Dear Matt:

I feel some empathy for him, as I read your recent post.. Still, he’s done you wrong and I feel more empathy for you for having been betrayed by the one you loved and trusted.. what a shame. I wish it didn’t happen.

When I had my first quality therapy, my therapist at the time focused on emotion regulation skills. He assigned me with homework at the end of each session (or he’d email me a homework assignment after a session). Homework included listening to one of Mark Williams’s Mindfulness audio meditation series, every day. These are available online free of charge. I wonder if you’d like to listen to any one of them, the “Befriending” meditation perhaps. Maybe it will help you with your heartbreak. Maybe it will help your ex.

You wrote that “he kept pushing it deeper“, it being trauma, you mean. And pushing it in, suppressing it fueled a state of elevated stress which he tried to lower with excessive eating and cheating, as… emotion regulation un-skills..?

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

1st post: “N’s natural state is not rude, he is usually very sweet and I feel like his recent rudeness has been acting out of some resentment towards me“-

– (1) it makes sense that anger precedes rudeness. Imagine feeling angry and not acting rudely. (2) There is someone I knew whose usual very sweet state was dishonest and manipulative. On the other hand, her less frequent angry state was her honest state: she was honestly, authentically angry and vindictive.

“He apologized, said he felt badly that his work week was bleeding into Saturday… He texted me Saturday morning he would actually be over around noon… He gets to my apartment at 4pm… I cared more about the fact he said 3:30 and showed up at 4pm, this final act of disrespect? effected me more than the rest of his time changes, especially that he didn’t acknowledge this one. was slightly stand off-ish“-

– I wonder if his initial apology was sincere or if it was part of his effective social/ people skills, a social lubrication strategy. He may have good people skills, apologizing not because he regrets something he’s done, but because apologies work.

“Saturday night: We sat on the porch and I brought up the argument where he said words don’t matter. I said… He listened, but his responses told me he did not understand“- appearing to listen may be a social skill that he is good at.

“He said ‘as long as you don’t start speaking to crystals and such‘… I don’t know if it is important to be compatible in this area or we can just be different here, and him being more earthly and grounded can balance me? not sure”-

– on the surface, the balancing idea reads like a good thing.. except that if he often says – not what is true to him, but what works for him, the problem is bigger than incompatibility in regard to spiritual understanding.

“We went to dinner. He often tells me he works so hard for us with long hours and stuff like this… When we were getting ready for dinner I asked if we could go bowling after dinner, he said ‘if you can pay for it,‘ I then said… ‘You say that… you want to work hard so that we can do cool things… like go bowling?’… he said he didn’t understand how me and M don’t work more hours… He said he didn’t understand, ‘I would not be okay with only working three days a week while living in an apartment I rent’ as opposed to a purchased home… We got to the dinner spot and realized it was a place we had already been and he said the place was expensive…he paid… He got weird and did not hug me back”-

-he doesn’t want to spend money he doesn’t have to spend and that’s fair, he doesn’t have to. Problem is that he may be saying things that sound good (ex., I am working so hard for us), so that people think well of him, not what is true to him.

“On our drive he said the ‘c’ word again, but this time in a much better mood he caught himself and said ‘oh sorry‘ and corrected his wording. I appreciated this, confirming to me he had been acting out of a bad attitude before it is not who he is“-

– Or his motivation in saying sorry and correcting his wording was to say what a nice person would say, and he was in a much better mood to say what a nice person would say. It is only when he is angry/ or tired or in a bad mood that he says what’s true to him…?

“We then went home for some art, leftover thanksgiving food and cartoons. We smoked a bit of marijuana… it was not very relaxing for me… Or am I projecting again, since F did not understand me“- (1) I don’t know what part the marijuana had on how you felt (2) F did not understand you, but I am suspecting that N does not understands you either, that he is good at people skills: at appearing like he understands.

I wrote to you: “Ask Hatch what makes/ made her feel safe through the years… Let her speak to you in her own child-like words…?”, and you answered: “The tv show friends, being alone, dark rooms when I am panicked… pool days… my mom when she would solve things for me, when my dad would play crossword puzzles with me… my grandma… when I am trusted and believed, loved…  I will continue to ask myself this. Are these the type of answers you were talking about?“-yes, except that I would like it if Hatchling elaborated on one of the items on the list, expanding on it while in a kind- of meditative state of mind: very relaxed, uninterrupted, typing away whatever comes to her mind.

