Dear Anita,

Thank you for taking the time to think my responses through. I have been thinking throughout the day about some of the behaviors I exhibit currently as well as those from the past. I have also thought about how I used to feel.. I felt like I had to protect my mother and that for her to receive sex from another man (I guess besides my own father) seemed wrong, threatening, and painful to me. It made me feel a lot of emotional pain, especially when I was away from my mother at my father’s house or elsewhere. I can remember crying often because of these thoughts, but I also remember having a serious fear of something happening to her which I think ties into the way I lived at my father’s house with the somewhat crazy stepmother. I know I say that I felt emotional pain towards my mother and involving sex, but I was not sexually attracted to her, I just wanted attention and intimacy I assume.

I think back to some of the relationships I’ve had. I can see where I would get upset about the smallest of things, even as little as a girlfriend saying another guy was cute or attractive. I can remember thinking of being cheated on or that she would hang out with another guy or something completely absurd, but it got to me. I just felt a lot of emotional pain and it sort of scarred me.