Dear Dee:

“I would like to think I was just about the easiest kid ever to have, .. I just really have never liked for people to have to worry about me….  I am complicated and selfish and I know it”-

– you became the easiest kid for your parents so that they won’t worry about you, because you loved them. Fast forward, being the easiest person to get along with became your habit-of-being/ your personality. The cost of is that you hide/ hold in any thoughts, preferences and emotions that may inconvenience the other person. This kind of hiding makes a long term, healthy, honest and intimate relationship- impossible.

Because of this hiding and holding in, the easiest kid… became a complicated young woman.

“I could have a romantic relationship, I just need it to be completely on my own terms and I don’t want to have to ask anyone to change for me”- it is okay for a person to change some things for you, it is healthy, not a bad thing. It is okay for two people to compromise some things for each other, it makes team work possible, not only in the workplace, but in romantic relationships as well.

I can’t think of any healthy, long term, intimate relationship of any kind being possible when it is  completely on one person’s terms (“I just need it to be completely on my own terms”), or one where neither person is ever inconvenienced by the other (“I just really don’t want my preferences to inconvenience anyone else”).

“my boyfriend thinks there really isn’t anything (wrong).. I don’t know how to act as if anything IS wrong because the problem is completely mine!”- the problem is not completely yours in the context of a relationship with another person. The problem is yours and his. If indeed he is not aware of the problem, he soon will.

“I am very willing to share my feelings, thoughts, and experiences of all kinds with anyone, it’s just easier to do so if someone asks me things?”

I am asking then regarding your fear and terror (“I am more so actually in fear of the immediate response he will have.. I am terrified of the confrontation”)- how did your parents confront each other and how did they confront your brother and you?

anita

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