Dear Caroline:

“Do you think there’s a chance she is not in love with him? That I am wrong? I talked to my gf about it and she says she is in love big time. No way she’s not. But she only assumes it from the story I told her so it’s hard to say..”-

– this sounds like your problem with self-doubt and not trusting your feelings: self doubt in the title of your previous thread and in the first sentence of it: “I know about it for a while: my self doubt, making decisions and then doubting myself” (Sept 7, 2023). You mentioned distrusting your feelings in a previous thread: “ I have those feelings but I do not trust them I guess, not enough to act” (Sept 29, 2022).

Having communicated with you long enough, over a variety of topics, and  learning about how you think/ process information, and then reading and re-reading what you shared here about this coworker, I think that your thinking is correct: that she really is infatuated/  in-love with your male coworker.

anita

*correction: it is not simple and not straightforward.

Dear Caroline:

You are welcome, and no, it doesn’t seem silly, not since I understood what it’s about: it is not silly to feel hurt for being someone’s 2nd best, it’s a kind of hurt that I can very much relate to.

Having just read that she suggested that the three of you,  a married man with a pregnant wife at home, and two women he is not related to (Ex., daughters, mother, aunts) will be going on a sleepover in the mountains.. this is making me think.. What? I mean, it seems bizarre to suggest this.. unless she is clueless or she is/ has been so overcome with feelings of infatuations that she lost her reasoning abilities.

“I did not want to ever ask her: ‘Are you in love with him?'”- instead of asking her this Yes/ No Question, a question that confines her, you could ask, if you wanted to, an open-ended question that allows her wiggle room:  what are you feeling about him?

“Yesterday I asked her: Are you sorry that things turned out the way they did? (meaning he does not have time to meet anymore.. ). She said she knows he ‘has changed’ but she thinks it’s because he is different department and is more busy with work than we are. I don’t think she understands that it may be the fact that he is married”- seems like she prefers to not think about him being married with kids. She may be in denial about it, as in putting this “little” information aside, as it is an inconvenient truth: truth that doesn’t fit her feelings. There is a term for such lack or rational reasoning, it’s called Emotional Reasoning.

“I think that may be the reason he does not have time anymore”- good for him, he chose wisely.

“I figured I would ask her, in a funny way perhaps, or say something like ‘I know it will be only two of us’ (because 100% sure He won’t make it this time either) ‘but I hope you don’t mind and I would be enough company for you'”- I wouldn’t say that. Instead, I would do is ask her an open ended question, or a couple of open ended questions.

anita

Dear Caroline:

I asked if you want to “help her..? Warn him?”, and you said “none of these things”, so you don’t want  to help her although you are “worried about her”?

Reads like you are concerned for her emotional well being. Why not bring up your concern to her in a way that is gentle, as gentle as can be and see how she responds?

(I will be back to the computer in about 7 hours).

anita

You are welcome, Caroline. What I am reading in your last 2 of 3 sentences is courage. Think of preparing for the difficulties you expect to have, practically prepare, best you can.

anita

Dear Cat:

Good to read back from you!

“last week I got a new job. I will be a senior carer on nights, working in a dementia unit. The place where I am going to be working pays really well and it looks like Hogwarts! It actually blew me away when I went for the interview and the manager really liked me so I am looking forward to stepping into this new chapter!“-

C o N g R a T u L a T i O n S  !!! I can see you- in my mind’s eye- working in a place that looks like Hogwarts! An exciting new chapter!

“Do you live with people or alone? I am trying to visualise the environment where these messages are being received!!“- Let’s see what I can share comfortably on this public forum, at this point: I do not live alone, but not in a commune type setting either. I live on the hills, outside the city limits, about 5 miles from the nearest town, so it’s quite a forest type scenery up here, not many neighbors. Does this help at all, for your visualization?

“Thank you for soothing me on the Ed situation… I can’t explain how painful it all was, just wanting something to be fixed, and not being able to fix it“- you are welcome. You have a big heart, this is why you care so much.

