Dear Changeagent:

You quoted me: “I noticed quickly that you are unusually mature and insightful, unusually aware of reality, seeing the big picture”, and you asked: “I am unsure why you said ‘unusually mature’ and ‘unusually aware of reality’? I just wasn’t sure why it is unusual?”-

– I made that comment in response to what you asked here: “Is it me that is emotionally immature and missing something?”. My response was that it is not at all my impression that you are emotionally immature, but the opposite, that you are very mature= unusually mature, as in more mature than many other people, in my experience. Also, it is not at all my impression that you are “missing something”, but the opposite, that you are very aware of reality, that you are seeing a lot of it, the bigger picture.

The bigger picture that you pointed to consists among other things, her seeing not you, but other people in her past (inaccurately projecting others into you), and of her adding to your childhood traumas by her mistreating you in ways that resemble the ways your mother mistreated you.

Did I satisfactorily answer your question?

You shared in your recent post that you lived on the streets in 2014 (“you move on but you never forget”), that you recently understood for the first time in 40 years that your mother indeed abused you since you were a child (“I never knew it was abuse. I do now”), that you cut contact with her December 2019, and consequently lost contact with your sister and niece, currently having “no family at all”. You live in a small regional town in Australia. When Covid hit and everything closed down, and knowing finances were going to get worse, and that your partner not being in a position to work- you tried to get more work, feeling a lot of stress and pressure, feeling “extremely tired/ fatigued all the time. The kind that sleep doesn’t solve”.

You wrote that when you first met her and hugged, it felt like you were “fused together… a fusion, a belonging, like coming home… I feel her tummy against mine and there’s something there fusing us together”. You went into your relationship with her “with a full commitment to grow as a person individually and together… believing we can work it out”.

You shared that you are an empath, which is a blessing and a curse, that you are deeply depressed and unstable, and that you’ve been those things before. You will not ask her to leave because she has nowhere to go.

My understanding regarding that fusion/ coming home experience with her when you first met: it was your  state of mind, an intoxicating state of mind born out of a long-term unsatisfied hunger for a feeling of home, for a connection in which you can finally rest. This fusion was your desire to be home rushing ahead of you, making it seem like it was happening. But it didn’t really happen.

You wrote: “It would be very different story if she was slapping me around, verbally abusing me, swearing at me, putting me down, putting my life in danger, or even getting violent. That is when I would say enough and to get out. She is not doing those things… In regard to your point about the power imbalance. I agree with you… I feel that people that like to exercise that power in a relationship is cruel”-

– when a person succeeds in exercising power over another in non-violent ways, there is no need to practice violence. It is similar to the following: if a dog succeeds in scaring away a trespasser by barking, there is no reason to attack. Animals instinctively prefer to spend the least amount of energy so to accomplish their goals, as well as to not risk injury and death unless absolutely necessary.

In other words, if she has power over you as-is, there is no motivation on her part to expand more energy than is required by slapping you around, what would be the use.. nor is there a reason for her to expose herself to unnecessary risks, such as the risk of being arrested for causing you physical injury.

About injuries, there are injuries that are visible, such that involve blood pouring out of the body, and there are injuries that are visible in other ways: and broken bones and there are injuries that are not visible in the same ways that blood is visible- you can see them in the deadness of one’s eyes, in the aged look of the face, in the behavior of the injured, staring into space, sleeping a lot, acting “extremely tired/ fatigued all the time. The kind that sleep doesn’t solve”.

Changeagent- I wish you get the one who is injuring you to live elsewhere, there has to be a place for her to go to. It is not right for you to suffer the way you do so that she will have a place to live, a place you pay for. It is not right for you to sacrifice your life so to benefit a woman who doesn’t seem to care that you are suffering. What is the use of cutting contact with your mother when you are living in effect, with your mother’s substitute?

I know you are very tired and very distressed and I don’t know if you can focus on my words. Can you?

anita