Dear joanna:

Re-reading my last post to you, I don’t know if you asked your mother at the time to open the door or to not open the door. In either case, you gave her a suggestion to prevent a physical confrontation with your father. When I quote, I retype, not paste, so there can be inaccuracies.

I suggest you read about learned helplessness, a phenomenon observed in other animals and it applies to humans as well. It happens without our choosing and happened to me too. But I was still motivated to move away from my mother. I don’t see that motivation in you throughout our months of communication. And so, you suffer and you do not consider changing your life circumstances so to no longer suffer.

There is another thing, I think that you lie to me sometimes. I think that you didn’t and do not have a plan to buy a place for yourself. I think there is that place where your grandparents live that may be yours in the future, after some legal transactions involving your mother giving up her ownership of it. I don’t think you are able or have planned to buy a place. There are other things that I think may be lies: meeting this last man at the gym, for one, before going to a café. And going to a café vs for drinks, that first date. Or how long the date lasted. You wrote to me a few posts ago, what does it matter, if the first date lasted an hour or an hour and a half (as you watched the time). Well, it matters to me if you lie to me.

Back to learned helplessness. It is not your choosing that it happened, not your fault. But now what? Can I instill in you a motivation that doesn’t exist: to change your life circumstances and move out- I don’t think I can. My empathy is with you for having suffered for so long. I wish you didn’t.

The frustration is witnessing you suffering while you no longer have to suffer. You had no choice as a child. But now you do. And so one may say: just leave, go elsewhere, life will still be tough but hope is in leaving. One said so, I did. But there is no practical value to my suggestion when you are lacking the motivation that will move you toward putting my suggestion into practice.

anita