Dear alette:

I understand how disturbed you are over his unwillingness to communicate with you.. It never happened before that he refused to communicate with you, that he avoided talking about certain topics, stonewalling you, like he is currently doing? Do you know of him stonewalling other people in his life? I am trying to understand if this is a brand new behavior on his part.

anita

Dear Kshti1502:

I will answer you best I can in about 16 hours from now, for now, if you are able to answer before I return: can you give me examples of your intrusive thoughts, the words constituting the thoughts, as well as when they happen most of the times, and in what circumstances during the day?

anita

Dear Jez:

I read your post and am sorry for your heartache. You wrote that you are considering an adulterous relationship with this man. Perhaps you can see a counselor/ therapist before making a decision on the matter..?

anita

Dear Robbie:

“About 5 years ago I wrote a very long post here“- it was back on June 8, 2018, your very first post on your first tread, a post I answered on that same day. The last time we communicated was on Feb 7 and 16, 2023. Welcome back to the forums! I have been away Feb 16-Aug 28, 2013, and back every day since, good to read from you today!

About your childhood, you shared in this thread: “I was a shy kid, in many areas blocked, stuck and anxious… disconnected from myself, from my healthy needs and boundaries quite early. Earlier than I can remember…. I grew up in a flat with my parents. I didn’t have my own room, or my own space… Most of my childhood I’ve lived in a guest room which served also as a storage room for my parent’s stuff. The door was made of glass, so I’ve had no privacy…. For years, after school I would go to my parents’ work place and wait for them to finish work… I would wait there for sometimes 7..8 hours. I’ve had nothing to do there. I would wait, walk around, just wait for the time to pass… During summer holidays we would go to our lake house. We would spend months in total there. I hated it… Similarly, at the lake house we all slept in one room and I didn’t get much space for myself. Also, I’ve had no friends there. I felt alone and caged.

“Since I didn’t like school that much, I didn’t bother studying either. I remember not being interested and finding it very difficult to concentrate. I would procrastinate and avoid homework at all costs. The costs however, were high. My mother used to hit me whenever she would find out about my bad grades. A few times, I remember being brutally hit with a belt. Often after hitting me she would cry and apologise. She lost it quite a few times like that. I remember being confused – not understanding what the f*** is going on.  Also, once I’ve been promised that if I don’t improve my behaviour they will take me to a foster home. I’ve been told they will abandon me. I remember feeling scared that I will lose the attachment to my parents…

“When I was about 11, my parent’s bought my first computer. I was hooked from the early beginning. I would spend an entire day and sometimes night playing games and watching films”.

About today, you shared: “Today, more than 5 years later, many things have changed. I’ve come closer to myself and I’ve learned to be more comfortable with my daily life… I am very, very grateful for all the insights that came my way, the teachers and the experiences that transformed me. I am also very proud of myself for letting myself be guided by my heart and not my fears.. For the last 3 years I’ve been working online and it has been very good – I was able to work whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted and the pay was very good. I enjoyed that!.. I’ve learned to be close to myself, to procrastinate way less and have a healthy routine… “-

– C o N g R a T u L a T i O n S   for all your learning, amazingly expanding awareness and progress, and I am glad that you are very proud of yourself!

“Also, many things haven’t changed. As I recently said during a therapy session, ‘The game is the same, only the level has changed’… Although many things have changed… I’m still looking for the same thing I’ve been looking for as a kid. I’m still looking to fit in… I’ve had a couple of jobs in the last years but couldn’t hold on to them for long. Often I felt excruciatingly anxious and tired while at work, I just wanted to escape. For the last 3 years I’ve been working online and it has been very good…  I still at times felt like I wanted to procrastinate but knowing I can do it in my own terms helped a lot. In many ways that job was tailored to my current blockages and anxieties. I managed to work and have an income without experiencing a lot of discomfort. Now, sadly the project I’ve been working on ended and again, I find myself looking for a job. I am more confident now of course, I have better awareness and I know things will work out. However, I would like to dig deeper into what has been really holding me down. I’ve often felt like I was operating with half of my brain tied to my back….I’m curious if any of you see the connection between my childhood and my current struggle finding a job and motivating myself to move forward. I often feel stuck and tired of this inability to move on”- 

– Yes, I see the connection between your childhood and your current struggles: I could title your childhood story, The Boy in a Glass Cage, or Stuck Waiting, and/ or Never Alone,  Always Lonely (“I was very lonely. Well.. Not. My parents where there every second of my childhood“, from a previous thread).

