Dear Katie:

It is very difficult to grow up with a mother you cannot trust, involved and withdrawing, unreliable, unstable, untrustworthy. You didn’t grow up with your bio father and the father figure you did have was an abusive man.

This tells me that your attachment as a child was to your mother. A child has to be attached to a care taker for survival and she was your only option. This means that what she thinks is very important to you, that you tried and still try to please her. She was critical of J, and you followed suit with criticizing him and leaving him. She liked S and you responded with moving in with S.

To separate from her, mentally, that is to end the lifelong attachment to her, you will need, I believe, psychotherapy with a competent, empathetic (reliable, stable, trustworthy) therapist.

In your original post you wrote: “I’m pretty ashamed at what appears to be a bouncing from relationship to relationship with a lack of any sense of loyalty to anyone.”

The sad, sad thing (and I feel sad) is that your loyalty has been to your mother. It is this loyalty that is harming you. You are a very loyal person, unfortunately it is to the wrong person.

You had no choice as a child to be loyal to her, there was no other person for you to be loyal to, that is to form the attachment you had to form, as does every child and many animals. Forming an attachment to a therapist of the kind I mentioned will be a beginning in separating from her.

Hope you post again.

anita