Dear anita,

I am sorry that all your hard work was lost 🙁 It happened to me before, that I had lost a post, but it must be worse after you had put in so much time and effort to look for the quotes and read my old threads. Still, thank you so much for your help and dedication!

Hopefully you were able to relax a bit afterwards and are feeling better now!

My experience with the dormitory man has hurt me very much. What makes me sad is that this was my first experience with a man. I had really waited for something better. But I had become impatient with myself and was really confused at the time.

His strange way of thinking had affected me too much. But I also want to correct myself. I was wrong in saying that this behaviour is normal in his culture. There, he wouldn’t even be allowed to have premarital sex… I think the problem was this individual. He was even more confused than me! For him, this kind of behaviour was seemingly normal. He had no empathy for me at all… I can get angry when thinking about him. The worst is the hypocrisy! How he expected a virgin bride, when he himself didn’t follow his own rules…

What is true is that I am feeling guilty easily and always. I am now also feeling guilty about K again. Maybe I shouldn’t have met him again. And for looking at his pictures online. And even for something that I didn’t really do: connecting in whatsapp contacts. These thoughts still worry me and cause me anxiety. The thought of hurting another person is so terrible for me, that I try to fix it in every way possible, with bad results for me and the other person.

When I was with the man from the dormitory, I hardly felt any empathy for myself, as I was so focused on not hurting him. It would have been better to help myself, preserve myself. The feeling I had was that I was so worthless, that it doesn’t matter if somebody hurts me, most important thing for me was to not hurt another person. Even if this person treated me like dirt. Once he even did something terrible to me and he even was shocked himself and said “god, what did I do?”. But for me the most important thing was to make him feel better, so I said to him: “it’s o.K., I forgive you.”, even though he had just completely humiliated me and crossed my boundaries.

But I think that I have made progress when it comes to this. I now value myself more.

When it comes to my parents, it is true that I felt like a burden to them during childhood… Even my sister said some time, that she felt like that. And the thought still comes up, when spending time with people. Am I getting on their nerves? Am I annoying them? Hurting them? The thought becomes so horrifying, that I often preferred to avoid social contacts and stuck to myself.

My relationship with my father is complicated. Now we get along better. I am thinking that he is a very lonely and insecure man, even when trying to appear tough to the outside world. I can empathise with him… He must have had it hard himself. I do think that he is a good person at his core, but he is also not the easiest person to deal with…

And during my childhood, he was not treating me so well… His words and actions towards me were often cruel and it has hurt me a lot. Sometimes I think that he saw his bad qualities in me, while he saw his good qualities in my sister? Then maybe this was the reason why he disliked me so much. Once he said to me: “You are a disgusting person that hates herself”. Now I think, that he probably said this to himself, but back then I did not understand and the words hurt me.

Maybe this was why he was so aggressive towards me? Wanting to destroy the bad parts in himself?

As for me, I do think that I often took on opposite positions to my fathers. Definitely when it came to religion, wanting to be open minded… Probably also in the points you listed. To be honest, it doesn’t quite sink in yet. What I can see is that I made my own needs invalid, that I overly focused on my faults, while forgiving everybody easily for theirs. And that this indeed made me sick and was very unhealthy for me.

At least I am becoming more aware of my problems now and am more connected to my own feelings.

During the last days I was also feeling a lot better and I think it is also thanks to communicating with you. It feels good that you are listening to me and that I am allowed to express my worries here.

Today I had quite a productive day. In the morning I baked some cookies while listening to classica music and by candlelight. It was so nice! Then I finally finished packing Christmas parcels for my familiy and wrote a letter to my grandmother. Later I deep cleaned my room while listening to an Agatha Christie audiobook. For today, I am quite content with myself. How was your day?

Take care!

Dear anita,

you are right about the public transportation. So far I had still used it, when going to work and such, as I don’t have a car. On my way home I walked often, but it is an 1,5 hour walk. My roommate offered me that she will give me her old bike, otherwise she will throw it away. Maybe that can be a better alternative.

I am happy that I can stay at home for the next two weeks, not having to worry so much about infections. But maybe the feeling in my chest also comes from something else. There is also mold in my room and last December, I had a bad cold with coughs, which I had never experienced before.

Today my roommate also came by to clean up (I thought she had gone home for Christmas already) and we briefly talked. We wished each other a merry Christmas. I am relieved!

Still I am feeling anxiety at the moment. It also has to do with K appearing in my whatsapp contacts a few weeks ago. Don’t worry, I deleted all his numbers and messages now! But suddenly I saw his status (didn’t look at them). I think either he had added me, or what must have happened is that I added his number when he called me last summer to my phone contacts, then didn’t delete it. Then recently there was a whatsapp update and so he showed up. It caused me lots of anxiety and stress.