2nd post: “(N) has avoided taking responsibility and has a pattern of deflection. However when he has calmed down and we discuss a few days later, he is able to see where he went wrong”- or when he is calm/ in a better mood, he is able to do a better job at making a good use of his people skills: appearing/ effectively pretending to see where he went wrong.

* I wonder: are you aware of him reading or having read certain books or watching You tubes about people skills, such as on how to resolve conflicts/ arguments, how to bring about desired outcomes via social manipulation?

“I don’t want to accidentally show him in a darker light than he is… he usually eventually understands, unlike my friends boyfriend who completely dismisses her”- Or.. N appears to understand and has better social skills than your friend’s boyfriend.

“He is suppose to come home with me this Christmas and I almost wish he was going to spend it with his family, not to be away from him but so he doesn’t miss his family Christmas for mine, if we are not meant to be“- You don’t owe him to be with him for the rest of your life: you made no such official commitment: the two of you are neither engaged nor married.

3rd post: “There is a little more to this. After I told him the ‘c’ word was offensive he said ‘ok well you have called someone a d*ck before why is that ok?’ (apologies for the crude language…I said it was different and he just sarcastically laughed”-

– well, it was different because he didn’t repeatedly tell you that the d-word offends him, and he didn’t repeatedly ask you to not say the word. And you didn’t tell him to get it through his head (which is what he told you) that words don’t mean anything and to therefore to not get offended.

“And one more detail to him saying…  I worry about small things that don’t matter‘ and he said ‘oh good’ then I said ‘and how I don’t think that is true’ then he laughed (true, not sarcastic) because he had jumped to the conclusion with ‘oh good’ that I agreed with him when in fact it was the opposite. Anyways just thought this detail would help you see that this has been something he has thought for a long time and made comments like this before”-

– You worry about things that matter, important things that don’t matter to him. Such as being authentic with him, talking and acting in congruence with who you truly are (and with who you are truly becoming, as you are not static).

“N thinks that he is superior to me in that he doesn’t let his feelings bother him as much as I do… For example our work schedules. I am on the end of calling out of work too much, driven by hatch… N is on the opposite N, never called out a day in his life...  I am not the best with money“-

-Being as driven as he is to make money.. I wonder why he is with you: a question you asked him yourself, something like why are you with ME?  He gave you only superficial answers, repeatedly saying that Love is a Choice. I wonder why he doesn’t choose to love a woman who makes a lot of money, a woman who is the best with money. Did you ever ask him this question?

“He has straight up told me before he doesn’t trust me with money“- maybe he wants to have full control of money, so he doesn’t want a woman/ wife who will take any control over where any of the money goes, and a money-driven woman who is good with money.. would want such control.. Hmmm.

“I now see this in N. One of my questions of if I am projecting or if he is genuinely similar to my dad“- It can be two things at the same time (both, not one or the other): projecting F into N AND reacting to who N truly is, which is similar to your father. They both use good or excellent people skills, don’t they?

“I feel misunderstood, but once I explain myself he will then understand me“- or.. appear to understand you by the expressions of his face and the words he uses..

“until he doesn’t anymore and I have to explain again”- until he is too occupied or tired to invest in appearing..  rinse and repeat.

“N does this very often in arguments. It drives me crazy why he asks me what’s wrong, it genuinely makes me angry and makes me (hatch) want to hit him… he is not understanding me and almost as if he is not even trying. I just want to shake some sense into him like ‘open your eyes!'”- imagine a person invested in appearing this way or that way: they are invested in Style, not in Substance.

anita

Dear Matt:

You are welcome.

“To me this is such a complex situation“- interestingly, this is what I was thinking after submitting my post and the edit, and before reading your reply: I was thinking that his situation may not as complex as presented, a result of his self-esteem issues, but simply a result of his undisciplined sexual appetite.

