Oh and L really is a good person! Better than me in a lot of ways.

Today, having the chance to articulate my story/feelings and talk about them with people who aren’t involved in some way, or that I have other issues with, is helping me to organise my thoughts and think clearly about my feelings/what I want. I’ve been meditating since my last post and reading/re-reading you guys’ advice. Formulating my answers has been a real eye opener for me, and even though I see that I’m still stuck in the past and I’m much more broken than I thought. It’s been theraputic and I can feel myself getting better and clearer the more I write.

Firstly I’m going through major problems recently, health and family issues. Including some horrible behavior towards me and L by my family. I should have realised that they could contribute to my anger and insecurities resurfacing now. L has supported me emotionally and financially during this time, as I have done for her in the past, but things have definitely put a strain on our relationship. And anger has been a big part of my family stuff.

The more I think clearly about everything, I realise that my anger towards both of them (and others) is rooted not (just) in this thing that happened, but in my past. Although I am angry and hurt that he didn’t tell me after it happened (And about her actions too). The real details maybe don’t justify the strength of my reactions.

When I meditate on things I can think of some times in our childhood when I felt so angry towards O, but when I remember the details he didn’t actually do anything wrong (those times). O has been a bully growing up (he’s also been protective), including physical violence towards me a lot, and we have since fallen out over it, but no doubt my unspoken resentment about L and him was a factor in me deciding to cut him out of my life for a while. I thought my anger at L was because of him and how “bad” he was, but when I think back, my anger at him is maybe also coming from somewhere else. After all, he has been a victim too.

I also realised during meditation that I don’t think I have ever truly forgiven or let anything go my whole life. I tried to think of any small offense I’ve held on to, that I could forgive as practice for bigger things. I can’t think of one. Most things people do I don’t care about at all and I don’t carry it with me. But when I do It’s to my core and I make the hurt a part of me forever.

Maybe I just have lots of unforgivable hurts in my life. But I think I’ve never truly forgiven something that actually hurt me.

I have lived with anger so long I’m not sure what life is like without it. Anger has been my driving emotion forever it seems. As opposed to pain or depression, anger makes me get up and do things. It makes me feel vindicated and I don’t want to give the world the satisfaction of seeing me lie down and die. I see this in the way that I will often be paralysed with a feeling of uselessness and not doing what I want in life, until a big argument or falling out with my girlfriend/family happens. Then I will ride my rage for a few days, doing some of those things that I felt bad about not doing, and feeling a bit better for a while. It’s obviously unhealthy and this seems like the time to address it and try to do things for healthy reasons. For me.

I’d thought I was moving on and healing a bit because I had stopped thinking about my childhood so much, and accepted that I will never have closure from my mother or anyone else. I had put the past behind me and tried to start fresh with my mother. My biological father, who I hated for a long time for never knowing me and hurting my mother, popped up a few months ago and made a half-assed attempt to contact me on social media. I just felt it wasn’t worth my energy/mental health to pursue a relationship when he obviously wasn’t too bothered, and I was fine with that, not angry.

Maybe your right Anita and I should never have come back to try be better with my family because they, far more than L, seem to be sources of trauma and pain even now. And there has been no attempt by them to address the past or heal old wounds. In fact they all seem to be happy to create new ones instead. I am starting to think I should cut my mother, ex step-father and abusive brothers out of my life for the foreseeable future and try to heal myself for good this time.

The path seems to have opened up before me a little. Though I am by no means fine, I can identify courses of action that will make me feel better. Splitting up with L is not one of them at this time. Maybe that’s selfish, but at the start of this attempt at forgiveness/healing I told her explicitly what I was feeling and going through and that it might turn out that we can’t be together. She said she wanted to do anything she could to help me be healthy, even giving me some space and going back to her country if that’s what I needed. But she was adamant she wanted to stay and help if she could. I’ve been communicating my feelings to her every step of the way, and even though I’m sure I’m not easy to be around right now she continues to support me and make an effort to be a positive in my life. I really do love and appreciate her so much!

WOW, I realise I’ve just written a small book so I understand If it’s a bit too much to read through. Thanks so much to Tinybuddha and you all! For being my sounding board and impartial voices amongst the madness of my life.

Thank you.

GL and Kkasxo.

Thanks for reading and leaving your input. I’m going to reply to you both because your points are connected.

I can’t argue that she was free to do as she liked. It’s hard to accept but I have told myself this and I know its true. Your both right that my insecurities about myself and my brother O, plus the fact that it was him who she slept with, have made this into a much bigger deal than it should be. I would definitely not have been as upset if it was anyone else. I have lots of unresolved issues and perhaps L has been an easy target to blame for everything bad I’m feeling, including my anger towards O.

