Dear nextsteps:

I am very impressed by the empathy and thoughtfulness you expressed in your recent posts on other members’ threads, investing so much time and thought reading and commenting, suggesting things that may help others. And so, I went back to this thread of almost a year ago. I hope it is okay with you, to get this attention from me. Please let me know if it is, at this time.

You stated on this thread: “I am lucky to have the life I do and have a wonderful boyfriend and live in the country and have a stable job etc.”

The problem in living this life with your boyfriend is the price you pay:

Placing your boyfriend’s feelings and needs ahead of your own (not having the opportunity to become adequately aware of what your feelings and needs are at any one time), acting nice regardless of how you feel, so to make him feel comfortable; feeling unsettled and off kilter, feeling not at home, not seen or understood by your boyfriend, lonely and disconnected in the relationship and otherwise.

In your family of origin you didn’t feel at home either. There too you felt lonely and disconnected.

With your friend, at the time, you experienced something different, a connection not only to another person but to yourself: “he just seemed to notice little things about how I was feeling… made an effort to know me… to know how I was thinking/ feeling on the inside”.  While your boyfriend cared how you acted, on the outside, wanting that nice behavior to stay the same, your friend cared how you felt, what motivated you, what your experience was, on the inside.

My input: there is no way for us, people, to know what we feel unless there is someone on the outside pointing to our inside, asking, inquiring, caring. We need another’s caring, and another’s input so to feel settled, to be aware and settled with what we feel.

You wrote: “The problem is when I am honest with my boyfriend about how I feel he says that I am ‘not as nice as a person that I was before’ and that I have changed as a person”- you haven’t changed as a person, you only changed your behavior, what you said to him and how you said it (and you said nothing mean to him, you wrote that). It was not comfortable for him, so he rejected your honesty, that is, he rejected you.

Your life seems great (I am using present tense, assuming you still live in the same circumstances). And it is indeed comfortable. When you compare your life circumstances to many other people’s lives, it does seem desirable, the envy of many. If you moved out and lived on your own, your life circumstances may have been worse: discomfort and no authentic being.

And if you moved out and got into a relationship with a man who was like your friend, one promoting your authentic being and becoming, it would still be a difficult and long process, to become your authentic self. It may even require effective psychotherapy.

“What to do when nowhere feels like home”- when home was not established in our brain early on, in the context of our lives within our family of origin, it is not easy to come by. Some places feel quite and peaceful, but not for long. We are unsettled until we find our home in the context of a relationship. Or relationships.

Got to have someone interested, motivated to see us, to know how we experience life on the inside, like your friend.

anita