Dear Kayla:

This is a great opportunity for you to heal, to improve your functioning in relationships, any kind, and so live a much better life than you would otherwise. You wrote that you were getting emotional as you typed the above. This healing is a long term objective- no shortcuts. The reason it takes so much time is that emotionality- intense emotions involved in this kind of learning and healing. You have to pace yourself, be very gentle with yourself, very patient with the process, distract yourself, take breaks to “let the dust settle”-

and so, you can read (or re-read) my following comments regarding your latest post later, when you are calm:

* You wrote: “His father has anxiety, and I have anxiety, therefore I was just like his father. So he treated me the way he treats his father”- I would add/ correct: his father has anxiety, you have anxiety and he (your ex boyfriend) has anxiety. If you had way less anxiety and was very assertive, he would still treat you the same way if he was in relationship with you. Thing is, he is not likely to be in a relationship with a confident, assertive woman. Such would be a short term relationship, I imagine.

* You wrote: “My childhood with him (your step father) was always about structuring our lives, days, and behaviors around ‘not making Mark mad.’ He was never physically abusive, so I’m not sure that any of us understood how threatened we were by his anger… Everything was always tense, I felt like I always had to be on guard lest I make a mistake and set him off.”- clearly, you were very threatened by his anger regardless of the lack of physical abuse. The threat of physical abuse is … just as threatening as physical abuse. An prey animal in the wild, like deer, gets just as scared (and maybe more scared) when seeing a cougar lurking near by, as it does when actually being attacked by the cougar. As a matter of fact, a prey animal often freezes and is no longer afraid when actually attacked.

* You wrote:  “I was essentially trained to be submissive to angry men”- yes, and you may very well be attracted to angry men and driven to pacify them.

In your last paragraph you wrote: “How do I break this pattern? How do I recognize the anger for what it is early on? I want and know I need to take some time before I begin dating again, but I want to make sure I know how to break this pattern before I try to put myself out there again.”- again, this is a long term objective. You already started this journey of learning and healing. All you have to do is to continue, gently and patiently. This cannot possibly be quick. A rational understanding is of no value without an emotional understanding to go with it. And that takes time, re-visiting the same again and again, learning more and more every time.

Clearly, your best bet is to have a relationship, next, when you are ready, with a man who is not predominantly angry, one who does not point the finger of blame to another as an MO. But there will always be angry people around, if not in a personal relationship, then in professional relationships. So there is work to be done.

Post anytime.

anita