the small jail cell you are in is all about two people: you and him. 

Turns out, he’s not even with me in the jail. I’m here all alone.

I am worried about how much more harm you will suffer since it seems like you are unable/ too scared to separate from him. The entropy you mentioned in your original post of this thread, the movement toward mental disorder and chaos- this has increased because you are in a relationship with a man as acutely unstable as him.

I don’t know what will happen but we lost communication again, these fluctuations are killing me, I know. However, I cannot ignore him, I cannot draw a fine line. I’m terrified of losing him to another person. I tend to think about all the stuff I endured and I know that he’s learned a lot from our relationship. He knows how it’s toxic to ask about the past, think about one’s past. So he tells himself that he would never question anybody else. But he did that with me for a year, and I couldn’t get respect in that area. I feel wronged by life, it’s like I’m a neglected child all along. He learned all about it and he’ll continue with this lesson, maybe he’ll be happy with some other girls and I’ll be standing all alone. He learned what works and what doesn’t with me and he’s ready to be more healthy with somebody else. This double standard kills me.

Also, that she suffered abuse by both of your parents. Was it physical abuse?

Yes, we both suffered from it, but she suffered way more. Maybe that’s why I cannot feel any resentment or any jealousy towards her. I know that she suffered and continues to suffer, she’s eleven years older than me. She’s seen more, she was hurt more, damaged more and she is way stronger than me. I respect her in that regard. It’s hard being alone in this world but she managed to run away from our house in her childhood and never came back.

When you said she was narcissistic, I thought she was spoiled and got what she wanted. But that’s probably not true – it seems she didn’t get much, even though she may be better at asking for it.

The fact that she has narcissistic tendencies makes her a hard person. But she wasn’t properly loved either. She was manipulated in her relationships more than me. She went through a lot of stuff, she had to stand still and she did so. I have never seen myself standstill, I always move with the wind and the wind takes me someplace else to hold on. If I cannot hold on to someone, I seek someone else.

But I also accepted that she cannot loves me, my mom in a natural way. Her narcissistic tendencies kind of prevent her from seeing us as independent individuals. She texts me, calls me only when she needs me. We weren’t brought up together and maybe that’s why we’re a bit distant.

It’s good you’re aware of that mechanism and that you made her aware of it too, even though she might not be willing to change…

She is nowhere near becoming willing to change and that scares me. I made her realize this that day but nothing has changed. She has this unhealthy coping mechanism where she forgets all about herself and devotes herself to the cats she has around. I like that she likes animals, I love them too, that’s my weak spot too. But she is beyond unhealthy. She is now about to end her second marriage and god knows what she might do, she is overly depressed, I’m concerned because I’m not well enough to try to make her better. And this could suffocate both of us. She’ll also face financial hardships if she broke it off, and she’ll have to find someplace else to live. Of course, she has two daughters, therefore two places to stay, she is getting older and older and it really scares me. On the other hand, I’m continuing my life that I’ve been living without the emotional support I need from her and other people as well.

It has been hard, I feel alone and I distract myself with work. I see people moving on but I guess everybody is simply depressed these days.

I was alone when she met him, her current husband. I was spending my time alone at the house in the evenings, and she was working. I remember a night, before a huge exam which was about the entrance to high school. A child is supposed to get to bed early those days, cause we have like 6 or 7 big exams in our standard education life. But I remember her not being able to return home for a long period of time and I felt a bit bad. I wasn’t able to sleep cause I waited for her. There was an anonymous guy I met on the internet, never met him, and I even complained about this to him. I remember him pitying me. Then it took like a week for him to leave/ghost unannounced. We were children, it was okay. But It was a very weird experience for me. For the first time, I had somebody I could text with and I have heard some nice words. I was literally over the moon, I even remember forgetting everything cause I was daydreaming the whole time. He wasn’t that disrespectful I guess and he waited till my “big exam” was over. I was able to get a higher grade than normal because I was feeling happy.

