Dear Jenny Lynn:

I just finished re-reading and studying your posts for a few hours. I want to offer some potentially helpful insight into you, that is why I am doing this. Following is a bit of a summary and quotes from your various posts. After the quotes there will be my input, my understanding.

From your original post, Nov 15, 2017: You and Glen met Nov 2015 and started dating Nov 2016, in  committed relationship since Feb 2017 (just celebrated your first year anniversary), and moved in together April 2017.

You started dating Glen a month and a half after you ended a relationship with John (Oct 2015-Oct 2016). You started dating John after you ended your relationship with your boyfriend at the time (the one before John), that boyfriend forgot  your birthday. (“lol so there wasn’t much to get over… I dried my little tears”). You date one man at a time, being loyal to the man you date.

You and John got along, had maybe three arguments in a year, not serious arguments but he did not want to commit to you.

Once you and Glen started living together, April 2017, you argued a lot. Glen displays “thoughtfulness, consistency, not afraid of commitment, punctual, spoils me”, but is also “very irritable, argumentative, thinks he knows everything, has extremely high expectations of me”

With Glen … you became like John, uncomfortable with commitment.

Last September was your birthday and Glen “basically didn’t do anything for me” and the next day he broke up with you in the middle of an argument about you going out to dinner with a best friend, I.E., who “wanted to do something nice for me for my birthday”. Glen “has a really bad temper… He doesn’t hit me or cuss me out or anything… I want my space back… my problems.. (are) mostly the result of living together before we should have”.

You wrote that Glen “has always had a large attachment to me… crazzzyy in love with me now… He loves every inch and speckle on me. But sometimes I feel like he wants to steal me rom the world… He takes care of me, he would do anything for me.

He admitted to you that he didn’t do anything for your birthday “to spite me for something I had done earlier that week”

You suggested to Glen to live separately but still date. He refused. “If we aren’t together he will literally never talk to me again. Period. Straight up.” Glen is “Pressuring me, nagging at me. Putting me in a position that I may not be ready for. Now I see what that can do to a person… because there’s a great person standing in front of you that you don’t want to lose but you also want to be true to yourself… Pressure makes me resent you… Glen doesn’t see just like I didn’t see how what he does affects me and our relationship. He doesn’t see why I want him to move out and have my own space again”.

From your Nov 16, 2017 post: “I am an unhappy person with a mostly good life. Which is sad. I do have functioning depression…I live and pay my own bills. I have a good job for someone my age (24) no kids an okay family. Fantastic friends.” You wrote that last time you were without a boyfriend was in Feb-July 2014. At that time you “Got on a nice food workout regimen, did some heavy reflection on myself & I lost weight… was moderately as happy as a depressed person could be… I was okay.

 

“Now I have a car, more money, I graduated from college and now I feel burdened… I apply unnecessary pressures to myself”

“… growing up my birthday was never really a special thing. It was ‘acknowledged’ but I never had birthday parties growing up…My family usually throws a dollar bill at any issue truthfully. They really don’t care about your feelings… I don’t have a very close relationship with anyone in my family…I really don’t have a person that I can turn to in my family and be transparent with…I just kind of felt like my birthday didn’t matter.”

“…I was alone a very large majority of my childhood… I really need my personal space is something I have learned… We discussed it and now he is okay with just leaving me alone for a little when I need my space.”

You wrote: “I like to keep the stories of the things that happen to me light because honestly if I told them for what they are it could get pretty dark. And even being a depressed person I am still a good time. I hate being a downer if I can help it… so I joke.”

Nov 20: “being what someone thinks about all day everyday. The most important thing in someone else’s life. Literally it’s like his entire world revolves around me. That’s just something I’m not used to I guess. I’ve never been anyone’s #1 before.”

Nov 30: “I love everything about him (other than things that ricochet from his temper). I love his smile, his laugh, his sense of humor, love that he can listen to me ramble about nothing, I love his sense of style… I love his goals.. I love how considerate he is… I love how he looks, I love how smart he is… I love how in shape he is..  I love his ‘natural’ eating habits, I love that we relax the same.. I love that he wants to take care of me (even if financially speaking that will be in the future), I love that he is original, not a stereotype… I love how he cleans and doesn’t just think that’s my job… I love how I know he loves me however….even if I don’t.”

