Dear Anita,

Happy Holidays 🙂 I love your effort with the heart emoji haha the effort means more than the heart.

Thank you for taking the time to think of me on your thanksgiving.

I read your whole post first, and feel like we are on the right track, I think I have entered a new stage of facing this trauma and projection of it onto N. The beginning of this year started with me blaming N for my feelings, then I became aware that not all these feelings were warranted for the present situation, confused/frustrated/triggered I came here. Talking all these things through I feel I am at a stage where I am taking responsibility for feelings that are not mean to be directed at N, but F in another timeline. Taking responsibility is my new stage.

“– Only part of you knew that he didn’t mean for you to feel transactional and abandoned. The other part of you.. is not so sure, is it? I am quite sure that he didn’t mean it, and I know that he is not at all responsible for you feeling transactional and abandoned. Part of you holds him responsible.”

Yes, part of me holds him responsible, but I do not want to. The illusion of the projection of F into N is very convincing and often hard to argue, I am suspicious and find little things that points an arrow/projects something F did into N. It is hard for  me to tell if it is a projection or if he is actually behaving similar to my father. But I am having a hard time trusting myself and the distinction between the two, because the part of me that would fall for my dads dishonesty scares me that it will just as easily happen again. How am I suppose to truly know the difference between manipulation/dishonesty and truth?

“To stop getting triggered by him, you’d have to take full responsibility for feeling transactional and abandoned, a feeling that dominated a significant part of your growing up years. Way before you met N for the first time.”

Yes exactly, however I think here is a space where I get confused; to stop being triggered by F I had to take full responsibility for feeling transactional (a new word that has popped up in the vocabulary about my dad and very accurate) and abandoned, this feeling of taking responsibility has a very specific feeling to it. It is humbling, it makes me feel weak, and it makes me feel like a little kid being scolded… So when I take responsibility for feeling transactional and abandoned by N, it cues the same feelings of humility, weak, and scolded like a child. This feeling reminds me of how my dad made me feel, and the familiarity is confusing because it used to indicate me being manipulated, doubt in my own instincts that he was right and my feelings were wrong. So when I need to take responsibility for a feeling such as feeling transactional by N, how do I get the validation that I did the right thing and that he wasn’t in fact transactional? and validation that I didn’t compromise who I am in order to just stop being triggered?

I actually have a recent example of taking responsibility and feeling this way. The night before thanksgiving we went to get groceries together. We stopped for dinner first, then on our drive to the grocery store he was angry at a bad driver and called them the C word. This word makes me very uncomfortable, I have told him this numerous times. I told him again that it made me uncomfortable and to please not. He proceeded to say it again… he kept saying “oh the word c*** bothers you? I am not calling you and c***” just kept saying it. I called him an asshole for doing that and said the fact he continued to say it even though it made me uncomfortable was not loving and how you treat someone. He said “words don’t mean sh*t, get that through your head or you will be controlled by them the rest of your life” I don’t know why he was being so harsh, he was really annoyed at me for being impacted by “just letters.” We had a whole argument about it and one familiar feeling I had with him right then, familiar from F, was that I couldn’t explain to him why the word made me uncomfortable. I roughly said, it is more than a word it has a misogynistic historical reference and it held weight. He rolled his eyes. He lectured me about how he doesn’t let anything outside of him have control over him and how I should do the same and not let a simple word ruin our evening. He said “you get upset about things that don’t matter and I am tired of it.” By now we were in the store parking lot and he was trying to get out to go in and I could not bring myself to get out of the car with him, I felt completely repelled by him and wanted to shop separately if he was gonna be this way. He softened his tone and said “do you want to be controlled by a word?” I don’t want to be, but in that moment I felt similarly to when my dad would manipulate me into believing my feelings were invalid. Confused I just agreed that a word/letters should not control me. I do actually still agree with that. But reflecting back I do not agree with him that “words don’t mean anything” what is prayer then? It is not the letters and words, because language does not matter, it is the backing behind the words that DOES hold weight. I just don’t have the energy to bring this up cause I am tired of arguing with him about these things, we have been arguing more than usual the past couple weeks.

Yesterday morning I took him to a got yoga class, it was very nice and puts me in a good headspace, but I was pulled right out of it by an interaction with him. We went into the grocery store because he wanted some electrolytes following our class. He also grabbed a case of glass water bottles he liked and when we got to checkout looked at me cause he didn’t have his wallet. I am not in a place of spending $20 on water but I felt obligated because of how much he has paid for me over the past year, and also felt he was looking at me like it was completely within reason that I owed him, after all, and I regret, I was not able to pay him rent most months I lived with him and I fear it has set us on a rocky financial road. He said at the time it was so absolutely okay and he encouraged me to quit my Verizon job, then when I was on unemployment I could only afford groceries and the rest he encouraged me to spend on my art. But now it is as if he resented me doing that, which I feel is unfair. Anyways, at the store for the $20 water I pulled out cash from my wallet, I sold some furniture online and had some cash from my last paycheck. He looked at me in absolute distrust, which I guess I deserve, he said “um where did you get all that cash?” I answered “from the offerup furniture” he did the math and realized I had $20 more than that, he said “no that’s not all where it came from where did it come from?” honestly his suspicion made me anxious and I forgot that my boss payed me in cash for a portion of my paycheck, so I said I couldn’t remember. He got so suspicious of me! I was so uncomfortable it reminded me of my financial relationship with my dad where I was co-dependent and questioned. I said “I don’t remember” he said “that’s suspicious you never have money and now you just have cash?” It was right then that I remembered it was from my last paycheck, but his tone was so off putting that I responded “I am not going to tell you, you are asking me with so much distrust, you cannot demand that from me, you can just trust me.” He was very irritated. When he is irritated he puts on this act like nothing is wrong, it’s incredibly annoying but I am getting used to it. He asked if anything was wrong and I was like “yea I don’t like how you are talking to me, accusing me of doing something shady, asking me questions like I am untrustworthy” I told him his energy was bringing me down and he was being negative he then said “you never have money and now you do and me asking makes me an a**hole? You know what, f**k you.” This immaturity just put me so off. We didn’t speak the rest of the drive but I wasn’t even upset I was just confused and disappointed. We got home and I took a long shower. I came to the conclusion that he probably saw my finances as affecting him as well and that is where the concern came from. I also concluded that I had a bad relationship with money from my father so that is probably why I had anxiety and forgot. Him getting so frustrated and me not telling him was all just immaturity and miscommunication. I was no longer upset about the situation but I am just tired of these little arguments chipping away at our days together and both of our daily energy.

“You’ve been suspicious of him for a long time. No wonder you had such a difficult time when you lived with him.. Living with a Suspect, always on guard..?”

This is what it felt like, but I also knew I was being suspicious and tried my best to not be, but I couldn’t help but pick up on things. I started to put my headphones on when I went to our room so that I couldn’t hear him talking with our roommate, because for some reason if he was just taking care of himself and that made him later to bed I wasn’t bothered, but the second I heard him talking to our roommate and realized that was why he wasn’t in the room with me early enough to talk before bed, I would get triggered. So having the headphones stopped me from knowing and getting triggered. But they both have very deep voices I could hear if they talked loudly so even that did not always work.

(I will respond to the rest of your post in my next reply)

Seaturtle