Dear Sina:

The OP in this thread posted three times June 29-July 1, 2014. Her situation that you identify with (“I’m in the same situation“) is that she broke up with her boyfriend of 1 year, a man she thought highly of, a “closest friend“, a man she thought would’ve been an amazing husband and father- because she didn’t feel excited about a life with him as a romantic partner, she felt claustrophobic within the relationship and wanted freedom. After wrestling with herself for a few months, she broke up with him. At first, she felt empowered but then she felt guilty for having hurt his feelings, doubtful about whether she did the right thing, angry and then sad that he didn’t want to remain friends.. and eventually (in her 3rd post) she felt okay with her decision to break up with him.

This is what she wrote on July 1, 2014 (I don’t think you read her 3rd and last post): “I miss both the companionship aspect of the relationship and him, I think, but I’m sure it would be easier if I had more to do to keep busy on weekends… I do feel like I loved him as a friend (and I do love my friends!) but obviously there are different kinds of love, and sometimes that is just not enough…. I’m feeling a lot more settled about it today“-

– In your post today (Feb 2, 2024), Sina, you asked: “Please tell me it gets better“. M answered you almost 10 years ago: yes, it gets better. For her it got better on the 3rd day of her thread. Please post again, if it helps.

anita

Dear Caroline:

“I can’t not beat myself up. I made a huge mistake“- being beaten up, you are more likely to make more mistakes, not less. If you want to make fewer mistakes, don’t beat yourself up and have empathy toward yourself instead.

“I do not have a life during a week. I only have work and sleep… I ruined my own life“- don’t ruin your life further by .. beating yourself up. I know how strong the impulse to .. be mean to yourself, but it’s a destructive impulse.

“All I do everyday is sit in my room in front of my computer. I am too tired in the morning and then I can’t leave till 10pm. I do not feel good“- this has to change, sitting in your room all day. Either you find a way to get out somehow, every day, or quit the job ASAP.

How about a few days break from the job for the rest of this week + weekend?

anita

Dear Caroline:

You are welcome. “I was a fool… Why did I did this to myself“- this is you beating yourself up.

“I believed a coworker who said his team was so much better, work is so great, people are so great..“- I am guessing that’s the coworker honest opinion about the team and management.

“I do not feel good here. I thought I would be respected here” – the not feeling good, not feeling respected, that’s your internal feeling that keeps following you wherever you go.

“They are all nice to me but I am not as passionate about work as they are. We do not have anything in common. And I think it’s stupid how excited they are about getting a project“- this is your alone/ isolated feeling inside you that follows you wherever you go, sometimes more in certain places and situations than in others, but it’s always there, isn’t it?

“I thought it would be different. I thought people would be different, work would be better“- like I always say, when we have very difficult childhoods, our negative childhood/ internal experience keeps following us.. wherever we go, and we feel the same. It  takes heavy-duty emotional healing to experience life differently.

“I am afraid there is no way out of this“- you need a positive distraction right now, a walk outside or a hot bath..? (I am about to go on a walk)

anita

Dear Caroline:

You are welcome, and do take your time. Thank you for the note.

anita

Dear Jim:

I just lost my reply to you that took me a couple of hours to put together, in the usual way I reply: quoting from you, responding, then reading what’s next, quoting and responding, etc. Since I already read and studied all of your original post, I will respond differently, and my reply will be shorter:

Most of the interpersonal abuse in our world is not carried out cold-heatedly, in a cool, planned, rational way. It is carried out in the heat of the moment, while the abuser is distressed.

(I am adding the boldface feature to the quotes): “She feels insecure in my opinion of her physically and emotionally and fears rejections SO much that it frequently (on average every 2 or 3 weeks) leads to an event where she simply cannot control her fear of being left or abandoned for one reason or another and this results in long bouts of crying, screaming and abuse towards me. She calls it ‘blind anger’, says it rarely happened before me… I’m a very placid and nonconfrontational person, patient and gentle“-

– Seems to me that these are abusive events where she could control her fear but chooses not to, because her abuse is about controlling you so that you don’t leave her. She chooses to express her (not so blind) anger with you because you are placid and non-confrontational, patient and gentle.. so you are safe for her to.. explode.

“and she always feels regretful and remorseful afterwards“- in line with the pattern of abuse.

“Our therapist has identified that the strength of our relationship and how right I am for her has probably opened up deep trauma for her”– I think that your therapist is wrong, and that it is not the strength of the relationship that opened up her deep trauma. I think that it is the fact that you accept her abuse non-confrontationally that is giving her the opportunity to express herself in these ways,  feeling safe enough- with you- to do so.

“Our therapist has also explained to me how the void created during these moments of abandonment can be total, all consuming and utterly petrifying- the person ultimately does not exist in these moments- it’s far worse than anxiety, it’s something else entirely- something most of us could never really relate to“- reads like the therapist is suggesting that she is not in control of her behavior during those events of “blind anger”, as if these are psychotic episodes in which she is not aware at all of what is happening.

Are these events happen only in private, not in public… or does she explode regardless of who might be witnessing her explosions? I am guessing it’s the former.

“I recently responded, smashed my phone and upturned a table- the most outwardly frustrated I have become about anything, maybe in my whole life. I would never under any circumstances be violent towards her or anyone though. The way these events unfold is that her anxiety begins to pick and pick away at me and not let me go, demanding answers to unanswerable questions to try and pacify herself, even though that is unachievable. I try to keep calm but I am often goaded into saying things I don’t mean, which are then fuel to the fire”-

– it is she who is picking and picking away at you and not letting you go, it is she who is demanding answers to unanswerable questions, etc., it is she who is abusing you, and you reacted out of your character because of her abuse.

