Emotional investments, are tough to let go.

So why don’t we just admit, that some  bad relationships seem to go on for many years past their expiration date. Why is that? In my humble view it’s simply because of the emotional investments, people have a hard time letting go. Women know that if they let a man go, another woman will cash in on the years of committed investment she had put into molding him into being the man he is today. Well many women believe their time and physical investment in a man made him a better man, so why let him go and have some other woman benefit from the investment.

This however, is not a gender specific problem… Men have similar issues. Men invest time and effort and even a great financial investments in a woman’s well-being,  so they have a hard time letting go of a woman they know they will never get those investments back. Therefore Men know if they “breakaway” that those investments are history.  Modern day Women know if they “breakaway” their contributions are also lost and will be forgotten once a new woman steps into the picture. 

Why are you looking over your shoulder,

 at that couple?

Try looking ahead to a brighter future,

 what’s behind you  is just history!

A quick true story of two women having the same taste in a particular type of  men. 

While I dated a woman for two years, I mostly enjoyed what she brought into the relationship, she was smart and ambitious, but she had some strange ways at times so I could not see making her a long term partner (therefore  we never lived together). After the two year period, we went our separate ways. A year later I met another woman in the gym, where I was a personal trainer, she became attracted to me, she wanted to workout with me every chance she got, even asked me to train her on Saturdays, but I had no idea she and my former lady friend  were rivals. But she knew I had been with her rival, because she saw us together. She even saw the woman’s car in my driveway, early mornings, from time to time.They were rivals that became enemies, because they had their youngest kids born about the same time fathered by the same man. I was the new guy on the rock and didn’t know their history as rivals. Since  I don’t listen much... when people start talking about other folks history, I was often clueless, because I assumed I didn’t know who was being talked about. I just did not pay much attention to the many warning my friends were giving me. Until one day I was confronted by the woman I had the first relationship with, she asked me two simple questions “do you know the woman that is living with you? Do you really know her history?”  

I shrugged my shoulder and said: ‘I’ll assume  you have something you want to tell me, about her’. So she told me that while she was married to her now ex-husband he had an affair and the other woman got pregnant, and she, his wife was also pregnant about the same time,  so they had babies about the same time. Her youngest son and the other woman’s daughter therefore were half brother and sister, they were born days apart. Wow! I didn’t see that coming. So I asked around and people who knew both women told me “Boy you sure can pick women, you picked the two women back to back who seem to have the same kind of taste in men. What are you trying to prove, that you are better than the other guy?” one good female friend said to  me. I was a bit taken back by the information so I asked the woman who was living with me... who her daughter’s father was and she lied to me, because She wanted a fresh start with me and not let her past become a reason for her not having a “forever after relationship.” She knew I had things that I considered to be deal breakers. Drama, was a major one! The two women had similar  emotional investment they had put into their relationship with me, and they had the same taste as far as who they wanted. The first One that felt she had to pop the other ones "bubble," by telling me about their history. She knew that I was different to her ex-husband in one area, I was not a cheater. And I might get annoyed with  the second woman , who felt she had to lie to me to maintain her investment., which backfired because I didn’t like being lied to.

My dear aunt once told me, after my divorce; “ A divorced man or a widower, who own his own house,  are very attractive in the eyes of younger single women!”   

Final thought:

Emotional Investment are hard to let go of, we often wonder... “what if, I let go and someone else hits the jackpot, after I have put in all my coins into the slot machine ….” And all that you  have invested brings in a big payday for someone who just comes into the picture after you broke camp. They can and will cashes in big time. You never know what will happen… so this is why….. it’s so hard for some people to let go!