Dear Maria:

Thank you for respecting my request that you communicate clearly to me and succeeding in doing so, in your most recent post. I will retell what you shared and tell you my thoughts and advice:

You are 22. When you were in school, your focus was to get good grades and have good friends. As you look at your peers (young women your age), you think of them as “much ahead of me.. more adults, they want the next boyfriend to be their future husband, they talk about becoming a mother”, but you still feel like a teenager because you never dated and never had a boyfriend: “I haven’t had a relationship by the age of 22 makes me even more insecure and not good enough in life”.

This is how you feel when a guy shows interest in you: “I always get scared and uncomfortable when a guy seems to like me.. I never feel that excitement to kiss them and be with them, I always withdraw… I get very nervous when someone tries to flirt with me and tries to get intimate. I feel uncomfortable, I get worried if I look awkward, if I kiss bad, that he will think I’m not that great… I always escape those scenes”.

You shared: “Most of the time, I tend to find something that makes me feel and shows me that he’s not right for me.. I always find something that makes them less appealing”- I think that because you were so afraid of intimacy with a boy/ young man, you tried to make it easier for yourself by looking at the unappealing traits of the man, looking for how he is not right for you, so to .. sort of justify your escape from those scenes.

(Not to say that every boy or man who approached you was appealing and right for you, of course. I bet a few were physically unattractive in your eyes).

Let’s see how you reacted when a young man who you did find appealing approached you: “there was a boy I’ve known for a while who seemed to fit most of my criteria. He actually asked me to be his girlfriend on my 18th birthday. I was uncomfortable and scared of kissing, didn’t know how to act. He was very sweet, but I felt a pressure on me and I was worried what people would say of me. I feared being judged if I ‘showed’ myself, that vulnerability that people need to have in order to have a relationship, you have to risk. .. By ‘showing’ myself, I mean be myself completely, be vulnerable, not trying to impress”.

Next, you shared this about your sister: “my sister didn’t have a boyfriend when she was 15 and 16, didn’t have issues with it.. my sister portrays me in a way that I disagree (with) and it upsets me a lot.. she misunderstands me. She portrays me as somebody who is too emotional, can’t handle criticism, childish. Sometimes she makes fun of me, or criticizes me in front of others we know.. she does it in a way that ‘puts me in a shell'”.

My thoughts: your sister has been bullying you emotionally for a long while: criticizing you, making fun of you, telling you how you think wrong, how you feel wrong, how you behave wrong. No wonder you are in a shell- she put you in a shell, just like you wrote: “she .. puts me in a shell”.

She has put you in a shell a long time ago and she keeps you in that shell by repeatedly criticizing you. I understand that she doesn’t always criticize you, but it doesn’t take non-stop criticism to put a person in a shell.

You are afraid to step out of the shell and show yourself in the presence of a man because you are afraid that he will criticize you too, like your sister does. You are afraid that he will think or worse, tell you that you look wrong and kiss wrong.. that you are inadequate, not good enough, not acceptable- same message as your sister has been giving you repeatedly.

My advice:

1) Stop sharing personal matters with your sister. Unfortunately for you, she is your sister but she is not your friend. I understand that you love her, and I bet that at times she feels affection for you (in between her criticizing you and making fun of you), but it doesn’t change the sad fact that she is your bully, not your friend.

The less you tell her, the less material and opportunities she will have to use against you by criticizing and making fun of you.

2) Learn to assert yourself with your sister- it may be scary to do so, and it will take time, but begin the process. Let her know that you don’t want her to criticize you and make fun of you anymore; tell her to keep her critical thought of you to herself and no longer share those thoughts with you. Tell her that it is wrong to do what she has done to you, just as it would be wrong if you criticized her and made fun of her (I am sure you could criticize her and make fun of her if you wanted to, but you don’t want to. She should return the favor to you!)

“I try to behave in a good, passive way”- learn to no longer be passive with your sister or elsewhere. Learn to be assertive instead.

3) Prepare for the next time you are approached by a man by practicing the future encounter in a similar way that an actress prepares to go on stage- visualize the encounter, have a conversation with the man, in your mind (what he says/ you say during the encounter), maybe write it on a paper: he says/ she says (but throw that paper away because your sister may use it against you!)

Preparing this way, will make the next encounter a bit less uncomfortable. But it will still be uncomfortable. Unfortunately, your sister’s criticism of you and making fun of you .. spilled into the context of encounters with men/ potential romantic relationships. It will be difficult and it will take time to heal from her criticism and this spill, but you can make it happen!

anita