Dear Sarah:

You are very welcome and thank you for your appreciation. The following will be another long post, I hope you give it time and consideration.

1. Regarding learning and understanding ourselves: “The problem is while I logically know all this, that knowledge doesn’t seem to be enough to change my behavior now. I find it hard to make the emotional connection”- as younger children we experience lots of emotion and very little logic. When a child is overwhelmed with emotions that are too painful, she disassociates from those emotions to a large extent. She then grows up to be a teenager and adult who tries to figure out her distress and dysfunction using logic alone, which makes her understanding very partial and limited. Our understanding of our childhood experience has to include the emotions experienced then because our experience at the time was mostly emotional, not logical.

When we understand our childhood logically, but not emotionally, it is as if we are studying ourselves in a science lab, looking at a specimen under a microscope, trying to learn about that specimen. The learning and understanding of the specimen is an academic learning. We often forget a whole lot of what we learn in a lab or a classroom, it doesn’t stick.

The emotional understanding in addition to the logical understanding, on the other hand, is as if we are looking at our inside, not at a separate specimen to be studied.

I’ve known lots of things logically since I was a teenager, but my logical understanding did not help me, didn’t serve me in any way. If anything, it fueled and maintained my distress. Decades later, as I am typing this, I am still learning emotionally and I am using this website to continue this very learning. It is a completely different ball game as far as learning is concerned- it is an understanding that does make a difference, an understanding that does change the way we behave, leaving behind dysfunction and moving toward functional behavior, it changes the way we feel inside, finally letting go of that early-life distress that keeps plaguing us as adults. This kind of learning takes so much more time (and is so very gradual) than academic/ logical learning.

In summary, we don’t understand ourselves (or others) until we understand ourselves emotionally. When we had inadequate childhoods, we have to understand what happened to us there emotionally. No way around it.

2. I can tell a whole lot about how you felt as a child how you feel as an adult. When experiencing distressing childhoods, we keep re-experiencing that same distress. I will now quote the little you did share about your childhood, and then (#3), how you are re-experiencing that same emotional experience of childhood in the present, or recent past.

I don’t expect you to believe me or to make the emotional connection, because like I wrote it takes so much time and persistence, and often it requires quality psychotherapy where an emotional connection with the therapist makes it possible for the client to make that emotional connection with herself, a gradual undoing of that childhood disassociation.

This is what you shared about your childhood: “my father had multiple affairs throughout my childhood and eventually went off to have children with another woman, leaving my mother when I was ten. My mother was so distressed by his behavior and for years afterwards that maybe she wasn’t the most.. present .. mother to me and my brothers much of the time”.

My understanding: unless your father told you when you were younger than 10 that he was having multiple affairs, you knew about it because either your mother told you about it, or you heard them arguing, or you heard her tell third parties about it. If your father was busy during your first 10 years of life with his career and multiple affairs, then he didn’t spend as much time with you as did your mother.

Likely, your mother was way more physically present in your first 10 years of life than your father was, and then he moved out of the home completely. All this means that what happened directly between you and your mother was much more powerful in creating your childhood emotional experience, than what happened directly between you and your father.

Here is your disassociation in the two sentences I quoted above: “maybe she wasn’t the most.. present.. mother to me”. I have no doubt that she wasn’t adequately present with you, not even close to adequate, but you are not sure, “maybe”. And what’s there in those “…”, it’s missing, not sure.. rather not recall.

3. I will try to  fill in some of what’s in the “…” by looking at your most recent emotional experience which is a re-experiencing of that childhood emotional experience:

3a) As a child, living with your very distressed and otherwise occupied mother, you felt unwanted: “he handed me my toothbrush at the bar, I immediately assumed he’d brought it from his house as a hint that he didn’t want me staying there any more”-

“immediately assumed” means that your real life childhood experience of not being wanted sprung up to the surface within the present (most recent) adult life circumstance.

Notice that I wrote that you felt unwanted. Here is what  I learned about young children: they don’t misinterpret how their parents feel about it. In other words, your mother really didn’t want you there some of the time, if not a whole lot of the time.

