Dear Nan:

Didn’t know you were a nurse. You’ve been care taking of a difficult, grouchy, ungrateful patient, R-2. And you imagine he will fall apart without you. You mentioned before that he might commit suicide if you leave him. And you seem to think that he will not be able to function without you: do his laundry, pay bills.

I think he will be just fine.

I wonder how you will feel when you realize he is just fine without you.

It is a combination then, of you seeing R-2 as weak and seeing him as dangerous, vengeful. See the two views of him? A weak baby and a vengeful monster.

What if your freedom is going to be from your care taking role? From the role of placing yourself second and third to others…?

I like this concept, freedom from your care taking role in life. Freedom to be YOU. It is not easy to change a role like this- it has given you a feeling of safely so far. There will be anxiety in changing roles. But you had anxiety all these years, from early on (I remember your reply to a post on trichollomania).

I see the attraction to R-1 as imperfect as he is. At the least he does not require you to take care of him. Like you wrote, he never asked you for money, refused an offer you made to him to help him, and paid for everything when you met. Good. Being in a relationship with him will not mean you taking care of him- and that is the most important thing about you having a relationship with another man- let it not be a grouchy, ungrateful patient, teasing and giving the nurse a hard time.

Well, Nan is a Nurse, Nurse Nan.

Till your next update. My goodness, I can imagine you jumping off that cliff- at this point I see the cliff as the role I hope you abandon and leave behind with R-2.

Am I closer to understanding you???

anita