Dear Stacy:

You wrote to me yesterday: “I don’t mind a longer reply… These posts have been the only thing really getting me through this breakup“- then another long reply this will be.

I read through your now 5-page thread and I want to present the problems you brought up in categories as follows (the content of each category overlaps with the content of other categories, so the following Problem Categories are not unrelated.  Another note: I will be adding the boldface feature selectively):

* The Practical, real-life Problems:

1) Money Problems: “I was born and am still poverty level.. as soon as I come home from my job, I see my mom sitting on the couch all day long in pain and self-wallowing, and the septic tank repair bill or some other stressful and real life issue constantly plaguing us that I have to take responsibility for…   Money issues and repairs constantly keep us stuck in a hole…  No one goes to work or school in my house aside from me… I definitely don’t have the money to move out still but I’m hoping to get there. I have two part time jobs and they just aren’t cutting it, especially with no health insurance. My medical bills and medication are a problem, on top of constant car repair bills. There are talks of me hopefully getting full time at one of my jobs after December if their budget allows it and I can get health insurance then. This would change my life… My car broke down AGAIN last night. I’m stuck at home physically when this happens, but also stuck because I keep having to put my paychecks into fixing the car rather than saving to move”.

2) Physical and Mental Health Problems: “When I was 12 years old, I choked on a cough drop and nearly died. and developed a severe choking and swallowing phobia…. At 26, it was discovered I also have Eosinophilic esophagitis… I’ve been reading a lot into health anxiety/OCD and I’m beginning to wonder if this is overlapping with my extreme rumination and obsessive thinking and need to ‘figure out’ my relationship and breakup as well.… I genuinely fear I have developed some form of OCD from this. Every single day, I can have the slightest physical sensation and I have to talk myself down or need to seek reassurance that I’m not in danger. It’s EXTREME and I can’t be talked out of things. It’s ruined my life and my relationships… It’s mostly the physical sensation of choking (either from EOE, stress, GERD, allergies or asthma) so this is all very complicated for me and it’s hard to explain it to doctors… Chronic stress is harming me for sure…Anxiety and panic to this level depletes my appetite and triggers my choking phobia so badly”.

3) Poor/ dysfunctional current living conditions: Loudness and Lack of structure, discipline and routine: “My sister has severe insomnia so she doesn’t have then on a sleep schedule. They stay up until 7-8 am and sleep in all day. In fact as I type this, it is 3:41 am and my sister is arguing with my nephew in the room next to me. So when I need to sleep, the house is loud and chaotic…  I don’t get much rest or peace at this house. It’s why I also fantasied and counted the days for when I got to go see my ex… I’m just absolutely tired of living in dysfunction and no discipline or routine… I WANTED guidance and rules and routine. I got chaos and isolation back then, and these same themes seem to be replaying in front of me with my sister and her kids now”, “After work, I never want to go home so I usually get myself a soda or just go sit in a parking lot until I know I can’t avoid it any longer”.

* Emotional Problems:

1) Growing up Unsafe, the resulting Hopelessness and Helplessness as a state f mind, and your desperate need for safety/ refuge:

“I felt from at least the age of four that my parents were not capable of keeping me safe anymore because I could see them fearing for their own safety with how destructive my brother was getting”, “she (your mother) is physically and financially incapable” “It makes me feel hopeless for her and for me“, “I absolutely think that I found refuge in my ex” “he (ex) wasn’t deeply thinking about anything.. I think it was more so the illusion by proxy of feeling like I can have room to be hopeful and not feel constantly helpless“.

2) Low Self-Esteem: “I see value in everyone else but myself. I know that’s my biggest problem“, “I just feel really inexperienced and not good enough for him… It’s, ‘Oh this rich family accepts me and thinks I’m good enough for them”, “I allow him to dictate my entire worth about these things and that’s my problem”.

3) Negative Body/ Sexual Image: “I feel perpetually stunted with my physical body… I don’t feel like a woman. When I have sex with men, I feel like a 12 year old”, “My life is a lot more bleak compared to the women he is lusting after. They.. are all hyper-sexually liberated women“.

4) Enmeshment/ lack of separation from your family/ mother: “My therapist said years ago that I do indeed struggle with family enmeshment“, “I don’t feel like I get to have my own adult life or sense of identity outside of her and these issues so perhaps dating this guy also gave me a sense of MY OWN LIFE. I’ve never moved out of the house or had my own separate life outside of her“, ” I don’t want to abandon her” “I know I have to live my own life, but the guilt I’d feel from that would be horrific”.

5) Loneliness and Isolation as an ongoing subjective experience: “I got chaos and isolation back then, and these same themes seem to be replaying in front of me with my sister and her kids now… I feel horribly alone despite living with 5 people… I just feel really disconnected from everyone and this is the very reason why I reached out and met my ex last year at this time” (Oct 17).

I am hoping that the above, being presented this way, will be of some help to you. Maybe one day you will present this (edited as you wish) to a health-care professional so that he/ she can put together a treatment plan for you.

There is no doubt in my mind that you placed your ex on a pedestal not because he belongs there (not at all) but because you desperately need to look up to someone so to feel safe (See #1 above, under Emotional Problems). I believe that you’ve been ruminating about him so heavily since the breakup because.. you still feel that he is your hope for safety.

You wrote yesterday: “I went back through our first couple of months of dating texts the other night (my current ex) and he was SO receptive to reassuring my anxieties. He told me he’d never leave me… He told me…  he reassured me…  He told me… my ex admitted he was… I just am so lost… I’m just going to keep confusing men and pushing them away with my anxious check-ins for reassurance and my anxious confrontations. None of it is aggressive… I do feel a huge loss to have lost my ex and his family and I know I felt refuge in his acceptance and them for many reasons as I’ve mentioned here before. I know I have to move forward but this guilt is crippling me so hard right now. I feel worse about what happened and how I handled it every day”-

-Sweet, precious Stacy: you are a good person, a kind and loving person. You don’t deserve to suffer the way you do. Please consider this-

– You feel a huge loss: subjectively (the way you feel), it is a huge loss, but objectively (reality is), there is no loss: he’s just a guy with his own problems, living at home with his parents, not making much money; a guy who talked a good game, telling you exactly the words you desperately needed to hear. But even if he meant those words (I assume he did) these are still only WORDS. It takes so much more to.. be a mensch (a person of integrity and honor).

Integrity and honor entail oh.. so much more than words.

Even if you didn’t seek his reassurance, even if you acted perfectly at all times (an impossibility for any human), he’d still be who he is and what you would have gotten from him would’ve been more words. Even if he had the right emotion to go with his words, what you need is real-life action that’s congruent with.. integrity and honor.

anita