Dear Seaturtle:

“These doubts come to my head. They aren’t gone… which tells me my third eye is tired? I wonder why I have these doubts so intensely the past couple weeks, so you (think) that text exchange just really impacted me more than I can still even give it credit?“- yes, the text exchange about 2 weeks ago impacted you a lot. Looking back (again) at the exchange, he blamed you for making him feel badly (“Words can’t describe how you’ve made me feel”),  and he.. proceeded with his attempts to make you feel badly (“I have no desire to waste any more energy with you.. You have no clue what love is.. I don’t know where any of your stuff “). The result: his efforts to make you feel badly have succeeded, and for 2 weeks you felt doubtful, guilty and exhausted (“exhausted Seaturtle”), 3rd eye closing due to exhaustion.

“What is this fantasy fulfilling in me to keep? I once learned in therapy that ‘you’re struggling to make the change because  the old behavior is still meeting a need.’ So I wonder what is this need, why am I having a painful fantasy that he could have evolved for me. Why am I doing this to myself“- back to the exchange: “Him: ‘you have no clue what love is’ Me: ‘yea I realize that. Him: (Thumbs up emoji)'”-

-N repeated F’s message that you don’t know how to love, that you have no clue what love is. Going back to your post on Oct 11 last year, about F: “Every 3 months, not an exaggeration, we would have what he began to call ‘house cleaning’ where we would sit down and he would list all the ways I had exemplified being ‘ungrateful’ at his house”- ungrateful, as in unloving, having no clue what love is .

F’s “evidence” that you have no clue what love is: “The shoes by the door, dishes in the sink, backpack/clothes downstairs, my messy bedroom, messy car, how I didn’t think about him and cook him dinner…”. Your reaction to F’s (untrue) message: “While I lived with him I went through a lot of suicidal thoughts and running away attempts”.

Fast forward, N repeats F’s message and the message “really impacted (you)”.

I think that the fantasy that pulls you toward trying to change N is the same fantasy involving F: the fantasy of hearing F/N say something like: I was wrong about you, Seaturtale, you do know how to love!

I now understand why you agreed with N when he said that you have no clue what love is: F said the same thing in his ways (those housecleaning sessions) and you believed him (F.. and N).

“Fantasizing  him seeing me is still fulfilling a need.. as it did in the relationship. My need to be seen. So all of this is because I still don’t feel seen, even by me?“- you still don’t see that you have plenty of clue what love is. It was only 2 weeks ago, that you agreed with N that you have no clue.

“I feel seen my you, by my roommate“- my goodness, I am having a bee’s knee moment (an aha moment) right this moment: I now understand why you presented yourself as a self-centered, selfish (Narcissistic, your word)  person in your original posts on both threads (right from the start of each thread): not because you are these things but because F told you that you are these things and you believed him. And maybe it is your child-like loyalty to F that motivates you to repeat his message to other people (here… and in-real-life?).

But you are not that person.. if you were, you wouldn’t be so negatively impacted by that message. It was a false/ untrue message all along.

“I feel I have worked so hard to see me that it seems impossible that I don’t at least see more than before“- this very morning (expressed right above), I saw something huge that I didn’t see before.

“So why do I need this, because of childhood lack… so the real question is how do I fill it“- see yourself as a loving person who has been a loving person from your very beginning. This is what I see.

anita