Dear Kara:

You are welcome.

You wrote: “when I’m unsure of my feelings I look for others to tell me what to do”- let’s look at how and why you are unsure about your feelings.

You wrote: “I’m physically more attracted to men my age. I know that’s very shallow”- you feel attracted to men your age, this is your feeling. In the second sentence there is your judgment about your feeling: shallow.

Feelings are never unacceptable. They are neither good or bad and we are not good or bad people, deep or shallow for what we feel.

Only our actions are a matter of choice and we are good or bad, deep or shallow, perhaps, for what we do, not for how we feel.

Your attraction to men your age, is like I wrote earlier, a matter of personal preference, there is nothing shallow or deep about this preference. A woman who is attracted to older men is not deeper than a woman who is not.

The value in feelings is in the information they provide us, and to live better lives, we better figure out that information.

When people give you their input, their advice, a portion of their advice is based on their feelings, their experiences and that needs to be taken into consideration. The decisions you make need to be based on your feelings and your experience because it is, of course, your life. Others’ input can be helpful if you figure what in it is the other person’s experience.

You wrote: “When talking to my friend she said to give it a chance give it a go”- your friend may be so charmed by this man’s attention to you that she believes it is true love. Maybe her experience is with men who does not pay enough attention to her, and her response to you is out of that lack.

You wrote: “Mum is against this relationship re age gap”- maybe your mother’s experience is that she hates her own aging and aging bothers her. Maybe her response is out of that dislike of aging.

Both advice are of value. But notice: your friend, being motivated from the lack I mentioned as a possibility, may be blind to the alarming suicidal threats by your boyfriend, missing that point somehow. Maybe your mother is focused on aging and is missing this very point as well.

Your boyfriend, “He said I’m always 100% influenced by everyone else maybe I am”- well, you are very influenced, although I don’t think it is 100%, but you have been. Notice: he is trying to influence you as well, to take advantage of this weakness of yours.

In the first two years of the relationship you “felt completely my self and secure”- I don’t think it is possible anymore because of his may expressions of his misery when you broke up with him, culminating in the most extreme: suicidal threats. You wrote: “(he) says he cannot live without me…Last time he got very dark and had suicidal threats to me where I involved police”

I personally don’t see how you can feel yourself, and feel secure again after these developments. I say so because I cannot see myself being relaxed enough with him to be myself nor do I see myself feeling secure.

This is an opportunity for me to evaluate my input right here, that I don’t think that you will be able to feel comfortable and secure enough to be yourself after these developments because I won’t. Is my projection here an accurate one (true to you), or is it inaccurate (not true to you, that is, you can feel secure with a man who tells you he can’t live without you and has threatened suicide before)?

* I have more input, but this post is getting too long and I would like your response to what I wrote so far.

anita