Dear Lara:

From my personal experience growing up with a hostile, aggressive parent, the result was that as an adult, I was overly sensitive to other people not paying attention to me. If people were not perfectly attentive to me, perfectly kind- I felt offended, hurt, rejected. It is only after enough healing that I can see that sometimes people don’t pay attention to me because they don’t feel well, or they are preoccupied with their thoughts etc., and I don’t get offended.

In addition to that I didn’t want to be “too good” to other people because I was afraid they will take advantage of me, that being good meant being weak, and not caring about people meant being strong. I was indeed confused because of my hostile home experience.

So, I am guessing you  are overly sensitive as well, maybe having an unrealistic expectation that people will be the exact opposite of your parents at all times, while a realistic expectation from people would be: respect at all times, but attention and affection- some of the time, not all the time.

Having said all that, it still is possible that the man we are talking about, like I wrote to you three days ago, is not naturally inclined to be attentive and affectionate, that his tendency is to withdraw and be cold and distant, that he can be attentive and affectionate only for short periods of time (like during the week before you left N. America) but not for long.

What do you think?

anita

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