How are you, Ben?

anita

Dear Eva:

I want to re-read all that you shared and get to know you again. You (56 or 57 at this time) first posted on February 4 this year, exactly eight months ago. You shared that you had a partner, a Soulmate. The two of you were “a kind of nomadic people, so we don’t have a house or a car. He did art and I do creative work as well“. Back in the summer of 2021, you were living together in a tropical country, able to go out into nature during the Covid lockdown at the time.

You unexpectedly lost him that summer to an accident, an event that turned your life upside down in five minutes. In later February of this year, your mother became very ill and you travelled from Asia to Europe (for the first time in 10 years) to take care of her and of her brother (your uncle) who was also sick. A month later, your mother passed away.

You shared that you’ve been traveling a lot between Asia and Europe, never staying at one place for long, having no fixed home or job, but you check on everyone you know/ friends, asking about their lives, how they feel, being outgoing and genuinely interested in people, wanting to maintain contact. But people take weeks before answering you, answering your messages with long delays, and not asking about you. When you asked people what went wrong, asking if you said or did something wrong- you received no answers. You’ve been experiencing people promising things and not following up on their promises. And this has been happening years before the pandemic.

One friend used to tell you how much she loved you, that she admired you, that you could stay at her place at any time you were in town and for as long as you wanted to. One summer, you stayed at her place for a month. As her guest, you cleaned her place, did the laundry, ironed and cooked dinner. She told you that you could help yourself to anything in her fridge and kitchen. One morning, you noticed that she had five old honey jars with one spoon of honey left in each, so you chose to use that honey instead of opening a new jar. Shortly after, she was not talking to you and tried to avoid you. Three days later, she told you that she was angry with you because you “finished the honey jars“. Some time later, she removed your belongings from her flat and placed them on the street for you to pick up, “didn’t say hi, didn’t even open the door“. That happened six years ago.

My input today: when we discussed the honey incident back in Feb, I thought that maybe seeing those almost-empty honey jars in the fridge gave her comfort, and by removing them, you took away her comfort. It did not occur to me at all until this very morning, as I re-read your posts, that you may have overstayed your welcome in her flat, that the one-month long visit was too long for her, and she needed her privacy back, especially since her place is a flat, and not a big house. So, at first she loved you and admired you, and then.. she got tired of a visit that lasted too long.

You shared that you live a nomadic lifestyle (“I travel a lot.. I have no fix home or job…nomadic lifestyle… I understand that this kind of lifestyle is not everybody’s cup of tea“). If it includes staying in friends’ homes for long periods of time, it may be that people get tired of visits that last too long, and this is the reason they don’t keep in contact with you.. not wanting to have you stay in their place for too long, yet again.

Let’s look at what you shared yesterday, Oct 3 (I am adding the boldface & italic features to parts of this quote): “My concern with certain friendships is that they start to get closer, they invite you all the time, they tell you they love you, they offer their help or home, they say how talented you are etc. And then they let you drop with no understandable reason… They talk a lot about their issues… they talk more about their interpersonal issues, reporting the same stories, I still listen… Outside very kind, social, smiling people, you would think they love everybody,  but once at home, they tell you horrible things about the others, how they dislike them etc. And the next day they call these people and do them favors”-

– reads like you have a view of these people/former friends that’s possible by living with them: they talk to you a lot, you listen a lot, they gossip to you about people in their lives (who do not live with them), you observe how they (your hosts) behave outside their home (being kind to others) vs inside their homes (gossiping, being unkind to the same people) because you.. lived with them, inside their homes, overhearing to them calling those other people on their phones, etc.

“I am so confused and shocked because it has been happening for years… Very close friends stopped writing back without any explanation… Why do you say you love a person and then you do this? I am confused… I really need a bit of help to sort out this ‘vanishing thing’… No clue“-could the answer be that at first, your friends/ hosts were delighted to have you visit them, but as you overstayed your welcome, your hosts were distressed but uncomfortable telling you the reason, so no explanation given, and they chose to avoid future discomfort by vanishing?

anita

Hi EvFran:

I am sorry for your loss, the loss of your mother last March. Lots indeed for you to deal with. I wish your life was easier and brighter. I hope it will be.

