Dear lisa:

It is not the nature of the relationship between your parents that hurt you most, it is your personal relationship with your father that hurt you most. I think that your mother was not  available to you, anxious and otherwise occupied. You teamed up with your father but he betrayed the team when he yelled at you and disapproved of your crying and criticized your smile.

As a child, you were 100% loyal and committed to your father you would have done anything and everything in honor of that team. But he was not that loyal. There is an enormous hurt involved, when a child  is betrayed by the most important person in her life, the one she looks  up to as the greatest and the best, as that  idol you mentioned (“I idolized my father when I was a kid”).

I think that this is what your anxiety in the context of romantic relationships has been about all these years, not wanting to feel again that hurt of betrayal.

What do you think?

anita