Anita

Thank you for your reply.

I have been moved out of my sisters house since this August, and I am finally financially secure and fully independent again. I do have a roommate and she has been great to me and patient with my rollercoaster of emotion.

I was trying to be patient with this most recent woman tolerating her indecisiveness because I thought she was worth it. However her not knowing what she wanted was ultimately the problem. As I mentioned she was bisexual and the other date she went on was with a woman, she hadn’t been with a man except me in years. She brought this up multiple times as a source of internal conflict, feeling a rare emotional connection to me, but also still desiring women.

To your point of people living out their childhood experience as an adult, I see this all the time in my work as a therapist and my own experience with it is what makes me a good therapist myself, I have received countless compliments from people how they feel understood for the first time and like things are starting to make sense. I’m beginning to realize I’m far more emotionally mature than I thought. Of course I have a ways to go and wisdom to be found, but in general I have done the work that the vast majority of people don’t do. This scares me because I’m fearful I won’t ever find a secure attachment with anyone because so many people are so wounded and lost in the world, including myself. This leaves me with a very small pool of healthy adults to choose from.

Problem for me is that just because I’ve done the intrapsychic  work on myself, I still experience my childhood attachment pains when triggered like it was happening now. My answer thus far has been to show gratitude towards those wounded parts of my psyche for getting me this far, I see my inner critic as my inner child still screaming out for attention. So I try to listen to what he needs. Lately I’ve been struggling to identify how to help him. I know I need connection with other people and even though I have many friends I have few people I feel vulnerable with.

I wondered today why did I even post here? I think it’s because I feel safe sharing here with you above all, and I need to know someone values me enough to pay full attention. I believe that’s what I need more than anything is a safe non judgmental group of people to fill me up when I feel down. I need to be heard. Thank you for listening.

i think my ultimate question for myself is and will be do I keep reaching out for connection? Or do I just accept things the way they are and just be? I’m torn, reaching out has ended in pain, at least romantically speaking, it has worked out with other relationships though. I’m just scared to move forward right now and don’t know where to find strength.