Dear Eric:

“her family was more friendly than I was expected. This is my first time experience meeting a girl’s parents“- this is a good thing, that her parents/ family were friendly to you, a very good thing for a first time experience.

“So, yesterday I’ve met her parents and the meet up was quite okay, but I feel like I made several mistakes and there are issues that I need to fix… after the dinner I regret it,  I should’ve… idk how her parents might think of me…  I need to speak more to her family members… a guy shouldn’t be too quiet… I even woke up several times in my sleep, as I feel I did lots of mistakes… My head is mostly filled with thoughts that her parents might think I’m stingy… I keep having thoughts after yesterday’s dinner ‘do I still deserve her?’, ‘have i failed her?’… always end up making mistakes in crucial times… I don’t want to mess up anything again”-

-The themes of detecting mistakes after an event that you consider crucial, then regretting the mistakes, and then overthinking about fixing the mistakes continue. I am not surprised because I know how strong these mental habits are. You are so afraid of making mistakes and messing things up, that you see mistakes where there are no mistakes.

Every single thing that happens during what you consider a crucial time, can easily become- in your mind- a disastrous mistake. These mental habits bring you a lot of misery and they exhaust you. A person is not likely to learn and function better when miserable and exhausted.

It seems to me that Eric believes that Eric is a Mistake, and therefore Anything that Eric Does (or doesn’t do) is likely to be a mistake. Therefore, Eric is policing himself. It is as if Eric is three people in one: a Criminal (whose crime is to make disastrous mistakes), a Police officer (whose job is to guard the criminal so to prevent him from making mistakes ), and a Judge (whose job is to punish the criminal and to tell the criminal how to fix his mistakes).

But Eric is Not a Mistake. He believes he is and he suffers for it a lot.. unnecessarily. I communicated with you for years, and I can tell you with confidence: you are not a mistake. You deserve love, appreciation and respect. You deserve to be cherished like you want to cherish her.

In regard to the specifics of what you shared recently: you being quiet and seeming to be shy would be a plus for many parents of young women because they don’t want loud and aggressive men to sexually take advantage of their daughters, and they feel safer knowing- or believing- that the man dating their young daughter is shy. It is similar to what she (the woman you are dating) told you: that she prefers an inexperienced guy because an experienced guy will do things to her that she doesn’t want done (I forgot the exact words she used).

Try to relax into who you really are, Eric: Not a Mistake but a human being like me, like the woman you are dating, like her father.. not less than any other person. You are not an exception to humanity, you are part of humanity.. you are a person like me.

anita