Dear Anita,

Thank you also for your responses, they are so helpful. I will echo the sentiment that both yours and Teak’s comments are really helping so much right now in this difficult time, I can’t thank you both enough.

Looks to me that you tend to magnify unpleasant/ negative experiences and perceive them as much bigger and worse than they really are. Maybe W’s insults and hurtful comments.. were not really insults or hurtful.

This is really eye-opening to me, it had not occurred to me that I am magnifying these difficult thoughts/scenarios. It may be a habit I have developed over several broken-down relationships, uncomfortable family dynamics as a child, and being susceptible to depression and anxiety. I am admittedly a sensitive person, and I feel emotions very acutely, especially empathy, and I often feel others’ sadness strongly. This has given me so much to think about, to try and control my emphasizing of negative feelings and scenarios.

* I am assuming sex was emotionally painful to you, not physically painful.

In fact, it was more painful for my partner, she struggling to express herself sexual and struggling with feelings of guilt and a lack of physical desire (things she has told me in the past). But due to my openness to sex and sexual expression, I think I struggling with feelings of rejection when my desire for sexual closeness was met with my partner not wanting to, if that makes sense?

– this is all you shared about your childhood. Absent are the sounds you heard as a child: perhaps there were arguments between your parents (before they separated and divorced), maybe angry and loud, maybe angry and quiet, maybe the silence between them was tense and threatening. Maybe you were afraid of their next argument, or the next silence treatment one imposed on the other.. Maybe you walked on egg shells, so to speak, waiting for the other shoe to drop, scared, sometimes angry. Maybe in the silence of the home, alert to every sound, your hearing became acute, each sound magnified, so to prepare for danger to come. This can explain your current magnification of potential threats, threats that often do not materialize (do they?):

This is very interesting, I was too young when my mother and father divorced, but because we lived in another country, my mother raised me for 2 and a half years in the country I live in now and I didn’t really meet my father until I was a little older when he moved closer, my mother informs me that I was very scared and hesitant towards him, and we didn’t form a strong connection. I remember a lot of sadness from my mother, so what you said makes sense – I did not want to cause my mother any further hurt, and my fathers temper and his dislike of children meant I definitely walked on egg-shells around him so as not to make him angry. He would often be very angry at normal child-like things, such as dropping something, or not understanding a difficult concept.

You wrote in regard to living with this woman: “I feel trapped”- trapped as a child perhaps, in the home where you grew up. The child that you were wanted perhaps to take action and run away from home, but he was too scared: (1) he will be so lonely away from home, (2) his mother will be very, very sad if he runs away, and she does not deserve to be hurt.

This really resonates with me, I think I felt trapped between two parents – my mother whom I wanted to make happy and shower with love and prevent from being upset, and my father who I was scared to see but was forced to be with every other weekend, I would often cry whilst at his house as I missed my mother. I definitely wanted to run away from this, and I felt so lonely when away from my mother (1), I always felt acutely sad for my mother when we were with my father and the woman that he had had an affair with when with my mother (2), I could not bare to upset her.

Fast forward more than 20 years: “I..  feel like crying every time I see her in the house, as she does not deserve to be hurt… I feel so sorry for my partner and my feelings make it hard to hold back the tears most days. I am so scared that if I do take action, I would feel so lonely and regretful, but breaking up is also all I’ve thought about for months”.

You have no idea how much this brings home these feelings, the comparison with my mother – the female care giver whom I didn’t want to upset, and my current partner, the now female care giver whom again, I do not want to upset. Knowing these things really is helping in understanding why I am struggling with these matters. Is there anything you would suggest that helps with these feelings? I am trying to cultivate mindfulness and close relationships with friends, but as I mentioned, I feel a little disappointed by my closest nearby friends at the moment. But in a way this gives me the strength and desire to be OK on my own temporarily, to be strong and resiliant.

Thank you again for all your thoughts, reaching out on this platform has been the most helpful thing I have done in a long time.

D