“I do not want to date for a while now. I don’t do dating apps and I think these things should happen naturally. I am still strengthening my world and focusing on my goals – job, NVQ, gym, writing. I have a lot to work on“- excellent attitude, if I may say so.

“I am 30, and I do feel young!! Each day I remind myself that I am only 30, and work on grounding myself, my health and then focusing on my goals. How old are you?“- I would tell you how old I am but my fingers are refusing to type my age. (haha). I will tell you that I am old enough to feel that 30 is as young as 20 (when I turned 30, on the other hand, I perceived myself to be old).

“If I can ask: what made you feel like a bad person?“- my mother telling me how miserable she was and that it was my fault that she was miserable, detailing my alleged efforts to make her feel bad… Only a  BAD person would form the intent to make her mother suffer and then go through elaborated plans to make it happen (which is what she claimed I did, and no matter how much I tried to tell her it wasn’t true, she insisted otherwise).

“I know how that feels. There have been things that I’ve done or been through (when I used to do a lot of drugs) that sometimes I feel horrific about. But, I remind myself that the past is the past, and that making mistakes and having guilt is a human thing and there’s people in the world who have done a lot worse than I have!!“- I am sorry that you know how it feels,  but good to read that you forgive yourself for past mistakes. I wouldn’t want you to feel horrible about those mistakes or about anything: that would be unnecessary pain that will be of no benefit to you or to anyone else. It took a lot for me to forgive myself for mistakes and harms I caused other people as an older child and an adult. I am committed to becoming healthier and healthier and in so becoming  more and more willing and able to do-no-harm to others. And to myself.

“I remember at the time of writing, it felt like it needed to all come out and Tiny buddha felt like the space to do this and I released it. I would never write this stuff online now! But then, I have matured a lot over the years.. I have come to terms with everything from my childhood and in day life I am not affected by it“- good to read that you matured a lot. Indeed, your impressive maturity is evident in your writing. (Notice: Everything is the title of your thread).

“With the suffering quote – I realise now that my parents and also my sister are all older than me and all responsible adults too. I realise that they could’ve taken responsibility and reached out to me, and been concerned about me and my wellbeing. But they haven’t. and they have continued their lives as if I don’t exist, and so I have put the responsibility back onto them (especially my parents) and I have focused on myself and tried to make my life as happy as it can be“- it feels so good to read this. It inspires me to think similarly.

“In terms of you ‘losing’ being a right person for me, that isn’t the case at all. I guess life happened, I continued to grow daily and try and better myself. Started becoming someone who I would like to be friends with, and in turn attracting better people into my life (and still am). I understand that our connection is solely Tiny buddha forums based, and so I considered myself to be another person in your sea of people that you are helping! Did you feel as though you ‘lost’ me?”-

– (1) you were never another person in a sea of people, not in my mind. You are more like a beautiful, tree and life-filled island in the sea, full of life! (2) Yes, I thought that you lost respect for me. (3) Thank you so much for explaining that you were busy bettering yourself during your absence from these forums, it makes me feel good.

“It makes me happy that you are starting to believe in the numbers!! Mostly, I think the Universe does it to us, to remind us that it is there and is conscious and aware of what we are going through. At different points I have taken different paths in my life and the Universe has changed the angel number! At the moment mine are 23, 37 and still the classic 11:11. What numbers are you seeing?“- (1) I want to watch the YouTube video you mentioned, I think that it will give me some understanding of what we’re talking about here. (2) I keep seeing 11:11 and 1:11.

