Anita,

Yes it was when I went to college.  I would say emotional abandonment.  I felt her love was and is conditional; when she was  available to me I felt fulfilled. I would say I did anything for her approval and took her backlash without question.

There are some things about S that I have not told you and I do not know where to begin. I can say I ignore red flags. This is all textbook behavior-I know.  To start off with he smokes and it bothered me. I told him that I wished he would quit-he gave excuses. In my opinion he smoked too much marijuana and borderline drank too much.  He seemed lazy and not quick to pay for things.  He didn’t make much money maybe that was why.  I felt that he loved his girls and wanted to be around them but he never really took them anywhere.  His youngest daughter who is 7 stayed with me a few times. The last time she stayed over he didn’t stay and the next morning she wanted  dunkin donuts and it was about 8:30am.  Apparently he told her the night before he would bring donuts when he came to get her.  I called him and he said he still couldn’t find his wallet.  She called him again at 10am to come and get her.  He sleeps a lot.  As I write these things (and I didn’t want to but the more I thought about it I wanted to tell you) I cringe.

Another thing I do not want to write down is while my ex husband was verbally abusive I got used to that behavior. His jealously was his way of showing that he cared.  He was always following me around and it was his way of showing he cared.  while his behaviors were obviously very unhealthy it’s what I knew; codependency from him is what I was used to.  Similar to people with narcastic qualities once he got a girlfriend all of his behaviors stopped. Overnight he began looking at me like I was an annoyance-a bother-someone that he replaced and all his attention was on them.

I don’t know what to think-Lindsey