O has made me feel very bad at some times in my life and I’ve found it hard to accept that L would sleep with a person like him. But at the time she hardly spoke English and was just getting to know us both so I can’t really blame her for that. We were just friends with benefits, but I do think she betrayed that friendship by her actions and didn’t show me much respect as a friend. Sure we weren’t exclusive, but my brother? Of course I have made mistakes in my past too which might make people say the same about me… Of course she couldn’t know about my family issues, my past with O, or how it would effect me to this extent. She’s told me O didn’t know about us, that he initiated it and she just went along, so I believe there wasn’t anything malicious in it. I know my actions at the time probably made her more likely to sleep with other people and I hated myself for that a long time after. She told me (about the once) without having to, but I had to push her to get the whole story. Technically she was honest the first time (they only “had sex” once), but it didn’t feel very truthful when I found out the rest. Perhaps she wasn’t obligated to tell me anything but we had promised to be honest with each other so hiding it doesn’t seem right either. At least now I know everything, I can put it where it needs to be and perhaps move on.

I absolutely trust that she’s honest with me these days and I have given up any thoughts of hurting her back. I do know she wants this relationship to work and she’s been amazingly patient and supportive of this process. I actually want to forgive everything (including myself) and stop making her live with my pain and I don’t want to live with it either. Basically I have gone round and round both sides of this in my head for too long and I just want it to stop. What I’m learning as I write these posts is that staying with her or not isn’t the biggest issue for me. I do believe the good outweighs the bad and I want her in my life. When it come down to it, the truth is I should get over it and stay with her, or get over it and let her go. I need to sort my head out, regain confidence and find myself again. Then make decisions from a place of peace.

Thanks for bearing with me through my arguments with myself. It’s helping me so much just to talk about all this and organise my thoughts/feelings.

Anita.

Yes, you have it right that not only alcohol, but drugs and the environment we lived in were big factors in our behavior at the time. We were essentially homeless, moving squat every few weeks/months (sometimes 3 or 4 times in a week) living a totally unstructured lifestyle, and taking recreational drugs/drinking almost every day for years. A pattern which we helped each other to break. She was becoming addicted to ketamine (which I have strong feelings against) when we met, I helped to convince her was unhealthy and destructive even though most of her freinds were taking it and offering it to her. And she made me question the way I would say yes to “fun” drugs/drinking all the time, regardless of weather I should (or even wanted to) in the moment.

Thanks for those points about my brother (I will call him O from now on) and his memory. I also know that when L stopped the second time from going all the way, she told O she had been with me and he said sorry and that he didn’t know we had been together.

I do feel betrayed by my mother. I have for my whole adulthood, although there are some events that really stand out. Why I stopped talking to her is a big question so I’ll try not to write my entire life….When my mother had her first child, she joined a religious cult called “The Family” or “Children of God”. Me and my 8 siblings were split into age groups with lots of other kids and didn’t interact normally as a family. I barely knew them, except O who was grouped with me because we are close in age. We lived a strictly controlled life. EVERYTHING we watched read or listened to was made by or approved by the cult leaders. It was a very sexually charged atmosphere. And children were sexualised by the adults when they barely reached puberty.

Although O and I were fortunately too young to directly experience any sexual abuse ourselves (as far as I remember….I’m not certain), there was physical and psychological abuse. My oldest siblings weren’t so lucky and they have clearly been struggling to live happy lives. In one case the abuse continued from one brother to one of my younger sisters, who later tried to kill herself. I blame my mother for this happening in the first place, for failing to address it properly when she found out at the time, and not ensuring my little sister got the help/support she needed.

My family left the cult when I was 8 yrs old (my oldest sister had run away previously but I didn’t know). So at that tender age I discovered that everything I been taught in my life previously, everything my elders/parents and role models had said was lies. I had to try get over the weird beliefs and find out what was true. Since then my mother has consistently denied any wrongdoing, never even bringing up the past at all. She will say she doesn’t remember traumatic events, or that she “made some mistakes but did her best”, without ever apologising (to me at least). Which makes it extremely difficult to resolve any of our issues.

I had quit secondary school aged 14. A year before getting any qualifications, but just managed to get let into a college as the youngest student there, my mother split up with the man who left the cult with us who we had called dad. She married someone else almost immediately, eloping to Hawaii alone, before moving miles away into a 1 bed apartment with her new husband and my little sister. O was practically on the street already dabbling in heroin and I said I didn’t want to move, but stay in the area and finish college, so she left me with a guy I’d never met, who put me up until I was kicked out of college not long after. I went into homeless shelters and different places at the age of 15. That was when I stopped talking with my mother. Although she did barely maintain contact with a phone call or two per year. I basically had nothing to say to her for a long time.

And just to clarify. we were having casual sex but were not a couple until later. both the times she messed around were during the very start of the casual period.

Thanks.