Dear anita,

Thank you for taking time to reply on a weekend.

I thought I’d said a lot here, it’s not that I wanted to hold back, more like I don’t remember, or my mind has hidden some already?

Even though my mother was always the one who forced others to talk during a fight, I know she’s hurt more, just that she’s also done that to me, which caused tensions between us until these years when we lived apart.

Another thing I’ve been avoiding is being intrude. And I know I’ve applied it to the man by hardly asking questions, even those like “how’s your family?”, I believe if that he wants to share, he’d do it voluntarily, if he doesn’t, I’d probably get a fake or reluctant answer.

Now I remembered, blocking is my mother’s behaviour, she’d announce doing that, and it’s childish to me, also, when one blocks the other, it means that he or she is affected by the other. Well, a part of me probably still want to be seen “mature” like/by the man.

As for leaving people on read, it’s my personal thing, it’s not respectful when someone treats me so, or when one does, I expect him or her to initiate next time, as it’s not my turn to speak. He told me before that I should talk whenever I wanted to, but how do I know if others want to hear from me, instead of risking, I choose to stay silent.

It’s true that I’d kept many things to myself when he and I were able to meet in person. And it’s awkward for me to express at times. Then I returned to my country, the main communication was via messages, I already tend to over analyse, without seeing the other’s facial expressions, I interpreted messages negatively often. I know it can be tiring for him to deal with me from time to time, yet it’s definitely worse for me. I decided to open up a little (the core one was my fear of people’d disappear, as it’s happened several times) after sensing some changes in the relationship and reading psychological stuff. Maybe he was encouraging in the beginning, then he either ran out of patience or simply shifted his attention.

Talking about my fear, it always took me a certain amount of time to get over when someone I valued disappeared, and you see, the man’s doing it and worse, he reappeared. Usually I didn’t give a second chance, but he’s done much for me before and we had good times together, so the drama dragged on (sorry for confusing tenses, English isn’t my native tongue).

I’m aware that I need to fully accept that he’s not interested to release myself from this.

Back to my mother again, I don’t remember considering selfish/self-centered when she fought with my father, but some time ago, when she ruined the atmosphere at home, I did hate that and thought she just couldn’t control herself; however, compared to her, I’m selfish for not doing much for the family.

Honestly, I can be cold to those I don’t care… And it’s important for me to show my appreciation when receiving other’s help, because others aren’t obliged to do that (does that relate to low self-esteem?). And all the conflicts come from my head, like I don’t want to force myself to do/believe anything, but maybe it’s the thing I have to accept; and I want to keep the naive me, but I must put on a mask to protect myself.

During fights, my father was either quiet or simply left the house, and sometimes he broke things. Moreover, he became horrible when divorce was on the way. I’m totally like him regarding the silent part when I’m not happy until the other breaks the ice. One of the reasons is that I know words can be mean, so I’d rather say nothing.

To your other question, when my mother picked up a fight, she was like “what now?/what have I done now?” and I just wished her’d leave me alone. Or she’d threat on her life… My father wasn’t passive aggressive towards me as I was sometimes the messenger, but the only time I was slapped by him was due to her fight with my mother. And my mother said that sentence to me in a okay way, I think it’s more like that no matter how good I’m, she can criticise something, which I suppose comes from that I don’t have to sacrifice much like her.