Being observed at any time through the glass door of the storage room where you lived, in the flat, with parents entering at any time without knocking, parents who saw you but.. didn’t see what you needed so desperately (privacy and positive attention), and when on “vacation” in the lake house .. still no privacy- no wonder that as an adult, you don’t want to be observed by people and therefore, you have had problems having long-term relationships. Lonely- you need people; having been caged in a situation where you were watched at any time- and sometimes hit by your mother(and threatened to be placed in a foster home), you need to be away from people. This is the main conflict, as I see it.

The boy in the glass cage was an anxious boy, a prisoner. Fast forward, the boy is you (not all of you, but much of you), and he will not be caged again, not if he can help it: not in a relationship, not in a job! The job you described was perfect for you because it afforded the boy enough freedom, and it is clear to me that your future job or jobs should be similarly flexible, so that the boy can experience a measure of freedom. And the woman for you needs to be similarly flexible, affording you lots of alone time behind a closed, solid door into which she’ll never enter without knocking first, asking and receiving permission to enter.

anita

Dear Angie:

I communicated with Michelle in the first page of her thread back in Aug 2021, and the last time she posted here was 2.5 years ago, back on Aug 14, 2021. I hope that she will read your post of today and respond.

I can see how much in pain you’ve been and for so long, and I hope that you reach a better, more peaceful and accepting state of mind. If you would like to communicate with me/ other members, you are welcome to post again here, or start your own thread.

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

I hope you are well. I want to elaborate on my answer to your question “Do you think there is any possibility that N and I end up back together in a healthy relationship?“- my answer still is that a healthy relationship between the two of you is possible, but what do I mean by “healthy relationship” (it may not mean the same as what you mean by it)?

What I mean by a healthy relationship is a fair relationship which works for you and for him, a win-win prospect. Clearly N cannot make you perfectly happy, but no man can. Clearly, he cannot be everything that you need and want.. but again, no man can be. There needs to be clarity in your mind about what you will compromise about when choosing a lifetime partner, and what you will not compromise.

It cannot be a healthy relationship if you feel superior to him. You have to feel that he is as worthy of you as you are worthy of him, and that while his strengths are different from yours, his strengths are as valuable as yours.

We talked at length about his closed 3rd eye chakra and your open 3rd eye, but it’s not this simple: in some ways, your 3rd eye is a bit closed (as is mine). For example, in regard to the topic of money and the relationship with N,  your 3rd eye is not open, I think, or I suspect, I should say.

Looking back at the cash incident, clearly, he felt that you were taking financial advantage of him, and you expressed- at length- that maybe you did take financial advantage of him and you felt guilty about it. When I suggested that you arrange to (some day, when you are able), to pay him what you think you owe him, so to relieve your guilt, you didn’t respond at all to my suggestion (as far as I remember) and never mentioned the topic again.

You shared that he worked very hard for his father for little pay and that he worked hard for his money in general. You moved in with him while you were employed, with the understanding that you will be his roommate (and girlfriend) and pay into the rent. You then quit your job, with his emotional support, and didn’t pay into the rent for a year or so (?) It reads like N is financially generous and (?) spent a lot of money on restaurants and entertainment with you.. while working very hard for his money…? If this has been the case, I can understand him feeling taken advantage of, financially.

There may be something here that he is seeing, but you do not…?

A topic that I didn’t think about when I answered you earlier, is his daily, heavy duty use of weed, something for you to consider as something you may not want to compromise about…?

anita

Dear Tara:

Like I wrote in my previous post, I wasn’t able to access your previous threads and our previous communications in those threads earlier today. After submitting my first post today, I re-read through your previous threads, and I am amazed by how much we have in common in terms of growing-in our families of origin. Actually, we have more in common than I thought back in 2022, when we last communicated, and I am quite shocked at this revelation this afternoon.

