Dear Seaturtle:

You are welcome, and thank you for your quick reply. If I was ever to publish a book about my life, the title would be UNSEEN. It’s an everyday experience for me still: for example, I was worried that you will not SEE my first post to you because of possible double posting, and when I saw your reply, I felt relieved. At the end of my first post I asked you, paraphrased, if you wanted to SEE more of my thoughts before I offered more.

Like you, are care very much about others feeling unseen. For over 7 years when I replied to members (under a different account, I answered EVERYONE and as quickly as possible, and if I couldn’t answer at length, I notified members that I will get back to them in X hours, not wanting anyone to feel ignored, left out.. unseen/ unheard.

The pain of growing up unseen is quite amazing in its intensity and persistence.

For a young child, a parent is like a mirror facing the child. The child can’t see herself in any other medium. In the mirror my mother presented to me there were huge areas of darkness, so I couldn’t see the ABC about me. And then, similar to your father in suggesting that you didn’t care about him, my mother suggested the same, and she went on long tirades about how- not only did I not care about her- but that I wanted to hurt her feelings, that I made elaborate plans to hurt her, etc. All untrue, paranoid-like.

She was my mirror and her presenting me as BAD, when I was not.. was a different kind of darkness in that mirror.

I will soon be away from the computer for the rest of the day. We can talk more about this here on your thread over days, weeks.. or longer, for however long you would like. Take care!

* I just noticed that you posted again. I will answer your question for me (and any more that you may add) Sat morning, in about 20 hours from now.

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

What got my attention early on when reading your very intelligent (if I my say so) posts in your two threads, is what I see as the core of your difficulties in your relationship with your boyfriend of two years. Here it is (I am adding the boldface feature):

“I do not know if he loves me for me…… He often says ‘love is a choice’ and I get that and agree to an extent but I’m like ‘ok but what do you love about my personality? like me specifically apart from others… I don’t feel seen… I am not sure he  sees what makes me special as opposed to another girl… I want him to tell me he loves things about me that make me ME. I want to feel like he sees me… I want him to tell me..  anything that is validating to who I truly am… I want to explode and just be like “DO YOU SEE ME“-

– Having read all the positives you indicated about your boyfriend and the relationship with him, and before reading anything about your childhood and parents, it was clear to me that you grew up UNSEEN, and what you experience with your boyfriend (evident in the quote above) is the re-activation of your unseen childhood experience.

I grew up severely unseen myself, and when I was your age and kind-of dated, I was OBSESED with a man’s previous girlfriends and had to know what’s different about me, what does he like about ME that’s different from what he liked about THEM. I felt like I was.. not appreciated for anything significant that’s special, or unique about me. I didn’t want to be- in the guy’s mind (or in my own mind) just another someone, or.. no one.

I grew up with my mother (father was gone when I was five or six), and .. well, I was one of the loneliest girls on the planet, isolated from the inside.. I’ll try to explain: UNSEEN (with capital letters, as in to the extreme), there was an emptiness within me, a heavy, dark emptiness. To be seen would have been like the person seeing me turning on the lights in that darkness, so that I could see myself. The darkness within made me a stranger to myself. I didn’t know who/ what I truly was, so as a young woman I demanded that a guy will give me the answer: what’s different about me from this or that girl that you dated before.. What’s special about me.. Turn on the light in my darkness-within and tell me what you see..?!

What a relief it was/ is, decades later, to start seeing ME.  Interestingly, the more I see, the less my need to be special, unique, as in different or better than others.

Back to you. I didn’t read your childhood experience although I saw that you mentioned it. I will now read..:

“I didn’t receive unconditional love from my father… If I wasn’t doing things to his standards, I received a very cold version of him, versus his warm personality when I was doing something he defined as efficient and effective… My mom..  didn’t allow me to suffer when I was growing up…  I mentioned a fear of being/becoming a narcissist. I believe both my parents are on this spectrum. My mom cheated on my dad several times, she slept with a guy I was supposed to go on a date with… My mom hurt him (dad) so bad…  I started to recall how emotionally absent my dad had been growing up.. emotionally abandoned… My moms over coddling makes it hard for me to be uncomfortable, and I had to learn to deal with my own emotions later in life which, I still feel control me at times… He (father) was very critical, I left a dish in his sink at his house, or left my backpack downstairs, basically left any trace of myself in ‘his’ house, he would get upset… he would list all the ways I had exemplified being ‘ungrateful’ at his house. The shoes by the door, dishes in the sink…  My dad would accuse me of planning my showers around avoiding talking to him… I was a very obedient child, I don’t know why, looking back now I wish I was more rebellious… I was watched like a hawk“-

– you were watched like a hawk, but you were not seen.