I don’t know what I feel, maybe resentment, maybe just pity for myself. I cannot get angry with anyone, I just feel helpless. I wish my mom had healthier coping mechanisms. Also, it’s my birthday and I didn’t expect to feel like this today.

I might be feeling resentment towards people that tried to love me but then eventually quit. Such as my mother, ex-boyfriend, and so on.

Dear TeaK, thank you for your reply.

But you stood your ground and she finally said she’s worried about you. How did you feel afterwards? Was it a positive or a frustrating experience?

I realized something thanks to this question. I didn’t think about what I felt when she just quit trying to convince me into thinking that I could be better if I wanted. When she eventually said that she was worried, I just said some stuff to make her worry less. I just told her that I won’t harm myself and all I would do is cry more. I said her that she doesn’t need to worry about me and I’ll try to get better.

That sums up lots of things about me I guess.

Presumptuous – as in demanding too much, demanding things they don’t deserve?

Yes, in a way. I thought of some friends when using this word. Demanding, and also not being afraid when you’re demanding. I try to be more modest, nicer around people. I don’t demand much. I sometimes cannot even demand what I need, or want. This happened a lot when I was a child. I used to go to my dad’s home, and he lived alone. I remember just preparing myself for minutes and minutes in order to ask if I could open up the computer and play with it for some time. It was hard for me to ask this. It was hard for me to speak my mind. It got easier in years, but I still have hard time demanding. Although, most of the time I don’t know what I need or deserve. Therefore, I cannot demand much.

when someone is spoiled and wants too much, it makes you angry.

Yes. Angry, more like I resent life. I resent the people that let that happen. I realized another thing this week. I am not a jealous person in general. But when it comes to the things that I cannot get from life, and that I need, I get jealous. Is that always the way with jealousy? I don’t think so. Sometimes, people get jealous of the things that they already have.

Just an example, I can get jealous of some attention from someone I care. But only, if that attention is being given to somebody else instead of me. This could be a boyfriend, an older sister, mother. And this could be a teacher, or the life itself. I see the stuff I need and I see other people easily reaching it, without even working for it. And then I get jealous, feel resentment since I cannot reach those stuff I want. Could be love, intimacy, praise or attention.

Or things you do have the right to, but only believe you don’t? What are some of the things you believe you don’t have the right to, but still want to do?

I am not sure about this but I’ll give it some time to be able to figure it out. I might want to feel more spoiled or more lucky. I might want to enjoy my time like I work a lot harder.

Dear Anita,

“He feels like family”-  like the family you have or the family you didn’t have?

“He feels like family but it simply doesn’t work”- He feels like family, and like (your) family, it simply doesn’t work.  Is my editing of this sentence accurate?

I think this is more accurate than I thought it would be. I guess it’s pretty hard to realize and to accept that a specific need of oneself is simply corrupted. I thought that’s what I needed, and it’s going to be hard accepting this truth, that I don’t need him, one hundred percent. I hope that I’ve written these right, those were a bit complicated sentences and I might’ve made some mistakes.

Editing my words and thoughts is necessary, I guess. I see your point, but I guess I’ll need lots of practice about this. I’ve been reading about cognitive behavioural therapy and I’ll read some more about somatic therapy as well. Whatever I can do on my own. I am not as depressive as before, I don’t know how it’ll go. I’ll feel upset again, for sure. I’ll try to handle it better. I know that there’s hope. Thanks for everything.

Hi dear Anita and TeaK,

It has been a rough week. I couldn’t even put the words together, so I just kept quiet for some time.

And I believe it’s because she refused to deal with her own pain, that’s why she didn’t have compassion neither for herself nor for you. Now she has compassion for cats and abused animals, while probably still having no compassion for herself or you.

This sounds right. I can see the connection even though a part of me says that I haven’t done enough for my ex-boyfriend. I haven’t made him feel that he was loved enough. That’s what he complained about, he didn’t think that he was a priority in my life.