“Ed was – something different. It was impossible for me to have a true authentic connection with him because he is SO guarded, you can feel the defensive energy coming off him and he was so irrational due to the alcohol and drugs and was illogical, not making sense and also delusional. Sadly. I tried to help him, and even just trying to sit him down and calm him down, I wasn’t able to do. It was insane. But I really tried to highlight the problem and I appealed to his family members to help him. I just really really hope that he chooses to grow and change and face himself and his addiction.”-

– this is what I mean by saying that you have a big heart. You really, really tried to help him. You tried to reach him through his defenses, and when you weren’t able, you tried to enlist his family members to help him:  You did your Best!

anita

Yes, Simon, I am still active on this site and I will read and reply to your recent post in about 12 hours from now.

anita

Dear Luna:

“I don’t know what in what I said gave the impression that I don’t ‘feel’ the need for a relationship“-

You said:  “I would say I tend to have a rational take when it comes to emotions. I’ve looked so much into that too haha it is interesting that you brought it up because I feel like I wanna step away from that too; feel the emotion instead of thinking it.” (Sept 25).

“I don’t know what in what I said gave the impression that I don’t ‘feel’ the need for a relationship“-

I didn’t say that you don’t feel the need for a relationship, or that you don’t feel emotions otherwise. Put in a new way this Sat morning, my understanding is that you find refuge in thinking, refuge from feeling; that overthinking provides you with a welcomed distraction from old emotional pain.

You mentioned a phrase in a reply to a member just over nine months ago: “What you feel, you attract, and where focus goes, energy follows“- your focus is thinking, and that’s where your energy flows, into overthinking. In regard to the first part of this phrase: what you suppress feeling (yet still feel), is what you attract.

What you feel in regard to your powerful of childhood, you chose to not share in your thread, beyond the very general and vague sentence that I boldfaced in the following (Sept 24): “I can see how you’re drawing the link between the parent-child bond and my inquiry and I expected this to be brought up given they’re the most common models in terms of a healthy (or not) couple partnership. So to get back to your question, like any other child, I have received powerful messages from my environment on how to act and be in a couple“- no mention of what those powerful messages were and what you felt about those messages..  not as any other child, but as Luna the child.

Back to your yesterday’s post (Sept 29): “To make that clearer, I feel and think that need. I have both an emotional and an intellectual perspective on the matter”-you are a thinking and a feeling person, absolutely, I  have no doubt.

“That being said, I agree with the idea that relationships are never trouble-free; Life as a single person in itself is full of ups and downs let alone in relationships. Hence, feel free to share more insights on the subject if you’d like. This is what this space is for. Best, Luna“-

– My main insight in regard to romantic relationships is that when we grow up distressed and conflicted, and the Conflict is not resolved in childhood, it carries on into adult romantic relationships. Personally (and expressed here in a child-like, emotional manner vs the intellectual): my mother was very angry at me, a whole lot of angry. It makes me sad and it makes me scared. Please don’t be angry with me, mother! PLEASE??!!! Please, pretty please… don’t be angry with me.

I tried to disappear best I could, as a child, to feel as little as possible so to hurt as little as possible. Fast forward, as an adult, in what could have been romantic relationships, maybe, I was.. no where to be found, dissociated.. gone. Men who approached me- I automatically rejected, looking away, walking away, but if they persisted in pursuing me physically, as in sexually, after physically fighting them off me, if they persisted (those men were predators).. I disappeared while they did what they wanted to do.

I NEEDED a hug. I was so lonely and my mother’s touch was far from feeling like anything positive, even when she meant it to be affectionate. There was no one to touch me kindly, so that was what I needed from humans who sought my company, and those humans were men looking for sex. I welcomed the hug; unfortunately for me, they exacted a price for the hugs.

What I shared above is very personal, yet I shared it in a public forum. If my mother read it, she would venomously shame me for what I shared here. Part of me is afraid that you will do the same, or that someone reading this will.

” I’m asking about getting mentally ready for being in a relationship through self-development. For more context, I’m very passionate about self-development and I’m very future-oriented when it comes to matters of the heart” (Sept 24)-  I don’t expect you to share anything as personal as what I shared, or anything at all about your childhood, or about sex. It doesn’t feel good, really, for me, to have shared it, and it will be scary for me to click the submit feature.. It’s risky, but talking about self development, which is your passion, it takes taking risks.

Best to you too,

anita