“How do you love someone who is (I’m sorry to say it, but she uses the term herself frequently) so broken, and protect and allow yourself to flourish?…Almost every day there is something low level upsetting, if not major. Yesterday she told me all the intrusive thoughts came back because I didn’t return my arm around her when sleeping and she felt unloved…. Every time we have a major incident I feel weak and want to end things… I wonder whether the next time will be the time that I break“- her abuse is weakening and breaking you. You live as if on a minefield, never knowing what word that you say or fail to say, what act, however innocent, will bring about her explosion.

“She has told me she feels worthless at times and wants to end her life. A couple of times she has threatened to harm herself if I walk out of the door“- threatening self-harm and suicide is a manipulative tactic practiced (in the heat of the moment) so to prevent you from leaving her.

“I have horrible positive feelings sometimes about the relief I would get from it coming to an end. If I knew she would be okay, even in the relatively short term, I think I would end things“- her manipulative tactics have been successful so far. And I am thinking, she has no motivation to be okay because.. if she’d be okay, she’d lose her control over you, and you’d leave her.

“Today we went to look at a house with a view to move in together because her lease ends in March. It’s a big step obviously. I feel so unsure of what we both might be getting into“- you’d be deeper in a trap.

“I need hope that things will get better, but I don’t know if I feel it or it’s possible. I try to encourage her to think positively but even that seems something she can’t commit to”- for the relationship to work out, she will have to acknowledge that she has been abusing you, she will have to commit to never abuse you again, no matter how she feels. She’ll have to practice emotion regulation skills better, every day and protect (not abuse) you and the relationship.

anita

Dear Going Through Life:

You are welcome! “I agree with you but how should I deal with this?… I want to be ready for the future”, you wrote in regard to pushing away love because of fear. My answer for now: (1) become more aware of this dynamic within you, of wanting love on the one hand, and being afraid of it on the other. Get to know yourself more,  get further educated in this regard.

(2) Develop emotion regulation skills so that when you feel distressed- in the future, when in a relationship- you will be able to calm yourself down and think rationally about the situation, correctly evaluate it before impulsively reacting to it, and make thoughtful choices.

In regard to not accepting her love, you wrote: “I never blamed myself for this… But still I am filled with regret and resentment, thinking things could have been different. How should I deal with this natural response of mine? and how should I let go of this regret?”-

– To attempt to answer these questions, I need to understand the resentment part of your natural response in regard to not having accepted her love. There is anger in resentment: who were you angry with, in this context, and what was your anger about?

“My emotions were always numbed with SK”- this seems incongruent with what you shared in your original post about the relationship with her: “It was a very passionate and lovely relationship, from the start we were really close..  the first months were really awesome..  I also fell head over heels for her“- this doesn’t read like numb emotions on your part. Can you help me understand?

“I refused to say I love you to her many times, I was scared, I burst out with anger sometimes too”- Again, I would like to understand your anger better: what was it about, at the time?

“But deep in my heart I felt all those emotions fully. I regret not expressing myself to her in the moment. I think I was also scared of not getting to explore more… I had FOMO“- … and I would like to understand your fear-of-missing-out better: missing out on what exactly…?

“Maybe I was not okay with the emotional dependence she brought in the relationship, because I was never emotionally dependent on anyone since I was young. I never sought emotional dependence apart from the times when I was bullied and cried in front of my father“-

– when you sought emotional help from your father (acting emotional dependent on him, in that one time),  after having been bullied in school, when you cried in front of him… how did he react? Did he shame you for crying?

When SK sought emotional help from you, acting emotionally dependent on you, did it make you angry that she is.. allowing herself a privilege that was denied from you: the privilege to act weak, dependent?

“Another experience to add, when I was young, I think around 8 years old, my bigger sister and mother got into an argument which ended with my mother choking me for a few seconds”- would you like to elaborate on that experience, what happened after those few seconds…?

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

Jan 30, 2024 (page 26): ” I would love to venture further on caring for my inner child, seeing myself so that in my next relationship my expectations/needs are not too high for one person. I want to discover more about myself, what my childhood has caused me to need in adulthood“.

Oct 11, 2023 (page 1): ” I mentioned a fear of being/becoming a narcissist. I believe both my parents are on this spectrum…   Every 3 months, not an exaggeration, we (your father & yourself)  would have what he began to call ‘house cleaning’ where we would sit down and he would list all the ways I had exemplified being ‘ungrateful’ at his house.  I left a dish in his sink at his house, or left my backpack downstairs, basically left any trace of myself in ‘his’ house, he would get upset…. This all has followed me, I worry my partner doesn’t think of me, when he doesn’t put the toilet seat down my head tells me he doesn’t think about me at all. My dad would accuse me of planning my showers around avoiding talking to him, or if I was upstairs when he got home I was expected to come had conversation with him… If my boyfriend is showering by the time I come over I think, ‘wait why couldn’t he plan his shower so he would be out when I got here, he must not care very much about our time together‘…  all these are ways my mind just was exhausted living with him and I needed to get away from”-

– If you left any trace of yourself at your father’s house, he would get upset. He demanded to be The Only One in his house. This excessive, narcissistic need on his part to be attended to and prioritized at the expense of you, led to your excessive need to be thoroughly seen and prioritized. It’s a 180 degree response: from zero (no trace of you allowed to be, none prioritized) to 180 (LOTS of you must be seen, allowed to be expressed, and prioritized.. and it could never be enough. It’s about trying to over compensate for not having been seen and prioritized.

Did we talk about this topic thoroughly?… I don’t think that we did.

anita