Dear Changeagent:

You shared the following about your childhood: “I grew up with a mother who wanted me to fix and rescue her. A mother that was also abusing me, unforgiveably at times… I completely forgot about me, because there was no time for me growing up. Everyone had a need they needed from me, and a responsibility and role assigned to me for each person for a very very long time. Started as a very young child. I thought it was normal”.

Fast forward into adulthood, you have lived with a partner who stonewalled you for “extremely long periods”, asked you “to leave time and time again” while you had nowhere to go to, packed your bags and after a few days, asked you to stay. A lot of what she did, her actions and behaviours, resembled those of your mother. And so, she added to your childhood traumas.

On your part, you made mistakes in the relationship, but once you became aware of how certain actions negatively affected her, you stopped those actions. She didn’t see you clearly because “her vision was very blocked by her past and her past partners”. In October she was diagnosed with a Bipolar disorder.

Last month, your “heart and mind could not take anymore”- you broke up with her and suffered a nervous breakdown. Currently the two of you are talking again and “we both discovered we want to be together, but take it slow”. She is currently on medication for her bipolar disorder.

You are considering resuming the relationship with her, but this time, “no fixing or rescuing”.  Instead, you will “allow her to fall flat on her face and help herself, get back up again, whether she does it or not”. You understand that for you to change this behavior, you will have to “undo long term conditioning and brain washing”.

Last night the two of you were having a conversation. In the middle of it she got upset and started to cry. You asked her why she was crying. Her response: “She got up, got a tissue, walked out and went to the bathroom”, and was gone, she didn’t come back to finish your conversation. This was a repeat of her past behavior. It reminded you of the many times this happened before, and you “went to a dark place” in yourself.

“My tears didn’t matter, my expressed hurt over it did not matter and she just went to bed. I went to bed too, just not in the same room. I really wanted to be alone… I’m not in a good place in  myself. My head is a huge mess. I’m so confused about everything.. do not trust my own perceptions about things… I don’t even believe in life anymore”.

My input- you shared regarding your experience as a child: “I completely forgot about me, because there was no time for me.. Everyone had a need they needed from me”- you are back there, currently: you forgot yourself. There is no time for you because she has her needs, and yours don’t matter.

I remember myself as a child, I too forgot myself, there was no time or place for me outside my own imaginings and fantasy life. In reality, I didn’t matter, I wasn’t seen or heard. It was as if I did not exist outside my fantasy life (where I was seen and heard, being an international superstar, dancing in front of large audiences, cheered to).

Outside my fantasy life I was in a dark place, my head- a huge mess, confused, doubting my own perceptions, feeling guilty and ashamed, so desperate to be seen yet enduring eternity in the shadows.

Back to you: I don’t think you can recover from the damage done to you by your mother while in a relationship with a woman who resembles your mother in her behaviors.

I think that you need to reassert that breakup of only a month ago. Rescue yourself. Be the agent of change in your own life- turn the lights in that “Dark place” and find your way out (or show her the way out, again).

anita

Dear Changeagent:

I will be able to read your recent post when I am back to the computer in about 14 hours from now. You are welcome to post again and add anything you want to add before I return.

anita

Dear Changeagent:

You are welcome and thank you for your empathy: at rock bottom, you are still empathetic, still attentive to another person’s feelings.

Because your role as a child was to attend to others’ needs and forget about yours- this must not happen here. This thread is about you: your needs, your feelings, your life experience.

“I have no energy to try repair a relationship that fell apart”- it is a relationship where you fell apart, a relationship that pushed you down to a “rock bottom”.

When we remain in relationships that broke us, trying to repair them- we break more.

You sent her a text last night, expressing how you felt and why you slept alone, and “as per usual”, she did not acknowledge your text. You were “not important enough to be acknowledged”.

“How can a person that has told me I matter and they love me, do that?”- it is easy to tell a person anything, it is easy to say words, it takes seconds.

“Is it me that is emotionally immature and missing something?”- from reading your original post and on (and I have read thousands of accounts in these forums over the years), I noticed quickly that you are unusually mature and insightful, unusually aware of reality, seeing the big picture.

“Over the last year I had so many different messages, messages of love, messages driven by hate and everything in between that I don’t even know who I am anymore”- as the social feeling/ thinking animals that we are, we are each other’s mirror: we see ourselves in the other person’s facial expressions, tone of voice, words and actions. When she expressed love, you saw yourself as worthy of love, if only for a moment; when she expressed hate, you saw yourself as worthy of hate, worthy of being ignored.

Last night she told you that when she is in a relationship, she doesn’t talk much so “to avoid an argument, a confrontation, to keep the peace”- seems like her past experience in relationships is that of arguments and confrontations; war, not peace.

She said that when in relationship, she says what she thinks and feels, but when the relationship ends, she “can say whatever (she) likes because the relationship is over”- seems like her past relationship experience was that in which she said things that led to the ending of the relationships, so she learned to be quiet, to not say anything for as long as she can, stonewalling a person when angry.

“I know factually, I’m the healthiest partner she has ever had. No control, no power, no abuse, strong love”- in her past relationships, I doubt that every guy, or perhaps any guy, was in power and control while she was powerless.

