Dear Seaturtle:

“When you used the child with her mother at work…  hatchling is the one who gets bored of my job and has me desiring new routines?”- yes.

Hatchling= all your automatic thoughts and emotional reactions in the present that started and took hold in childhood.

Seaturtle= thoughts and emotional reactions/ emotional experiences that did not take hold in childhood. This includes what you learned from books and online, including what you are learning here, in your thread, and including becoming aware of hatchling and how she operates within you as an observer, observing her from some distance.

“I definitely felt boxed in, but I think what was even more frustrating and quite paralyzing was not understanding why I felt that way“- understanding the why is Seaturtle’s job. It requires observing hatchling from some (mental) distance and figure out her why/ what motivates her, what causes her to feel and behave this or that way.

“Wanting to run out of my own body and just escape this box I didn’t know how got there or how to get away from. I wanted to please my dad and fit in that box for him“- a child will do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to please the parent.

“My grandma on my dad’s side also, I remember in 8th grade I posted my first Instagram post and I had cleavage in it, my grandma freaked out called my parents and that night my whole account was deleted“- The Cleavage Scare=>  Delete the Cleavage… Interesting.

“What is interesting to me is I need to simultaneously release hatchling from this cage, but at the same time she is also driving the ship“- a real-life child throwing a temper tantrum in the supermarket, insisting that her mother buys her ice-cream right there and then, is driving the ship only if her mother rushes to buy her the ice cream so to quiet her down.

The real-life child throwing a temper tantrum in the supermarket probably needs help in a different context: she probably needs positive attention at home.

“It feels like hatchling is uncaged because she makes herself very known“- as does a child throwing a temper tantrum… only she doesn’t make herself known in the right context (home) where she remains unknown.

“It feels like hatchling is uncaged because she makes herself very known when N does something that resembles our father’s past behaviors“- Like the child throwing a temper tantrum in the supermarket, hatchling needs your positive attention at home, home with you, Seaturtle, outside the context of your relationship with N.

Hatchling did all she could to please her father because her father was her first priority. Hatchling needs to be your first priority, a higher priority to you now than your father is r ever was.

“You spoke a lot about being caged in a box, a ‘non-feminine, non-sexual/ tom boy box’ and this really resonates with me. I think a part of me fears I was still in this box when N and I met two years ago, and now when I come out of my box he doesn’t understand me anymore, although this could just be projecting F into, but whether this is true or a projection I really don’t know”-

– it is possible that it is correct understanding on your part, and I never thought of it myself until just now reading this. It may be that N is discouraging you from making the changes that are healthy for you to make. People do resist changes in themselves and in others…

“I worry that N met me in my box, and fell in love with her…. I feel like he loves the boxed version of me…  N and I are very much friends and that is all my dad has ever wanted is for me to be with someone who is a buddy, not a romantic partner, which would make him uncomfortable. I wonder if N is a decision made by the boxed girl…”- the boxed-in girl who still wants to please her father.. the boxed girl whose first priority is her father.

(I am responding to your posts my usual way, reading and responding to one part before reading the next).

S, N.. is F’s choice for you…???

“sometimes I feel like N is the relationship I grow a lot in and with, but that somehow it doesn’t work out, but then is that just because of my projecting F into N and I will regretfully manifest this relationships end? You spoke before about the self fulfilling prophecy”- I didn’t consider until THIS very post that N may prefer the girl in the box, that maybe he has been discouraging (???) the girl in the box from coming out and that your choice of N is.. your father’s choice.

Coming to think about it, you did say that your father is doing financially very well at his work and that N has .. you called it something like a millionaire attitude (like your father). Similar values and priorities.

“I feel like he could just as easily fall in love with M as he did me“- for M, being a tomboy may very well be who she genuinely is, it’s her.. out of the box version, while the same is your in the box (not genuine) version. I suppose that you think that a genuine tomboy version can easily win over a non-genuine tomboy version?

“he calls love a choice and rationally like I get it but it also is not what I want to hear, he could just choose to love anyone? I don’t want to just be anyone and I feel like that with him and it makes me feel undervalued, not special, and not loved for who I AM.“-

– hatchling needs to get out of the box, to leave her father’s expectations of who or what she should be. She needs to stop trying to please her father.. to stop the habit (an automatic habit by now) of trying to please him. Hatchling wants to be someone, someone who is valued and special, and that someone is who she gets to be and become outside the box.

“‘… leave the relationship. Being conflicted about it for so long, and for close to half of the relationship is reason enough to leave it”-  This response makes me feel free. But it also makes me sad and makes me wonder if I incorrectly portrayed N in order to get this freeing answer… My mom and sisters all think he is a great match, even my friends don’t understand me when I tell them I am not sure and certainly have doubts. Even my boss! N has done favors for the art gallery I work in and my boss thinks N is the most ideal man, tells me all the time how lucky we were to find each other… The thought of ending it with N scares me, and I hope the freeing sensation isn’t a lie. What if that freeing sensation I imagine feeling, doesn’t happen and instead it is just that, ‘finding out that your expectations were indeed too high and regretting leaving the relationship.'”-

-I too thought that N was, as I wrote to you before, close to perfect (while no one is perfect). Like your mother, sisters, friends (and your father), I too supported the relationship because you described so many glowingly positive things about N. But now I understand more than I did before in the 8-pages of your thread.. Wow! I didn’t understand before that some of your understanding of N is not an incorrect understanding based on a projection of F into N, but may very well be a correct understanding of who he truly is.. which is someone who prefers your boxed-in version and in so doing.. he (unknowingly) is doing your father’s bidding, which is to keep you in the box.

To check my understanding, I ask: can you give me examples of N’s words and behaviors that indicate that he supports your in-the-box version and discourages your out-of-the-box version? For the examples to help me, they have to include a description of the objective circumstances, what words were said, and what actions took place (ex., in a restaurant, the waiter said XYZ, N said ABC, then N got up and left the restaurant, etc.), and not include what you thought or felt, how you perceived or interpreted the situation.

anita