Okay, this is bizarre.  My browser started ‘refusing’ to post.  I’ve typed several long-ish replies (don’t know any other kind 🙂    ) to your last two posts, and none of them “took.”  Seems to be working now, though.  We’ll try it again.

Thank you both for your thoughts and suggestions.  TeaK, your take on things is pretty close.  It *is* AA that cracked my shell and started drawing me out, and maybe that left me ‘vulnerable’ in a way to opening further… but too much , too soon, and in an inappropriate direction.

Time and distance are working their magic.  I feel bad for ruining a friendship that was of mutual support, by trying to make it into something it was not.  I regret depriving her of what was a source of support and encouragement (for a while, at least).  She’s on the other side of the country, lonely (said as much while we were still talking), and I *could* have been there for her still, had I not shifted my thinking from supporting her to what I wanted instead.

I like your suggestion to examine exactly what I was feeling, and why I was so eager to reach out and make a connection.  I do my best thinking this way, putting things “on paper” and going over it… helps keep me focused, and enables me go come back to where I was if I get off on a tangent.  WHEN I get off on a tangent.  🙂

My mom was supportive… but silent in the face of stepfather’s words.  If she had anything to say about it, she did so in private; I never saw it.  I took her silence as agreement with what he was saying.

Wife is not really hostile, but the support is ‘selective,’ and control is an issue (lot of the criticism comes from that, not doing things the way she thinks I should, or going “overboard”); she has her issues, as I have mine.  I’m coming to realize that it’s that ‘control’ that’s getting to me, along with the gunnysacking (bringing up the past to make a point in the present).

I think I *am* doing what you said: seeing myself with new, different eyes.  They don’t see deeply or very far yet, but in time.  Getting a much better sense of boundaries, of what’s acceptable and what isn’t, instead of just taking it all.

Anita, I couldn’t agree more with your take.  With the perspective that a little distance is providing, I can see that it would almost certainly have been a bad outcome all around.

Too much, too soon.  Need to crawl before walking, walk before running, run before sprinting.  Maybe in time we can see about flying.  Baby steps first.  I’ll take this whole thing as a “fore-warned is fore-armed,” and be more on top of things if and as they develop.