Dear crawford:

I read your recent posts and I think the information you provided is relevant to the issue. This is my understanding:

The problem was not in your relationship with your father, or in the relationship between your father and mother. The problem was in your relationship with your mother. She didn’t let you have space to breathe, so to speak, to be yourself, or what you refer to as your authentic self.

You wrote: “She never learned to create her own reality and dreams so she always tried to live her dreams through me”- she lived off your reality, your dreams. This means that in her closeness with you, she took you away from you.

It is my understanding that you didn’t even get to have your own experience of your father. She told you that your father leaving without saying goodbye was traumatic for you and she told you that he shouldn’t have rewarded you with money. She told you… you didn’t come up with this yourself, did you.

The reason you “need this space and alone time”, why you “feel drained around him (your friend)’ is that your mother’s closeness with you included her taking away from you what didn’t belong to her, your individual thinking and feeling, your individual experience of life, your reality… your authentic self. You keep wanting to be alone.

And therefore, I understand, you keep people away from you, men and women, because their closeness suffocates you, robs you from too much. You get them off you and away from you so that you can breathe.

Maybe your attraction to men, an attraction you say is not sexual, has to do with that suffocation you experienced in your relationship with your mother, a woman.

anita