Dear Ryan,

although this relationship hasn’t worked out the way you hoped for, I think it’s actually not a bad thing that it happened, because as you say yourself, you could be open and vulnerable, without slipping into the old defense mechanisms. This shows you’ve grown and aren’t the same man who has 2 failed marriages behind him. I say this in response to these words of yours: “there remain the issues that have led me to be twice-divorced, where I have yet to have an intimate, long-term relationship, in my 45-years of life. I certainly have a lot of work to continue to do.”

You don’t necessarily have so much work to do any more, neither you’re the same man you were before. Yes, there are still things to work on but you’re much more aware now and have the help needed. You’ll get there, for sure.

“I also need to work on my self-worth after working much of the past 10-years on my self-esteem.”

Actually, I think self-worth and self-esteem are one and the same, whereas self-confidence is a slightly more superficial thing, in that people may have self-confidence (due to their skills and accomplishments), but deep down, they may still feel unworthy. A typical example is an athlete who’s built his self-confidence around performance and winning. When they have an injury and cannot perform any more, they may become depressed because they based their worth on some outer thing – excellence in sports – and without it, they feel worthless.

The sense of worth is at the core of our being, it’s something that should be there simply because we exist. In childhood, if the message we’ve received from our parents was that they don’t appreciate us that much, they’re not happy to have us, that we aren’t that important to them – that’s how our self-worth gets damaged.

Based on my own experience, I believe that my mother criticizing me damaged my self-confidence, but her expressing that she didn’t want to have me (because she was afraid to have children, she felt incapable of being a mother) was what actually caused my lack of self-worth. When the child feels unwanted, this is how the wound happens. Interestingly, I wasn’t aware of my lack of self-worth until much later in life, I was only aware of my lack of self-confidence.

Anyway, now that you know what to work on, it doesn’t necessarily need to take a long time to heal it. You may start valuing and appreciating yourself already now, not because your outer achievements, but just because you’re valuable and worthy. We all are. This is how the sense of inferiority/superiority gets resolved too. You lose the need to compare yourself with others, you focus on your own life and growth, without looking what others are doing.

I wish you a happy new chapter in life, and keep us posted how you’re doing…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tee.