Dear Rebekah:

I haven’t been in a similar situation in that I did not grow up with a father in the home and I did not have a relationship when I was 18 or a relationship that lasted six years (not before middle age). There are other differences. My childhood was traumatic in other ways. If you would like my input anyway, here it is:

You wrote: “I’ve had a weird feeling in my gut since the beginning. Something is a little off, something is missing?”- it would have been weird if, after your childhood history, if you didn’t feel weird or that “something is a little off”. You don’t exit a childhood like this, an incestuous father and a schizophrenic mother who committed suicide, without consequences.

You continued: “But this is my first relationship and I have nothing to compare it to”- the solution to that weird feeling, this something being off, is not to gather … bad relationships so to see this one, in comparis0n, in a better light. Just saying. Not that you will necessarily gather bad experiences.

And: “Maybe I’m just broken. Maybe I’m not capable of feeling that all-encompassing love”- I believe you are capable, with a couple of adjustments: it is impossible to always feel love for another person and to always think positively about another person. If what you mean by “all-encompassing love” is feeling love all the time and thinking positively about the loved one all the time, then no one experiences an all-encompassing love”, not longer than a few days or weeks perhaps.

The other adjustment is that there are consequences to what was inflicted on you in childhood. A child cannot come out of this untouched, unaffected. Reads to me that you have lead a good life, considering your experience. Do expect something off. It can be attended to, worked on-

anita