These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.

Welcome to the show. I'm glad that you are here. I'm going to talk about a couple things today.

Somebody wrote to me and said they're listening to my love and abuse podcast

or they've been listening to it for a while and they finally broke up with the person who cheated

on them multiple times and they felt they were held to unhealthy and uneven standards and shamed

for their past and lied to. It was a constant cycle of highs and lows.

And my partner said that he wanted to change, but he never seemed to be able to. And then I

would feel bad for him and I would cling on. I am finally at the point where I know a future

will never work. I have blocked him, but he found a way to reach out after a couple weeks of being broken up,

and he was talking about how miserable he is now,

and his life has spiraled downhill and how he hates himself and is in the darkest place of his life.

I was empathetic, but told him to please not contact me because it is too hard for my healing.

Do you have any advice for dealing with this?

I feel bad for him and I don't want him to feel miserable, but talking to him breaks me.

Thank you for everything.

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm sorry you went through that and I have probably a quick answer for you.

You are very empathetic like you said and because of that, you will overextend and be overly

compassionate to people that you see in misery. The problem is someone like this, someone in this state of mind and with these

dysfunctions and stuff that he needs to heal.

Some stuff that he's going through right now he needs to heal.

I don't know if it's a fear of abandonment, a fear of being alone, a feeling unworthy or whatever

...