Dear Anette:

You wrote earlier that you are “healing from trauma”, trauma is having been abused as a child. And indeed, your healing is evident in the choice you made regarding this man:

1. You learned from your past experience that you can’t change people: “I tried doing that in my long term relationship back then and that was a painful lesson I learned”, and you acted on that lesson and ended this recent, beginning relationship.

2. You took responsibility for your own projected experience of life with him and chose to take action and not have the life you don’t want to have: “I will be responsible for my unhappiness and stress, not him, because he showed me who he was in the beginning”.

3. You saw the bigger, future picture, beyond the limited, immediate picture, and took action that made sense in the bigger picture. The limited picture is: (he) was so kind, consistent, caring, and quick to introduce me..”, and the bigger, future picture is this: “I was going to be ‘in’ a tough ride with him “. (I imagine it will be a tough ride to have a husband who passes out and keep you in debt, even if he makes sincere kind and caring gestures in between his passing out episodes and financial irresponsibility).

4. You feel sad because you lost the comfort you experienced with this man (in the context of the limited, immediate picture I mentioned), and  because the emotional experience of childhood abuse and mistreatment doesn’t go away, but notice that you are enduring that sadness without drowning in it and desperately looking for whatever comfort is there for you (which is what lead us people to make poor choices), and sadness is not all that you feel, there is also  joy: “it was a hooray moment”!

I wish you ongoing healing this holiday season and in the approaching new year. Endure the sadness, enjoy the moments of joy, that good feeling of being able to make thoughtful, responsible and proactive choices, knowing these choices will lead you to a better and better life.

Post again anytime, be it today, tomorrow, a month from now, whenever you feel like it.

anita