Dear lisa:

The fear of being trapped in a relationship- I know this fear very well and I think it is quite common. It makes a lot of sense to me that your experience as a child is.. well, still your experience. Most of us keep living the same childhood experience lifetime. We don’t “Get over it” because we are at a certain age.

As a child, you arrived at the decision: “I will never let myself get trapped in a relationship that is so awful“, because your experience in your childhood home, witnessing the “verbal and emotional abuse” by your father, was an awful experience for you. You were not an objective witness to such abuse. As children we have great empathy for our parents, so you experienced the abuse by proxy. Plus, a child gets very scared when there is abuse in the home, even when the abuse is not aimed directly at a child.

anita