Heya Anita,
The gift:
Its actually a one-off and I’d like to send you the real thing, if that is possible. (Might require some arrangements in order to keep you private and protected and all that! But I have a few ideas.)
Regarding anger:
My therapist asked me “What is your experience of rejection?” Its something I need to unpick. Instinctivly it feels like the mothership of my anger.
That _and_: my last relationship -which was on/off basically limping along for a whole two years ended very badly. This is a different man to the one whom I discussed in this thread.
He was not there for me when I needed him, he did not have much of a concept of what it meant to be in a reciprocal relationship. And I just kept going: kept giving. He’s quite autistic and I put his lack of efforts down to this. There are lots of things I am very angry with him for, and I am angry with myself for staying with him for so long. It ended when I first found the hairs of another woman in his bed – I suspect his ex. He claimed she stayed in his house while he was away with work. I was deeply unsettled, we talked about it and I was unequivocal in demanding that he needed to be 100% honest with me, and upfront about his friendship with his ex. (Years ago, he had dumped me and gone back out with her.) Shortly after I was humiliated to find out he’d lied to me and spent Christmas with his ex, and not with his brother as he led me to believe. I ended it right away. It was such a slap in the face after I had worked so hard and given so much.
One time – when I was out with the gentleman whom I wrote about at the start of this – I had a go at him, essentially thinking he was this ex of mine.
Occasionally I re-lived feelings it was literally like a case of PTSD. So if it took him a while to respond to a text message, it would take me instantly right back to a place of intense negativity that I associated with my ex. I also angrily demanded validation and praise from this guy, because I had felt that so sorely lacking in my last relationship.
We had a complicated interaction once. One time I found myself shouting at him to “Fuck off” and “Nobody is MAKING you stay here. If you want to leave and not be with me then just GO.” I yelled this because he had looked disgusted and said to me: “What you just said implies I’m selfish, which hurts because I worry I am selfish. Why would you hang out with me if you think I am selfish?”
So yeah: in response to that I yelled at him to fuck off. It was a knee-jerk reaction and totally inappropriate for that present situation. Really off-kilter.
He pretended not to hear me which meant I could back-track and ask a sensible question instead of being so reactive. I found out later, that he had heard me.
Anyway that was the last time we hung out together as an item: he was declined to meet me the next time I asked him out, so I said it wasn’t going to work. We agreed to meet and talk: he dumped me. (But then we connected really well and left the pub holding hands – which confused me.)
-Feathering
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 