Feb 6, 2018: “Things have been going well. A few arguments here and there but nothing huge. He’s reduced his level of dramatics and I have increased my understanding of them… He apologizes for his actions now… We have been good lately really been connecting… I’ve been involving him more in my day… I can tell that it really does make him feel good”.

Nov 7: “I think what I really need is to get a handle on not letting how he is feeling get to me and alter my mood too. Like his mood lately… realllly wearing on my nerves. Because at the same time I understand his frustrations. It’s always annoying when someone complains about a situation they could have avoided if they’d just done more”

“…(Glen) wasn’t bringing in any income. From the first week of Dec until about 2 weeks ago he didn’t have a job… it was his fault… As of late it’s like every third thing that comes out of his mouth is a complaint, moan and groan, then complain some more… His moodiness comes off as so spiteful to me… bad attitudes are contagious. Today he woke up in some silly mood.

…My mom has always been a shot caller in her relationships. I’ve never known her to attach her being to a man. She lives for herself. And here my ass is just cannot resist the urge to want to feel loved by a man or get something idk what I’m searching for”

“… I know in my head, truthfully I am a extrovert, I am just depressed. I am the life of the party, 97.5% of people like me… But its been so long its hard to see I forget sometimes and then I see something like a old photo of myself and I just am like ‘hey! I liked her!!’

…I have probably been depressed for over 10 years… as a kid… my home life was so muted… Back in 2015/16 it just took over me and it never let up; it’s been 2 years basically now… now I have gained almost 100 lbs from losing 80… my energy levels plummeted, I won’t leave the house for days at a time if I don’t have to.”

Nov 9: “my ability to not harp on the negative… from my childhood. ‘Nobody likes a complainer’, especially when there is no change in motion… I hate being a downer…. I don’t feel good enough mentally to exist with my friends and other people and offer the same energy as I used to; just fun and carefree… I am clearly not ok.

My input: Little Jenny  Lynn, the baby, the child, was not born any more extroverted than any other child. You became extroverted as an adaptation to that muted home life, one where your feelings didn’t matter to anyone, not any negative feelings, that is. You became the life of the party as an adaptation to a lonely life.

Your mother did not  only not “attach her being to a man”, she did not attach her being to her little girl. You wrote that “she lives for herself”. She lived for herself when you were a child too. And she wasn’t there part of the time when she was in prison.

What could Jenny Lynn do in that home life, where she was alone with her negative feelings? Minimize them, hide them. Expressing her negative feelings (hurt, sadness, anger) brought disapproval, after all.

To gain approval meant to not express those feelings, to ignore them best you can.

As humans we crave to connect to people. Your way to connect was to not be a downer, to be extroverted, the life of the party. To be fun to be with.

Problem is we cannot make those feelings go away, the hurts, sadness, anger, fear. And so the extroverted behavior cannot sustain you, cannot eliminate those feelings, as those feelings will persist in making themselves known to you. They will not be muted.

I don’t know how much Glen complains, if he complains excessively. Maybe he does. But I am thinking that you are as troubled as you are when he complains because it was always a no-no for you, something you were  not allowed to  do. It angers us when someone does what we needed to do and were not allowed to do. You were not allowed to voice your negative feelings. You were muted.

Your extroverted behavior has been your way, since early on, to in-mute yourself. Problem is, to in-mute yourself, you need to express those hurt, sad feelings inside. They need to exit you, that hiding place in you.

You did not live with a man before, I don’t think, at least not with a man who loves you, who has you as his priority. When you hide your negative feelings from someone who loves you, it so happens that you don’t only hurt yourself doing so, but the person who loves you also gets hurt. Because he loves you.

Not being loved, not being cared for, not being anyone’s priority is what you are used to and what you adapted to best you could. The ways you adapted to that childhood experience is not working in the context of a loving relationship.

I hope Glen is the right man for you, the right place for you to express those negative feelings to, to… complain a bit. It may be very helpful for you to attend quality psychotherapy so to bring those feelings out of hiding and process them.

There are people who complain as a way of being, and it is a downer to others. I am not suggesting you take that extreme, nor do I think it is likely, not at all. I am suggesting that these feelings need to be voiced, acknowledged, accepted, processed.

I may have more thoughts. Let me know what you think, after reading all this.

anita