You are welcome, Kshitij!

anita

Dear Kshiti:

You are welcome. I am sorry about the worsening situation in regard to your intrusive thoughts. I don’t think that we talked about you seeing a doctor, did we?

There are pharmaceutical treatments for intrusive thinking/ OCD, certain medications that help many, and can help you. What do you think about making an appointment with a doctor, for evaluation and possible treatment?

anita

Dear Pj:

You can talk to me, and to other members, right here in your thread, whenever you feel alone. I’m here every day and have been for almost 9 years (excluding a 6-month pause). Also, there are support groups for caretakers such as yourself. You can look at senior lifestyle. com/ 40 resources for adult children taking care of aging parents.

“seeing my mother suffer at the end of her life…  and the fact that my mother would be gone forever crushed me“- would you like to share about your mother, has she been a good mother to you? What did she teach you.. ?

“I don’t know the purpose of this life anymore & where this life will take me. I’m lost“- less than an hour ago, I submitted a post to another suffering member on the topic of purpose in the midst of suffering. In it I quoted from Viktor Frankl’s famous book Man’s Search for Meaning, a 1946 book about his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War 2, a place of much suffering.

Here are a few quotes from the book: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself”.

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire… The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

The title of your thread is “Should I start over”?“- yes, please do start over and share about your new beginning here, will you?

anita

Dear Going Through Life:

You are welcome and thank you for being so nice, gracious, I appreciate it!

“While breaking up she told me that because of the distance and the timings, it’s better we stop talking, after that I talked to her a bit and not much. Then after a few days she texted me she met someone else…. she was lying”-

– putting the long-distance factor aside for a moment, what I boldfaced above could be, maybe, her excuses for not having continued the relationship with you. Being that women are the ones traditionally pursued, it is often that when rejecting men who pursue them, women come up with tactful, untrue reasons aimed at sparing the pursuer’s feelings and avoiding a confrontation. In this case, she may have been saying (paraphrased): I am not interested in talking with you, not because I don’t like this or that about you, but because of the distance and wrong timing, nothing to do with you! 2nd time, perhaps wanting to get the message across to you more clearly, she told you that she met someone else.

“She hoped we could stay friends“- this could have been part of the rejection-package, so to speak. When rejecting a man’s advances, most women are careful about not hurting the man’s feelings, not just, or necessarily because of being kind, but so to not incur a man’s anger, not wanting the man angry at them.

But she could have meant it, I don’t know. And she may be a kind, honest (and tactful) person, and mature enough to understand the disadvantages of a long-distance relationship.

“I feel like there’s a strong connection there… I actually felt a really strong pure bond with her… It’s been almost 3 months since we talked and still I can’t get rid of these feelings. These feelings scare me but the though about her makes me smile a lot. I think that happens when you really like someone“- no doubts you have strong, positive feelings for her. But these feelings were not as strong throughout the 3 months, not same intensity, and your attention was often elsewhere. Same is true to her, her feelings don’t stay the same.

Your current feelings for her are not any kind of evidence that she is feeling the same, or similarly. I know that you are aware of what I just typed, but I am stating this because there is a subconscious belief in these feelings (of longing for another person),  that they are feeling the same. There is no basis in reality to this belief.

“Although she is really attractive and I don’t find myself as attractive as her physically. In confident that I’m consistently working on myself and feeling better and confident….Don’t know how to start the conversation with her, whether I should just write a whole paragraph and send her or to first ask about casual stuff first… I’m kind of putting my respect on the line“-

– if you send her a casual short message, like how are you?, she’d probably figure that you are pursuing the (long-distance) romantic relationship that you had with her, and that you re pursuing it in a timid, least risky way. What if you write her a long-enough paragraph where you present yourself not as a timid man who’s afraid to be rejected, but as a strong, confident man who can take rejection?

This would be a unique approach that can give you an advantage over the competition (assuming she is not in a relationship currently)- a man who comes across differently from others. This can make you look attractive in her eyes. It is an attitude that can attract other women to you.

In this paragraph, you can tell her how you feel about her, what you like about her, and what you would like from her, given the long-distance factor, and ask her if it suits her. Be honest, direct, straight forward and caring (for her well-being), all at the same time. What do you have to lose with this approach?

anita

Dear Andromeda:

There is a quote, I forgot who said it, paraphrased, it says: the worst thing that can happen to a person is not losing one’s life, but losing the reason for living. A famous book that comes to mind, written by a man who survived the WW2 concentration camps, is A Man’s Search for Meaning.