We lost contact and then found it and then lost it again, and the cycle repeated. I’ve cried a lot, not being able to share much. I even made my mother worry by saying that I was depressed. At first, she thought that I made it worse and also that I could feel better if I wanted to. Then we spent a few hours texting and arguing on how I think about her refusing to respect my depressed state and how I’ve never shown her this side of me. Eventually, she quit arguing and told me that she is basically worried and wants me to feel better. Other than that, I’ve kept doing my yoga and also kept questioning. It was very painful to even try to let go of him. He feels like family but it simply doesn’t work.

Yesterday, I tried the tarot cards that my flatmate has given to me last year. It distracted me for a while and I looked at some cards for a few friends. It was the first time that I felt a slight spark, other than my low depressed state. Then I also picked some cards myself which said that I should be willing to make a decision for myself and commit to it. I know this would apply to most of the people out there but I thought that deciding to move on would be the logical choice for both me and him. However, it’s really hard for both of us. I don’t know what will happen. I’ll be leaving the city for some time, maybe 10 days, maybe more. Maybe that would help us a little.

It’s actually not weird – you’re attracted to people who trigger the fear of abandonment in you, because they remind you of your mother, who was the first person who triggered that fear in you. We’re always attracted to people who remind us of our parents, so we can finally get from them what we didn’t get from our parents. You’re hoping to get a sense of security and commitment – something you didn’t get with your mother.

Dear TeaK,

Honestly, I don’t see it. I feel like I genuinely tried to feel safe with whomever I came across. I feel like I’ve tried everything, I was not limited to a kind of people, I was just looking for people that would be able to understand me. When I see that a person cannot communicate with me, I lost interest. Is this the problem? I don’t know. But I can say that I have no standards other than this. I just want to be understood, like the rest of the people.

Do you perhaps feel that your mother would have liked to leave you, but couldn’t because you were her daughter and she had an obligation towards you? Is such notion somewhere in the back of your mind?

My mom loved us like any other mother would do. But I know that she’s seen children as something that would hold people back. Therefore, she never wanted us (me and my sister) to be mothers. And I don’t think that we would ever have children. So, I don’t know, maybe that’s right. She would never leave us, but if she didn’t have us, maybe she would be able to break up with dad and have a new life where she is able to make her own decisions sooner. With us, she had to wait for a while, and then she broke it off years and years later.

Has your mother scolded you for other things (not necessarily related to toilet training) with words like “What have you done?!” Because it sounds like something you would hear from an adult and then repeat it to yourself when you feel you did something wrong.

That might be the case, my mom used to be hard on children, like if someone is behaving spoiled. She didn’t like spoiled children. And I wasn’t a spoiled child, so it was maybe nice. I don’t know.

Perhaps she was always in a rush when feeding you, she didn’t play peek-a-boo with you, she didn’t have time for a bedtime story, or was in rush to read you one… all in all, that the emotional bonding didn’t really take place as it should have, and you felt rejected and abandoned by her. Do you think this might be the case?

She was working hard and trying to raise us, do all the responsibilities at home as well. Maybe that’s why she didn’t have much time. Thank you for your reply, I can agree with you at those, that I deserve better stuff from people. But my emotions don’t work like my logic. It’s so easy to be caught by a thought loop and then it makes me suffocate for hours and days. I was able to do my yoga practice today with a delay of 10 hours, I guess. It didn’t help that much but maybe I should start with some breathing exercises as well. I am currently reading a book on yoga/meditation and the spiritual sides of the elements written by a yogi. I can either try to believe in what he says, or I can find all the words and concepts as nonsense. It’s hard to grasp some stuff when you’re reading about spirituality. He tells about how some elements can be out of balance in our bodies and how it does affect us. For instance, if someone’s air element is not in balance, then that person might have some troubles with flatulence. This kind of sentence makes me even more skeptical.