I am back here, one day at a time.

anita

<p class=”ContentPasted26″>Dear anonymous03:</p>
* I am writing this comment while being closer to the ending of writing this post after two days of working on it. This is a.. lengthy post warning, as well as letting you know that I am writing this- as I explained below- for my sake also, not just for your sake. So, please feel comfortable to read- or not read, reply- or not reply- to any or all of the following. Also, your last post on the forums was ten days ago (Sept 23), so I understand that things probably changed since you posted here.. hours after I wrote this opening comment, I am adding: I am getting emotional toward the end of this post, so I am adding an emotional trigger warning.*

I want to re-read your posts and see if I can be helpful to you, and to myself (win-win is the goal). First, whenever a tiny buddha member shares about problems in a romantic relationship, being angry at the romantic partner (similarly to a situation in real-life), I am communicating with only one side of the relationship and not with the other. It’d be a fear- based/ people-pleasing behavior on my part, if I rush to the side of the person I am communicating with, so to not “make” the person (with whom I am communicating) angry with me. Like most/ all people, I don’t want to have another person’s anger directed or misdirected at me. So, in this post, I will face this fear of mine, fear of others’ anger  (and so, I am helping myself), and be as objective and honest as I can be, and in so, hopefully, I will be helping you.
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>I realize that I have a limited amount of information, only what you shared here, which paints parts of the total picture of the relationship, not the whole picture.  My intent is not- at all- to hurt your feelings or to distress you. I do understand though that parts of what is to follow may be distressing to you (and anger you, which is my fear).</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>Also, I realize that we all project all the time, this is how we get to understand other people. The problem is not that we project, but that sometimes we project inaccurately. I will be paying attention to the possibility that some of my projections may inaccurate.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>On my part, there is some distress (like I said) in risking becoming the object of your anger. It is a fear particularly intense due to my childhood experience with a RAGE filled mother, rage that did not only spill but rained over me like a storm. So, my fear is not based on who you are, but .. on who my mother was.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>I’ll get straight to the part in your original post that made the most impression on me when I first read it (I am the one adding the boldface & italic features): “Later, in the hotel, we were in his sister’s room, and he was telling us about how his uncle had insulted his mom, and how he has never forgiven him for that. After that story was over, I said, ‘Okay now let’s get to something important, let’s talk about booking tickets for tomorrow’s tour.'”- as I read this it was clear to me that you were rude to him, and I suspected that you were rude because (as you stated) you were angry earlier in the evening. I figured that you tried to hurt his feelings in a passive-aggressive way. I mean, clearly to suggest that his perhaps decades-long  feelings (“he has never forgiven him”) are less important than booking tickets for a day tour is.. undeniably rude.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>Continued quote: “He was hurt by this because he felt that he was sharing something close and personal, and I was insensitive when I said, ‘let’s talk about something important.’ I hadn’t meant it like that at all, but I could see how that may have sounded, and realized it was hurtful… I realized my mistakes, took responsibility, and apologized. I said I did not think about it at all before saying any of those things, but I should have, and I’m sorry”-</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>- you told him  all the right things, as if taken from a conflict resolution book.. but “I hadn’t meant it like that at all” doesn’t read believable to me, given that you were angry with him shortly before this conversation took place. To clarify, I believe that you didn’t think to yourself, before saying what you said, something like:  I am going to say this to him so to hurt his feelings!  I think that your intent to hurt his feelings was instinctual, something a person often does when angry, and that on some level, you were aware of it, or could become aware of it..?</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”We went to our room after, and it was clear he was angry and upset. When asked, he ignored me at first, but then told me about all this… He said I have been subtly insulting like that many times, but he has never said anything before. I was horrified that I had been like that, and I told him it was unknowingly done”- reads like you admitted that indeed you subtly insulted him many times, and you were horrified that you did so, or that you did it unknowingly.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”He said that the problem is that I do not respect him. If I respected him, I would not have behaved like that. I said I was not being disrespectful purposely, and that I was sorry I disrespected him”- reads like you agreed with him that you disrespected him, adding that you didn’t intend to disrespect him.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”I told him I’d like him to point out to me in the future if I said or did anything like that again. To which he said he wasn’t going to. He kept reiterating the same things dramatically for quite a bit, saying he could not understand how I could be like that…  how I could not have any empathy at all”- (1) he is making a good point: if you have no empathy for him on a regular or repeated basis (having empathy for him inconsistently, let’s say, not when you get angry… and you stay angry for long periods of time), that’s a big problem because without empathy, you don’t consider/ care how your words come across. (2) reads like he’s been frustrated for a long time and he feels quite hopeless.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”He then brought my ex-boyfriend up.. He then said to me, ‘I have limits. Once those are crossed, I will f*** off. You won’t know when. You won’t know anything. There will be no discussion. Nothing. It will be over.'”- he is definitely angry, understandably angry at you because you really disrespected him, and not only once. He is fed up.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”I was horrified that he would threaten me like that. I did not deserve such a breakup”-  he expressed to you how angry and frustrated he is with your repeated expressions of disrespect toward him. When typing the sentence I quoted here, you didn’t think about his desperation and what he deserves (which is consistent, dependable respect and empathy).</p>
* If he was a more..  emotionally skilled individual, he’d say something like: I am so frustrated and so angry about you repeatedly disrespecting me that I feel like breaking up with you.. I love you, but I am also angry I don’t know what to do about it. (Last time I was angry,  I wasn’t that skillful. I wish I was, but I wasn’t. Maybe next time).
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”He calmed down a bit after I apologized and said that he did not mean it when he said he’d leave without a conversation. It was just anger. What got me was that he did not apologize and take responsibility”- (1) Still angry with him, you focused not on the first part (what he said that was positive), but on what he didn’t say. (2) You put too much value in apologizing-and-taking-responsibility, delivered without adequate thought or regret, kind-of, perhaps, automatically repeating what is written in a conflict resolution book and crossing it off your list (as in saying: I apologized, I said something to the effect of taking responsibility, so I am off the hook/ I am Right.. and he is Wrong, for not doing the same).</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”In another fight a few months…  I cried like there’s no tomorrow. I just wanted to go home. He spooned me. And turned me to him and hugged me to him, saying seeing me cry breaks his heart. And he was sorry”- he reads like a good, empathetic person.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”Finally, I calmed down a bit and told him, ‘You said I’d be a shi*** therapist.’.. he said he… was only talking about empathy. But he was sorry for saying it anyway. I did not believe him. But I said ok anyway because it was 3 in the morning. My face hurt from all the crying”- your hurt feelings are honest. I feel empathy for you for experiencing so much emotional pain. I wish you didn’t and that you wouldn’t suffer this way in the future.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>* All of this does not mean that you will be a bad psychotherapist: first, you are still studying to become one, and this very experience with your boyfriend, which you expressed in this thread, can be part of your (informal) education toward becoming a good or even an excellent therapist. You can become a better therapist for having been empathy-challenged (in regard to your boyfriend) and overcoming it, a better therapist than one who had no such challenge. Overcoming it, you can offer your future clients a valuable, personal, hands-on experience in creating enough space in your anger to allow empathy to shine through and take the lead.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”I’ve acted ‘normal’ since then, but that night haunts me. We got back to our home towns (we’re in an LDR), and I haven’t been able to completely be okay with him. I’m a little distant”- lingering, long-lasting anger.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>”I do not feel safe sharing anything with him now because I don’t know how it will be used against me. Am I overreacting?“- seems to me that he is a decent man, that he is not responsible for most of your anger and that you are reacting to the anger within you that was there before you ever met him, anger that gets triggered.</p>
“he is really sensitive and feels attacked very easily… Sometimes when I share things with him, he acts like I’m overreacting or being too sensitive…I feel he just lacks empathy some times. And all this is draining for me”- you are both sensitive people, both having a problem with anger (it’s a problematic emotion for so many). Therefore, the two of you have to stop the WAR and sign a peace treaty: NO ATTACKS, no getting even, no lashing out. Take that Pause (see the NPARR  strategy I suggested to you in this thread)