Here is what I think your father didn’t see (this is what my mother didn’t see in me): that you LOVED him. If he saw this basic, true, most significant part of who you were as a child, you would have felt seen.

Your empathy (“My mom hurt him so bad“) was with him, but he didn’t see that, did he? Didn’t see how much you cared for him. If he did, he wouldn’t have given you a very cold version of himself when you weren’t doing things to his standards, because he’d know that you loved him no matter what, and when he noticed that you left traces of yourself in his home, like your backpack, instead of thinking something like: this is a backpack and it doesn’t belong here, getting upset; he’d think something to the effect of: this is my  daughter’s backpack.. a trace of her love, and she belongs here.

There is more that I can say, but would first like to know what you think about what I wrote here and if more of my input is welcomed..?

anita

Dear ME:

We communicated a little back in February 2017. At the time, you lived in a 3-bedroom home with your husband and two children, one of whom is your current 19-year-old son, then 13-years-old. A year before (Aug 2016), your husband’s parents and brother moved in with you for two months, a total of 7 people in a small home. This is what you wrote back in regard to your mother-in-law having lived in your home: “I did not realize how bad of an alcoholic she was. After a couple of days she got super drunk got in my son’s face (while hubby was here) proceeded to tell him how he’s not right and there is something wrong with him… More than a few times she would call me a sl*t, cu*t, and bi*ch, (pretty much every time she drank) this would happen in front of my children…disturbing my kids emotionally“.

At one time, this mother-in-law from hell (my characterization) physically assaulted you in front of your children, and all through, your husband supported.. not his wife or his children, but his mother, fighting with you: “She started yelling at me and them and then started shoving me… I told my kids to lock the door and tell the police she was hitting me… the kids jumped out the window and ran across the street…  Both of my kids are in counseling due to the grandma and fighting in the home…  My husband gets mad and yells at me when I say I don’t want my kids around her.. My kids are both now in counseling to help with all the trauma this has all caused. I am the one taking them and are there for them when they need to talk… I feel like I’m walking on egg shells to keep my kids from hearing the fighting“.

Fast forward 6 years and 8 months, your traumatized 13 year-old son is now 19,  met a girl about three years ago (at 16) while online gaming, then met her in-person (at 18), and a year later, three months ago, he moved out of your home and into his girlfriend’s parents’ home 13 hours away and he is  “not talking to his friends, his family, even his own sister now. And every time anyone has talked to him on the phone since he left, the girlfriend is always there, so no one can have a real conversation with him. He isn’t acting normal at all, and we miss him very much . Please help!!! “-

-I am sorry about the pain you are experiencing. You went through a lot of difficult times and this is one of these times.

I was wondering: it possible that your son is having a better life in his girlfriend’s parents’ home.. away from the fighting between you and your husband (if it’s been going on before he left 3 months ago), or away from the bad feeling left in the home after all the fighting of the past?

If his move and isolation from his family is good for him, it’d make you feel better about it, wouldn’t it?

anita

Dear Friend Shookie: I am looking forward to read and reply to you Fri morning.

anita

Dear Eva:

Thank you, Eva, you have a beautiful heart!

I get scared of people even when they are not scary simply because I see my mother in others and because there was no one to help me while I was growing up (growing in, really), no one to counter her effect. People in general were not a source of help or comfort for me as a child; often- a source of distress.

