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anitaParticipantEdit: (impossible) perfection.
anitaParticipantHi again, SereneWolf:
It’s okay if you don’t feel like answering my 2 questions from my first reply, or if you’re not in the mood for answering any questions at all 🙂
I’d like to share with you my own experience with starting a new chapter, while re-experiencing the same old, same old uncertainties.
Every time I decided on starting a new chapter ( starting as a teenager), I believed that it was possible for me to get rid of the feelings that kept me stuck in the old chapter.
Believing that felt euphoric for a while, but the old feelings returned and I found myself back in the old chapter, more and more discouraged 😔
What finally made it possible for me to move on to a new chapter has been to comit myself not to (impossible) erfection but to (possible) learning.
The last 3 words in your original post are “trust in myself.”-
I used to be consumed with self- doubt (old chapter). But not anymore.
Every single day I repeat the same words (a mantra, I think it is), the ending of it says exactly this:
“I redirect self- doubt and distrust in my own perceptions, evaluations, emotions and worth=> to trust in my own perceptions, evaluations, emotions and worth-
“Not because I’m perfect or could ever be, but because I’m learning.”
If any of this speaks to you, please let me know.
🌿 Anita
anitaParticipantGood Sat Morning, Confused 🌅
Confused: “I feel like I am with a ‘sheep with no will'”- I looked it up: it means a person who doesn’t initiate, doesn’t express preferences, and simply goes along with whatever someone else says.
* This describes 100% the way I used to be.
Confused: “a passive person that expects 100% from me every time… Why would she feel that?… I think it’s fear of rejection that stalls her mostly”-
Fear‑based passivity is when someone avoids initiating, expressing preferences, or showing desire because doing so feels dangerous — not physically, but emotionally.
It develops when a person has learned that speaking up leads to rejection, criticism, or being ignored, so they protect themselves by staying quiet and letting others lead. Over time, this becomes a habit: they wait for the other person to initiate so they never have to risk being rejected.
Habits are hard to break, (and deep childhood conditioning is even harder to break- see below), this is why she briefly tried to be more active and then slipped back into avoidant passivity once fear resurfaced.
By avoidant passivity, I mean trying to avoid rejection, criticism, being judged, or conflict.
This kind of passivity almost always starts in childhood, and not because the child is naturally quiet, but because the environment teaches them that expressing themselves is unsafe. If a child’s preferences were dismissed, or if showing desire brought conflict, they develop fear‑based passivity as a survival strategy.
By adulthood, it looks like “old‑fashioned values” — but underneath, it’s the same childhood pattern of avoiding vulnerability.
Childhood conditioning toward passivity means the child learns, over many years, that not acting is safer than acting — and that silence protects them better than expression.
* For me, Confused, this explains things better than anything else:
When someone grows up with childhood conditioning toward passivity, they learn to hold in their feelings, needs, and frustrations because expressing them feels unsafe. But holding things in doesn’t make the feelings disappear — it makes them accumulate. Over time, the pressure builds until it bursts out in a sudden, disproportionate emotional reaction. That’s why a person who is normally quiet, deferential, or conflict‑avoidant can suddenly erupt with rage, harsh labels, or extreme statements like calling you a “narcissistic ass****.” The explosions are the release of months or years of unspoken fear, insecurity, and resentment.
The passivity protects her until she feels overwhelmed, and then the emotional system flips into fight‑mode because she has no middle ground.
What thinks Confused?
🤔 Anita
anitaParticipantOne more thing, SereneWolf:
I want to say that I see you’re starting fresh, and I respect that. Sometimes clearing the slate makes it easier to hear yourself without all the old noise.
I’m glad you’re here.
Anita
anitaParticipantWelcome back, SereneWolf 🙂
I thought you might be coming back as SWolf 🙂
I think that what you need here, in tiny buddha, is less analysis and more emotional presence: someone (or someones) to truly listen.
I can’t think of a more worthy quest than to live with less fear and more trust in oneself.
I wonder, how does the fear feel in your body?
And moments of trust in yourself, how do those feel?
🤔 Anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
Hmm.. maybe she thinks that a man should pursue the woman and pay for everything?
Maybe she feels ‘unloved’ if she has to spend money in a relationship.
What do U think?
(Trying to understand what drives.. or stalls her).
🤔 Anita
anitaParticipantHey Dear Confused 🙂
“The first thing I’m gonna clarify before we begin talking… is that I’m not here to prove myself innocent, we’re here to open up about what bothered us and feel heard”- 👍👍👍
Sincerely, Confused, I am impressed with you!
.. I’ll b Back in a moment
August 21, 2026 at 11:35 am in reply to: When family dynamics you grew up with become unacceptable in adulthood #460531anitaParticipantGood late morning, about-to-become-mom, Nea 🙂
“I’m realizing how difficult it has become for me to be extending empathy for someone who has never really changed”-
A few years ago, and I shared about it somewhere in these forums, I had an image of a plant situated in a dry, arid ground, so its roots keep growing longer and longer, trying to reach water.
Similar to a child, situated in an empathy-arid home, extending more and more empathy toward the unempathetic parent, trying to reach his or her heart.