But I have to admit, sometimes (too often) I still looked at our conversation and his profile picture from his other phone number. I don’t know why, maybe I have an obsession, as you said. My therapist also said that it is because I am very lonely, which is true. I am feeling extremely lonely at the moment. Then I developed this bad habit… Hopefully he didn’t notice, I really did not want to bother him. But it must end now completely and after I deleted his contact info, there is no more temptation.

It only causes me stress. I want to end this forever and stop thinking about him. How do I overcome such an obsession? Deleting his numbers was a good start.

Sorry that I talked about this again. I really want to heal from this and move on.

For some reason, I am already feeling a bit better, after I had submitted my post. Sorry… I think I have to remember the things I can feel thankful for and all the good things in my life. And sometimes there will be days or weeks where I will feel completely down, but that’s part of life.

Better I work on something worthwhile now. I will make some postcards to send to my family.

Still thank you!

Dear anita,

I just wanted to give you a quick update that I am doing o.K. But I have also decided that I should post less. I feel a bit uneasy about having shared so much information about myself online.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to me, when I was feeling very distressed. During the time of our communication I have learned more about myself and now I have more of a sense of who I am and what I need to work on. I am able to see clearer now and feel more confidence in myself. Overall I think I am a reasonable person (except when stressed) and I am learning how to help myself more and more. I am not there yet, but I am taking steps in the right direction!

Thank you for everything! Hope you are doing well and please take care!

Dear anita,

I think that having met him and having ended it properly will help me in the future. But at the moment it stirred up something in me. But don’t worry, I will not contact him and I doubt he will now contact me again either. “My task is now complete” he wrote.

I should distract myself, work for uni, go out for nature walks. I have signed myself up for some sports classes too. In a few weeks, I will be doing better again. nothing tragic happened.

Dear anita,

I think it is the right decision to have ended it and to not remain friends. I will not be trying again with him, because it would likely not work. And what if I then left him again, what kind of mess would that be?? Or maybe he would leave me. No, it is for the best to leave this in the past. I have checked his instagram account (definitely need to stop that) and he seems very happy now. He posted pictures with captions saying how good life is. So I do not have to worry about him.

During the meeting the communication was still not that good. I was still very shy. But when I wrote to him, I was able to express myself better. Usually I am able to express myself better in writing. Only when I feel very secure with someone, I will be able to speak calmly to them, and with him I did not feel that much at ease. We just never got to spend that much time together, get to know each other well.

I brought up some things that did not work that well in the past. Was that petty of me? I said “communication was not good”. To which he responded, that I never wanted it, having no smartphone. I said “yes, I did not want one”, but I did not say that I don’t think that this was the only reason for our bad communication. Even though I do think that.

He talked about being friends, that he is interested in having that human connection. But I said, what would we do as friends, we never really spent any time together? And he said that this was not true, we went out to eat together. I did not know what to respond. But to me, those were not real dates. We went out twice. One, when he was making a stop in my town before traveling elsewhere. He informed me only shortly before that he was coming. He wanted to eat and suggested to go to a place at the main station, but there was no room to seat there. So I suggested a different place. While we were eating the conversation was slow. I was always tense around him and did not know what to say. He was texting on his phone, even called someone. I thought to myself that I must be the most boring person in the world.

The second date we met at the evening after it was dark. We sat at a bank, talking. His cousin called him. Then we walked to the main station, where we picked up some food that we then ate at home.

To me, those were not really dates. Am I asking too much? Am I untgrateful?  I do not need any fancy restaurants or gifts or anything, but I would have liked to spend some intentional time together. I know that he was busy, but we could at least have planned better, made some effort. It never felt like that, all felt so in between, like I just got crumbs… I wondered if he really was interested in me and I did not feel like it. On the other hand, I should have spoken up to him, talked about it. If I ever meet someone, I will do that. At least I have learned some things from this experience.

Anyways, I meant to say, two of the criticisms I brought up, just were dismissed. And I was also incapable of explaining myself. But those are signs that this would have never worked. In the conversations I felt like he was the leader and I the follower. like he had an idea how things should be. I did not get the impression that he was very interested in my thoughts or opinions. And that he did not reflect his own behaviour. It would not work for me and I would suffer, if I stayed with him.

And friendship would only confuse me, I think. So it is best as it is. Good that we could close that chapter together. He seems happy now and I am happy for him. Still I have a bit of a depressed feeling. But in time, I will be able to move on.

Who knows, maybe someday a relationship will be possible for me. Maybe when I’m 70 or so the time will come for me that I am ready, haha…