Dear Stacy:

You are welcome. I will respond to your most recent post (and other posts) like I usually do: quote a sentence, or a series of sentences, and follow with my thoughts, then quote the next sentence, etc., developing my thoughts and understanding as I go along. (I will be adding the boldface feature to your and other quotes):

“I have never been chosen or wanted by a guy who I find attractive and impressive. Not until this guy“- sounds like this guy has been, in your mind, a sort of god (ex., from the bible: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth”, Deuteronomy, 14:2, “For many are called, but few are chosen.”, Matthew 24:14).

Looking at the title of your thread: “Extremely painful breakup and confusion“- I have no doubt that significantly lessening your pain and confusion will include taking him off of that elevated position, the godly pedestal where he does not belong.

“I know this is messed up and it’s always been a problem for me where I feel perpetually stunted with my physical body and my place in life. I don’t feel like a woman. When I have sex with men, I feel like a 12 year old“- when we grow up in a home that feels unsafe, our emotional growth gets stunted. It happened to me: strangely (felt strange to me), as I was healing in middle age, I felt so very much like a child. There was a serious disconnect between how I felt and how my face looked in the mirror. In my mind’s eye, I was a preteen, or younger. What happened was that growing up, I dissociated, sort of placing my growth on hold until such time that it will be safe to reconnect with life again and continue to grow.

It was not a personal choice on my part, it’s how nature works. For example, when a tree does not have enough water available, it stops growing and sheds its leaves.. until such time when it has enough water to resume growing.

“I was enamored by how attracted I was to him in every way, and I absolutely felt that he was super impressive. I’ve never been flattered by other men finding me attractive and for me to have this with him made me finally feel like a woman…  actually sexy“- he.. made you a woman, almost (“Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man”, Genesis 2:22).

“I just genuinely do not believe a conventionally attractive man who has an impressive life and travel or sexual experiences with other affluent women could recognize me as a sexually attractive woman“- he recognized you as a woman.. he “made” you a woman.

“It may sound shallow“- nothing at all that you shared so far sounds shallow to me.

“but I just want to feel like a woman, a capable woman and to be desired by a man who actually impresses me. He was that guy for me, and it’s hard to lose“- a regular guy couldn’t have done it. It took a very special guy. No wonder it is hard to lose The One who made this magic happen.

* It’s a good thing that it happened no matter how it happened: you wanted to feel like a sexually desired woman and you felt it. This means that you can feel it again.

“My life is a lot more bleak compared to the women he is lusting after. They travel literally all over the world and they are all hyper-sexually liberated women“– did you talk to these women privately or are you basing this understanding (that they are hyper-sexually liberated women) on their TikTok financial interactions & other such advertisements? Maybe many- maybe most- are effective, successful performers.

Dear Stacy:

I read your whole recent post this Sun evening, and I kept thinking, as I was reading, that you are a good, decent person. Your beauty as a person shines through your words. If I was the guy, I would so very much appreciate you, love you and honor you.

You’ve been giving him too much power over how you feel about yourself, power he didn’t earn and does not deserve: WHO is he to determine your worth? What did he do to deserve this power? His parents’ PhDs don’t give him this power, neither do this siblings Master Degrees, nor how much money they have in their bank accounts. What did he DO to have this power to determine your worth..?

He is just a guy you knew nothing about a year ago. It doesn’t really matter what he thinks, what he meant when he said this or that.. except that it matters to you because you give him power that he does not deserve.

I know that I am a stranger from the internet, a stranger to you, but I know you better (!)  than this guy knows you: I know that you are an intelligent, conscientious, caring, fair and just person: you are the best that humanity has to offer. Please consider that I know what I am talking about (I do!)

I will reply further Mon morning.

anita

Dear Neha:

I think that you’ve been a very good girlfriend for a long time, but for at least a few months he hasn’t been a good boyfriend to you because either he doesn’t notice how much suffering you’ve been going through since he quit his job, or he knows.. and doesn’t take it seriously enough to do something about it.

I think that you should not loan/ give him any more money. Think about the possibility of asking him to take 6,000 out of his credit card account, or accounts, and give that money back to you.

So, there are two items I am pointing to: (1) his lack of awareness/ caring about your emotional suffering for so long (2) the money topic.

(I will be back to the computer in about 8- 18 hours from now)

anita

Dear Stacy:

You are very welcome and thank you for your empathy and kindness!

“I was born and am still poverty level, he was born upper middle class…  I have had this feeling since I was old enough to start seeing people around me having more than me. It follows me everywhere and at 31, almost 32 soon… I am scared I cannot heal from this. I don’t know what I can do to brush off these feelings… I thought that being with a man who finally understands and acknowledges privilege and doesn’t throw up the fact that I’m ‘not doing enough to better myself’ and shaming my family for being poor was a great sign he was a safe partner. I hate I lost that.“-

– this is what I understand: very early in your life, you observed that people shamed your parents for being poor/ financially disadvantaged (and for using drugs, I assume: “I grew up in a drug filled home“), throwing it up to their faces (hitting your face as well) that they were not doing enough to better themselves. You observed your parents hurt and ashamed (A child is very empathetic to her parents, taking on their feelings as her own, or feeling what she imagines that they are feeling).  Perhaps you felt ashamed of them yourself, while also loving them very much.

