Dear Juanita:

Thank you. “I thought he was a secure guy when I met him, though I was in emotional turmoil at that time”- you were in emotional turmoil, so you needed someone stable and secure. We tend to believe that we have what we need to have. A child needs a parent’s love so she believes she has it in the parent; a woman in turmoil needs stability, so she believes that she has it in the  man.

“When my husband is helpful, I get a bit wobbly”- it is only in cartoons and some fictional movies that a character is always bad, never good. In real life, every  bad person is sometimes good to someone, even to their own victim. We get confused only when we expect someone to be always the same way.

“I was dished up a lot of empty promises.. I used to play down a lot of his behaviours.. I was grateful for human closeness”- we see what we need to see, we make believe that what we need is there.

I am sorry to read that you endured his empty promises and his lies, and that you supported him financially for so long… I understand you believing that you didn’t deserve better at the time. For most of my life I believed I didn’t deserve much of anything good.

“It’s easier if someone is just a total ***$$**- then you know where you are”- like I wrote above (before I read this sentence I just quoted from you- no one is a total **$$** all the time, only cartoons and some fictional movie characters. “when someone exhibits”- only if you wrongly believe that people are all good or all bad.

Regarding your writing, your creativity (“they mercilessly squashed my creativity.. it’s like an ocean within me and I long to be creative”)- I would love to read anything that you write, as an exercise, resurrect some of that squashed creativity!

anita