Dear Lily:

You wrote: “I’m so  scared. If I only disrespected myself, I can live with it and  forgive myself at some point. But if I damaged him.. I could never forgive myself” – you are willing to disrespect yourself so to avoid any possibility of damaging another, and  by damaging another you mean that another person may feel badly because of  something you said or failed to say, some expression on your face that you didn’t intend, etc.

You wrote: “I couldn’t enjoy sex itself that much, I went more along with what he wanted  and maybe he noticed.  Maybe I made him feel bad” –

You had sex with him because you didn’t want  him to feel bad if  you refused  him. Then you are afraid he felt bad because he may have noticed you didn’t enjoy it.

You never said an unkind word to him, no mistreatment of him whatsoever, yet you are afraid that anything about you is damaging to him. You wrote Sept or Oct: “When he last  wrote me he said he was  out with friends, so it  seems that he doesn’t suffer that much, right?”

You are surprised that he  didn’t suffer; you have this belief that you are very powerful in this way, that  you have the power to destroy an adult man if he  noticed that  you didn’t enjoy sex with him, not intending it to show.

“He didn’t respond to me  often and never   let me be part of his life.. My friend said, that it doesn’t make sense that he really doesn’t have time  to call or text me”- I agree with your friend.

Since Sept 8, the  beginning of your thread, you wrote the following regarding his responsiveness to you: “And he didn’t respond.. I tried to call him, but he didn’t pick up the phone… he didn’t take my phone call… (Oct 8) After I met him last Wednesday, he isn’t contacting me that much anymore… He  only sends me  messages that say ‘Hi’ or ‘How are you?’. But he doesn’t respond if I ask him how he is or comments on my answer… he  doesn’t  message me  at all anymore now. Yesterday I sent him a message asking if everything is okay”

You wrote yesterday: “He didn’t ask me a lot of questions, didn’t seem to want to know more about my  life”, but “In the beginning he gave me a lot of compliments, but most were  about my looks… He also  said ‘I love you’ very quickly and wanted to have unprotected sex”.

Sept you wrote: “He  also  said  ‘I love you’ very quickly and wanted  me to say it.  But maybe  this was because of sex”- the second sentence here, “But maybe this was because of sex” is your rational thinking.

Clearly, the compliments about your physical looks, telling you that he loves you were his way to have sex with you. It is a very common behavior on part  of men who pursue sex with women.

Here is another example  of your rational thinking (I italicized it)  from Sept 26: “Last week he even said ‘I want to have a baby with you’. At first I just responded with ‘it’s too early for that. Maybe someday’. But then I thought more about it and found it weird that he said this after knowing me for less than a month. Was this just an invitation for unprotected sex???”

Yes, he did. You wrote yourself earlier in your thread: “He also wanted to have unprotected sex (I refused)”.

I would say that your hope is in examining your thinking for rational vs irrational thinking. Therefore Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, where thoughts are examined for being rational or irrational will be very helpful to you.

Your core belief that you have the power to damage  people by an expression on your face, a tone of your voice, a word you said, while  not mistreating a person (no yelling, no name calling, no shaming, no abuse) needs to be changed.

anita