Dear Liz:

You are welcome “he now is honestly my home and my safe space… I also have depression, anxiety and OCD, where I struggle with a lot of intrusive thoughts on a daily basis especially about my relationship… 10 days into our relationship… (an ex) flirted, and I kind of reciprocated at the time. I also put my hand on his leg… I am deeply filled with regret... My OCD makes things feel a lot more detrimental than what they actually are“-

– Your boyfriend is now your safe place, and that is wonderful, but I am guessing that like me, you didn’t grow up in a safe place, a safe home. As a result, you’ve suffered depression, anxiety and OCD,  like me.

When you grow up scared on an ongoing basis (not all the time, but.. too often), the fear does things to the brain, it unsettles the brain, it makes it jittery. The jittery brain is looking for signs of the next danger. An example of what a child perceives as danger: parents yelling at each other, fighting.

When the child hears her parents talking, and then one of them gets a bit loud, the child’s brain hears.. not a bit loud, but a lot loud, and gets scared that a fight is about to occur. Next, the child either hides, or does something the child to prevent a fight. For example, the child will run to the louder parent and say I love you! Or something like that, so to distract and calm the louder parent and.. prevent a fight.

Fast forward, the scared, anxious child is now an adult (Liz) and has a wonderful boyfriend, but she feels that still, as always, something is wrong, and she is looking for signs of danger, signs that something bad is about to happen (a breakup, I am guessing), and the sign you found is the memory of you kind- of flirting back with a guy very early on in the relationship.

Objectively there is no danger in what happened (unless you tell your boyfriend and he responds unreasonably) and it’s a memory of nothing much, but subjectively it feels more detrimental than (it is). Just as in my example, when one parent’s voice gets a bit louder, in the anxious child’s brain, it sounds way louder than it is.

I remember that growing up, in moments when I noticed that I was feeling unusually good/ safe, I got alarmed, as in thinking: oh, oh, I forgot for a moment that something is wrong, that something bad is about to happen, and I am not prepared!

I would like to read if you relate to what I shared here and to what extent, before I continue.

anita

5 months and a day.

anita

Thank you, Adrianne, tomorrow then!

anita

Dear Dena:

You are welcome!

“I guess my biggest struggle is knowing how not to connect everything back to my childhood. For example if a friend is giving me mixed signals or I feel excluded… I also struggle to know peoples trues intentions. I often get disrespected or mistreated by others in small subtle ways and only now I’m learning to call them out on it but then if they’re super apologetic I almost feel bad that I took it personally and go right back to having no boundaries??“-

– (1) I apply what I call The NPARR Strategy. Here is how it may help you: when you Notice that you feel excluded, or otherwise disrespected or mistreated, Pause (pause the rumination about it, pause before saying or doing anything), Adress the situation: was I really excluded, disrespected or mistreated in the particular current situation? Is there a different way to look at/ interpret the situation? Is there a situational problem that requires a solution, or is the problem inaccurate thinking on my part? etc., Next, Respond- or- not (say, type put or do something.. or not), and lastly Redirect: move your attention elsewhere, and whenever possible, redirect judgment to empathy, for yourself, and when appropriate, for others as well.

If you try the above (or you already tried something similar), please let me know how it goes for you.

(2) Whenever possible, ask people about their intentions when they say (or do) this or that. Because not all apologies are sincere, or mean that the person thinks that he/ she did anything wrong, better ask an apologizing person, what it is that he/ she is apologizing for.

Closing this post at 4:25 am, your time.

anita

Dear Adrianne:

In this post, I will be thinking as I type, re-reading and responding to much of what you shared starting with your original post:

1st, original post: “One time she told me it bothers her that we talk a lot, meaning she feels like she texts me too much and that she would prefer to spend this time with a boyfriend“- this sentence still puzzles me, and it puzzled me from the moment I read it.

Your response to the above quote (the sentence that follows the above): “I said it was okay for me, I didn’t mind talking to her often“- it reads like your understanding of what she said was that she felt like a burden to you, that she cared about your well-being: not wanting to take too much (time, energy) from you.

My problem in understanding this is why did she say in the same sentence that she would prefer spending this time with a boyfriend?  Not with another, or other girlfriends (so to ease the burden on you), but with a boy friend.

“She kept looking for a boyfriend. She met one and since then she stopped talking to me almost entirely. First she started texting me her photos with him like everyday, those photos were almost identical: them at the restaurant, them at the mountains, close ups of him and her. After two weeks together she started talking about them getting married, kids, having graves together after they die, this sort of things“- it could be that she sent you the photos and talked to you about them getting married etc., because she was (like you suggested as a possibility) that she was jealous of you for being in a relationship while for a long time, she was not.

It is possible (I thought about this yesterday), that since you and her share the same coworker, that there was some gossip going around, and he/ she told her that you said something to the effect of her taking too much of your time/ others’ time because she can’t get a boyfriend. It’s possible that she’s been reacting not to something you said to her, but to something someone else said.. that you said.

It is also possible that, in her mind, the friendship with you was too close, as in a romantic kind of close, and in sending you the photos etc., she was trying to say: I am heterosexual!

Maybe she felt some kind of a romantic attraction to you; maybe she felt that you felt a romantic attraction to her. Maybe both. And it troubled her.. maybe.

“One time I got a surprise package and. it turned out it was a gift from her on my birthday. I was happy and very surprised but when I texted her to thank her she did not respond until next day..“- I am thinking romantic at this point, but of course, I don’t know.

