Dear anita:

I think I capitalised “No” to emphasise that no abuse was taking place. You know, I have spent some time on this website, and I have often encountered that people who started threads would either state straight away or when prompted by you or other members that they had been abused or harassed, their parents had been drinking, they had taken drugs and things like that. None of that ever happened to me. Of course, lack of physical impact does not mean that a dysfunction could not have taken place in another way (psychological). And here, I could bring examples that would prove that any one of those four contexts was dysfunctional. But, at the same time, I cannot help but ask: what defines a dysfunction? Is there ever such a thing in real life as a 100% functional relationship? Besides, what one may qualify as a dysfunction, another would say it is normal… I would be glad to read what you think about it.

By the way, this is one more problem of mine. I always try to look at things from different angles, different perspectives, to see all the pros and cons, pluses or minuses, which often leaves me hitting a dead end: I can see the two different points of view, both have a right to exist, but no compromise can be found… Or those lists, the bottom lines – so often the weight is equal, so I don’t know what to choose or where to go… In fact, “I don’t know” happens very often to me – because of the above and because I know too well that there may be lots of additional factors at play in any given situation, factors that I (or others) may not (yet) be aware of… Yet, the desire to control hasn’t served me well so far, so I am slowly learning to go with the flow, to let things take their own course and shape…

Would you like me to tell about the four contexts the way I see them now, i.e. how it was when I was a child and how it has changed now that I am a grown-up?

Oh, and one more question for you, if you don’t mind. I have always wondered whether it is overall possible to provide advice in the context of this website when only one party presents his or her views. What I mean is that we don’t know what the other party or parties involved think about the situation. Maybe the author has exaggerated or saw something that was not even there? I see such misunderstandings very often in real life, and when everything is in the written form, that might be making it even worse since we don’t hear the intonation, we only see the written text.

And one more thing that I have learnt so far (I am not trying to digress, I simply have too many questions and have searched for answers in vain for too long) – if one is trying to prove something, one will inevitably find proofs that what s/he is trying to prove is indeed so. That is, if I wanted to show that the four contexts were dysfunctional, I can do that. I could also show that I was and am very loved by my next of kin, albeit loved in the way in which everybody involved can love and understands love.

I don’t know – see…

X