Dear Adelaide1:

I read all of your posts: Jan 15- April 3 on one thread, April 12- May 22 on a second thread, and June 2-3 on a third thread. My purpose for doing so is to learn all that I can learn from what you already shared, using all that you shared to better understanding you. To process information, I need to rewrite the information I read, so here it is, lots of quotes included:

You are in your late twenties. Your first “proper relationship” of almost five months started about June 2019 and ended at the end of October or at the beginning of November of last year. She was your “first kiss, first everything”, and your experience with her prompted you to come out as a gay woman. Before her, you “never really saw a relationship happening” for you, and when it happened, “I really couldn’t believe my luck”. You “truly thought I had finally found my person”, and “she became one of the most important people in my life”.

You were “actually fairly content with  being single” before you met her, and you didn’t like the anxious person you were in the context of the relationship with her: “I was anxious a lot of the time.. the only thing more anxiety inducing than not hearing from her is reaching out and waiting for a reply. This was the case when we were together.. I used to end up in a huge anxiety spiral about not hearing from her.. I am definitely anxious- preoccupied..  it’s a classic pattern where she has not replied to my latest message for a week now.. it was like this in our relationship too.. she just wouldn’t reply while we were in the middle of a conversation.. Like one time I sent her a very heartfelt message.. and she saw it and didn’t reply for several hours. I got so anxious I messaged her again.. She eventually replied and didn’t even address most of the message which was hurtful to me cos I had made myself quite vulnerable in sending it. It used to drive me crazy, really.”

During the relationship with her, you were “willing to compromise on key wants because I didn’t believe I deserved them.. I was so willing to overlook my own needs”, including your need for (more) physical intimacy with her, a lack that was “extremely frustrating” for you.

Sometime after the breakup, you experienced “lots of anger/ resentment.. Just angry that it seems to have been so easy for her comparatively.. she could  never contact me again and be perfectly fine with it and here I am pinning for her.. I suppose I’m feeling angry at the world in general too. I feel like I was given a glimpse at what love could be like- after waiting so long.. and just as I thought I was getting somewhere it was taken away”. Soon after posting about this, you “started feeling bad about being angry and berating myself for all the mistakes I made during the relationship. This always happens, even when the anger toward someone is justified.. I always focus on what I’ve done wrong rather than giving myself space to feel when others have hurt me”.

More about anger, you wrote: “as a disabled woman I am extremely socialised to downplay my anger in all kinds of situations. The attitude is generally ‘be grateful for what you get and don’t expect too much'”.

You wrote about your love for her that it was “built on an emotional connection, rather than a physical one” partly because of her compromised physical health. Otherwise, on love, sex and flirting,  you wrote: “Sometimes I really wish that it was easier for me to connect with people on a superficial level i.e., be seen as desirable enough for random hookups.. but then I ask myself, do I really want  a quantity of hollow connections over quality ones? And the answer is probably not, but the physical intimacy would be nice in some ways.. Hookups and getting short buzzes from flirting is more damaging in the long run. I don’t want that really, I want intimacy and that’s different… instead of going for the short, sharp dopamine hits superficial validation gives, I need to ask myself ‘is this connection building the sense of intimacy I want?’ and if the answer is no.. I need to use that as a guide to move on and put my time and energy elsewhere… sometimes she throws me flirty comments, but only in a superficial way. This is.. very unsatisfactory indeed”.

Connecting deeply is a very significant experience for you: “I am indeed proud of myself for opening my heart despite the risks, and consider myself lucky to have such a capacity to love deeply.. I am so glad I took that risk… feeling and loving deeply is something we should celebrate about ourselves”. You quoted something you read that spoke to y0u deeply: “You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart”.

This very significant experience of connecting deeply led you to a certain awakening: “I have continued to connect with people in a more authentic way than I did before this ‘failed’ relationship, and I’m proud of that.. I have also made an effort to get involved in a volunteer programme one evening a week and through that I am getting to know some lovely people.. Basically, I do like the person I am becoming post this relationship.. I have had a very fulfilling week in terms of social connection. I have been at one gathering or another almost every day some unexpected. One such unexpected connection came after I went to a play at the last minute a couple of nights ago and had the loveliest interaction with the performer during the show… I also had some very high praise at work from multiple people. It’s clear that a lot of people believe in and think highly of me… what I want from connections with people, romantic and otherwise, is a shared sense of intimacy… Loving someone like that is not something everyone can or is willing to do and you should hold onto that”.

