Dear joanna:

I re-read your Oct 15- Feb 3 posts and I understand better the relationship with Tom. I realize that you don’t see him the way he is because you desperately need him to be a good, loving man. You need him to be that, so you make believe that he is that, and that  if only you make him see that you are worthy of his love, than he will love you.

You don’t see that he doesn’t love you because he is not a loving man. You believe he doesn’t love you because you didn’t show  him yet, you didn’t prove to him yet, that you are worthy of his love. So you keep trying to show him, to  prove to him.

This pattern originated in your experience with your parents. Your mother was the aggressive one, your father was passive. Neither one was good and loving. Your hope for love was with your father because he was not aggressive, not like your mother.

You made believe that he is a good, loving man because you needed to feel safe with at least one of your parents. There is nothing stronger than a child’s need to feel safe. A child will make believe anything to bring about this feeling of safety.

You still live with your mother, at thirty or so. You are an adult but you didn’t heal from the aggression you experienced with your mother, aggression that you can’t heal from because it is still directed at you. Your father is no longer alive, and if he was, love wouldn’t be in a relationship with him because it was not there before.

So there is Tom, and the hope is with him. Only it is based on a made-believe, a delusion, a false belief.

You wrote about Tom: “He lied to me, cheated, didn’t even promise he wouldn’t… He ignored me for weeks and didn’t respect me… he told me things that still haunt me.. that.. I don’t even deserve to break up with because we were never a couple.”- but you still believe he is a good, loving man.

Dec 8, you wrote: “I failed to make him love me… I can’t forgive myself I couldn’t make him love me… why can’t I be the person he wants. Maybe some detail I’d say or do would change how he feels about me”-

You don’t realize he is not a loving man. You believe he is not loving you yet because you  didn’t show him yet that he should love you, that you are worthy of his love.

When you spend time with him you believe that you have another opportunity to show him that you deserve his love. As you try, you feel hope and you feel safe. When he is gone and doesn’t contact you, you despair, feeling that you failed yet again. Your anxiety increases. Then he contacts you and you feel hope again, maybe this time…

You wrote: “Whenever he was around I felt like everything would be fine now, and nothing else mattered… he will take all the pain away… that he will fix everything again… the fact that we’ll see each other again brings hope, however illogical”. This quote is equally true to your experience with your father and with Tom.

You wrote about Tom Feb 4: “I know he’s like my father whom I missed through all my life. I don’t hate my father or judge him.. I understand him and I know he was a good person and loved me… When my parents divorced and I visited him I had this feeling that all the issues I had back home, they didn’t matter since I was at my dad’s. … he made me feel safe.. I lived in a fairytale for a week  or two.”

When you feel safe with Tom it is indeed a fairytale. You are not safe with Tom, it only feels safe. Your father was not a good, loving person, and neither is Tom. You made believe your father was a good, loving man and you make believe the same about Tom.

You wrote: “I know this man, my ex-not-boyfriend (Tom) reminds me of him (your father) in many many ways… after talking to him I often have a feeling it’s gonna be okay… He often says the right things… I know it’s mostly my idea of  him, that I want him to have those features.. because I miss this feeling. So  when I notice there was something I could use to make him stay, I did this, and in return for making me feel safe (or fooling myself) I allowed him to  hurt me as well”-

You said it yourself, it is your idea of him, not who he is.  You want him to have those features, being a good, loving man, but he doesn’t. He is not a good, loving man.  You wrote that you are fooling yourself, meaning you know at times that you are not safe with Tom, you  only feel safe.

You wrote about Tom: “He told me he does not love her (his girlfriend)… in general he never thought he loved anyone in his whole life“-  he is not a loving man (he was a loving boy, I have no doubt, but lost it along the way).

You wrote: “he never thought he loved anyone in his whole life. That made me think it’s not me who  is unlovable”-

True, it is not you who is unlovable. He is not a loving man.

You are seeing him the way he is, at times, but when anxious, you need him so badly to be a good, loving man that you make believe, again, that he is those things.

When we make believe, when we don’t see reality for what it is, we suffer.

Your real hope, your real life safety is about seeing what is true to reality. The comfort you experience with Tom is temporary and brings you much suffering, because it is based on fantasy, on make believe.

Hope to read from you soon.

anita