Dear Anonymous:

Thank you. First: I am concerned about this man maybe wanting another hookup with you and although you said that it will not happen, that you want a real relationship, not a hookup situation, I hope that at a moment of loneliness or feeling physical attraction to him, you might forget your resolution. I have no reason to think that your resolutions in life are weak, or that you are weak, this is more of a general concern, as in: people get lonely->people get impulsive-> people make exceptions to their resolutions. If you did hookup with him again, it will only refuel your distress, anger and frustration, so be careful, will you?

Second part of my post- December 2015, you wrote: “sometimes I become too self- conscious when I’m having a conversation with someone else, and it leaves me sort of disconnected.. I still have trouble expressing myself verbally.. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m thinking or feeling, and I feel at a loss for words. I’m always trying to think about what to say first, so my words don’t come out wrong, but it often takes such a long time for me to get it out.. Why can’t I just speak my truth and my feelings?.. I WANT so badly to be good at speaking them, because I know how important communication is for maintaining a healthy relationship with intimacy”.

My answer to your question (to which I added the bold feature), four years later: “My mom was emotionally closed off, and unhappy.. my dad cussing a lot very loud. My mom would get scared and withdraw.. My mom never really showed sadness or anger.. she always wanted everyone to just ‘be happy’ and ‘positive’ all the time. Was always the time to say ‘Don’t be sad’… When my mom would say those things, it made me feel like being sad was a bad thing and I should avoid those feelings or try to change them asap” (Jan 2020).

A parent is supposed to mirror their child’s feelings (look concerned when the child feels hurt, sad when the child feel sad, etc.) Your mother provided you with no such mirroring, being emotionally closed off and withdrawing, not expressing sadness of anger. So there was no intimacy with her, no “healthy relationship with intimacy” with her. You didn’t get to know you and she didn’t get to know you. I am guessing you felt emotionally constipated/ disconnected around her.

I think that this is the reason you gravitated toward your father, he at least expressed some feelings, and with him you felt relief from that emotional disconnection. So you surfed like him, and you did not want to be like your mother, feminine (“my mom and I can now have fun doing (things like hair and makeup and shopping- something I wasn’t into as a child”); you wanted to be like your father, masculine, a tomboy (“Didn’t have a lot of girlfriends growing up and didn’t love girly things as a child”).

“I didn’t love girly things because in my mind they were boring… I remember feeling bored and missing hanging out with the boys whenever I was at a sleepover with girls or at a girls- only party”, because, I am thinking, it was boring being with your mother, who was closed off, with whom you didn’t have an intimate emotional exchange. And the excitement was with your father, with whom you did have some intimate emotional exchange.

April 2016 you wrote: “I’ve always sort of had trust issues.. it just scares me thinking that someone I love could be nothing as they seem. It makes me fear trusting the people I’m close to”-

– can’t trust a person who is emotionally closed off and who regularly withdraws, who is never sad or angry, because you don’t know what’s with them, what is happening there in their minds and hearts, if anything.

I think that what I referred to as emotional constipation/ disconnection, emotions being closed off and held in, is about you growing up with a closed off mother, and therefore,  not having received early- life mirroring of emotions by your mother, with whom you spent most of your time with as a child.

Your emotional disconnection is also what is responsible for you feeling sad and bored every so often, dissatisfied. January 2016, you were considering moving to your mother’s. You wrote at the time: “Although I love the location my mom lives in, I just feel I’d be sad and bored”- just like you really felt living with her as a child, sad and bored.

Of course you’ve made lots of progress and you are very gracious and interactive here  on your thread, but that emotional constipation/ disconnection is still a problem and a big part of the reason why you didn’t talk to this current man about your feelings and expectations throughout the year you knew him. And maybe it is part of the reason why you don’t know him that well.

It just occurred to me, your screen name, Anonymous- as in unknown feelings, being anonymous to yourself?

anita