Dear Nicole:
It seems to me, from what you are describing, that it may be impossible to get you to a place where you stop thinking and overthinking HIM and only then focus on you. She can USE your thinking about you to help you get in touch with YOU.

In a post above you wrote: “But I want to believe that he’s miserable deep down and that I wasn’t making him miserable!!! I want to believe that he’s not a happy person and that he’ll probably never change.”

A good therapist, I believe, will use your concern about whether he is happy or not to dig deeper into you, figure out what FUELS this concern, maybe obsession (recurring concern, lots of thinking about it). Something is fueling it and it has to do with you.

You wrote (quote) that you wish he was miserable but that it wasn’t you causing him misery. This is a loaded statement and a LOT in it to be looked into, examined.

In your original post you wrote about knowing he is not good for you but in a dream you longed for him. You wrote about your lonely experience growing up with your family, your father an alcoholic, your mother ignoring the fact that his alcoholism was affecting you, treating it like an issue between her and him only. You wrote about the fights with her as a preteen and teenager.

I will not be surprised if (and I am guessing) you felt responsible for the LACK of attention in your childhood, lack of validation, not being SEEN this way. Maybe you are longing for the truth, that is, that your parents were indeed UNHAPPY and that their unhappiness was not your fault, you didn’t cause it. Maybe this is the original conflict and instead of focusing on it, you focus on whether the ex bf is happy, hoping he is not and that it is not your doing…?

If you get to the original wound fueling your over occupation with the ex bf’s happiness and what not, then you will be dealing with the real issues directly.

What do you think…?
anita