

Thanks that was really helpful - Brendan made me laff tho. I think realising that I was acting nuts was definately a big step - I was always good at justifying everything.

I don't think it is to do with my parent's as much as it's to do with being lied to by one of my ex's. The one who was jealous with me was doing drugs on the sly and lied to me about it for quite a while until I found his syringe (I wasn't even snooping!) and stuff. That is the moment I remember doubting my judgement because I'd believed his lies and dismissed the signs as me being stupid. I was only 21 at the time and he'd been very controlling for 4 years up to that point. The next real relationship I had was with my ex-husband and even though he was totally diferent and gave me no reason to doubt him, I never trusted him or any man since. Damn how come I never cottoned on to the fact that this was an issue I needed to deal with before!! It seems blaringly obvious writing it down.

Kel - It happens when you get emotionally involved and feel rejected or not loved for some reason and the pain you feel becomes anger and things start to go pearshaped. Gerry my bf did cheat on me but that was after 2 and a half years and I'd started deliberately destroying the relationship because I thought he was going to cheat on me. In the end it got too much so he cheated to end it. But we are friends now and have managed to talk about it, which is good because it has helped me to understand how big my trust issues are. He had some trust issues too, so it was quite difficult for both of us. I know quite a lot of women who are like this and a few men, and it's exhausting being like that. Gerry do you have any cognitive behavioural stuff to use if you already know you can be irrational in your reactions to minor triggers? Or what other useful advice can you give on this issue?

It's not just women who are like this tho. I was with a guy who was worse than me. In fact I wasn't even like that at the time, but he used to flip out if I took more than 5 minutes extra to go to the shop for milk or something. Do you think I may have caught it from him? Maybe it's like a virus.

None, that's what makes my behaviour even more irrational. I remember someone who had OCD telling me that it took her two hours to go to bed because she was compelled to do stuff she didn't want to do. It's a bit like that

Are you serious? But how did you find out what she had written in the diary that she left around for you to read? Did you have strong feelings for her or not? If I didn't really give a sh!t about someone, I wouldn't waste my energy snooping cos I wouldn't care what they were up to.

Evidence of course! But if there wasn't any to find, I'd just think that he'd hidden or deleted it so it was a waste of time anyway. You get into a whole undercover detective vibe looking for evidence, whilst simultaneously driving ur partner insane. That's why I'd like to know if this is a common thing or if insanely jealous nutters are a minority and I'd love to learn how other people manage to be in relationships without turing into Inspector Clouseau

Haha, I only recently realised this was not normal!

This is something I've suffered from most of my adult life and is getting boring now! I know other wommen who seem to have similar personalities to me; easily fired up, strong emotions, intelligent but insanely jealous beyond reason. What brought it home to me recently were the partner's of two of my male relative's obsessive jealousy over things I knew for a fact were not occuring! So my logic goes something like this: They are wrong about this but are totally convinced they are right (as am I when I'm on one!) so maybe on some of the occasions when I am sure that 2 + 2 = 5, I may have been just as wrong! Discussed this with current ex-bf, and promised him I'd try my hardest to try to logically work out that I am insane when I'm jealous, during the moment I am insane with jealousy! He was very happy about this progression and a kind of peace has decended - hopefully more than just a passing moment. So come on counsellor Gerry - how do we go about working out we are acting nuts in the middle of acting nuts and stop ourselves going through the phone and pockets etc of our loved one? In other words how do we learn to trust?

I think life as a single parent can get hard becuase sometimes you need someone to take over from running everything for a bit so you can just chill and recharge. I find it wierd that I've been a mum for 22 years and am only now working out how to do it with the help of feedback from my older kids. There doesn't seem to be a lot of single parents in East Dulwich and I did find it a strange sight seeing so many couples with granny in tow pushing their precious little sprogs on the swings in Dulwich Park on Saturdays. I think you may need to frequent Peckham Pulse ball room to find local-ish single parents.

Any particular style you'd prefer? I have a nice little leopard skin number I can't fit into anymore.

Maximay said ".I do have to admit though I have since taken a very honest look through my posts and I have kind of waged a very unfair one man war against a lot of what you have said, posted and stood for" - appology accepted but you still didn't answer you how you were female in your first post and male in your last two.

Lol - haha it's not that ex I've been shagging, I reckon Maximay would have been even more poisonous if it were!! It's my cute young ex-bf I've been liaising with again.

Mightyroar - kids are such joy! I am still always late getting my youngest off to school cos no matter how many times you tell her to get up, get washed, get dressed, eat, brush teeth etc, invariably she finds playing with her toys far moreinteresting! And I've given up on my 16 year old - supposed to be on study leave, ha, sleeping all day leave more like it!

I try not to have to, Steve!

He of large and powerful trowel is indeed my handyman of late.

I just re-read this thread and nearly fell off my chair laughing. We still didn't get the single night sorted out in the Hamlets. Can the person who knows the Hamlet guy pick a day and we can all turn up - although I'm not strictly single anymore seeing as how I got fed up with DIY and enlisted my helpful ex.

I have a feeling Maximay is in fact female, lied about having a child who died from an overdose, is intimately connected with my ex-husband and feels the need to have a go at me for her own sad reasons. My ex-husband is part of my past and although we are civil to each other nowadays for the sake of the kids, Maximay seems to be unable to move on or accept there may have been some blame in the breakdown of our marriage to lay at his door as well as mine.

So Maximay you say you are a Father yourself, but when discussing what to get at Xmas you said "Lucky he gets them anything, my kid's dad gets them bugger all!". I think it is about time you declared your vested interest in slagging me off and stop hiding behind anonymity, unless that is you're scared incase instead of judging me, you yourself become the one 'in the dock'.

Do you think things are heading towards Germany before WWII/Rome before it's fall etc? Mother of a recession on the horizon, so crank up the patriotism and xenophobia, spy on all the 'citizens' and homogenise(sp?) culture under a centrally controlled moralism while excessive sexual exposure and hedonistic consumerism keeps the plebs busy.

I'm a single parent, but even when I was married I was still a single parent so the only difference is that I just have more room in my wardrobe and a babysitter every second weekend!