Dear Anita,

I’ve read the page on wikiHow and there is a part that got me thinking. Exposure Therapy. It says that we should practise staying away from our loved ones. Right now, there is just one person that I’m afraid of losing and I’m constantly being exposed and then something happens and then we get together again. For example, he just texted me that he wants to stay alone for some time, and told me to take care of myself. That was it. So this can also be a goodbye message, but he can also text me again hours later or days later. He has never left me without any communication over 12 hours, he always wanted to know if I was doing okay or he wanted to stay in contact. He always wanted to make me feel safe and okay, no matter what happened. My point is, I am now away from the only person I can feel safe with and how am I supposed to practise this when I’m constantly being triggered? I guess I just have to learn it the hard way. In the past, I’ve never felt safe with anybody. The former relationships I’ve had never made me safe as he did, the people always behaved in a way that I would feel triggered by this fear. The first boyfriend always talked about some other behaviors from other girls he’d like, he made me insecure about lots of things and he used to break up with me a lot, so I got used to feeling triggered all the time. Then the second one was having affairs all the time and I used to feel that, but I had no proof whatsoever. But with him, I was able to feel safe for one year. But since that year was over, he started to get depressive more and he also started to trigger my fear.

I don’t know if he would leave me for good this time, but I know that I would be triggered again and again since those safe times are over now. He was depressive again, I’ve tried to make him feel good but it just doesn’t work. He feels alone, even when I’m trying to help him. I guess he wants me to connect more, understand more but I’m nowhere near empathic as him. I’ve got another online appointment with a psychiatrist during my breakdown days ago, but I’ll have to wait for 40 days.

I don’t know what will happen. I guess I’ll be doing my yoga practice with lots of crying today.

Dear TeaK,

It’s kind of a reverse of what was happening when you were a baby.

It’s interesting that you’ve noticed this, and the fact that I’ve mentioned these two reverse feelings/scenes. Maybe it’s related, I’m not sure. But I can accept that I felt safe enjoying my time on the computer when my mom was sleeping in the next room. The same thing happened with this boyfriend of mine. When we were staying together, he used to sleep in my bed or in another bed in another room, and I felt so safe knowing that he sleeps peacefully. If I knew that he sleeps right now, at his own house kind of away from me, with the info that he is still with me and he’ll be okay, I guess I would feel safe again.

It’s weird that everybody that I’ve cared for or tried to felt safe with has this one common thing. They all triggered my fear of abandonment sooner or later with their behavior. Bus terminals, roads, and airports have always made me upset. The concept of leaving someone, someplace, or even some object has always made me upset. I don’t want to be narrow-minded or I don’t want to diagnose myself ignorantly but this can also be about the Anal-retentive personality Freud talks about. I have just one story about wetting myself in the night and I guess that was years and years ago when I was a little child. And from what my mom has told me, I’ve got up, realized that I’ve wet myself and then I’ve got angry with myself and ranted to myself asking over and over “What you’ve done!?”. I don’t remember how my mom treated me during the toilet training. I don’t remember any harsh treatment but as this phenomenon explains, the treatment during the toilet training has huge effects on the psychology of the child. If it’s harsh including getting mad or not corresponding well to wetting oneself, then the child may have problems letting go of both people and their stool resulting in chronic constipation. I don’t want to find excuses for my inability to let go or feel neutral when I am alone mentally, but I guess I’m just trying to expand my comprehension.

While I was writing all these, he texted me again reproaching me about how we couldn’t understand his misery. We, as the people he’s surrounded by. Maybe that’s right. I just couldn’t understand him but I am here, trying to stay in his life cause I feel like I have no other way than this to feel neutral, good again. Maybe I’m just seeing the situation from my viewpoint, with my triggers and fears unable to understand his misery and this behavior only makes it worse for him. I just want us to endure life together, I know that life is hard and trying to endure is one thing everybody tries to do. You just try to endure the bad days, and then you try to make it better and better. But I guess he just wants to give up and he wants to do it alone. The fact that I don’t accept him giving up is the indicator of me not understanding or hearing him.