Male mammals are not monogamous, it’s an instinctual thing. For many humans, it takes emotion regulation skills/ self-discipline to.. not cheat. If your ex is lacking emotion regulation skills, and if he has opportunities to cheat.. he may cheat regardless of his self-esteem status.

anita

Dear Matt:

You shared that you came out to your parents at 21 because of your love for this man, that you have loved him for three years, that you drastically changed your life for the better so that you could be happy with him, that monogamy is very important to you, that the plan as of last week was that the two of you were to live together, and get married sometime in the future.

And yet, for the last 10 months or so, he repeatedly cheated on you with 3 different men. He didn’t tell you. You found out by looking through his phone. His response: “He says that it was absolutely never about me and it was entirely related to his own feelings of inadequacy“.

His mother’s response: “this absolutely has nothing to do with you. We’re going to get to the bottom of it“.

The motivation behind these responses is to protect your ego/ sense of self worth, as in saying: he didn’t cheat on you because of any inadequacy on your part, Matt (not being handsome enough or smart enough, etc.), but because of inadequacy on his part.

This claim is supposed to make you feel better, as in you thinking: it is not my fault that he cheated on me, it’s not that there is something inadequate about me!

If you accept this claim that it had nothing to do with you, then you accept that in the future, if you resume the relationship with him and he cheats on you again.. then again, it will absolutely have nothing to do with you.

But what he did should have had something to do with you, it should have been a whole lot to do with you because the result of what he did has been the most heartbreaking experience you ever had in your life (“I have been reeling from the most heartbreaking experience I have ever lived through“).

When he cheated on you, he wasn’t thinking about how hurt you will be if and when you found out, and this, right here is the problem.

“he has struggled with self esteem issues severely for the last decade… his mother…. replied..’…  We’re going to get to the bottom of it.’“- reads like it was a surprise to his mother that her son has been struggling with severe self-esteem issues for 10 years, and now that she found out, she wants to get to the bottom of it (and fix it..?)

How does a mother miss such a thing for a decade?

“He has told me he is now in intensive therapy and wants to completely wipe himself of his issues he’s been hiding from me and from himself for 10 years“- he hid severe self-esteem issues for 10 years, so he didn’t know : no thoughts of inadequacy ever crossing his mind? It was all a surprise?

There is no way that a person suffers from a low self-esteem and never a related thought crosses the mind.

No one completely wipes themselves from severe low self-esteem issues, at least, not quickly, no matter how intensive the therapy.

There are plenty of people who suffer from low self-esteem but they do not cheat because they don’t want to hurt the one they love. And this is the problem I mentioned earlier in this reply: his 10-month cheating was.. not about you getting hurt.

I just read your 2nd post, Matt, the one you submitted 10 minutes ago. Your attitude and plan to continue your individual therapy and become a better judge (of him/ what happened) in the future.

“What do I do with all this love?“- first and foremost, at this time, direct it to you!

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

Your Nov 24, 10:45 am post provided me with new information and it is a game changer for me in regard to understanding N and your relationship with him. First, I will attend to what you shared on the matter 3 days ago; second, I will re-read and comment on some of what you shared in the past in light of the new information of three days ago.

“The night before thanksgiving…  on our drive to the grocery store he was angry at a bad driver and called them the C word. This word makes me very uncomfortable, I have told him this numerous times. I told him again that it made me uncomfortable and to please not. He proceeded to say it again… he kept saying ‘oh the word c*** bothers you? I am not calling you (a) c***” just kept saying it. I called him an asshole for doing that and said the fact he continued to say it even though it made me uncomfortable was not loving and how you treat someone. He said “words don’t mean sh*t..‘”-

– (1) He used the C word repeatedly AFTER you told him on that occasion and in past occasions that the word makes you feel uncomfortable. (2) If the word he used was.. let’s say weasel when referring to the other driver and you complained about him using it, maybe he’d have a point about you being oversensitive to words used-  because a real-life weasel was not present in the car, and even if it was, it wouldn’t understand the word (or any word), and therefore not possibly be offended by it.. but the C- word is a word known by almost every English speaking human to be an offensive word, and ANY and EVERY girl or woman familiar with the word understands that the reference is to a private part of her body, and that the reference is very negative and derogatory. (3) If words “don’t mean sh**“- should you (if it was possible) not hear his words.. put on headphones all the time? (4) Let’s say he was referring not to ALL words, but only to the C-word. In this case, he is saying that your feelings of discomfort..  don’t mean sh**.

