Dear tiny lantern:

I am glad you are back.

It will be a very poor choice for you to confront your mother, not now, not ever. If you confront her you will get the same results you got already, which you listed: she will get upset at you, blame you, get angry at you and deny everything. Just like you wrote. And as you indicated, as a result of such a confrontation, you will feel even worse about yourself, and she may very well use your words against you later.

Your last sentence above is: “I don’t want to share and open up with anyone who could then reject and leave me”- that is understandable. This is why it would be a poor choice to share (confront) with your mother. She will reject and emotionally abandon you just like she did before.

And this is key: healing from her emotional abandonment of you, you must give up on receiving emotional support and understanding from her. Give up on hoping for that- this hope will bring you nothing but more misery.

As you give up the hope of emotional attention, support and respect from your mother, you will be open to evaluate men for this very thing: is a particular man emotionally attentive, supportive and respectful to you (unlike your mother) or is he inattentive, rejecting and disrespectful to you (like your mother)?

Next, you stay away from relationships with the second group of men and carefully (evaluating over time), enter a relationship with a man of the first group. It will be scary, so you will need to do it slowly, carefully, opening up bit by bit, and evaluating the responses you get, over time.

It is difficult for a child, and an adult child, to be aware that one’s own mother has been and is rejecting. And then, to give up trying. But it needs to be done.

I hope you post again, anytime you are ready and willing.

anita