Dear Palegazesunnidays:

“I know that I’m being hurt, I feel it… I know what hurts feels like, I can’t do that to them… With A right now.. I’m feeling guilt. Guilty that I will hurt him, that he will again feel abandoned… I.. feel others’ pain”-

– You feel your own childhood-pain, and you imagine that other adults (A, other men) will feel great hurt/ pain in the context of you ending the adult relationship with them. It is called Projection, inaccurate projection. I will explain my point best I can: it is true that A, and other men you dated, felt acute pain as children, and that pain is still in them. But in the context of you ending a relationship with any one of the men: the hurt that they experience as a result, is way, way… way less intense than the hurt they felt when abandoned as children.

What you feel is the intense pain you felt when emotionally abandoned as a child. You inaccurately project this pain to the men, predicting- falsely- that they will hurt the same way when you end the relationship with them. But they are not the children that they were, and you are not their parent. What hurt them so very much already happened many years ago.

Same thing in regard to your father: the fact that you were not enthusiastic about your parents’ frequent, long visits to your home- did not hurt him much, and- reads to me- did not hurt him at all.  Try to stay with these thoughts of mine for a while, and tell me how you feel about it, will you?

anita