Dear lily:

You shared about your childhood inserting terms (“conservative, fundamentalist Christian… overbeating.. boundaries”) and understandings that you gained as an older teenager and adult, into your recollection of your childhood. It is a sort of retractive understanding. I will start my post with an exercise, translating what you shared to the language of the child that you were 30+ years ago, best I can, using the first-person and present tense, adding in parentheses some quotes:

My mom doesn’t let me do what I want to do. She doesn’t like my friends, and she doesn’t let me hang  out with them. I wrote in my journal about what I am thinking and feeling, and she read it. She doesn’t like what I am thinking and feeling and doing. She does not like me (“I somehow end up in situations where I feel I am not accepted/ valued/ loved”).

I tried so much to make her like me, I tried hard (“I offer so much but receive very little in return… I spent years wanting my mom to accept me for who I am but she never has”). I am afraid that she will leave me, because she doesn’t like me. What if she leaves me and I will be all alone??? (“I have an anxious attachment style”).

She doesn’t trust me, she doesn’t think I am a good person (“she would call campus security if she didn’t hear from me.. like I could not establish independence”). I want her to like me so much! I want her to have good thoughts about me, and good feelings too! When I imagine her liking me, when I fantasize about her looking at me with a warm, loving smile that says that she is happy that I am her daughter– it is the best feeling ever, it is like  the biggest dream coming true! (“I can’t help but wonder if I am just living in a fantasy world for simply wanting someone to accept me”).

My mom doesn’t like me. She is not  okay with me. I don’t like me. I am not okay with me (“It took years of therapy to get comfortable in my own skin”). I want my mom to like me! I need her to like me!  will do anything to make it happen! (End of exercise).

As a teenager and an adult you took on the opposite positions to your mother’s: she was narrow minded=> you are broad minded; she was intolerant of people of different races, religions, etc. => you are very tolerant of people’s race (had a non-white boyfriend), sexuality (had partners of both sexes), political ideologies (have friends who identify as communists and a boyfriend who strong anti communism feelings); she did not welcome certain people in her house=> for you,  “friends will always be welcome in my house regardless of their political ideologies”.

“I miss him and am still crying about it, and just can’t believe that he can sleep at night having said such horrible things and not even attempt to apologize… I also feel overwhelmed with empathy for him.. and somehow wondering if I shouldn’t have given up on him”-

– in practical ways, you are no longer chasing your mother (or this man)  for approval and love,  but your heart is still chasing her. You still want her to apologize to you, your empathy is still with her, you are still longing for her love, your heart did not yet give up on her loving you.

When you felt that the relationship with this man may work out, it felt euphoric, didn’t it?  Not as greatly euphoric as the child that you were felt when imagining your mother loving you, but close enough to fuel your longing for him, to fill you with sadness over The Dream not coming true.

“I also, in some ways, feel like a complete failure. I like to think that I am really good with people, from all walks of life and political views… But here I failed and can’t figure out why”- when you were a child, living in a single parent household, you needed to be “really good with” just that one person: your mother. You desperately needed to be good with her. You tried and all your efforts failed. Not because you were not a good girl, an intelligent, loving girl willing to do anything and everything for her mother’s love- but because there was no love there to have.

This man, his love is not there either, he is too troubled. Like TeaK said: “the inner child in you.. is still attracted to people who remind you of your mother”, hoping that someone like her will finally love you.

“I go out on dates with people who seem kind, honest, loving, and willing to give more, and yet I feel ZERO attraction or chemistry with them”- the attraction and chemistry you feel with men whose love is not there to have is because of the Dream I mentioned above, a dream fueled by an intensely euphoric feeling of finally being loved by your mother.

“How do I.. stop missing this person, or caring about whether he apologizes… I seem to only be attracted to people who are avoidant.. and for the life of me, I don’t know how to change it”-

– you will need to give up on your mother loving you, not only rationally, but emotionally. Your heart needs to give up on that hope/ Dream… thoroughly give up. Once you give up on the Dream, you will lose the euphoric feeling that has been fueling it. Life will feel boring for a while. But after some time of emotional/ chemical adjustment, while you date a man (or a woman) whose love is there to have, you will feel something good, not as great as the euphoria of the Dream, but good enough to start with. That good feeling will gradually grow, your relationship will be healthy and loving, and your life much better for it.

anita