Dear Tania/ Nia:

(Do you prefer that I go back to call you Nia?) Please take your time reading the following post, read it part by part, over time, before you respond.

You shared earlier that your parents divorced when you were a very young child. As a young child, you lived with your father who died when you were 17. Last you saw your mother before he died was when you were 3. Next you saw your mother was after he died, when you were 18.

Your father hated your mother, and told you that he hated her.

This is what I think happened: you did not have a mother living with you, your father hated your mother, and you desperately needed your father (the only parent there) to love you. Being loyal to your father, you showed him that you hated your mother too, that the two of you were together in his hate of your mother: “I was so angry..(to)  hear anyone called ‘mother’, I’ll react like I don’t care, I don’t want to hear or sing a song about mother, but deep in my heart, I wanna have mother love”.

Here is the big problem in your childhood, as I see it: you wanted more than anything to be in the same team as your father: you and him together against your mother. You were loyal to him, but how did he reward you for your loyalty?

– he told you that your face reminded him of your mother: “my face just the same with my mom that he hate the most.. I thought that he didn’t like me because my face just the same with my mom that he hate the most (he ever told me that thing when he was angry)”.

He betrayed your loyalty by pushing you away from him, away from the team you wanted to be in (you + your father), and he placed you in the team with the woman he hated  (you + your mother).

When he was angry at you he said other very hurtful words to you, words that caused you pain: “sometimes I got pain from my dad’s words when he angry”- he betrayed his little girl’s loyalty and trust, and caused a lot of pain in this little girl.

You wrote to me: “Yes you are correct.. feeling lonely, unattended to, unloved.. jealous suspicious.. is what I feel my entire life.. even with my dad”- this is how a child feels when left by her mother and betrayed by her angry father.

You remember: “when I was in elementary school, and my father give compliment to my friend… I become really jealous.. I feel my father like her more than me”- your jealousy was born early: you were paying attention to how your father treated other girls your age, and every time he smiled, or said a kind word to her- your hurt returned to your heart deep and intense.

As an adult and in your marriage you keep re-living your unhappy childhood; it is what happens when children suffer a lot in childhood, with no help then or since: they keep re-living the same emotional experience of childhood as adults. Let’s look at this re-living of your childhood experience:

In Feb 24, in your original post in this thread, you wrote regarding your husband: “Recently, I knew that he chatted with another girl whom he likes before. I mean, my husband has feeling for her 10 years ago”- just like as a child, you were really jealous of the girl whom your father gave a compliment to, thinking he liked her more—>as an adult,  you were jealous of the woman your husband worked with,  because gave  her a compliment, or showed her some positive attention.

On that day, you wrote: “This all feels hurt… really hurt… I don’t know what can I do now.. I just feel hopeless and feel that I’m not worth it anymore.. I can’t trust anyone to tell about this… I don’t have any spirit to live”- this is how you felt as a child, this was your emotional experience as a child, and you keep re-living the same emotional experience.

You wrote, back in February: “I’ve been through darkest time before, when my father passed away and I lived alone. Even that time I also don’t have spirit to love, but I still have hope for my future”- you hoped that in the future a man will love you, and only you.

But still, as a teenager, when you liked a boy, you convinced yourself that he doesn’t care about you, and you do the same with your husband as a married woman: “it’s also a habit from I was a teenager, when I like someone else, I always convincing myself that he is not care or thought about me… I already realize that I also do this with my husband.. I worry, still struggle.. how to forget that he care for another woman more than me? I worried that he compare me to her”.

You have been aware of some of the things I stated here early on, from the day you started your thread (“sometimes I thought ‘is this maybe my traumatic about my parents?”, Feb 24), but your awareness is not enough (there is more for you to become aware of), and often you get confused: you don’t know if you are re-living your childhood emotional experience or your husband really does like another woman more than he likes you.

You can’t really trust your husband because you were betrayed by your father, and you did not yet heal from that betrayal, plus you don’t really know if your husband is worthy of trust.

Without healing, even if your husband was as close to a perfectly loyal husband as possible, you would still get  hurt and confused when, for example, the two of you would be watching a movie, a pretty actress is playing in the movie, you watch your husband’s face watching the actress, and you think to yourself: he likes her more, he is thinking how pretty she is. He wishes he was married to her, etc. etc.

In the example I just gave, the husband did nothing wrong, but you would still be re-living your childhood experience.

Best for you would be if you attended quality psychotherapy. I don’t see how you can heal without quality professional help.

Maybe it will help a bit here, in the context of your thread, if you share more about your childhood, the hurtful  words your father said, how he betrayed you, etc. (?)- not for the purpose of feeling badly, but for the purpose of increasing your awareness through our communication.

anita