Your first post was on July 14, 2020. Five days later, on July 19, you shared: “I don’t remember much of my childhood, I know that my parents fought a lot, but I don’t really remember any distinct memories from those events… I was always in trouble for various random reasons almost all the time when I was younger, and I believe it because of this I felt I could not confide in anyone. I do not remember confiding in my mom much until about the point of 18…

“I don’t remember any direct details from any of my parents fights except very vague memories. I remember a time, not even sure what age I was at, standing at my parents door listening to them scream at each other, I remember crying, feeling as if it was my fault, because a lot of the fights I believe involved their ways of parenting me. I don’t remember exactly what I felt, as I can’t think back to my feelings much before the age of around 14-15. I remember my mom talking to me about their fights even from a young age, about how horrible and mean and angry my dad was, even though me myself didn’t directly experience his anger as far as I know or can recall.

“I was mostly in trouble for various normal reasons, such as messy rooms, bad grades, attitude towards my parents, talking back, defying their wishes, such as talking to boys or texting and making social media accounts when I was not supposed to. When I was a bit older I remember my mom and I often screaming at each other when I reached my teens for things like missing curfew, not doing as well in school, etc. and the only direct thing I can remember saying from these fights is something to the extent of ‘you only punish me for the bad things I do, you never tell me you’re proud of me for anything'”.

On June 19, 2022, while living with your parents, You shared: “As I have been staying at my parents’ house nothing too horrible has happened, but my mother still tends to complain about my father and her relationship with him constantly. Another thing is my father also tends to have small angry outbursts when little things don’t go his way. I always go into my room to escape the anger, though it’s not directed at me, I hate the cussing and yelling and screaming over the smallest little inconveniences in his day. It gives me feelings of anxiety”.

On Aug 7, 2022, you shared: “Throughout my life, my mother has always been unsupportive and extremely judgmental of any relations I have had with males, and I think this too also contributed to the feeling that I needed to lie about my whereabouts.
Recently, they caught onto this lie easily (I really didn’t hide it well) and I ended up having a conversation with my mother about what has been really going on and apologizing for lying to her and my father. This conversation did not go the best. I was told that I quote ‘need therapy’ and that ‘she knows it’s not casual.’… This spiraled into my mother listing everything that I have done wrong while living in their house, and threatening me to move out and also to get rid of my dog. Since this discussion, my mother has not talked to me in 4 days”

Aug 8, 2022: “I decided to try and make amends with my mother, and write her a little apology card with a small gift and flowers. I left them for her before I went to work today, then I got a text from my father telling me it was a very sweet and thoughtful gesture and she cried. Then proceeded by him telling me she is going to stay with her friend for a few days? I am so confused on what is going on in this situation and why this situation lead my mother to the extremes of leaving our house. I am unsure what to do and feel as if I am walking on eggshells inside our home. As soon I get home I say hello to my father, who is always in the living room, and then immediately go into my bedroom for the rest of the day. I feel as if I am trapped here in some weird way. I also don’t understand my mothers reaction to this whole situation, I am confused and unsure of if this whole ordeal is my fault or doing or not”

Sept 17, 2022: “This is where it get’s difficult, as I have written before, my mother tends to be very disapproving of every single interaction I have with men. Whether this be casual, or in a relationship. Last post I made, I lied to my mother about having a casual relationship with a man, and this ended in dramatics. She ended up leaving for a whole week to go to her friend’s house, and then came back like seemingly nothing happened. I am wanting to go out and have relations with men, as I am young and in my 20s, but every single time I want to go out I feel the need to lie about what I am doing now. I also can’t go to places or to houses that they don’t recognize when viewing my location, because then they will blow up my phone asking who I am with etc. To clarify, I am not a deadbeat doing illicit activity or doing anything more than having fun and going out and living my life outside of their home, but this seems to be the problem to them. I am working 2 jobs, 40+ hours, and going to college part-time. Even the smallest things in my life I feel that I have no privacy in, my mother does not even knock before she walks into my room. I feel stuck and hopeless and like I will be living the life of a teenager until I find some miracle that will help me move out of their house. I am stuck between lying about where I am going and inevitably getting caught and yelled at, or being truthful about where I am going and still getting yelled at and reprimanded like a child. I am unsure what to do and can’t seem to find any escape from this place. Every time I leave the house its ‘where are you going?’ Even if it’s just the smallest errand I have to go run. I don’t understand and I don’t know what to do”.

