I was born into a two-parent teenage household. My dad, loving but not really emotionally available, was in the Navy for the first 5 years of my life...he was out to sea for months at a time which disrupted the natural parent-child bonding between us. By the age of 16, my mom had lost both of her parents and her remaining family was fractured. Thus when she had me, I helped to fill a void in her life but we had a somewhat unhealthy attachment that backfired when I became a teenager. Having been somewhat sheltered most of my life, the "real world" I experienced in college threw me for a loop. Lots of drinking and too many promiscuities that brought much shame and regret. I truly didn't know who I was and looked to others for that insight. I basically flunked out of school and went home, only to throw myself headlong into a relationship with my ex husband, your classic Mr. Wrong-on-SO-many-levels. Lol! We had a baby got married, and got divorced. After 5 years of concentrating on getting my life together, I tried online dating. Met a great guy and fast-tracked the relationship...he built me up and then tore me down. It was devastating. A few months later I got back on the dating horse and met the current RABF. You can read my other posts if you want those details.
Basically I see that I am a rescuer who has felt like I made too big a shambles of my life to be able to scrape together a do-over, and so I have devoted myself to "the cause of Others". So here I am, working on leaving the RABF alone to work his recovery and focusing on my own recovery.