About self confidence, dependency, codependency, self esteem, self criticism and shame, you shared: “I have major self- confidence issues due to using a wheelchair.. I have no choice to depend on others in my everyday life to some extent due to my disability… what I still let define me is people’s negative reactions to it which I have internalised.. I mean there is a show featuring disabled people going on dates called ‘the Undateables’ for gods sake.. But I feel determined to let go of that shame.. ‘anxious types tend to bond quickly and don’t take time to assess whether their partner can or wants to meet their needs.. In trying to make the relationship work, they suppress their needs’.. I just feel very unloveable some days.. a lack o self esteem.. a large amount of intenalised shame, weak sense of self, and heavily relying on others as my main source of validation.. my brain tends to go into self critic override… my thoughts and ways I react to things are driven by a sense of shame, so someone else shaming me doesn’t have the motivational effect.. I am my own biggest critic so there’s nothing anyone else could say that I haven’t told myself…as someone who fits the category of potentially being ‘not worth saving’ should the health system be overwhelmed with cases, due to assumptions about my quality of life and the value that people like me bring the world”.

About your family you shared that your siblings, a brother and a younger sister, live in another country and your parents live in another city (your younger sister later moved in with your parents), and that you are not “particularly close” to your family. About your childhood, you shared that your parents minimized your feelings, so you didn’t get to label and process your feelings (“my parents whose way of dealing with hard things is to minimise them.. I wish my parents had taught me this growing up as it’s  only after seeking therapy that I am learning how much not labeling and processing my feelings has affected me”), and that you were “scared and timid” when you were “very small to when I was a teenager”. You shared that you’ve “been taught to put on a ‘brave face’ and it has made things harder in the long run because I don’t give myself the time to process hard things properly”.

More of what you shared (my purpose in putting it all in this post is to be able to use it later): “I sound like a different person when I am anxious and when I’m  not.. Woke up with a ball of anxiety in my stomach and had to give myself a pep talk of sorts just to get out of bed… I distinctly remember one time, being awake crying while she slept next to me because she was so cold after being affectionate the last time she stayed over… I have been feeling so, so anxious these past couple  of days about my contact with this acquaintance of mine. We have not had much contact the past few days and it feels like she had distanced herself from me.. It is also clear that she  is not interested in genuinely getting to know me as I am her… I reached out to my flirtatious acquaintance seeking a conversation and didn’t get the response I wanted (very surface level)… as always it was anxiety driven rather than an authentic action… (regarding the lockdown->) Interestingly my anxiety levels are lower .. I felt a lot more anxious when I first got into a relationship, for example, even when it was bringing me a lot of joy and excitement and I know it’s because I’m afraid of being abandoned/ alone more than anything else… Quite enjoying life in lockdown.. I think my brain likes certainty of knowing how the days are going to go and not having the stress of commuting to work or the reactions or strangers going about my day.. so a lot of my anticipatory anxiety is gone… I just get so anxious about communicating too much or too little, the tone of it, how the other person responds to what I say, who messages who first… the brain loves the familiar, so it seeks that out even if the familiar is unpleasant… She said she enjoyed my company and thanked me for a great time and yet my anxiety was gnawing at me again all night, about how the conversation went and what I did or didn’t say.. Same old! My instinct is always to reach out and seek reassurance but I learned with my ex that when I’m in this space no amount of reassurance works… It has also been beneficial to be able to lean on friends”.

My initial input today is regarding these two sentences: “as a disabled woman I am extremely socialised to downplay my anger in all kinds of situations. The attitude is generally ‘be grateful for what you get and don’t expect too much”- this attitude has to be put to death. I just noticed the extreme wording I chose so spontaneously: put to death. Reads extreme and yet so appropriate.

I have many more thoughts about all that you shared. But the paragraph right above is so important that I will leave this hours long post with just that one paragraph input- nothing is more crucial than changing this attitude.

anita