Dear Laelithia:

1) A summary of your current relationship: you (31, single, working psychotherapist, looking to move to another city) met B (39, divorced after 16 years marriage, debt free, with credit that took a hit, currently employed “in a very precarious work situation” and may lose that employment anytime, willing to move after you to the other city, timing of move depends on his work situation) on Dec 20 2020, a month and a week ago.

On Jan 11 2021, twenty two days after meeting him for the first time, you wrote the following about him: “kind, sweet, caring, and probably everything I could as for in terms of a relationship partner.. very affectionate, reassuring, thoughtful and wants to help me any way he can.. he has fully committed to me”.

At first you felt elated, telling a friend that you may have met your future husband. You were excited that “for once the man was reciprocating my excitement/ eagerness”. But then, you started doubting yourself and panicking: “it maybe was too soon and perhaps I might regret it… terrified at the prospect of settling down long term… my commitment phobia rearing its ugly head”. You wavered “from feeling very secure/ happy/ grateful for having this man in my life, to terrified/ worried/ scared that I jumped in too soon… concerned about my past history of rushing into things and then losing interest”, scared that you may hurt him: “I will completely crush him and he is such a sweet man”, or hurt yourself, that you “may have not made the best choice of mate”, not knowing if you “can trust (your) judgement on if someone is a good potential mate for me or not”.

Later, you suggested to B to slow down, and “he seemed hurt and scared at this prospect”, so you gave up on the idea of slowing down, so to make him happy/ to please him: “The people-pleaser in me seems to have come back in full swing.. I find myself more concerned about his well-being than my own”.

By Jan 26, a month and a week after he met you for the first time, he told you “that he wants and needs me in his life, that I have become his rock and he loves me completely”. You added that he is “exceptionally organized and clean, very selfless with me, and very loving… working very hard to be a good partner to me”, that he helps you with your issues and stresses and that he “definitely adds to my life”. But you are concerned about “his employability and his financial situation”, worried that you will “become the sole breadwinner”, worried about the fact that you are still doubting the relationship, “flip flop(ping) week to week.. head over heels for him, very attracted”—> “big doubts.. perseverating on his flaws”.

Most recently he told you that “he almost broke down at work due to the pressure his bosses are putting on him, as well as the fear of potentially losing me”. You now feel burdened by feelings of responsibility for his wellbeing, and you long for the days when you were responsible only to yourself and to your dog, “A part of me longs to be able to run to the other city and start fresh”.

2) Quotes from 2017:

May 10-14, 2017, regarding another man, long ago: “I can’t help but feel like it was something (or a few things) that I did that made him change his mind about me being ‘the one’… somehow I keep thinking that.. something about how I acted last time I saw him changed his mind…the reason why he no longer saw value in being with me”.

June 16, 2017, same man: “I’m having such a hard time understanding that nothing I did or didn’t do could have kept this outcome from happening. Instead I keep replaying our times together, and wondering what would have happened if I behaved better? What if I paid more attention to my appearance? What if I played it cool and aloof… These questions seem to haunt me, and are destroying my current happiness”.

May 19, 2017, regarding your parents: “I longed so deeply to be seen by them, to be heard, to hear loving words of affirmation…  my younger sister was born just 18 months after me and has always had a much better relationship with my mother than I ever did. I tried so hard to get her attention, I would clean the house as a child during the nights to surprise her, I would work so hard at school, I would try to engage with her. But she was emotionally aloof, and often deferred to spending time with my sister. Over the years I began to resent my sister, I did not treat her well, and this proved to worsen my relationship with my mother, and further my inner dialogue of feeling unworthy of her attention, and ultimately unlovable”.

June 16 & July 1, 2017, about the man/men and about your mother (what I believe to be your emotional experience of childhood, how you felt as a child and onward): “All my life I have longed for a love I did not feel I received… I have a hole, a deep longing that never seems to go away… I feel so stuck, so damaged, and hopeless… I can’t seem to find that connection.. it was not real love.. that emptiness inside of me… I wake up every morning missing… regressed back to wondering what would have happened if I had behaved myself better”.

On July 31 2017, I asked you: “will you share more about how it felt to you, how the experience felt, cleaning the home at night so to surprise your mother; working hard at school so to get her attention while she directed her attention instead to your sister?”

You answered: “I remember how painfully it hurt to feel like my genuine, authentic self wasn’t enough to garner the love and attention I desired, so I needed to constantly try to be the perfect daughter, then the perfect friend, the perfect student, the perfect therapist, and the perfect girlfriend. I realize now that I mold myself into whatever I think the other person wants, and in the end it doesn’t work, and I lose myself. This process validates the internal script that I have carried with me too long, that there is something wrong with me and I need to hide/cover it up. There were times, with my mother and others, that this seemed to work, which I think further validated the process of trying to be someone other than myself. However, as I look back, it never did remain effective long term…

“I felt above all else, scared. Scared that I wouldn’t be cared for like I needed to, helpless. I also felt sad, lonely, neglected, unloved, jealous, wrong, grotesque. Like something was definitely wrong with me, not her or anyone else. I felt guilty, for not being ‘right’ and ‘good’ naturally. I also felt confused, that I didn’t know why things were this way, and angry about it”.

3) A quote from yesterday, Jan 26, 2021, and my thoughts today regarding the recent quote:

“When I am on my own and single, I long for a partner to spend time with and that can help me and I them in life, but then when I have that, I seem to miss the freedom and lack of responsibility for anyone else when I am on my own… Or, perhaps it is not that and maybe I haven’t met the ‘right’ person for me. I am really not sure”-

– my thoughts: sometimes when you are on your own and single, you get to feel relative freedom from how you felt so often as a child, you get to enjoy freedom from overly observing yourself and looking for what you may be doing wrong, free from that excruciating day-after-day, year-after-year self-criticism and self-doubt about whether you chose right (and caused your mother to attend to you positively), or chose wrong (and cause your mother to ignore/ criticize/ reject you).

Single and on your own, you are free from that distress.. but you get lonely, so you get together with a man, but after an initial elation, your relationship dynamics with your mother plays out in the context of your relationship with the man, but with an added twist: you didn’t have to choose your mother, so you didn’t have that stress of making the right or wrong choice of a mother. On the other hand,  with a man, you have the added stress of making the right or wrong choice choosing a man.

If you want to, when you do- you can take it from here.

anita