Dear Ann87:

Your state of mind, Ann87, is such that at the present, you are unable to know what is going on. All your thinking, and there is a lot of it, is of no use. All your thinking at this point will not help you know what is happening in your life: who you are, and who other people are. You are lost. Lost in not knowing.

Please accept your state of mind. I have been there before, in that state and survived it and now I know stuff. I know things I didn’t know before, and I get to know more and more. So there is hope.

There are some basic things you don’t know and that is your foundation, shaky because of not knowing those basic things. You think you have a good, loving relationship with your family members, don’t you? I suspect you don’t, not a single good, loving relationship. If you did, you wouldn’t be this confused.

The way I see it, at this point, all you see is things in comparisons: you see your ex boyfriend as having been abusive. The boyfriend after him seemed very different. And in comparison to the one before him, he seemed good and loving. Neither one was good and loving, but in comparison you figured the second must be loving. You had bad relationships with your parents in the past (I think you shared that), and now, in comparison, the relationships with them are good.

I am suggesting (don’t remember the status of this) psychotherapy with a competent, caring and hard working therapist. I am also suggesting that you don’t go back to your “partner” (I wonder why you call him “partner”- I suppose in comparison with the one before him he seems like a partner).

Thinking is not going to help. Going to the basics, to the basic understandings of your early life will be necessary, i believe. That is the shaky ground on which your confusion lives on and on, endlessly.

Please do post again. Maybe you can write about the things you do know for sure. Instead of writing about all the things you don’t know; all the things you are confused about, can you write about the things you know for sure? Doesn’t matter what they are. Tell me: what is it that you do know, for sure (no doubts, no confusion, no internal or external debate)?

anita