💛 Anita
August 21, 2026 at 11:16 am in reply to: Realizing the ways my recent ex hurt me–how do I avoid growing resentment? #460530anitaParticipantGood morning, Mitch:
I’m back to your thread 8 days after you started it, just to say that your resentment is valid, meaning, it has a purpose-
To motivate you to act in ways that not only honor the other person’s needs, but also your own,
To shift, however gradually, from self- sacrifice, or self- erasure to ===> self- respect and assertion.
You matter no less than any other person!
So, don’t try to get rid of your anger. Instead, listen to its message. Once its message is delivered and actualized, it will naturally weaken and eventually be gone
✨️✨️✨️ Anita
August 20, 2026 at 9:59 pm in reply to: When family dynamics you grew up with become unacceptable in adulthood #460528anitaParticipantBack to the quote above, “With family you can yell, swear, or behave however you want.”-
Before continuing the quote, look at what he said right above:
He’s celebrating his freedom to yell, swear and behave however he wants with family, with immediate family: wife and children.. those living “under his roof”.
Continued: “Whereas you have to control yourself with outsiders”-
He doesn’t like not having the freedom to yell, swear and behave however he wants with outsiders.
I suppose his immediate/ living-under-his-roof family provides him with something he can’t get elsewhere and he’s grateful for that.
He’s almost saying: ‘You’re providing me with the opportunity to do what I need to do: yell, swear, and behave however I want, thank you!’
And if he is to consider your husband as an insider, as an immediate family member (rather than extended family member or a non- family outsider), your husband too needs to provide your father with that precious opportunity to yell, swear, and behave however he wants.
Not at all times, only when he needs to.
Does this resonate?
🤔 Anita
anitaParticipantHey 🙂 Confused:
The following made me smile:
“But guess what? She has contradictions too.”-
That’s Confused standing up for himself 👍 👏 👍
I have no doubt that she’s not a bad person, just a person with an unhealed emotional wound, a wound that took place way before she knew you even existed.
So, there’re all the good times you had with her on one hand, and on the other- you having to prove that you’re not a liar.. why, that’s unfair to you! (It makes me 🤬)
I know you for how many pages? I’m not sure, a 100, 8 months? I know that you are not a liar and that you shouldn’t be treated as if you were one.
“Also times that I violated her boundaries”- did she specify?
🤔 Anita
August 20, 2026 at 2:29 pm in reply to: When family dynamics you grew up with become unacceptable in adulthood #460524anitaParticipantGood afternoon, Nea:
I will reply further in the evening or later tonight, but for now, as I read the following:
“Another thing he has always said is that with family you can yell, swear, or behave however you want because ‘they’re family,’ whereas you have to control yourself with outsiders. I’ve never understood that logic.”-
I immediately remembered that one time my mother told me (translated): “You think that I don’t know that I am wrong (in regard to hitting or shaming me), but what are you going to do? You have nowhere to go”
(That was the only time she ever mentioned being or doing anything wrong).
Anita
August 20, 2026 at 1:09 pm in reply to: When family dynamics you grew up with become unacceptable in adulthood #460522anitaParticipantNea, I want to add that you don’t have to adopt my view — you get to decide what’s true for yourself and move at your own pace 🙂
August 20, 2026 at 11:38 am in reply to: When family dynamics you grew up with become unacceptable in adulthood #460521anitaParticipantGood late morning, Nea:
“I’m trying to hold both things at once: perhaps my husband could have disengaged earlier… while also recognizing that continuing to speak does not justify what happened afterward”.
* What happened afterward: “being sworn at, called names, humiliated, or physically intimidated.”
In most contexts, it makes sense to see the fault on both sides and to share responsibility for what went wrong. Problem here is that there’s no shared responsibility. Your husband did nothing wrong.
He didn’t disengage earlier because he was trying to explain himself, trying to make your father understand, rightfully trying to protect the truth and his dignity.
Like I said before, sometimes things truly are black and white.
Giving the perpetrator legitimacy, equal understanding, or empathy in the context of them initiating and proceeding with the perpetration of abusive acts against their victim (swearing, calling names, etc.), is doing injustice to the victim.
So, no, I don’t think that distinction is fair.
Anita
anitaParticipantGood morning, Dear Confused:
You wrote in regard to her senditivity to you mentioning an ex (nostalgically or not),
“This is up to me to adapt to”-
I agree. I think that it’s reasonable for you to adapt to this very common sensitivity. I’d dare say that women in general do not like their partners talking about exes.
On the other hand, it would not be reasonable for you to adapt to “guilty until proven innocent”- that would be a miserable way to live.
Being repeatedly accused for not saying things just the ‘right’ or perfect way, in her mind, and having to defend yourself again and again.. and again, can easily lead to emotional shutdowns.
Am I understanding correctly: she keeps telling you how much your lie has hurt her, you keep explaining and apologizing, and she keeps saying or implying that your explanations and apologies don’t make any difference to her,
And she’s saying there’s more than that one lie, that there’re more inconsistencies in what you told her in the past that she thinks may be lies?
🤔 Anita
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