Dear Cali Chica:

I know this is heavy, a heavy topic. Sometimes I don’t know if you will be back, when what I suggest in my posts to you is so very unpleasant to contemplate or consider. But I don’t back away from what I learn to be true, no matter what. I know that you will choose to read or not, when to read, when to reply, and what to do in your life. I also know that if I post too much, you can (and did) take your time, take the breaks you need to take and return if and when you want to return.

So, I was thinking about our exchange yesterday on my walk and it occurred to me that I can identify what is in the core of my past relationship with my mother/ your past relationship with your mother/ your current relationship with your sister:

= what it is, is that they attack you when you feel affection for them and try to help them; they attack you when you love them.

This is it.

Jan 9 I wrote to you: “I am so touched.. It brings a tear to my eyes, some sort of emotion, touched, affectionate toward you”. It was awkward for me to write those short sentences and I got stuck. I wrote: it brings tears to my eyes, and then I said to myself, tears plural is too many, better write a tear, singular. Then I checked, do I really have tears, it was a very thin mist in my eyes, not full tears. I wrote: “some sort of emotion”, not committal, uncomfortable.

The day after, I read your response: “I too felt that affection.. I think it’s best for me”, and I thought that next, you I will read: best to end this communication, this friendship. I felt a sort of a .. little dread perhaps (not committal to the dread either) and then I read that you weren’t ending our communication.

I didn’t feel a strong relief just as I didn’t feel a strong dread. And my affection before was repressed, cautious, uncomfortable, somewhat alarming.

Why all this reaction? Because to feel affection for my mother was returned by her aggression against me. So affection is punished, returned with pain. Is it a wonder then that feeling affection, of softness for another is scary?

And isn’t it why you’ve had great trouble feeling/ expressing that softness toward your husband?

When your sister asked you some  time ago why you don’t appear to be in love with your husband, she wasn’t aware, and neither were  you aware at the time, that your sister herself was a big part of why you didn’t feel and express that softness to your husband or talked about him with that softness.

Her part in it is that when you repeatedly reached out to her with affection, with love, with the sincere desire to help her so that she will feel better, what was her response: bite you where it is soft, throw dust at you so that you will stumble.

Well, no  wonder then.

anita