Dear Buddi:

I want to understand you better so I re-read your posts. In your original post you wrote about your parents, when you lived with them: “If they sniffed I had a crush they would ground me for months at home no friends, no going out no talking to anyone outside”- they punished you severely for feeling love for a boy.

Then they chose a man for you to marry.

The man you married “also gets upset but it’s nothing at all compared to what I was used to at home”- it doesn’t mean that you have been okay with his anger. It doesn’t mean that how he expresses his anger is okay. It just means that your parents were more aggressive, more punishing.

And then you met Mike and you fell in love. Finally you had your chance to love a man, a man you chose. And you loved him, being there for him “thru thick and thin”, wanting “nothing more than to be with him”. You let your heart love him all the way.

Unfortunately, he too expressed his anger in ways that hurt you, leaving for months without communicating with you. He lied to you repeatedly as well. He didn’t treat you well. He threatened you with telling your husband about the two of you. He cruelly asked you for advice about him dating another woman who was “so beautiful and so young”.

And when you told your parents and your husband about Mike, so to please him, he was displeased, discounting what you did with “you should have done this a long time ago”, and disappeared from your life once again without another word.

But you still love him, and you asked: “Why would a guy in his 50s do what he did? .. why did he come back after he lied and say things that made me believe he wanted me the same way I wanted him?”

For two years since you responded to Mike. You recently saw his display pic with another woman that that “tore (you) to bits”. You asked: “I have no idea what was less in me?”. You texted him and he responded with blaming you “for everything”.

Next you wrote: “This guy was my soulmate… the man I loved and gave my soul to is with someone else and I am slowly dying from within”.

Later you wrote: “I do not regret loving Mike those feelings are real and nothing like I experienced. But I do not know how to let go of him I want to start somewhere.

And later you wrote: “I want to accept that Love is not meant for me not this life.. I want to be loved the way I loved Mike… I ask myself this all the time what was less in me? Why did he not want me the way I wanted him?”

This is my understanding: you grew up unloved. You were punished, not loved. You were shown aggression, not tenderness. When you felt love for a boy, you were forbidden to see the boy. You were punished, isolated.

You were on one hand unloved, and on the other, you were not allowed to love and be loved by a boy. You also didn’t have the opportunity to develop a loving relationship, to get to know a boy over time.

Next a marriage was arranged for you and it was an opportunity for you to escape your parents. The man was not as aggressive as your father, a relief of sorts, but not good enough- no love there.

Next, you meet Mike. You shared nothing positive or endearing about Mike: he was repeatedly cruel to you, lied to you, threatened you, blamed you again and again.

But because you were so hungry to love, and to be loved, and because you never had the opportunity to love and be loved, never got to know a man through time, to evaluate who a man is, never had that experience of a developing love relationship-

you dived into it blindly, all excited, consumed to finally, finally love and be loved.

It didn’t matter who Mike is, all that mattered to you, understandably, is that finally you had the opportunity, for the first time in your life, to love and be loved by a man.

Mike’s behavior is not about who you are but about who he is. He is not a good potential love partner for any woman.

What happened with Mike is that you loved him, but he did not love you, not capable (no matter the woman). And so, it is possible for you to love again, for the second time in your life (Mike being the first), but to be loved in return by a man(for the first time in your life)- only not him, not Mike. And it reads like it is not your husband either.

anita