Dear Karen:

I am glad to get your update, and no worries, it’s not too long for me. L moved out last Friday, two days ago, still a very fresh change in your life, and an undesirable change. It feels strange and it will take some time to adjust to this change.

You shared that (1) you expressed how you feel about L to a mutual friend, and that friend told her what you expressed, showing her a text that you sent him. She “saw the txt about how I felt about her.. that’s when she said I don’t want your help moving out to my new place.. She said seeing it written down made her think”. L told the friend that you were helping her move out. The friend suggested to her that she was leading you on by letting you help her. L got annoyed and replied to the friend: “Karen knows my feeling, and she wants to help”.

(2) L said she was “so happy” about “doing it by herself, transitioning into civilian life from the army”, but then “boom, message from her family wanting something and she gets down”. You told her that she needs “to say no to them when they ask for something.. and she did which is first time ever… She feels like she doesn’t deserve in a sense to be happy”.

(3) You got L a gift, a photo album related to her career, a thoughtful gift. Her response: “she left the room… she was upset.

Earlier you shared about L and her family: “L is always the one doing the chasing, helping them… the one that has to make the effort”.

– Putting all the above together, I think that I have a better understanding of L. Seems to me that she is feeling, in addition to what I suggested earlier, a troubling sense of being in debt to her parents/ family, feeling that she owes them a lot. She wants to free herself from that imaginary debt, and that is why she has been chasing them- to give them and help them and pay her debt.  She chases them not because it gives her pleasure to chase them, or that she enjoys interacting with them- but because she desperately wants to be done with that debt, to pay it off completely. She feels that she doesn’t deserve to be happy until she pays her debt completely.

This sense of debt leaks from the context of her relationship with her parents, to her relationship with you. When she read a text about how much you love her, she felt that she is in debt to you for loving her so much, and that made her want to make you stop loving her.

When the mutual friend suggested to her that she was leading you on by allowing you to help her, she felt that she owes you for helping her, and wanted to stop you from helping her or to make sure you know that she doesn’t owe you for your help.  When you gave her the gift, she felt that she owes you for that gift, and this is why she was upset.

“I said to her, you are going to be feeling different emotions.. It’s hard for her with a lot of emotions”- the feeling of being in debt to her family (you/ anyone) is troubling her a whole lot. When she feels happy, all it takes to take away a moment of happiness is “a message from her family wanting something”. She doesn’t want to chase them, she hates chasing them, she hates getting messaged from them, but she takes their messages because she wants to pay off her debt, something she was never able to do.

If what I suggested her is true to her, then it gives you much needed information regarding moving forward in the friendship/ relationship with her. I will be glad to discuss this further with you.

* I don’t know why she brought up the other night a note she found where you wrote about your feelings for your ex back then. Maybe she felt less special to you because she is not the only woman you ever cared for.

anita

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