The societal judgment against your parents was a judgment against the young girl that you were because a young child does not distinguish between herself and her parents: she didn’t yet go through the so called separation-individuation development stage of childhood. Perhaps you were personally shamed as well for being poor, by school peers and such.

When a girl grows up without enough safety and love, she never separates from her parents emotionally, still feeling their feelings, or what she imagines that they feel, still evaluating life according to their thoughts and feelings, not yet re-evaluating life according to her own thoughts, not enough in any case (which if she did, she may think the same, similar or very differently from her parents’).

Every time she sees other people having more money and things bought with money, she feels that shame.

“His parents are both very successful and retired psychologists with PhDs… this relationship made me feel seen and special… there is jealousy there for myself and my parents that we haven’t gotten to travel or have the opportunities his family has had… I thought that being with a man who finally understands and acknowledges privilege and doesn’t throw up the fact that I’m ‘not doing enough to better myself’ and shaming my family for being poor was a great sign he was a safe partner. I hate I lost that”-

– with this man, you felt, at times, safe from societal judgment. In other words, with this man you felt temporarily free from shame, and with the breakup, you lost that temporary relief and the hope that you can live shame-free. With this man, perhaps you felt that it is possible for you to finally belong to the financially/ educationally privileged world into which you always wanted to belong. This is what the breakup means to you.. is it?

“I did not feel special to my parents, only in moments here and there“- a girl needs to feel special. She needs to feel that her parents (rich or poor) think that she is special: she needs to feel that she is making her parents’ lives better, that she brings a smile to their faces, at least once a day.

When she feels un-special, she looks for the fault within herself and she blames herself: “The trust issues I brought into this relationship that inevitably might have partially ruined it for him“, “I reached out to him to apologize for all of the times my past trauma triggered me and I projected insecurities onto him…  I sabotaged.. “). This self-blame adds much pain to the breakup, making it feel much worse than if you didn’t blame yourself so much.

Of course you made mistakes, everyone makes mistakes in relationships, every single person, but reading and re-reading your story, I figure that even if you were perfect (which would be impossible), it wouldn’t have been enough for a man who suffers from (and was diagnosed with) depression and ADHD, a man who at 31 did not have a single long-term relationship with a woman, a man who spends his time not in attending psychotherapy and immersing himself in mental/ emotional healing, but instead, he spends his time in pornography and sexual fantasies.. to have his first long-term relationship.

“He has too many amazing experiences“- no experience is as amazing as feeling right about oneself, feeling good enough (a healthy self-esteem), not even close.

“it being Saturday, my mind is racing that he’s already numbing himself with someone else“- no one numbs themselves because they have an amazing life.

“with someone like me who accepted him and wanted to love him, he didn’t believe that about himself, so he lost interest and maybe even admiration and respect for me“- I agree that this is a very likely possibility. When a child is unloved/ not appreciated by a parent, as an adult, he often looks for a romantic partner who also does not appreciate him. The (very common) compulsion is about changing an unappreciative parent into an appreciating parent by proxy of the romantic partner.

“I am absolutely stuck and drowning in my sorrows right now. I’ve cried all day… I will never recover from this. It makes me physically ill to have been played this hard“- I feel sad that you are suffering. And I figure that much of your suffering about this breakup and otherwise-  will be gone if you re-evaluated your story, his story, and eliminated assumptions and core beliefs that are simply not true. I will be glad to share with you, if and when you are willing, how I did such re-evaluation and how it changed how I feel.

You submitted the two posts above about 18 hours ago. How are you feeling now???

anita

Dear Stacy:

You are welcome and I am sorry that you are not doing well at all.

“When I am this down, literally nothing helps me“- I wish there was something I- a stranger on the internet- could say to make you feel better.

Reading your posts today, I can see how much you are suffering these days, feeling unseen and un- special, a blip on his map, thinking and overthinking about all your imagined- or real-  mistakes in the relationship, feeling guilty for the breakup, feeling that you are not good enough for him.

“What I was referring to about the ‘blip on the map’ thing with him in all those countries and sexual and social explorations, I just feel really inexperienced and not good enough for him… He has too many amazing experiences and has too many people that matter to him for him to worry about losing me, he keeps himself constantly distracted and onto the next thing. I truly feel like a blip on his map! Not only that, but there is jealousy there for myself and my parents that we haven’t gotten to travel or have the opportunities his family has had. And I get that part of me is ENTIRELY projecting and has nothing to do with him.“-

–  I too experienced a deep, painful low self-esteem and lots of guilt, and I suffered for so long. I felt guilty and responsible for all  bad things happening in my life. I felt that life is passing me by, and that other people are having so much fun while I was stuck in misery. Growing up, my mother worked cleaning the offices and homes of the rich, and she complained about her hands bleeding from the detergents she used cleaning their toilets and such, and her whole body hurting, and how unlucky she was working for those lucky people. I was so very upset that she was not one of the lucky, rich people she worked for. I wanted to make her rich so that she can finally be on the lucky side of life (I tried hard, and I failed).

