Dear Laelithia:

I hope that your dog is comfortable, not in pain, and I hope he heals as much as is possible for him, and that your father continues to recover from his surgery.

I want to refer to what you shared more than 3 years ago, on May 19, 2017 and comment on how it is relevant to now:

“my parents provided the best care that they could and I had many opportunities (private school, extraordinary activities, clothes/ toys, etc.),”- fast forward, as a 31 (?) year old woman, you are educated and I think you have nice clothes and that you are not lacking for anything material.

Continued quote: “however I longed so deeply to be seen by them, to be heard, to hear loving words of affirmation.. I tried so hard to get (mother’s) attention, I would clean the house as a child during the nights to surprise her, I would work so hard at school, I would try to engage with her. But she was emotionally aloof, and often deferred to spending time with my sister… my inner dialogue of feeling unworthy of her attention and ultimately unlovable”-

– fast forward, you have just experienced another very short, month long relationship. Your history: first relationship was a long term, stable relationship meant to please your mother, if I remember correctly, a relationship where you did not experience much interest or passion for the man who curiously turned into a woman later.

All other relationships were either very  short term, or on-and-off longer term relationships; undefined, unstable, unsatisfactory and very distressing for you, fueling your obsessive thinking and maintaining that same-old feeling and core belief that you are “unworthy of .. attention and ultimately unlovable”.

In summary, a childhood that gave you education, clothes and other material goods led to you being an educated, well-dresses adult (I imagine) who is not lacking for anything material. On the other hand, that same childhood led you to a series of very distressing experiences with men and ongoing distressing regrets about relationships that ended.

The way I see it, your relationship with your mother is maintaining that same-old core  belief of being unworthy of attention and ultimately unlovable. But even if you ended contact with your mother and left her behind you, this core belief will not be left behind. I do wish (because you can’t or won’t end contact with her) that you, at the least, move far away from her, hoping this will mean less contact with her, or space enough in between contacts, space that will allow you to loosen that core belief a bit.

The man we are discussing now, another very short relationship, expressed much interest and future plans for the two of you as partners, and then.. he changed his talk. Did he lie to start with, faking his interest in you, or was he genuinely interested in you and then changed his mind- I don’t know.

I don’t think that you happen to meet man after man after man who is dishonest and uninterested from the start. I think that what happens may be that your core belief expresses itself in behaviors that turn men off to you, sooner than later.

This is what comes to my mind this morning, as I look back at what I remember from our communication over the years: you are like a little girl that tries to act mature, like a woman; a little girl who thinks she can make come across as an intelligent, educated, refined woman, but the little girl can not deliver a convincing performance for long. She does her best, but .. she is only a little girl, feeling sometimes very scared, at other times very guilty, at other times angry, and often confused.

Maybe some of the men, those who were decent, saw a woman first, impressed by her intelligence, education, refinement, but then the little girl, scared and angry and immature, broke out from inside the adult and acted like a little scared and angry girl that she is. Then the little girl recovers some, trying to correct the situation with adult, mature, knowledgeable output, but her performance fails, and the man can see that .. that the woman is a façade.

This is my feel, at this point. I can’t tell you  how strongly I believe that you need serious psychotherapy, which you did not have so far, so to connect/ bring together the little girl and the woman, and the two will be One. Not a perfrectly confident woman, of course (hardly any woman is), but an integrated woman, one who has adequate insight into herself, one who understands who she is, and therefore, who others are.

anita

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