Dear Elisa:

You are very welcome. I apologize for not being back to your thread as early as I said I will.

In your post yesterday, you shared: “I connected to my childhood wound, as early as I can remember. How terrible scared I was as I felt so alone… so lonely and scared…  not feeling good enough… if only.. I would be lovable. I was always focusing on the other person and if they could accept me… I have endured a lot of abuse. And I found it so hard to walk away as I didn’t know if it was my fault or not, if only I could have changed… I really wanted to be with him. I admire him and still find him beautiful… he is like a scared boy… viewing him on a pedestal… he is not my dad, and I don’t depend on him for my survival so I can let go. Perhaps I don’t need to be special to him… I still like the idea of him”-

– your idea of him is not a reality, but an idea. The idea of him is a combination of (1) Viewing him the way a little girl views her father (and/ or her mother): admiring him, finding him beautiful, seeing him on a pedestal, as a superior, powerful being capable of giving you the lasting feelings of being good-enough, accepted and loved, focusing on him and waiting for him to give you these desperately needed feelings, and (2) Viewing him the way a mother views a little boy, as if you are his mother and he is a scared boy who needs you to give him these feelings that you need.

On one hand, you project your idea of a father into him, and on the other hand, you project yourself (the little girl part of you) into him. These two projections constitute your idea of this man.

You broke up with him most recently, but you worried only yesterday about the following: “now when we have broken up, he will suddenly change and become the being that I wanted to be with. And that I have lost him. That creates sadness in me“- you fear that he will become “the being”/ the powerful father-idea who could give you the lasting feelings that you need, but you will not be there to receive these feelings because you broke up.

So, you see: even though you recently broke up, your fantasy/ the idea of him is not broken. For as long as this fantasy and idea of him are unbroken, you are likely to end up sleeping with him once again. It could have already happened since you posted last.

“He came into my room last night after he broke up with me and wanted to share intimacy” (Nov 2020), “So three weeks back he broke up with me…But then after a week he comes into my room (we live in a communal living) and just lies down in my bed and from then on we shared intimacy”(Nov 2021)

“I guess intimacy was always a way for me to feel accepted and connected”, you wrote last month. But sex has made you feel accepted and connected, good enough and lovable for only a short while. Too soon after the sex, you felt just as not good-enough and just as unlovable as you felt since you were a child.

Reality: (1) You are not a little girl, (2) He is not the father you needed when you were a little girl, (3) He is not a little boy, (4) You are not his mother.

Protect the little girl part of your emotional experience (the inner child in you) from being further sexualized. Your inner child does not need sex. She needs the … real thing: the real lasting feeling and conviction that she is loved, and that she is good enough to be loved.

anita