Dear Patrick:

You are welcome. You agree with my understanding but it makes you “feel anxious about it. So some part of (you) wants to feel that love”-  to feel safe you feel like you need your father’s reliable, dependable love, so you keep waiting for him, keep trying to get dependability/ safety out of him.

The idea behind effective psychotherapy is that the feeling of safety is established in the very relationship with the therapist- it has to be someone you learn to trust, and within that context you grow to let go of the Impulsive and Self-Destructive (words in the title of your thread) pursuit of your father’s love.

In absence of therapy or in addition to it, if you build and maintain safe relationships with others, even just one, as with your wife, then healing can be done in the context of that safe relationship.

anita