Dear Kylee:

You wrote about your father:  “he would come and go as he pleased and currently we still dont have a connection… It really hurts me deeper than what i may know or show..that i dont have this relationship with my father. I have tried to reach out so many times” 

Later, you wrote regarding your ex boyfriend/s: “I am trying so hard to be communicating with him and open and trying … I try to be the best girlfriend I can be…But im soooo tired.. of feeling like im giving my all and the other person just gives minimal effort.”

Reads to me that you desired love from your father very much and you tried to be the best daughter possible, tried to reach out to him repeatedly but unsuccessfully. You kept that pattern of behavior, reaching out and trying with boyfriends.

You wrote: “I always fear the person will leave me or that im not enough for them”- probably an extension of a childhood belief that you were not enough for your father to stay with you and love you.

Even though on some rational level you figure your father  “has his own issues and I know they aren’t my fault”, on an emotional level you still believe that his unavailability to you, his lack of attention to you, lack of trying on his part, lack of commitment to you, all these are because you are not enough.

It takes time and work to get the emotional understanding of reality to catch up to the rational understanding. Sometimes that kind of work needs to be done in quality psychotherapy. Did you consider such?

anita