Dear t:

“I was very emotionally numb as a child and have mostly successfully avoided my mother as an adult. I have never experienced this kind of outward emotional instability with crying and everything“- the pushed down crying and everything was there within you since childhood, it’s just that it recently rose to the surface.

In your original post, you wrote: “When we aren’t spending time together I am extremely emotional in ways I have never experienced before“- I think that long ago, as a child, you experienced being extremely emotional before you instinctively pushed that extreme emotionality down below your full awareness (repressed ad suppressed it), resulting in feeling numb.

“The biggest similarity I see is that my boyfriend, like my mother, has good intentions. He never intends to hurt me but hurts me anyways“- my mother, who behaved similarly to yours, repeatedly told me that her intentions were always good. It confused me a whole lot: why do (supposed) good intentions hurt so much? It is only within the last few years that I understood- finally- that what she told me so many times wasn’t true.

Lets look at what you shared July 30: “Growing up my mother never communicated but expected me to read her mind and anticipate her moods and needs. If I didn’t do this, she would blow up and yell, throw things, etc.“- when she blew up, yelled, threw things, etc., she was angry, wasn’t she? What is the motivation/ intention behind anger (in animals, not only in humans), if not to hurt (or to threaten to hurt) the object of one’s anger?

Back to your recent post: “Then it’s followed by lots of reassurance – affection, ‘I love yous,’ talks about fun things we’ll do in the future. A very similar pattern to my mother, though of course the arguments were different (my boyfriend has not yelled at me or anything like that).“- once your mother was done expressing and releasing her anger against you (however temporarily), she tried to make it up to you, to sort of, undo her violence with I-love-yous, etc., wasn’t she?

That’s what my mother did. I think that she was trying to make herself feel better: to feel like a good, loving mother (her preferrable image of herself), following her verbal and physical violence against me.

But your boyfriend, exhibiting no violence against you, when he is being reassuring and affectionate- he is trying to make you feel better. A different pattern, different motivation?

anita