“He said ‘words don’t mean sh*t, get that through your head or you will be controlled by them the rest of your life‘…he was really annoyed at me for being impacted by ‘just letters.‘ We had a whole argument about it and one familiar feeling I had with him right then, familiar from F, was that I couldn’t explain to him why the word made me uncomfortable. I roughly said, it is more than a word it has a misogynistic historical reference and it held weight. He rolled his eyes. He lectured me about how he doesn’t let anything outside of him have control over him and how I should do the same and not let a simple word ruin our evening. He said ‘you get upset about things that don’t matter and I am tired of it.'”-

– (1) He was the one to repeatedly utter a very known offensive word for women (because he was angry and wanted to offend), but he handed you the responsibility for being offended by a word he chose to repeatedly utter. His attitude was as if the offensive word had an independent existence… as if the letters of the words materialized out of nowhere. (2) His attitude is also that of a man superior to you, saying: get-it-through-your -head, as if you are dumb. He dismissed your feelings as weird or unacceptable (rolling his eyes), and he referred to your feelings as such that “don’t matter“.

“We were in the store parking lot and he was trying to get out to go in and I could not bring myself to get out of the car with him, I felt completely repelled by him and wanted to shop separately if he was gonna be this way. He softened his tone and said ‘do you want to be controlled by a word?’ I don’t want to be, but in that moment I felt similarly to when my dad would manipulate me into believing my feelings were invalid. Confused I just agreed that a word/letters should not control me. I do actually still agree with that. But reflecting back I do not agree with him that ‘words don’t mean anything‘ what is prayer then?…”-

– (1) Again, he is talking as if the words he repeatedly choses to utter are not his responsibility, as if they have an independent existence, floating out there as independent entities, and you shouldn’t allow those independent entities to control you. (2) “Confused I just agreed that a word/letters should not control me“- he successfully confused you: you confusedly thought that words existed independently of him. (3) He softened his tone because you were repelled by him and didn’t want to shop with him.

“Yesterday morning I took him to a got yoga class, it was very nice and puts me in a good headspace, but I was pulled right out of it by an interaction with him. We went into the grocery store because he wanted some electrolytes following our class. He also grabbed a case of glass water bottles he liked and when we got to checkout looked at me cause he didn’t have his wallet. I am not in a place of spending $20 on water but I felt obligated because of how much he has paid for me over the past year… Anyways, at the store for the $20 water I pulled out cash from my wallet, I sold some furniture online and had some cash from my last paycheck. He looked at me in absolute distrust, which I guess I deserve, he said ‘um where did you get all that cash?‘ I answered ‘from the offer up furniture‘ he did the math and realized I had $20 more than that, he said ‘no that’s not all where it came from where did it come from?‘ Honestly his suspicion made me anxious and I forgot that my boss paid me in cash for a portion of my paycheck, so I said I couldn’t remember. He got so suspicious of me! I was so uncomfortable it reminded me of my financial relationship with my dad where I was co-dependent and questioned. I said ‘I don’t remember’ he said ‘that’s suspicious you never have money and now you just have cash?‘ It was right then that I remembered it was from my last paycheck”-

– He had no valid reason to be suspicious of you. His invalid suspicion of you is a controlling strategy meant to make you feel guilty and therefore in need for his correction, of his moral superiority to fix your .. moral faultiness. And he succeeded because in the paragraph right above, you wrote: “He looked at me in absolute distrust, which I guess I deserve“. 

“When he is irritated he puts on this act like nothing is wrong, it’s incredibly annoying but I am getting used to it. He asked if anything was wrong and I was like ‘yea I don’t like how you are talking to me, accusing me of doing something shady, asking me questions like I am untrustworthy‘ I told him his energy was bringing me down and he was being negative he then said ‘you never have money and now you do and me asking makes me an a**hole? You know what, f**k you.'”-

– (1) After the very wrong, controlling interaction with you that he initiated and executed, he asked you: what’s wrong? Again, freeing himself from personal responsibility for behaving wrongly and handing you the responsibility that belongs to him. (2) “You never have money” negates sincerity in what he told you previously about him being okay with you not paying rent.