Here is another possible indication of you feeling unwanted as a child- you wrote to the readers of your thread: “sorry if this is a long rambling post… Sorry,  maybe I’m just ranting… Sorry to butt in on this thread”, as if you are unwanted in your own thread (or in another person’s thread where the original poster did invite members to post).

3b) There was no emotional closeness between you and your mother, no intimacy. It was supposed to be, or it is what you (and any child) needs, but it wasn’t there: “I’m gonna trust my gut and give ‘this’ some space.. and will assume we’re gonna leave whatever ‘this’  was”-

– the reason you put quotes “this”, is because you are not sure what that was, a relationship, something you imagined, maybe you were taken advantage of, lied  to..  couldn’t be love, could it.. you are not sure just as you were not sure as a child what it was between you and your mother. The emotional distance between you and her (a result of her doing, not responding to you, not attending to you, and rejecting your efforts to reach out to her) was confusing and very distressing to you.

“maybe our friendship wasn’t real“- you doubt not only the romantic part of the relationship (or whatever “this” was), but you doubt the year long friendship as well, same confusion about what “this” was with your mother, what it really was.

3c)  Your mother’s stories regarding your father’s multiple affairs, her distress over those and over the fact that he left her to start a new family with another woman, those were very powerful in your mind: “Probably best if you replace me on (band) at least temporarily.. permanently if you want to.. it really sucks when someone changes their mind like this”- that someone is your father.

“I have asked too many questions.. it makes me feel like just another name on a long list of exes”- you were very hurt by your father’s affairs mostly because you felt so much empathy for your mother. Her experience as a betrayed wife became yours by proxy. Fast forward, you suspect the men in your life, not  wanting to be one of the many women in your father’s life.

3d) Your mother (and your father) didn’t really care about you, beyond your physical existence perhaps, or beyond you receiving education and whatnot, she didn’t care about how you felt: “I just came away feeling like he never really cared”- he, the recent man in your life,  might have cared. From what you shared, reads to me like he did care, but your mother didn’t care. You project your mother into him.

As a child you felt that the reason your mother didn’t care about you is because you were not good enough for her: “I think he is too good for me.. I think you had me on a bit of a pedestal and in real life I could never live up to it.. he just liked the fantasy version of me.. my worst fears were proved right (that he was too good for me and he would leave me)”-

– a core belief was born as a result of your relationship with your mother- and the absence of a relationship with your father- that you are not good enough. Fast forward, the thought is: no way this man sees me correctly if he values me, he must have a “fantasy version of me” in his mind. If he thinks I am good enough for him, it must be his fantasy, him putting me on a pedestal. It is just a matter of time before he sees the true me and I am off his pedestal and out of his life!

As a child you were very anxious, often experiencing something like this: “waking up at 4/5 am every night, having stomach issues and serious issues with anxiety.. dreaming of him and thinking about him 90% of the time.. hoping we’ll get together one day”- replace the pronoun he with she (your mother), and this is a description of your childhood emotional experience.

A whole lot of what an adult experiences in a romantic relationship and in a breakup is an activation of one’s childhood experience, (with a sexual element added)

You wrote: “I was only with the person for a few months (although we’d been quite intense friends for a year beforehand) so I don’t have the excuse that it was a very significant relationship!”- but your reactions to this insignificant relationship and breakup has a whole lot to do with another very significant relationship that you did have, the one you had as a child with your mother.

“I felt very similarly when I broke up with someone around 5 years ago- it took me maybe 2 years to get fully over it, I kept feeling like he was perfect for me and eventually we’d get back together one day.. But now five years.. I honestly feel nothing for that guy.. no effect on me”-

– because like it is with this recent man, the relationship was not about that man, but about your mother.

The feelings for this or that guy can be forgotten over time completely, but the feelings for our (unloving) mother are never forgotten, even when we don’t remember, even when we don’t want to remember, even when we feel nothing.. those feelings are strong nonetheless and they take  over  our lives until we do all we can do to heal from her un-love, to put it simply.

anita