Dear Elisa:

Your motivations, emotions and behaviors in this relationship, with this man, parallel your motivations, emotions and behaviors with your parents:

“I wonder why I need to be the one that adapts to him… It was always about him having the time, the need or the want to see me. It rarely felt like I had any say in it”-

-when a parent ignores the child or rejects the child otherwise, the child is the one with the need and want to see the unavailable parents, and they are the ones without that need and want. The child has no say in what her parents choose to do. As the child tries to get her parents’ loving attention, she is not able to do so by asserting herself, so she does what she is able to do: to passively adapt to her parent/s in every possible way, doing everything in her power to accommodate and please the parent.

“I just told myself that this relationship has to work. I am going to make it work no matter what. I will understand him and meet his  needs”-

-a young child is completely dependent on her parents: to be fed, sheltered, cared for. For a child, the parents are the only ones who can provide her with her essential needs. She does not perceive having other parents because she..  only have this one parent, or these two parents. And so, the child has to make it work no matter what: she will focus on what her parents need, meet their needs best she can- she’ll do anything and everything because there is no where else for her to go. Fast forward, you don’t fully realize that you are not dependent on this man for your physical needs, and for your emotional needs- you don’t see an alternative relationship- it is this man or nobody.

“Feelings of shame, not good enough and that’s something wrong with me. I understand that these are wounds in me that needs to be healed. I thought I could do it with him”- not if he reopens your wounds, not if he adds to your wounds.

“I was responsible for my parents’ happiness when I was younger. I needed to take their pain away. To protect them”- you needed to protect them so that they will start protecting you. You needed to take their pain away, so that they will be able to take your pain away. You needed to make them happy, so that they will make you happy in return.

“It’s a broken little girl thinking that it’s her responsibility to take other people’s pain away”- a little girl- turned woman- who has been in pain for so long, and still looks up to someone else to take her pain away. She figures that she can take a man’s pain away, in return- he’ll take her pain away, fix what is broken in her.

“There is this empty feelings, that feels like hopelessness and helplessness. I know this feeling very well from childhood. And I want to find ways not to feel this feeling. Perhaps this is the time. I’m ready for it”- to no longer feel helpless, you will need to effectively help yourself every day. This way, you will build confidence in yourself as being helpful to yourself,  no longer helpless. Confidence in your ability to take good care of yourself will fill in that emptiness, and fix that brokenness.

Part of taking care of yourself is making choices regarding who is in your life and in what capacity. You need people in your life who at the least, do not harm you. You know of the Buddhist principle do no harm. If anyone in your life (a parent, friend, boyfriend, etc.) repeatedly harms you- your primary responsibility is to protect yourself from that person by not engaging with that person, not giving him or her further opportunity to harm you.

anita