Dear Stacy:

“I was born and am still poverty level, he was born upper middle class.. I was always so embarrassed of my parents… she (your mother) is physically and financially incapable of a lot of things.. I absolutely think that I found refuge in my ex, and even his parents when they met me and accepted and loved me…  It’s, ‘Oh this rich family accepts me and thinks I’m good enough for them, and this guy from this impressive upbringing.. who claims to love me so much thinks I’M impressive? Then I’ve won.’… As soon as I come home from my job, I see my mom sitting on the couch all day long in pain and self-wallowing, and the septic tank repair bill or some other stressful and real life issue constantly plaguing us” (Sept 2023)-

– as a little girl, like any other child, you NEEDED capable parents, capable and  in charge, so that you had an adult to rely on. For the purpose of being able to grow up and develop, both physically and emotionally, to gradually claim a life of your own, you needed to feel safe and secure with capable parents.  Like any other child, you needed to think highly of your parents,  to be proud of them, to feel that they are strong where you are weak.   You never had that, not as a little girl, not as a teenager, not in your 20s, and still not at 31. And so, you are still that little girl living at home, still feeling too insecure to venture outside of your family of origin, claiming a life of your own.

About a year ago, you thought that maybe you found the.. adults-in-charge in this man and his PhD, upper middle class parents. He claimed that he loved you, but you were not sure, and you needed to know because love is a necessary ingredient in the home you NEED, so you investigated, asking him questions, looking for the answer in every thing he ever said or did, including in what he liked online. studying his social media activity, dissecting his past before he met you, looking for the answer to the question: do you love me? am I a woman of value to you?

“He said, ‘I just feel like you’re always looking for the damning evidence to prove that I’m a bad guy..”…I definitely put too much weight into every single thing he’s ever said or done while knowing me. Even his past that I’ve tried to dissect… I guess my first actual ‘doable’ step has to be unfollowing my ex. I keep looking for THE evidence to give me peace that I was warranted in my feelings to cause all of this in the first place. But I know that’s not going to happen. He’d have to literally post himself making out with her for me to make me see it, which is something he’d never do” October 11, 2023)-

-I guess you want to know one way or the other: does he love me? Does he not love me? And if the answer is a definite He Does Not Love Me, if you are sure of it- then you can let him go..?

As I see it, the problem- which is NONE of your fault (!) is that you are still little-girl Stacy, still needing a home where you can feel safe in, supported, with capable adults in charge.. you need this so to feel capable-enough of forging your own, independent, grown-up life.

And you feel too guilty to forge your own grown up life when your mother is still a self-wallowing child, incapable of a lot of things. Too guilty to leave her behind, too guilty to become capable yourself, when she is not?

I never felt safe at home growing up, Stacy. I learned that as an adult, it was too late for me to recreate my childhood/ to find capable adults who were willing to parent the adult-me. Healing is never complete, it isn’t for me. Healing is about grieving what you needed so desperately and never had, and then, picking up the pieces and doing your best, finally leaving home, daring to grow up all the way, becoming your own person, living your own life- in spite of the guilt and the fear- one step, one day at a time, with determination and courage.

anita

Dear Tammy87:

I am sorry that you were bullied in your teens, and that your bully- so it seems- never apologized and never offered to make amends to you, such as offering you significant financial compensation.

In your original post you asked: “a) am I being petty?“- absolutely not! Her bullying was not petty, as in having little or no importance or significance (an online definition of petty).

You detailed her bullying in your recent post: “threats of violence- threats of spitting in my face when they see me – throwing objects such as  cigarette lighters in public at me…“- these are significant offenses. I can imagine how scary it was for you back then to experience this, and how the effects still linger currently.

“b) should I accept this and continue the friendship?“- my answer: no. You say that the bully is still a bully (and she offered no amends to you), so your… former best friend is a friend and supporter of an unrepentant bully..

“c) should I just cut off contact and don’t meet again?“- yes. Don’t meet unrepentant, active bullies and their supporters.

“d) should I risk drama and just tell her how I feel about it…?…I have distanced myself from this friend considerably and see them maybe twice a year now…I feel she would gossip and talk about it to other people“- I wouldn’t share anything with your former friend any more than I’d share with the bully herself. I’d share nothing with either one.. unless, maybe if the bully apologizes to you and offer to make significant amends for her significant offenses against you.

anita