Dear Jenny:

You are welcome. You did mention the origin of your self doubt: when your mother compared you unfavorably to family friends and to a cousin. This self doubt now extends to your professional life in spite of your tangible success and achievements, as well as to your social life with friends.

You shared that as a child, you didn’t want to tell your father that your mother’s words hurt you because you “felt he’d never day anything to her”, feeling that he “doesn’t have an opinion of his own and will just say what mom says”. You used to wish, as a teen, that “he were more assertive, that he’d call out mom for criticizing my nature”. You needed your father to shield you from your mother’s criticism but he didn’t.

“everyone on the outside said that he’s an amazing husband and I for most parts saw him as that”- he was too submissive to be an amazing father to you. He was in the background of your childhood, almost non-existent as a power in your young life. He was the weak, while your mother was the strong, dominant parent.

Fast forward, you meet L, you noticed his rudeness right from the beginning, in the way he talked, and others told you that he was rude to people,  and you liked it.

“I remember liking L’s attitude in the beginning, in a weird way, I saw his assertiveness, his self-assurance… I remember telling my friend that I found his slight rudeness of tone attractive initially”- he was like the father you never had, the father you needed to have, the strong father you longed for. Your attraction to and desire for L is about your early desire for a strong father.

As L became more and more rude and abusive, you were still holding on to your early-life desire for the strong father that you did not have.

anita