Dear k8tyB:

Welcome back! Part of your diary is the previous thread on record here with our frequent correspondence. Did you re-read it as well?

I read part of it before responding to your new thread. I was wondering about the psychotherapy you started in late January: is it still going on? What have you learned there and where is it going?

Congratulations for having your last boyfriend where he belongs, in your past.

Regarding your bewilderment in your first paragraph above: “What throws me is the fact that even though I wrote about what was happening to me in my diary, it never seemed to really click at the time? It’s almost like I didn’t quite have a name for it ,or as if I was in denial or something”

It is very common for us to see what we need to see and not see what we don’t want to see. There is the reality, and we take in what is convenient for us at the moment to take in. If you need to feel loved desperately, you will pick from a person’s behaviors toward you those loving gestures so to feel loved. And you will excuse and turn a blind eye to the behaviors that are abusive.

anita