“When he’s calmed down and vented after a fight, he does sincerely apologize for whatever I felt bad about and admits it was not cool of him to do so. He even asked me to let him know if I think he’s being abusive any time”- (1) he is a good, empathetic, conscientious person, best I can tell. (2) better not calm down after a fight, but before a fight.

“Usually after we fight, once we calm down, we are able to have an objective conversation about it, where we share what we felt. No judgments. No attacking. It’s an open space.”- it’s about (and it can be done) calming down, and when calm-enough, then have an objective conversation, no judgment, not attacking.. have that conversation before you fight, and a fight will be prevented.

“It does annoy me sometimes that he jumps straight to a break-up when we’re having a fight and have asked him that. Why he has to jump to a break-up the moment things get a little heated“- because things don’t get “a little” heated, not for him and not for you; things get heated a lot, and when that happens,  he feels cornered, powerless, and he needs a way out, a way to exert some power. Talking about/ threatening a breakup has been his way to get a sense of power/ a way out.

It shouldn’t be about how he (and you)  fighting differently.. it should be about the two of you not fighting at all. There’s a way to talk about and resolving things without fighting.

“He is actually a generous and very kind person. And he loves me very much and hurting me is the last thing he wants to do. That I know. And do not doubt one bit.”- you said it, but you doubt all of this when you get angry, don’t you?

