Dear Danny:

The following is my current understanding of your story as you told it here since February 2014, over 7 years ago. You are welcome to not read it, and if you read it, you are welcome to disagree with it. I hope that if you read on, you will be open to what may benefit you to consider.

You wrote nine days ago, May 7, 2021, regarding a woman you were “torn over a couple of months ago”: “I’m strong as f***, but with this girl, let’s say if she turned around and told me she f***** a guy last night, it would affect me intensely. So that must mean I love her or some sh** right?”-

– five years and 10 months ago, in July 2015, following my questions, you answered: “My mother abandoned me when I was around 10 or 12 years old. She had an affair & dumped my dad. What happened was that since I was the only boy with 4 sisters, being the boy I would ‘go with dad’ .. & we all separated… For years I would barely see her”.

When you were 10 or 12,  you loved your mother very much (“So that must mean I love her or some sh** right?”),  you were aware that your mother had sex with a man who was not your father (“she f***** a guy”), and that because she did, you were separated from your mother and your four sisters. Her affair and your resulting separation from her affected your intensely (“it would affect me intensely”). As a child, abandoned by your mother, you were weak (not “strong as f***”)

More about how your mother’s affair and resulting abandonment affected you: “I began drinking & taking drugs from a very young age, 10 years old.. to blank out the pain of what happened…. I was busy being addicted to ecstasy, speed & cocaine, living a wild & hectic life” (July 2015).

You wrote nine days ago, “I’m strong as f***”. I think that anger makes you feel strong, so you hold on to anger as if without anger, you will be weak. Here are a few of the many expressions of Angry Danny through the years:

Feb 2014: “I asked her was she seeing anyone to which she said ‘I can f*** who I want when I want’, obviously I was livid & told her I would physically removing man parts if I found out about it… I’ve been angry for so long that it has become a part of me.. the venom, it’s just there, deep down inside my soul”.

Sept 2014: “I.. get emotional which turns to the rage where I hate the men she was with & want them all to die horribly…I even think a very small but stubborn part of me actually WANTS to stay angry”.

Dec 2014: “Did the counseling work? No. I still get mad at the past. It gets reignited… (I) feel my blood boil, get enraged, hope & wish that all the men that were involved are savagely decapitated & castrated”.

Jan 2015: “I’m fuming.. I want to beat the f*** out of that guy.. I’ll drag him out of his car & bite lumps out of his face”.

April 2015: “it is actions that can’t be undone. It happened & there is no way to rectify it. It can’t be fixed not even with a sincere apology, because even if she were to sincerely apologise, it still happened & I will always remember… no amount of time or apologies are ever going to make it right & that dark cloud will always be there”.

July 2015: “a part of me ..seethes & burns, holding onto obtaining punishment for those men… Writing about this is bringing it all back & I can feel .. the rage beginning to boil.. I still crave those guys to suffer.. ‘some day’ I will get them back.. The rage at the other men & desire to see them hurt is not going to disappear”.

Aug 2015: “deep down I still hate her guts”.

Dec 2016: “deep down I’ll never forget what she did”.

Sept 2018: “I’m not the person I used to be. I’m not that p****d off, furious guy anymore. I work for a good company. I’m starting my own business soon. I play around with hot ladies of varying ages. Life has literally never been better. However.. Some small part of me still won’t let go… all the terrible things she’s done… You excluded me? Ok, I’ll stay that way, and I’ll be as cold and distant to you as you were to me… I would tell her she can stick them up her a**”.

Oct 2018: “Deep down part of me still wants revenge… thankfully none of those people are ever in my path way. Luckily for them”.

Nov 2018: “I don’t need counseling. I know I’m probably stubborn  in terms of me holding stuff against her, but the fact is she did things that are irreparable so for that reason I won’t let those things go… She needs to remain aware that her actions aren’t and never will be forgotten about, and as such will be forever present in my dealings with her. That’s her punishment for the irreversible things she did”.

April 2019: “I’m not angry like I used to be, there’s just some residual pain left over from what she done.. that will never go away… I’ll consider letting go of the resentment, but this is much easier said than done… I date multiple ladies at any one time and that’s just how I roll now.. I’m going to be a wealthy bachelor too, always dating gorgeous young women”.

