Anita,

Thank you for your response.

I had read and processed it at the time you wrote it. Since then me and the woman i was seeing decided not to be romantically involved anymore. It was a healthy break which i learned from. We had a discussion and she basically wanted to be my girlfriend and I wanted to keep seeing her casually as we had only known eachother for a month. She knew exactly what she wanted and i applauded her for that and I had to be humble enough to admit i did not, even though i thought i did. I realized there is fear of intimacy present for me. At the core of it i believe is i’m most afraid of having a responsibility towards another person. The responsibility is that to love myself unconditionally, i.e. i’d have to give up impulsive pleasures and rewards for a greater, yet less thrilling, though more fulfilling pleasure of being vulnerable again with another human being. At the moment i do have responsibility towards other people, my clients in particular, i must be prepared to hold their emotions, for some reason having that responsibility towards a girlfriend seems scary to me right now in that i believe i may hurt them because of my lack of emotional availability at times. I feel the need to be alone frequently after work.

In other news, i still haven’t spoke with my mother and i don’t really intend to. I’m tired of the merry go round. My sister told me she believes I have mistreated my mother over the past few years as well. She doesn’t empathize very well with me about keeping boundaries with my parents. She gets her need to be needed filled from them, my mother especially and she admitted to this. So at this point i feel I may have to avoid going back home altogether and my sister will just have to come and see me for a change instead. It seems no one is okay with me being firm with my boundaries and as you’ve said in the past all the empathy is reserved for my mother. If i were to have this conversation with my sister there will always be something like “you need to forgive them” my mother preaches forgiveness yet wont every forgive me. This situation sucks but i know it’s better for me if I don’t ever go back to my sisters house while my mom is present. The thing is i don’t feel guilty for not talking to my mom, because it would somehow turn into a conversation about what im doing wrong in the relationship, there is never an end to those types of conversations unless me or my sister admits we were wrong. But at this point i refuse, of course i’m not perfect, and i have responded out of anger, suppressed anger specifically, and it is a parents job to hold their children’s emotions, and empathize with them, instead my emotions have always been met with criticism and im too tired to keep up that pattern.

Thank you for everything Anita, i’m so grateful to have such an empathetic person to bounce things off without judgement. d