Hi dear TeaK and Anita,

Thank you for your support. I am okay, there is no reason that would make me not okay, however, there are some thought loops and I feel weird these days. My boyfriend has moved to another house, and it has been weeks. It was really hard at the beginning, I got way more emotional. But I guess, we’ve adapted to the situation a bit. I am now able to appreciate being on my own sometimes, it’s nice to just be alone in one’s space. Also, we didn’t define what we were, we decided that we should break up but then we couldn’t, stuff like that. We still meet for some things, for example, we went to a shop to get a new laptop for him the other day. And he also invited me to dinner today, I couldn’t go and we’ve decided that could be done tomorrow and then I can spend the night. I am not sure about us continuing like boyfriend-girlfriend is a good thing and I am not sure if we are in a relationship, it looks like we are, but I decided that it could be nice to just stop thinking about it and focus on the other things.

He didn’t answer me since this evening, it has been almost 12 hours. He was playing games and he probably slept, if nothing bad happened. Or maybe he is in a depressive state and doesn’t want to affect me as well. But in these 12 hours, I’ve cleaned the house, talked with a guy I’ll do a small business with, and then I just thought. There was no one to distract me from my anxiety, I was not -that- anxious but all I did was to get passively anxious about what I’ll do with my life. I’ve realized that I am nowhere near what I want in life, and to be honest, I have no idea what I want in life. That makes me feel hopeless, and maybe alone. I feel like everybody around me is onto something, a career, some quality bonding with people that they care about, something good to be exact. And I feel like I am onto nothing, I am just doing what people want me to do, and I am in delusion about what I want.

I realized that all this stuff I thought I loved, I just love the outcome. For example, I thought I loved drawing, designing, handling business, communication, interpreting, video-editing, reading, languages. But I’ve realized, I don’t like the process of doing those, I just love when I create or accomplish something. And since I don’t like the process that much, I cannot proceed and get very good at it. And that is my problem, I like to get involved with everything but I don’t choose anything to be master at. I even got involved with the crypto market recently and a friend of mine taught me how to stake with defi tokens, how to analyze the graphics a bit. But that’s like the 1% of the field and I know just 1% about everything. Therefore, I am all over the place, not able to decide which paths to take and which fields to invest my time in.

Some say that I should apply for a master’s in other countries, some say that I should apply for jobs in other countries. Some come to me with designing gigs, and some say that I should work on my health. I have unstable blood sugar levels and they make me tired all the time, maybe exercising is the key but even that, I cannot do. There is no consistent relationship, no consistent field of work or interest. Nothing is consistent about my life besides being inconsistent. I guess the reason behind my depressiveness is that I have no goal. I cannot trick myself into wanting something bad enough to motivate me, there it is, my childhood years are back. All these years, for like 10 years I guess, I always thought I wanted some stuff. I wanted to be loved, I wanted to succeed, I wanted to matter, I wanted a tablet, I wanted a tattoo machine. I just wanted outcomes, not processes. I guess people do this mistake a lot, so that’s a given. But I find it hard to get out of bed in a respectively early hour because I literally have no ideals. I am way too materialistic to believe in something, and I am way too logical to invest my energy into an ideology. Weird.

Dear Anita, I’m glad you’ve seen a dream like that! It must be because I literally wrote my whole life here. 😀

I have to thank you again, your support means a lot. Whenever I feel hopeless, I just log in here and try to express my feelings. And you always come up with brilliant analyses that help me a lot. I hope that I can reach to that side of me soon, I’ve had hard moments today since he decided what he’ll do and he also decided that we should end this eventually. I wasn’t much expressive when it comes to the decisions. I might have given him all the responsibility as well, I’m not sure. But he is sleeping in his room and he’ll move out soon. It feels very weird and sad when I think about all the good stuff we’ve experienced. I know, I have to remember the bad stuff as well, like I can do with the job. To sum it up, it’s time for me to learn how to function without someone special helping me.