It is only recently that my self-esteem significantly improved.. what a slow process this has been. And I know that once you feel better about yourself (I hope that it happens quicker than it happened for me), once your unearned guilt is resolved (once you figure out what you are truly responsible for and what you are not responsible for), you will feel so much better, breakup or not.

I used to imagine that the lucky people (rich people able to travel the world and live in luxury) were happy go-lucky people, as the saying goes. But when my self-esteem significantly improved, once I was no longer tortured by guilt and self-doubt, I found out (to my surprise!) that those lucky people were not happy-go-lucky at all, and that every person experiences the pain I thought belonged only to me/ my mother.

From what you shared about him, he is not a happy-go-lucky person, it’s just that he is able to easily (compared to you) distract himself from what’s troubling him, while you get stuck in what’s troubling you, kind of sinking in it… ?

anita

Dear Caroline:

You are welcome. (I didn’t recommend any particular book on overcoming learned helplessness because I didn’t read any. I was thinking out loud that maybe reading such will help you).

“I find everything more difficult because I think I am less capable in life than other people. I know my mother used to/still is this way, she does not believe in herself, thinks simple tasks are too much for her, whereas other people can do it with no problem because they are.. more capable. Seems like I learned that from her. She always worries how I handle things, maybe part of her really cares and is worried but part of her probably thinks I cannot deal with some things because I am like her“-

– (1) seems like from the beginning of your life, your mother projected herself into you, seeing herself in you, and giving you the message that you are.. her, in this regard.  (2) A mother is like a mirror to the young child, and what she reflects to the child, is what the child believes she is. Therefore, you believed early on that you are less capable in life than other people. (3) I wonder if part of you, a part that is the very young girl in you, feels that if you become more capable, like other people, you will be betraying your mother, moving to the other people side of the world, leaving your mother all alone in the incapable side of the world, so to speak, and/ or that you will lose her love, and therefore, you will be all alone. (To a young child, Mother is Everything/ Everyone, and without her, the child is.. all alone).

“I would like to change that. I already accomplished more than she ever did and I did it without help of family or other people“- congratulations!

* I wonder about your reaction to what I wrote above (3), and I hope that you will contemplate it over time, because maybe such early thinking stands in your way of changing this core belief (of being less capable in life than other people).

“And yes I focus on negatives a lot. There are a lot of good sides in this job offer: more money, learning new things, being part of the team, doing something that I would be rewarded for just by being in this team as they are already successful. And There’s this bad side which is late hours and all I can think about it this one. Its a huge disadvantage, yes. But I catastrophize it“-

– if you refuse this job, I will not be surprised if you find yourself in the afternoons focusing on negatives (the lot of good sides in this job that you missed), overthinking it and feeling badly. This will fit the pattern of focusing on and overthinking the negatives, won’t it?

I think that before you refuse this job, if you choose to refuse it, you should plan on how to deal with the expected regret…?

I suggested that you evaluate the positives and negatives with a calm, resourceful mental attitude, and you wrote: “I am doing this, trying to be peaceful about it. I feel better today that two days ago. I will give myself another day to get familiar with this idea.“- good. We do our best thinking when calm.. and our worst when distressed, panicking and catastrophizing.

anita

Dear Caroline:

I read your recent first post attentively. Congratulations for the progress you have made in regard to your learned helplessness. I googled today, by the way, overcoming learned helplessness: there are books on the topic, one of which is “Understanding and Overcoming Learned Helplessness“. Maybe such will help you.

Your second post: “But my question is, Is it something you noticed and wanted to point out (which is very correct btw) or does this apply to my current situation with changing jobs?“- I believe that it very much applies to your current situation with changing jobs. When you have a core belief that you are not capable enough to deal with life, everything is more difficult, including looking for a job and accepting a job.. unless the job is absolutely perfect, with no negatives, which is never the case, is it?

I suggested that you look for another job with your preferred working hours, and you wrote: “It’s not that simple… I am a bit scared of leaving the company.. starting new again. It’s too risky for me right now, I do not have family support at least financially“-it’s never that simple because there is no such thing (that I know about) as a perfect job. So there are always negatives. Question is: which possibility has the kinds of  negatives that you can successfully manage?

In your current situation, here are some possibilities: (1) stop supporting your family financially…? That will ease your stress. (2) take on the new job for a short period of time, letting the company know of your intent,  so to evaluate how you manage the new hours, (3) start new again, but in a wiser way..?

No doubt that no possibility is problem free, there will always be negatives. But if you evaluate the positives and negatives with a calm, resourceful mental attitude, you will do better than otherwise.

anita

Dear Ben:

Oh, a different guy then. Are you familiar with the term limerence, and do you think that the topic of limerence vs love, which I brought up above, applies to you in regard to your romantic relationships, most recent and prior?

anita