Dear DP:

I am re-reading your posts on this thread in the effort of understanding better. I will quote and comment as I re-read.

You wrote: “we decided to get back together and leave our toxic pasts behind”- if only it was that easy to “leave our toxic past behind”- it is recorded in the brain, with emotions keeping the dry memories “wet”, that is easily activated in the present.

You wrote: ” The fact that she was with someone else hurts and the fact that I haven’t been with anyone else makes me feel inadequate. I just feel helpless and trapped.”- this is an activation of past experience, not only of your past experience with an ex girlfriend, but your past experience, I believe, in the context of your emotions and relationships, as a child, with your mother and father. You feel helpless and trapped like you felt then, reads to me.

You wrote: “My father was unfaithful…he’s walked out on us quite a few times and disappeared for months together”. In your most recent post to me you wrote: “I remember is being careful about never letting her (your mother)  know I miss dad… I became very well versed with blocking of emotions/thoughts I didn’t want anyone else to know or I myself”-

You missed your father. You believed you shouldn’t miss him, or  that your mother shouldn’t find out that you missed him because that will increase her suffering. This is a mixed loyalty kind of a situation, I am thinking: on one hand you miss your father, maybe wanting to be like him. Boys do want to be like their dads. (the sentiment being something like: I want to be just like my dad when I grow up!).

Maybe your current obsession is that desire to be like your dad, to have those extra marital, or outside-the-relationship experiences, vs. your concern about hurting your mother by being like your father.

What do you think?

anita