Raise your hand if you or a loved one has bailed on plans for a man 🤡

Keep your hand up if you or a loved one has spent nearly every waking hour thinking of said man 🤡🤡

Raise both hands if you or a loved one has changed important boundaries to meet the needs of this man (hanging out too late at night, giving him money when you are broke, disrespecting you and you do not remove yourself from the situation, etc) 🤡🤡🤡

Whether directly or indirectly, you have been affected by pickmeshia-itis. Treatments include: Block & Delete, Remove all traces of said man/loved one out of your life, Moving, and my personal favorite, Falling off the face of the Earth (a combination of the aforementioned treatments).

Some advocates out there may say "Work it out with them" "CoMmUnICaTe" or "You're running away from your problems." The thing is you are not. At FDS, we do not say these with the intention that you should continue as if nothing happened. What we mean is look at the situation, learn from it, recognize what went well/what needs improvement, take a break, and come back to dating when you are ready.

The horrible thing about pickmes or having secondhand pickmeshia-itis is that you don't realize what is going on until after. You weaken your boundaries to fit the needs of this other person. Check out other areas of your life because you may be codependent.

Codependency: discounting your needs and putting energy into supporting other people without consideration of what you need. This affects your self-esteem/worth, can lead you to forget yourself, feel that your needs are worthless, or even allow you to feel happy only when the other person is.

This is harmful and only gets worse as time goes on.

YOU deserve to have your needs met, YOU deserve to feel happy without attaching your emotions to others, YOU deserve to live the life that YOU want to live.

A few weeks ago, a fellow FDS member pointed this out to me and recommended some readings to help sort my life. I just finished The New Codependency by Melody Beattie and started implementing her advice. She talks about codependency while loving someone with drug/alcohol dependency as well as loving someone in general and having great boundaries. I'm about to start Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

Feel free to share in the comments things that helped you with codependency and overcoming weak boundaries. MOST OF ALL, feel free to share some success stories about establishing boundaries. It's always nice to share a win :)