Dear GonzalezM:

You wrote today that you’ve been with this man for 2 years, so I am thinking it is the same man you posted about a year and a half ago, in May 2019.

On that thread, you shared that you come from an abusive home and that you were married to an abusive man, “but luckily he left”. In May 2019, you were working in the same workplace, but in a different department, from this man who was “well invested in his career”. You fell deeply in love with him, but there were days without speaking to him at all. You felt ignored and expressed to him that you want more of his attention. He responded that he had priorities. At one point he told you that you hurt him, and you decided to back away. You “agreed to a break” and you felt that you “ruined the relationship”.

Today, you shared that this man works close to where you live (you no longer work at his workplace?). On Thanksgiving you “woke up feeling tore and lonely” about your relationship with this man, a relationship that was “nice sometimes, others it was lonely and confusing”. There were times during the relationship that you didn’t see him or speak to him for days or a week. You used to call him and sometimes he didn’t answer or call you back. He told you that he was tired, or that he was not ignoring you.

You never met his friends. You met his parents briefly twice, but he never invited you to dinner/ holidays with his family, even though you expressed to him that you wanted to meet his family. He didn’t even call  or text you Happy Thanksgiving in 2019 or in 2020, nor did he wish you Merry Christmas or Happy New Year in 2019. Two weeks ago he mentioned to you that he attended a friends’ wedding, a wedding that he didn’t invite you to attend with him.

Early on, he told you that he dated a woman for a few months, and his mother (“he loves his mother, that is his role model”) asked him “why ne never brought her around”, so he brought her to church and to meet his family. You were upset about why he didn’t take you to meet his family.

When you told him how you felt, his response was to tell you that you were “bipolar/ crazy”, and that “it was never enough” for you. You considered that maybe he behaved in these ways because he was embarrassed of you: his last girlfriend was African American, gorgeous and “had her life together”; you were Hispanic, and that maybe he felt that you were not what his family wanted for him.

This most recent Thanksgiving, realizing “he would never love me the way I love him”, feeling “humiliated and taken advantage of which is the most horrible feeling to carry with you everyday”, you “broke up.. drank.. cried.. texted him.. acted crazy and called him so many times”. He did not answer your calls and texts.

The next day, you apologized to him, but he did not respond. This is how you currently feel: “I can’t forgive myself, I feel like the worst human being ever.. I don’t think I am a bad person, but I make mistakes. I just can’t seem to forgive myself, and keep going in circles how I handled things. How I hurt him with my comments”-

– My input today:

1. I am sorry that you are suffering and have been suffering for so long. I hope you feel better soon, that you learn from your experience with this man and make better choices in the future, choices that will lead you to a better life.

2. You didn’t mention any hurtful or abusive comments that you made to him, so I don’t understand what comments you are referring to (?)

3. Reads to me that your relationship with this man, on his part, was a friends with benefits arrangement, a relationship based on him being with you sexually at his convenience, when and where he wanted, no commitment, perhaps (?) no dating in public, such as going to a restaurant together. But on your part it was a relationship you hoped would lead to marriage (“I love him and hoped to marry him one day”). So, there seems to be a huge gap between what the relationship was for him, and what it was for you.

4. He accused you of being “bipolar/ crazy”- let’s say that you really shift from let’s say, being very nice and loving -> to being angry and hostile, let’s say from time to time you called and texted him many times a day, in quick succession, leaving him emotional, accusatory messages, etc.- if this was true, then he was very cruel to you, taking advantage of you sexually while ignoring your valid emotional needs. His cruel and inconsiderate behaviors with you can only make your mental health worse.

In other words, if you really did behave in crazy ways, it means not that you ruined the relationship; it means that he was a bad man who took advantage of a vulnerable woman.

5. In both threads you were troubled by the idea that you ruined the relationship, and in today’s thread, you feel like the worst person in the world, even though you tell yourself that you are not a bad person. I am guessing that this feeling of being a bad person started in the abusive home where you grew up. I imagine that you were abused there and, like children do, you took responsibility for that abuse, believing that you were a bad girl who deserved that abuse. Am I correct?

anita