Dear Dina:

You wrote earlier on this thread: “I tend to be 110% or nothing in my relationships. Im either way too in, losing myself in the process, or completely uninterested in which case I break up immediately.” You also shared that your mother insisted that you cancel all your individual plans to attend to your family. As I see it, your mother taught you that to engage in a relationship with your family you had to give up your own interest, that you had to be “consumed” is the verb you used- you become nothing and the other party to the relationship becomes all that matters.

This explains to me why you tend to be all or nothing in your relationships with guys- either way too in, losing yourself or you withdraw and end it. You learned All or Nothing relating from your mother. But it is impossible to tolerate losing yourself in a relationship for long, so you end it. You learned a way that is unhealthy and cannot be maintained for long.

If you learn, either in good psychotherapy, or within a healing relationship with your boyfriend, to not give up all of you, to give and take reasonably, then you will able to tolerate a relationship.

anita