Dear Derek:

You wrote: “When I was younger I wanted to escape… I did this by overstudying… I valued myself solely on my educational successes and anything less than an A was never good enough for me.”-

It is not only that you found your value in those A’s, you found safety in them, temporary safety, of course. When you got an A you were safe for a while.

And now you keep looking for that safe feeling in A’s. You grade your partner, giving him less than an A in education, sometimes giving him less than an A in attractiveness. You grade your own love for him, giving yourself less than an A.

When you were younger, you wrote in the quote above, you wanted to escape. I believe you wanted to escape the feeling of danger in your home and you found that safety in A’s, that is in perfection, no mistakes.

The anxiety of long ago is still in you, ongoing, unsettled fear. If you work on your anxiety in therapy, learn ways to lower it, learn those skills (emotional regulation I think the term is), and then you learn to look for that feeling of safety elsewhere, that will help greatly.

anita