Dear Elizabeth:

“I always value your responses. I need to have an unbiased opinion from someone free of any personal experiences because I feel like they can see my soul in what I write instead. Which to me feels like a more accurate assessment of who I am as a person“- I want you to continue to value my responses, therefore I need to see your soul, to see who you are as a person- to my best ability.

“This week I have learnt that unlearning behaviours that you have grown up harnessing is very hard“- it has been so for me too, certain very undesirable behaviors on my part were incredibly hard to change. Fast forward a few years, and those behaviors have been completely changed!

“I bared my soul to this person, so weaning myself of him is not going to be an overnight task“- it caught my attention that you used the verb weaning, which is “the process of gradually introducing an infant human or another mammal to what will be its adult diet while withdrawing the supply of its mother’s milk” (Wiki). Isn’t it interesting.. our adult romantic relationships really are parallel to our earliest infant-mother relationship.

“I find myself falling back into old patterns where I feel like saving him still… I got so used to acting without truly thinking about the motivations for my behaviour“- continuing the parallel idea, I am guessing that as a child you felt the need to save your mother (or other caretaker).. perhaps. No need for you to respond to this thought of mine if you don’t feel like it, it’s okay with me. The reason I mention it is because as I read your words, your thoughts and experiences, I think of my own.

“It bothered me that I didn’t know this person whom I was intimate with.  Who is this person I gave my heart to?“- when we give our hearts to whom we don’t yet know… I can continue with the parallel idea above, but I don’t want to take away from your story.

“If there was ever anything I would ever ask for from him, it’s the truth“- a request that is too tough for many to accommodate!

“he is emotionally stunted! He is a little boy on the inside still struggling to get approval by any means possible. It’s like what my son would do when he does something wrong and gets punished for it“- there is a girl in every woman, a boy in every man. You can sometimes see the boy in the man’s eyes, hear the boy in the man’s voice.. and feel empathy for that boy.. but when the man holds the boy in a prison, keeping the boy incapacitated- the boy is out of your reach.

“He is a little boy stuck inside a grown man’s body. He craves approval from his mother, and on several occasions when I look back I see him doing the same thing with me“- I read this sentence before I wrote the paragraph above (I am reading your post part by part, responding to one part before reading  the next).

“I feel like I look for broken men to fix because deep down I don’t want to address my issues and my childhood trauma“- I mentioned the parallel in the beginning of this post.. before reading this sentence.

“As for Christopher, I am done with him. I am no longer curious about what motivates him. I saw him in a new light. He is a broken child on the inside and he is toxic. He is now walking around hardened by the guilt of what he did and each time I engage him, he starts apologizing“- if, and only if you want to attend to my parallel idea, please do. I will share something in this regard with you, connecting it to weaning, the verb you used in the beginning of your post:

Again, weaning is “the process of gradually introducing an infant human or another mammal to what will be its adult diet while withdrawing the supply of its mother’s milk”-

My mother was rude to everyone (mostly behind their backs), and to me. That was the “mother’s milk” that I knew, the flavor I recognized. Fast forward, I was drawn to this or that man who was rude to everyone, hoping that he will make an exception just for me. I was drawn, figuratively, to.. the only milk I knew, to the particular flavor that I recognized, but with a minor adjustment, a bit of an added flavor: that he will make an exception just for me. I wasn’t drawn to a man who was genuinely nice to everyone.. that was a kind of a flavor that I didn’t recognize,  and therefore, I wasn’t I drawn to it.

“He wants me to forgive him on his terms!“- what are his terms, and what are your terms, I wonder.

anita