Dear Micky:

You wrote: “Something seems to be blocking me from loving”. I believe that something is your experience with your parents’ marriage while growing up. His affair, their fights… you were right there during your most sensitive years, formative years.

You wrote: “I also fear that one day I’ll realize and simply accept that the stars were not aligned for us”- you are afraid that your future marriage will be like your parents’.

“whenever I think of this, the feeling of pain and confusion strikes back, even stronger, as if pushing me to make a decision to leave”- this is the same pain and confusion you felt growing up, witnessing the fights, the lack of love. Maybe you felt strong empathy to your mother, hurting because you observed her hurting. Maybe you felt anger at your father for having the affair.

A child should not be a witness to such relationship troubles, to affairs and to fighting. It damages.

You wrote: “My mom has always been reminding me to find a proper, honest, and loyal man in the future. She always say I should bear in mind that a man like my father is not worth it.”

Her teaching, that you find a “proper, honest, and loyal  man” was in the context of your father’s ongoing affair, their lack of love and lots of fighting. This means that her teaching was really that you reject an improper, dishonest, disloyal man”, focus being on the italicized.

This is your focus now, those italicized adjectives. This is how your heart is seeing your boyfriend, as improper, dishonest and disloyal. Your brain, or your intellectual thinking, tells you otherwise, but your heart is saying those things and that has blocked your loving feelings for him.

anita