“It feels like I let people too close sometimes and they use me when they are lonely, they have some emotional needs and then when they don’t need me anymore they abandon me. That’s how I feel because It has happened before. Looking at other people’s friendships I noticed that mine are perhaps too close, too intense, talking everyday, being very codependent sometimes and it burns out after.“- this is amazing: when  I typed earlier in this post: “It is also possible that, in her mind, the friendship with you was too close”, it was before I read this paragraph, and although I read it yesterday, I didn’t remember your words “too close“).

From the above quoted paragraph: “It feels like I let people too close sometimes… Looking at other people’s friendships I noticed that mine are perhaps too close, too intense“- I am not suggesting that your friendships carry a romantic or sexual tones, not at all. What I am saying is that for some people, maybe for a lot of people, “too close” and “too intense” connects (in their minds) to romantic and sexual. Maybe that’s what happened in her mind, which would make the sentence that puzzled me, no longer puzzling.

2nd post: “She just stopped communicating. And I’m not talking about prioritizing a partner/not having enough time for friends. Texting someone ‘hi, how are you’ is 15 seconds and sending couple of messages while she is at work, not with her boyfriend, is not something she cannot do“- maybe, in her mind, sending you a message is like cheating on her boyfriend. Maybe sending you a message makes her feel discomfort regarding her romantic/ sexual orientation mix.

3rd Post: “We work home office and We have this online chat for us and our other coworker and we used to shared jokes etc. everyday things, she used to be very active there and now she takes a day or two to respond, sometimes she never does“- if she chats with you, she has to chat with the other coworker; if she chats with the other coworker, she has to chat with you. It’s a group chat.

4th post: “But the way she phrased it, it seemed like she.. resented me. But for what? For needing to talk to me? For having some emotional needs that perhaps I fulfilled by listening her talking about her day?“-

– maybe the emotional needs that perhaps you fulfilled were- in her mind- of the romantic kind. As you can see, I am getting more and more sold on my theory of her same-sex feelings in regard to you. Maybe I am so focused on this theory, at this point, that I don’t see other possibilities, so I’ll try to think of other possibilities.

Here is another possibility: at one point onward, she projected into you someone else, someone from her earlier life, someone she had ongoing conflict with and was angry with.. because you reminded her of that person. It is very common for this to happen and many people suffer because of similar inaccurate projections.

“I know I sometimes talked about my boyfriend, or maybe ‘mentioned’ is a better word, but not in a ‘I’m in a relationship, and you’re not’ kind of way, but more like.. if I was texting her and he asked me to go shopping with him I would text her: “okay we’re going shopping, talk to you later, bye’… We are together 10 years and it’s kind of.. nothing exciting anymore haha, I hope you know what I mean. So it is really surprising to me now thinking that she could envy me or something“-

– I understand the “nothing exciting anymore“, and I understand a person’s needs to connect emotionally with people who are not one’s partner, like your need to connect with the friend your thread is about. I think it’s normal and natural.

“Sending me those photos with him was for sure a bit weird, since a) I never did that with my boyfriend so it wasn’t like our thing to do b) all those photos, as I already said were almost identical. Them sitting in the same position, smiling and hugging… I kept adding the heart emojis and that’s all“- oh, oh, heart emojis? You know that this is connecting to my theory or a romantic interest/ confusion.

“Whenever I mentioned something like ‘omg my boyfriend is getting on my nerves’ or something, she would ignore the topic. Like, did not even ask additional questions. Sometimes I felt like she did not want to touch this topic“- didn’t want to touch the topic of your boyfriend because part of her wanted to be your boyfriend..?

“I am not sure, maybe I am wrong“- ditto: maybe I am wrong (theory).

“maybe it sounds petty and childish but I always added a heart emojis to her dating life stories (I think it’s nice and shows support) but she rarely did. Often it was a ‘thumbs up emoji’ or ‘shocked face’“- the fit between my theory and what you share is getting tighter and tighter: you meant friendly heart emojis; she saw romantic heart emojis, and for that reason, she couldn’t send you heart emojis back..?

“It’s the small things sometimes that we see. Sometimes that isn’t said but it’s shown. Would you agree?“- yes, I agree.

“But the fact that she doesn’t even say hello to us, for weeks, doesn’t respond to silly jokes like she used to in the past, tells me there is something more to it.”– well, the something-more-to-it may be my theory.

I will close this long post with this: you seem to be a caring person, and seems to me that this friendship has been troubled- not because of any wrongdoing on your part- but because of some gossip material that you don’t know about, and/ or because of an inaccurate projection that she has made, and/ or because of a romantic and/ or sexual confusion and conflict on her part, and/ or some other trouble within her. Lots and lots of people are troubled in all kinds of ways.

anita

Dear Bhavana:

You are welcome. I am wondering: did his Christian family know about their son’s 7-year-long relationship with you (being from a Hindu family) for a long time, and approved of it (or at least didn’t disapprove of it) because their son was too young to marry.. then disapproved of the relationship because he is of marriage-age and they want him to be available for a Christian woman?

I also wonder (and of course, you don’t have to answer this or any of my questions) if you and now ex, talked about his family’s possible disapproval of a marriage anytime during the long relationship..?

anita

Dear Shandrea:

You did inspire me, you do inspire me: your inner strength, your resilience, your dedication to your children (both), your self-respect, knowing what’s right and what’s wrong and choosing to do what’s right and.. what I just typed came quickly to me, I typed as quickly as the thought went through my mind.

And thank you for being inspired by me (I am smiling right now because of you)!

anita

You are very welcome, Adrianne, and thank you!

anita