“I agree. It feels like I am carrying hurt and resentment from past issues. And I think it seeps into current issues“-I agree.
<p class=”ContentPasted26”>In the beginning and toward the end of your original post, you wrote: “My boyfriend got a little angry and was sort of scolding me… I want to talk about all this with him.. How he didn’t have to scold me..“. In a following post: “He’d already been scolding me since over an hour”.</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>On 1-21-2021 (interesting date), you wrote in another thread: “Growing up, I did get scolded a lot, sometimes for doing things that weren’t even wrong… I was always terrified of my mother and was afraid of her scolds…  I was her emotional punchbag: She would return from work after having a bad day and immediately start scolding me for something as silly as my bag being on the couch… I would always wonder what I did wrong for her to hate me so. My therapist had recommended that I… record her scolding sessions and show her that this is not okay… I finally managed to tell her that her scolding me for the silliest reasons is not okay”-</p>
<p class=”ContentPasted26″>- it is not far fetched to think that you are re-experiencing your mother’s scoldings in the context of your relationship with your boyfriend.. inaccurately projecting her into him.</p>
You wrote to me, here on this thread: “I appreciate your insights, but respectfully, I do not think my feelings towards my mom are affecting things in this case“-

– in this case, you are dealing with a person who “is actually a generous and very kind person. And he loves me very much and hurting me is the last thing he wants to do. That I know. And do not doubt one bit“. In the previous, decades-long case (growing up with your mother),  you were dealing with a person who was not a kind and loving person.. to you. I looked for where you mentioned that your mother is, or was kind or loving to you,  and I didn’t find any such place.

“I’m not sure I want to be in a relationship where I’m scared of sharing anything with my partner because he may just use it to hurt me.”- replace “partner” with parent… and you get where the majority of your fear and anger is coming from.

Back in 1-21-21, you shared: “my heart starts beating really fast when she yells“- it’s this habit of fear and anger, the two emotions involved with the heart beating really fast, that gets triggered in the context of your relationship with your boyfriend.

“She seemed to be mad at me for something or the other“- a mother’s (a parent’s) anger, when uncontrolled, is a scary thing for a child, particularly scary because a child needs her mother to  PROTECT her. What kind of protection will a person who’s angry at you going to provide..?! I mean, whose there to protect you from her anger?!

“Even though I hate her, I love her, and I kind of not like it if someone spoke ill of her. I am protective that way… It is confusing, my emotions for her. Makes me laugh sometimes“-  the legacy she left in your life, is your heart beating really fast (easily triggered and intense, prolonged fear an anger). Naturally, you felt angry at her, but the mix of love and anger confuses you.

Like you, I feel (still) a mix of love and hate (anger) for my mother. It used to bother me a lot, when I found myself.. forgetting to be angry at her, and instead, feeling empathy and affection for her. I have learned, relatively recently, to not be disturbed by this mix of love and anger. They co-exist. When I think of her affectionately though, it is never in the context of how she treated me (good or bad). I feel empathy and affection for her only in contexts in which I am not part, like when remembering her interacting with other people. Or how she suffered in contexts not related to me.

I have no memory of a loving interaction with her, not a single one. The nature and longevity of her abuse of me, the shaming was worst, the hitting was bad.. I can’t respond in any other way to (the memory of) her touch but to cringe. It’s overwhelming to think how I was stuck in this, with her, and survived it. The emotional turmoil was intense and prolonged. So much so, that every single hour, every single day, my muscles twitch (motor and vocal tics), ever since I was 5 or 6 (I was told, I don’t remember). It’s my heart beating very fast and my muscles ..running away but having no where to go, no shelter, no refuge.

If you were my mother, reading this post, you would attack me big time, there would be figurative blood coming at me from the screen, her shaming, condemning, crushing words would be hitting me like swords, piercing the core of me. My heart is beating fast writing these words, I felt dizzy just now and had to stop. My mother is not the same as yours, but they have something in common: great anger directed at their daughters. Like yours, mine also yelled at me and gave me the cold treatment following each rage attack. Your mother was probably not as vicious as mine when it comes to SHAMING, but what she did to you was bad enough.

“While I understand how she has affected me, being mad at her doesn’t help me or us at all. I’m all she has, and vice versa too“- I hope that she is not all you have, or all that you can have. I hope that your love for her is not keeping love out of your life.

“I guess. So yeah, things have been slightly better since I told her how she affects me. She has been trying to change“- changing enough to love you? Or has she changed enough to get along with you?

This is the earth shaking realization that I had in regard to my mother: I loved her; she didn’t love me back. I would never shame her or hit her and delight in her pain (my mother had a small smile on her face when she saw me hurt). It was a one-sided love, and love for me is never coming from her. It would have been a dream come true to have her love, to experience it.. but it was not to be. You know how people go through romantic breakups, this is similar, but it’s the first heart breaking experience and it lasted for too long. It’s truly a heartbreak, and better complete the process of that mix of hate and love, with accepting that love is not coming from her. You then get to turn around and look for it elsewhere, look for it where it’s possible, in a person who is generous and very kind person… and hurting me is the last thing he wants to do.

anita

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