Dear Azouz:

My mother raised me as a single mother. She didn’t date men but one time, it was dark, and she was with a man in the room, the door was closed. I picked through the key hole of the door to that room. They were both dressed and nothing was going on except that hug, they were embraced in a hug. I still remember the pain and shock I felt. There are lots and lots of things I forgot, but that incident I remember. I cried hysterically that night. I remember the agony and I never understood why I reacted that way. I think as a young child, living with one parent, a mother, you feel possessive of her. The sight of her in an intimate embrace with someone else was excruciating.

I think it is highly unlikely that you were not influenced by seeing your mother being intimate with a man while you were a child. You wrote “defenseless child” because what you saw felt like a threat and you felt defenseless, unable to fight against that threat.

I believe you were so affected by it, that you dissociated from the memory- your strong emotions about it separated from the memory. The memory seems dry, devoid of emotion.

Where did the emotion go? Someplace else, only to resurface in the form of obsession, jealousy, anger, rumination about this woman your thread is about.

Your thoughts?

anita