Hi Anita,

What you say is completely true. I’ve had a rough childhood. My parents divorced when I was 4 and I have no memory of them ever being (happy) together. From then on when I was with my mom I had to miss my dad and vice versa. I mainly lived with my mom and my sister and even though it wasn’t easy, I saw how my mom managed it all and eventually find the love of her life. My bf’s parents are still together and he has lived with them in the same house his entire life – something that is foreign to me as I moved houses often, also having to pack bags all the time to go spend the weekend at my dad’s house or living at my grandparents for a while. His entire life has seemed the same up to now and he never had to deal with drastic changes.

I’ve always thought that I was okay with my childhood as nothing majorly traumatising happened. But the older I get the more I realised how it emotionally scarred me. I don’t think that I’ll ever feel ready to marry a guy and have children because of my parents. I will always keep thinking that I don’t want to put them in the same situation as me. I love them and I no they did the best they could, but they themselves were trying to figure out life, so that is obviously not going to make my life easier.

My dad hasn’t been around much, when I was young we had a ‘legal’ arrangement but when I got older and went to boarding school, I didn’t visit him regularly anymore. I’ve never felt good enough for him and have sought his approval my entire life. When I broke up with my ex I saw a therapist. She understood me so well and she explained how I was dating that guy to make up for the emotional pain my dad had given me. This got me to learn more about my ‘inner child’ and I really see how it has affected a lot of my life decisions.

My bf doesn’t understand this because he never had to deal with these situations. And I’m happy he is an emotionally stable person – my ex boyfriend’s parents were in the middle of a divorce while we were dating and it felt like I was reliving the whole thing over again. So my current bf never having dealt with divorce, or divorce of the parents of somebody you loved and not even having dealt with heartbreak, of course I’m going to feel as if he doesn’t understand me. That’s all very intense and he doesn’t know that, he just sees how it affected me.

But I don’t know how to recover from this childhood, if that’s even possible. I know that seeing the triggers and knowing where it comes from, is a lot already. But it doesn’t benefit my bf or our relationship if I can’t change it or act on it. To me it is a lot of progress but to him it is as if I’m an emotional machine who can’t live with herself sometimes.

Anita, you ask all the right questions because in the end it always comes down to this. You have advice on how to truly deal with it?