“This immaturity just put me so off. We didn’t speak the rest of the drive but I wasn’t even upset I was just confused and disappointed. We got home and I took a long shower. I came to the conclusion that…  I had a bad relationship with money from my father so that is probably why I had anxiety and forgot. Him getting so frustrated and me not telling him was all just immaturity and miscommunication. I was no longer upset about the situation”-

–  He successfully confused you as you took responsibility for his bad behavior, downplaying his dishonest and abusive behavior as “immaturity and miscommunication“, when the truth is that he communicated very well to you what he wanted to communicate to you.

Second, some of what you shared about him early on: “If you read my last post you will see my partner is a stand up man, no question” (Oct 6)- Indeed, I didn’t question it (based on what you shared about him) until three days ago and this very morning.

“I want to explode and just be like ‘DO YOU SEE ME like do you actually see my spirit and soul over here exposed to you and walking in the world'”-

– When a person wants to control you, he/ she is not interested in promoting your spirit or soul. When a man repeats the C word, he does not see a woman’s spirit or soul.

You ended your original post with: “Idk maybe we are perfect for each other and I am self sabotaging, or maybe its the inner voice of my higher self telling me it’s not right“- I now agree with the latter part of this sentence. N is promoting your lower self: your self-doubt, confusion and invalid, unjustified guilt.

You wrote to me on Oct 13: “This is so hard, dealing with a parent with trust issues… I would cry every time my dad would go on this tirade, because I am someone who cares so deeply for people, so that he accused me of the opposite made me feel so lost, made me wonder if I knew myself at all. I wonder if this created self doubt in you? and how you overcame/ are overcoming this self doubt? My dad to this day still very often misinterprets what I do and who I am and it hurts every time, he thinks I am selfish and is probably why I have fears of being selfish or narcissistic. It is scary when someone tells you that you are coming across a certain way that is unbeknownst to you”-

-N’s behavior the other day at the store indicates that he has trust issues, having misinterpreted you having cash in your wallet and accusing you of having lied and pretended before to not have the money to pay rent. As a result, you doubt yourself.  N went on a C-word filled tirade with you only the other day.

Back to Nov 24, you wrote: “It is hard for  me to tell if it is a projection or if (N) is actually behaving similar to my father. But I am having a hard time trusting myself and the distinction between the two, because the part of me that would fall for my dads dishonesty scares me that it will just as easily happen again. How am I suppose to truly know the difference between manipulation/dishonesty and truth?“-

– (1) The examples you gave, his behavior in the car and in the store the day after, are indications that N is not the One for you because of who he (N) is, not because of who F is. (2) One can easily tell that N freeing himself from ANY responsibility for the words he repeatedly chooses to utter is.. part of a dishonest manipulation. And then asking you what’s wrong?.. taking no responsibility for any wrongdoing or wrong saying when he was clearly in the wrong.

“This feeling reminds me of how my dad made me feel, and the familiarity is confusing because it used to indicate me being manipulated, doubt in my own instincts that he was right and my feelings were wrong“-

– N is similar to F, unfortunately…

I don’t know if you are reading this and if you do, how you are feeling. I am feeling quite badly about my new understanding. I am sorry, Seaturtle.

anita

Dear Dave:

You are welcome.

“Tbh i have asked a doctor about this issue, and that doctor told me that regarding my situation, i’m safe….May i know ur opinion based on the evidence u found, regarding my situation on the x-ray? Is it safe in ur opinion?”-

– a medical doctor told you that you are safe regarding the X-Ray situation, and yet, you are asking me (a person who is not a medical doctor and who never met you for a medical examination, a person who is not an X-Ray technician or any other type of medical professional) if the doctor who told you that you are safe is correct or not…

I recommend again that you see a mental health professional regarding your anxiety, and again, I wish you well.

anita

* I neglected to edit out the quote “I feel I deserve this because everyone in my life has expressed to me how difficult I can be” before submitting the post above.