Like me, you have few memories from your childhood because a lot of what you experienced back then was negative, and you therefore dissociated from your memories and emotions, pushing your emotions down/ in (growing in), aka suppression and repression.

Like me, you grew in in an angry home: anger between your parents and anger directed at you from one point on, as you were always in trouble for various random reasons, accused and blamed, listing everything you (allegedly) did wrong. Anger in the home scared and scarred you, as it did to me. And like me, you couldn’t confide with anyone, and wouldn’t confide with your mother, as a child.

My parents had terrible fights (before they divorced when I was 6), and like in your case, my mother talked badly/ complained about my father to me (as well as talking badly about everyone else, sooner or later).

Now, here is the commonality we have that I didn’t notice until a couple of hours before: “Throughout my life, my mother has always been unsupportive and extremely judgmental of any relations I have had with males.. ‘she knows it’s not casual.’… my mother tends to be very disapproving of every single interaction I have with men. Whether this be casual, or in a relationship… I have no privacy in, my mother does not even knock before she walks into my room… Every time I leave the house its ‘where are you going?’ Even if it’s just the smallest errand I have to go run. I don’t understand and I don’t know what to do“-

– Both of our mothers were angry at their husbands (when married to him), and both did not have a positively close and intimate relationship with a man for the entirety of our childhoods and beyond. As a result, they got inappropriately close to their daughters, walking into your room without knocking (walking into the bathroom to wash me..), and both acted like.. jealous men when it came to boys or men in our lives. Isn’t this amazing..? It’s called emotional incest.

Notice her reaction to when you gave her a card, a small gift and flowers: she cried and left the home for a few days. I think that she was jealous of the attention you gave to the men in your life, jealous of your romantic interest in them, and when she received some.. romantic like gesture from you, she was so overwhelmed, she had to go away for a few days. This is my understanding of what happened.

How do you feel about my understanding: is it too overwhelming for you to consider it?

Now to your recent post, a year and five months since your Sept n2022 post, in light of re-reading your older threads: “I have never been able to keep friends for a long time“- maybe partly because of loyalty to your jealous mother.

“I’ve been in a notable amount of failed relationships, some serious and some not, which I have ended up ending all of them“- again, maybe you ended all, or some of your romantic relationships partly or wholly because of loyalty to your jealous mother?

I shared with you in my earlier replies, before I re-read the previous threads, that my mother isolated me from everyone.. from herself and from everyone else. She didn’t want me to be close to anyone. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want me to answer her brother (my uncle). It’s like she wanted me all to herself but couldn’t have a close.. an appropriately close relationship with me or with anyone else. And throughout my life, I felt that being close to anyone beyond a moment here or there, was a betrayal of her.

“I am currently in a relationship now, but I am starting to get that “it’s not enough” feeling again. Once again, I feel guilty…  Am I the only one who goes though this?“- guilty for .. betraying your mother? This is what I went through..!

“There is some kind of longing in me for something more, only I don’t know what that something is. At this point, I’m insatiable. No relationship is good enough. No job is good enough. No career path is good enough. No friends are good enough. I don’t know what is missing…Am I the problem? and what even is the problem?“- the longing I had was always the longing to be loved, not as a thing or a possession (of my jealous but unloving mother), but as a person with the right to my own thoughts, feelings, choices, initiatives.. my own life. To be really ALIVE, with emotions free from suppression and repressions, directing me (together with rationale) to live my life as.. as if it was my own, not my mother’s.

And like in your case, nothing was good enough when I was missing (guilt free) me in the driver seat in my own life, too.. loyal to the one who took unfair, inappropriate.. and inhumane possession of me.

If you would like, feel free- if you will- to post again and let me know what you think of my replies today.

anita