Dear Jenny:

“I talked to my mom, I talked to my dad.. they apologised.. and it helped me close that chapter and I am able to look at my relation with them from a renewed place and I know now what actually happened between us, why my mom said what she said, why my dad didn’t stand up for me, it helped me see them as humans who made mistakes like we all do and as people who love me but had their own psychological issues that they projected onto me. It helped me close that”-

– you present a very fast, smooth and neat closing of decades-old relationships that you witnessed and experienced during your most sensitive years/ those formative years of childhood-  and onward: (1) the one between your parents, (2) the one between you and your father, (3) the one between you and your mother. You understand the why(s) and how(s), all is understood, resolved and left behind, clarity achieved, and door is closed.

“what is still there is an interest in figuring the relation and him out… an interest in understanding the why(s) and how (s) of his thoughts and conduct towards me.. what happened.. I don’t know what happened… how can I close this with a clear head until I have it sorted and then left behind”.

“Now, please tell me, what do I do? Should I ask you the questions or is there some other way that’ll help me close this?”-

– my understanding: you closed the door on examining your childhood experience way too soon. Too much is left unexamined, misunderstood and unresolved. And all the questions you do not ask about your childhood experience with your parents, you ask in regard to this way less significant and involved relationship with this man.

Basically what I hear you asking in regard to this man is: did he love Jenny?

You closed the door on your childhood experience with the convenient and much desired answer: that your parents love you (“people who love me”). But deep inside, you doubt that they loved you then and now, and/ or that they loved each other. But you don’t want to ask these love- questions in the context of your parents, it feels to threatening.

Way less threatening is to ask if this man loved you then, or loves you still. No answer or analysis of his love/ lack of love for you can satisfy you because your questions are not about his love for you, but about your parents love for each other and for you.

My suggestion: open the door to your childhood experience and examine it in the context of quality psychotherapy.

anita