Look what happened to the “healthiest partner she has ever had”- he broke: “my head is a mess. I don’t know the lies from the truth anymore.. bordering on causing really bad mental health issues”. She broke you, she has had the power over you and she abused that power.

What I wrote right above- I wrote before I read the following (I responded to your post part by part, each part before I read the next): “she sometimes holds the power when it comes to communication”-

Communication is the heart of relationships, so when she holds the power when it comes to communication- she holds the power over the relationship.

Communication is also who you are: “I’m the communicator, expressive, like to talk, healthy communication”. When she holds the power over the (lack of) communication, she holds the power over you (I am the communicator, you wrote).

Earlier you wrote about her behaviors: “Stonewalling for extremely long periods.. being asked to leave time and time again.. packing my begs”- she is often angry. She may very well fit the Bipolar diagnosis that she received. Another professional could perhaps diagnose her with Borderline Personality Disorder. Regardless of the diagnosis, there is lots of anger in her heart, and that anger causes your heart to be in pain: “I’m really in a lot of pain in my heart”.

I understand that you feel weak and powerless to solve your living arrangement at the moment. But as a written exercise, can you list the practical steps needed to get her out of your house (1, 2, 3..)?

anita

Dear Changeagent:

You quoted me: “I noticed quickly that you are unusually mature and insightful, unusually aware of reality, seeing the big picture”, and you asked: “I am unsure why you said ‘unusually mature’ and ‘unusually aware of reality’? I just wasn’t sure why it is unusual?”-

– I made that comment in response to what you asked here: “Is it me that is emotionally immature and missing something?”. My response was that it is not at all my impression that you are emotionally immature, but the opposite, that you are very mature= unusually mature, as in more mature than many other people, in my experience. Also, it is not at all my impression that you are “missing something”, but the opposite, that you are very aware of reality, that you are seeing a lot of it, the bigger picture.

The bigger picture that you pointed to consists among other things, her seeing not you, but other people in her past (inaccurately projecting others into you), and of her adding to your childhood traumas by her mistreating you in ways that resemble the ways your mother mistreated you.

Did I satisfactorily answer your question?

You shared in your recent post that you lived on the streets in 2014 (“you move on but you never forget”), that you recently understood for the first time in 40 years that your mother indeed abused you since you were a child (“I never knew it was abuse. I do now”), that you cut contact with her December 2019, and consequently lost contact with your sister and niece, currently having “no family at all”. You live in a small regional town in Australia. When Covid hit and everything closed down, and knowing finances were going to get worse, and that your partner not being in a position to work- you tried to get more work, feeling a lot of stress and pressure, feeling “extremely tired/ fatigued all the time. The kind that sleep doesn’t solve”.

You wrote that when you first met her and hugged, it felt like you were “fused together… a fusion, a belonging, like coming home… I feel her tummy against mine and there’s something there fusing us together”. You went into your relationship with her “with a full commitment to grow as a person individually and together… believing we can work it out”.

You shared that you are an empath, which is a blessing and a curse, that you are deeply depressed and unstable, and that you’ve been those things before. You will not ask her to leave because she has nowhere to go.

My understanding regarding that fusion/ coming home experience with her when you first met: it was your  state of mind, an intoxicating state of mind born out of a long-term unsatisfied hunger for a feeling of home, for a connection in which you can finally rest. This fusion was your desire to be home rushing ahead of you, making it seem like it was happening. But it didn’t really happen.

You wrote: “It would be very different story if she was slapping me around, verbally abusing me, swearing at me, putting me down, putting my life in danger, or even getting violent. That is when I would say enough and to get out. She is not doing those things… In regard to your point about the power imbalance. I agree with you… I feel that people that like to exercise that power in a relationship is cruel”-

– when a person succeeds in exercising power over another in non-violent ways, there is no need to practice violence. It is similar to the following: if a dog succeeds in scaring away a trespasser by barking, there is no reason to attack. Animals instinctively prefer to spend the least amount of energy so to accomplish their goals, as well as to not risk injury and death unless absolutely necessary.

In other words, if she has power over you as-is, there is no motivation on her part to expand more energy than is required by slapping you around, what would be the use.. nor is there a reason for her to expose herself to unnecessary risks, such as the risk of being arrested for causing you physical injury.

About injuries, there are injuries that are visible, such that involve blood pouring out of the body, and there are injuries that are visible in other ways: and broken bones and there are injuries that are not visible in the same ways that blood is visible- you can see them in the deadness of one’s eyes, in the aged look of the face, in the behavior of the injured, staring into space, sleeping a lot, acting “extremely tired/ fatigued all the time. The kind that sleep doesn’t solve”.

Changeagent- I wish you get the one who is injuring you to live elsewhere, there has to be a place for her to go to. It is not right for you to suffer the way you do so that she will have a place to live, a place you pay for. It is not right for you to sacrifice your life so to benefit a woman who doesn’t seem to care that you are suffering. What is the use of cutting contact with your mother when you are living in effect, with your mother’s substitute?

I know you are very tired and very distressed and I don’t know if you can focus on my words. Can you?

anita