May 2019: “she messed me around beyond repair? Fine, I ain’t going to settle down with the next available girl. I’m doing the exact opposite”.

July 2019: “I get a jealous feeling when any other guys flirt with her, particularly one who is my friend, he’s basically a rival”.

August 2019: “My friend and colleague has become very annoying.. I just have zero interest in complying with his complete stupidity. In fact it just makes me want to roll my eyes and tell him he’s behaving like an idiotic moron. I’ve envisioned scenes where I crack and give him a piece of my mind”.

Dec 2020: “I now know I really want her to be my girlfriend…. For full disclosure, I am actively seeing another girl too. Neither know of the other.. I’m just trying my best not to turn into something ugly; a little needy whiney b***h. I don’t want to text anything stupid like ‘you seem so distant lately’ or any of that nonsense. Instead I think I’m going to do the opposite and go radio silence”.

Jan 2021: “In the last 6 years I’ve  turned away from up to 10 potential relationships with girls. One of which, during 2018, I came to really regret, but she had moved on to someone else. I was too late…I will not contact her again..  I sort of feel like ‘You little b*tch!'”

Feb 2021: “The girl I met the other night was as loose as I am, and we did have sex right through to about 7 am… the sex, whilst it was fine, was nowhere near as good as with the other girl”.

May 2021: “here I am, after spending one night together a week ago, after a 5 month hiatus, allowing myself to become emotional about this girl.. I’m definitely annoyed.. jealous.. irritated..  here I am feeling annoyed with her again… I’m strong as f***, but with this girl, let’s say if she turned around and told me she f**** a guy last night, it would affect me intensely. So that must mean I love her or some sh** right?”

But your ongoing anger doesn’t make you a strong person, it makes you weak, alone and  lonely. It causes you to behave in ways that hurt you and others. In Feb 2014, you wrote: “I’m not a bad person. I’m a good person, who has been treated badly”- you were treated badly as a child, and you proceeded to treat others badly, particularly women, as an adult.

In Jan 2015, you wrote: “I was considering doing more counseling in the new year but I think it’s possible that’s just going to keep me in hurt mode, where I’m rehashing all the details of what I’m angry & bitter about. I’ll just end up leaving the room worse than when I entered because all the feeling that come with the memories will have been resurrected”- I think that you didn’t want to do counseling beyond the six sessions that you attended not because you didn’t want to feel “angry and bitter”, but because you didn’t want to feel weak and helpless, one without power, which is how you felt as a child.

Back in July 2015, after I suggested that you project your anger at your mother into the women in your life, you wrote: “whether or not my mum had an affair & dumped me wouldn’t change my anger to that particular action by my ex. ..How does my mother abandoning me transfer to the things my ex done to me 15 years later?.. I do not hold anything against mum I never have & I do not wish to”-

(1) you have been angry at other women too, not only at the ex you mentioned in this paragraph. Angry at men as well, (2) “How does my mother abandoning me transfer to the things my ex done to me 15 years later?”- your mother did not cause your ex girlfriend to behave in any which way. Your powerful childhood experience with your mother caused you to perceive your ex’s behavior as evil, when in reality, it was not at all evil, not even bad. Your ex and you had a very short relationship, and your anger at her has been about her having sex with other men after the two of you were broken up. She did you no wrong when she had sex with other men, pregnant or not,  because you and her were broken up.

You did not mention your son for a long time, and neither did I. The reason I didn’t mention him is because I am hoping that you have very little and supervised contact with him, if any. I am afraid of what your anger can do to your son.

In summary: I think that it is very important that you do attend counseling and that in counseling, you will be strong enough to be willing to experience the scary feelings you had as a child (and still), the feeling of being weak and without any power. As a child, you had no  power to stop your mother from having an affair, no power to prevent being separated from her and from your sisters, no power to get your family back together.

Fast forward, you hold on to anger because it gives you the feeling of power, but it is not real power.  Like the wolf in the in the story of the three little pigs, you huff and you puff and you threaten to blow the house down, but huffing and puffing is all you do, harming yourself, harming others and keeping yourself angry, alone and lonely.

Turn your attention to the hurt underneath your anger, feel it, grieve the loss you suffered long ago, as a child, and move beyond it toward becoming more than your anger. Your life will be way, way better for it.

anita