Dear antarkala:

“From the moment my mom said he might not be good enough for me, I have been overanalyzing and overthinking about my relationship and my boyfriend which did not help the relationship in any positive way. You are right, I have to explore the relationship with my mother with the help of a psychotherapist to get better clarity and I am on it now“-

– the relationship between mother and daughter (childhood and on) can be very powerful, in negative ways, when it comes to the quality and dynamics of the adult daughter’s romantic relationships. This has been true in my case.

As I share about it here (just a bit in this post, and maybe in future posts), please know.. that I know that although there are similarities between our mothers, our mothers are not identical. There are many differences between them. Yet, there are a few significant similarities between our mothers (and therefore between you and I) that make it so that we can learn from each other’s experience.

I am saying this so to avoid/ prevent inaccurate projections on my end and on yours. If you read something that I share that is strange/ unfamiliar to you, please do not dismiss the totality of what I share as irrelevant to you:

My mother not only negatively affected my romantic relationships, she has emptied them from any measure of romance, killed the romance before I ever had a relationship. I do not have a single memory of feeling romantic outside my past day-dreaming (I used to daydream A LOT about being in a love story, way back when  I was a teenager).

Growing up and onward, she gave me two messages: (1) that I am not good enough, that I was an inferior specimen, and (2) no man is good enough for me. See the bind my poor brain was in? I felt too inferior to be with a quality man, and too superior to be with any man who was not close enough to being perfect (my mother had very high and superficial expectations of what constitutes perfect: the man had to be movie star handsome and rich). So, no man could be right for me. Result: no man was right for me all the years of my 20s and 30s. The great majority of the time, I was alone and lonely.

Also, my relationship with my mother was so troubled, so difficult, so full of distress, on my part, for years and years, that it turned me off to the idea of being in any long-term relationship of any kind. I was stuck with my mother, I didn’t want to get stuck with anyone else. When living with her, I wanted to leave; that desire to leave did not leave me for decades of adulthood.

Back to your post: “I have been trying to find a good therapist and it’s taking a while. If you have any recommendations, I would be happy to hear from you“- I would choose a therapist who exercises great empathy for his clients and one who does CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), nothing like cognitive clarity to help with confusion (Confused about relationship- Need help” is the title of your thread).

“Apart from that, I want to update that I had a great time with my boyfriend, he is a wonderful and genuine person who cares for me and loves me. Our relationship has grown so much over the past one year…”- reads like a high quality man and a high quality relationship.

“But the feeling of missing the attraction and spark is still there“-  I wonder about your relationship spark history (RSH, if you will.. lol). Did you feel the spark with other men, for how long and what happened to that spark (answer this or any other question only if you are comfortable answering).

“My mind says everything is going well but my heart keeps saying something is missing – my heart doesn’t say yes!“- I wonder to whom your heart say yes! in the past, and for how long.

“At the same time, when I am with my boyfriend, I feel my social life and spiritual life are not thriving and it bothers me“- a person cannot thrive in a situation (a relationship) when the person wants out of. It’s like this: if you live in an apartment but want to vacate it and live elsewhere, you are not going to thrive in that apartment (painting it, re-arranging the furniture in it, relaxing and enjoying it),  you’d be getting ready to leave it.

“Like I mentioned before, I keep getting thoughts like ‘Am I settling for something less?’…“- something less than your mother thinks you should settle for?

“It is Monday night here as well…. I am unable to stop overthinking. I feel this is unfair to my boyfriend, why should he go through this?“- no, it is not fair to him. I understand that he loves you, but why is he going through this otherwise…   does he love himself?

“He has told me today morning… that I am overthinking which hurts me. This has never happened to me“- again, I wonder about your relationship history, never doubted a man/ relationship before?

anita