Dear Laelithia (last post in this study):

In January 11 this year, 2021, you shared about yet another man, another very rushed relationship. You met a man for the first time on December 20, 2020. Twenty two days later, on January 11, you have already determined that he is  “everything I could ask for in terms of a relationship partner”, and within these 22 days, he fully committed to you: “Although I only met him on the 20th, he has fully committed to me”. By January 26, a month and a week since he met you for the first time, he told you that “he wants and needs me in his life, that I have become his rock and he loves me completely”.

At first, you were elated, told a friend within a week of meeting him, that you may have met your future husband, excited that “for once the man was reciprocating my excitement/ eagerness”. Next, you started doubting yourself and panicking: “it may be too soon… terrified at the prospect of settling down long term”, and you wavered “from feeling very secure/ happy/ grateful.. to terrified/ worried scared that I jumped too soon… concerned about my past history of rushing into things and then losing interest”. At first, you felt “completely head over heels for him, very attracted”, but then, “I have big doubts and find myself perseverating in his flaws”.

In doubt and afraid, you suggested to him to slow down the pace of the speed-of-light relationship, but unlike previous men, he was rushing man, and at your suggestion to slow down, he appeared “hurt and scared at this prospect”. He told you a bit later that “he almost broke down at work due to.. the fear of potentially losing me”. As a result of his reactions, you felt guilty for hurting him and you withdrew your suggestion to slow down, focusing on his well-being, not on yours.

By March 10, not yet three months since you met him for the first time, you were unexpectedly pregnant by him. You were mostly terrified but he was “pleased with the news and noted that he felt more secure in our relationship now”-

– When you expressed to him your fear about the relationship going too fast, a valid concern, he did not attend to your fear; he attended to his fear of losing you. When you told him that you were pregnant and that you were afraid, again- he did not attend to your fear, but to his own, telling you that he is less afraid/ feeling more secure.

He told you that you have become his rock, a month and a week after meeting you for the first time. If he meant it, then he must have been very desperate and in need of a rock, any rock that appeared good to him.

He pushed you to buy an expensive new car even though you were uncomfortable doing so- again he did not attend to your fear (regarding the unnecessary expense); he attended to what he felt like should be done with your money.

You wrote: “I started to feel resentful… knowing that the resentment I was feeling wasn’t entirely fair, because, in the end, I did not say explicitly no to any of it. I did not stand firm to my boundaries”- your resentment is fair because you expressed your fear to him and he ignored it. A loved person does not have to stand firm and insist on one’s boundaries because the one loving you will respect your first No instead of pressuring you to change your No to a Yes.

As I see it, marrying B is the wrong choice for you. If you decide to keep the baby, I imagine that you will be raising a child as a single mother, having no choice but to have the child’s father in your life for at least until you are 50 years old, being that you turned 32 this month.

The main problem all along has been your Emptiness which you’ve been temporarily and unsatisfactorily filling in with the elation, excitement and euphoria on new and rushed relationships with men you don’t know (not having had the time, nor the mental objectivity needed to get to know a person).

Your Emptiness is this emotional experience: “I.. felt Wrong as a child, a problem, a burden”, “I was causing her distress”, her= your mother (Jan 2019). Repeatedly disapproved by your mother, you felt very sad and at times, very angry. During the elation part of a rushed relationship, you get to feel Right (not Wrong), a solution (not a problem), an asset (not a burden). But the elation is interrupted by the same sadness and anger that accompanied your childhood, when you were “an extremely angry and sad teenager”. In Jan 2019, you wrote: “emotionally I still am that angry and sad girl”.

In Jan 2019, you also wrote: “I have spoken to my mother in adulthood.. her account of my childhood is totally different.. she is not able to provide me with the validation I so desperately have sought”-

-no, she is able, but she is not willing. She really did disapprove of you, she remembers that, but she doesn’t want to admit it because it will make her look like a bad mother. So she prefers to lie to you.

In Jan 2019, you wrote: “Believe it or not, my current relationship with my mother is a lot better. I think in me talking with her about my feelings and my account of the past (and although she doesn’t agree with it), she has become more sensitive to me and my feelings. I can tell she is trying”.

In January 2021, you wrote: “I’m concerned about now if I can trust my judgement on if someone is a good potential mate for me or not… I don’t trust myself in making decisions or even knowing how I feel about things and so I tend to outsource those decisions”-

– your mother, by disagreeing with what really happened in your childhood, by denying what you correctly perceived, created and has been fueling your doubts and distrust in your own perceptions and ability to evaluate people and situations.

Back to Jan 2019: “she is trying. She usually now verbalizes her dissatisfaction more with confusion and sadness at my state of mind, as she.. is utterly perplexed that I focus on the past and doubt myself and my decisions so much. She is the type of person that can immediately forget and move on from the past and never ruminates”-

– when she expresses confusion and being utterly perplexed about your state of mind, she is sending you the message that there is something utterly Wrong with you, the same message she sent you when you were a child.  And it is not that she forgets the past, it is that she denies it to accommodate herself, at your expense.

“As to her account, she has simply said over and over that no one in the world has loved their children more than she has, and she would always go to the end of the world for them. She has said in the past anything I remember about her not loving me or liking me is crazy, because of how much she loves me”-

-again, she is sending you the message that there is something Wrong/ crazy about you. As her adult child, I bet it feels good to hear your mother say that she always loved you so much.. but it is not true. She didn’t love you as a child when she sent you the message that you are Wrong, and she doesn’t love you as an adult when she sends you the same message.

The proof is in the pudding: if you were a loved child, like your mother falsely claims, you wouldn’t have “a hole, a deep longing that never seems to go away”- that hole, that emptiness is not about love, it is about the lack of love in your childhood. You’ve been rushing so desperately to fill this emptiness in relationships with strange men,  just so to have a moment here and there of of feeling loved.

If she loved you as a child, you wouldn’t be having that Emptiness, and if she loved you now, she wouldn’t be denying the truth to accommodate herself, at the expense of your emotional/ mental health.

Right here is what your therapy should focus on. Your mental health depends on you seeing the truth, and no longer accommodating your mother’s lies.

I will close with the metaphor of The Garden of Eden (followed by  your words in June- Sept 2020): we can’t go back there, all of us humans are Exiled from the early life illusion of eternal safety, love and calm, all good feelings forevermore. No man can get you back to The Garden.  Trying to get back to a place that does not exist brings at best a short-term elation followed by great disappointment and suffering. We all need to endure this reality, that there is no such place. There is pain in this understanding, but there is also hope because when you know there is no Garden, you can fully attend to reality, to life as is and make the best of it.

“they provided some sort of high. They distracted me from the Emptiness… the Emptiness is not good at evaluating men. Often, it chose the worst of them to pick as the partner… it picks and chooses such minute and often superficial details of a person to make a picture that doesn’t exist… It’s still hard for me to.. not crave the Fantasy and want that euphoric feeling to wash over me… Despite trying so hard not to, I have this silly belief that one day when I meet my ‘Prince Charming’ I will be so fulfilled, I will be so happy, and I will live ‘happily ever after’… I’m afraid that one day.. I might find that in reality.. life will still have its challenges, that I will never have that perfect idyllic Fantasy life I have been yearning for so long”.

anita

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