Dear Taylor:

You are very welcome and thank you for your empathy and for referring to me as amazing (feels good reading it).

“On the surface my relationship with my mom looks quite different but the more I think about it the more I wonder if there are underlying similarities. My mom is a very anxious person… She sought approval from her abusive father despite him rejecting her over and over, literally until the day he died. Often I think this must be part of where my issues come from, but I can’t recall any specific emotional trauma directly in my relationship with either of my parents“- my understanding: a very anxious mother is not an available mother, not in the way a child needs her to be. A child needs a calm, confident mother, because that’s what it takes to soothe a child wo is scared or in distress. A mother who is very anxious is distracted, unable to focus on and adequately attend to her child.

When the mother is very anxious, the child focuses on the mother, on what she needs, all empathy is with her, feeling her distress, and therefore, the child is deprived from a carefree childhood, not being free to explore and develop emotionally- socially.

It is her father who rejected her, but because your empathy for her, it’s if he rejected you.. sort of, rejected by proxy:

Her specific emotional trauma + your empathy for her => Her emotional trauma is your emotional trauma (not directly).

(I am using the boldface feature selectively in the following quote): “I have had this pattern in romantic relationships since high school – my first boyfriend cheated on me after 3 years together, my second boyfriend was a verbally abusive situationship in college, and my third boyfriend was a 6 year relationship where we lived together and he blindsided me with a breakup after his parents’ divorce. These experiences were quite traumatic for me but I have read that usually these unhealthy patterns start with childhood, not with adult relationships. I guess maybe I’m still blocked in figuring this out and I don’t really know the steps to get there.”-

– I boldfaced the above because it is correct, but not only when it comes to your unhealthy patterns, but also when it comes to the men’s unhealthy patterns. There is a lot of unhealthy going around, unhealthy on top of unhealthy, so it gets complicated when it comes to figuring out what happened in each one of the three relationships you mentioned.

As far as your unhealthy patterns, I think you described it well in your original post: “I tend to chase them and help them with their problems (without really feeling like my emotional needs are being met)“-

– focusing on your mother’s problems, on her anxiety, on her need to be calm (so that she can finally be calm for you, so that she can be there for you in the ways you need her to be)=> focusing on the men’s  problems, on their needs (so that they can be there for you in the ways you need them to be).

It’s sort of like postponing your needs until you meet her/ the men’s needs first, so to make them capable of meeting your needs. Is this another way to describe the pattern?

anita