Dear Danielle:

I’ve been thinking about you. I think that once the interrogations happened at the age  of ten, once the idea was  introduced to you that a sexual relationship between you and your step father was perceivable, and that  your own mother was perceiving  this, you lived the rest of your childhood, eight long  years or so to come, thousands of days, in the household with your mother and your step father, day in and day out, with that possibility in mind.

I am so sorry for this girl that  you were, living like that, as the … possibly, the other woman in your step father’s life, a competitor in your mother’s life. Maybe that brought about that belief, that feeling that  you are a bad person. I don’t know your thoughts throughout the years following the interrogations, what you thought when he looked at  you affectionately, if you thought it was a sexual look. And if you caught yourself smiling at him at any one time, maybe  you thought to yourself: am I flirting with him?

Maybe this is why you had the compulsion to tell your mother the whole truth all the time, to come clean as the competition. And why you felt so uncomfortable after having  lunch with your step father more recently, when picking a ring for your mother.

It is easy for anyone (therapists included) to jump at the idea that maybe a girl was sexually molested by her step father, as  an explanation. But it  is  not at all necessary so to  explain your situation and  I don’t see any evidence, in your sharing  of months here on the site, that there was such molestation. It is enough that the accusations were made, by your mother, that she  didn’t  believe you, that she kept asking, and then,  that you lived with the  two of them, with this sexual element  in the air, for years and years to come.

Again, I feel empathy for the little girl that you were, for the  growing  up girl, and I understand the distress. I think I understand. Am I understanding  correctly?

anita