Dear Aida:

People make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes, and mistakes of different lengths. Your mistake was eight month long. A mistake. Learn from it, learn what behaviors you will never accept and tolerate again. Learn what kind of guy you don’t want ever again. Learn you do have VALUE and self respect and that you will always act as valuable, respected. Learn that the mistake you made, the eight month long mistake, hurts you STILL because it hurts a WORTHY person to be treated as if worthless. If you were really worthless, it would not be hurting now. The lesson: you are worthy and you need to treat yourself and be treated as such.

I know a man, a neighbor who made a similar mistake to yours, staying in a relationship where he is disrespected and unloved for too long. Way longer than eight months. So far he is married to a woman who disrespects him and has nothing nice to say about him, well he has been with her since 1950 something, that is sixty something YEARS!

anita