If you found a Reason and a positive Meaning for your life- that could make the difference between hopelessness and hope, between emptiness and having a value you live for.

anita

* Dear YOR:

I read your story and I feel badly for your pain. There are significant similarities between your story and that of Arctic07’s, and I am looking forward to read Arctic07’s reply to your story, when she is able, as she too is in pain.

“he was super kind, super nice, just absolutely perfect in all ways… he owed me some money because I paid some of the bills of his apartment even when I was not living there, and he had found another housemate. I did not bother because for me, he was my family member. When asked to transfer it, he transferred 3/4th of the amount and said that he wont transfer everything because he spent that money over visiting me and giving me birthday gifts“-

– What I boldfaced in the above quote shows me that from the beginning of the relationship, although he appeared super kind and perfect in all ways, he was not genuinely these things. It takes a cold, calculating, very unempathetic person to be so petty toward a woman who has been so loving and so generous toward him.

You did your best with him and your father tried too, but your ex-boyfriend was not available to reason.

“I have been a meritorious student throughout. And apart from academics, I am also professionally trained in fine arts. I know how to cook. And I am a very organized person in general. ..Please help me find peace. I feel guilty, maybe I could have adjusted and saved us. Maybe if I kept my mouth shut instead of expressing how I felt, we would have been together. Maybe“-

– May you find peace in knowing, really knowing, that your strong emotions for this man clouded your vision of him. I hope that you realize that you mistook him for someone he was not. I am sure that there were times when his affection for you was genuine, and the best of him shone through, but those times did not indicate who he is long-term.

May your sense of self-worth be based on you being and having been long-term, the loving, caring daughter and sister that you are, and on the hard, long-term work that you put into becoming a meritorious student and professional.. and not on this man’s coldness and unreasonableness.

anita

Dear ParadoxMusic:

“The things that I hate about her are the things that torment me. I have not slept properly in the last 3 months. I have been going through a depressed phase of just wanting the pain to end, whether it be through death or amnesia or something… The relationship with B has ruined me for the worst“- this information by itself is enough to make it clear in my mind that a relationship with B should not be resumed, and that for you to not resume it, individual counseling/ therapy is something that you should pursue, so please do!

“All I wanted was to find a woman who can be a good friend to me, who is willing to care for me, and do everything else a wife should do, have God at the center of our life and I just wanted to serve such a deserving woman. I just wanted to find such a perfect woman… And I believed I found that in B“-

– Talking about religion and marriage, here are a couple of quotes from the bible (online): “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.” (Proverbs 12:4)- your months-long torment is like rottenness in your bones, is it, Paradoxy?

“That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children.” (1 Titus 2:4)- B wasn’t taught to be a good wife during her formative years (her first 2 decadesof life), but.. you want to teach her in her 3rd decade, post her formative years, do you?

Back to your words: “she is still 100000x better than most of the other women that I have met…Even if I give another woman a chance, I feel like I would constantly be subconsciously comparing her to B, and I do not think that is right nor fair for that person” – even though you’ve been tormented and sleeping poorly for months, you are still motivated to resume a relationship with a woman who (you believe to be) 100,000 times better than most other women. In your mind, most other women are 100,000 worse than B.. so, mathematically, statistically, you wouldn’t be motivated to consider another woman.

This is your 1st relationship, how would you know this statistical ‘fact’?

“The feeling of being loved by someone for the first time was literally changing me for the better. Knowing that I had her in my life felt like a factory reset button. I was a thousand times happier, more energetic, no longer depressed, no longer suicidal, no longer in love with that Dark Energy…  But now that I lost her, I can feel the things of the past slowly creeping back into me, starting with self hate... I have grown to realize that everyone else is happier without me existing in their life. All I would be is a source of pain for others... Maybe I should blame myself for breaking up with B in January, which caused her to do what she did… My parents are good people. Though their methods are questionable, their aim was to help me. They did not physically abuse me. But you could say that I was emotionally abused… They have never listened to me. Always discouraging me from what I wanted to do. Even this med career was their fault. I never wanted this. I wanted to do music or computers… I will never forget the pain, the anger, I have endured cause of them… I have had my parents’ anger towards something else redirected to me” (March 23, 2024).

“There happened to be an incident where my neighbor threatened my parents that they would call social services since they saw how I was being treated and my parents took out their anger on me” (March 3, 2020)-

– it seems like the emotional abuse you received by your parents (who may be good people outside of parenting you, such as being good neighbors) was severe, and it led you to the core belief that you are a source of pain to others.

Would you like to elaborate on the nature of the emotional abuse that you received, and how it led to this core belief (beyond what you stated in the quotes above, which I boldfaced)?

anita