Home→Forums→Relationships→Confused about relationship – Need help
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anita.
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April 2, 2024 at 11:18 am #430484
anitaParticipantDear antarkala:
It seems like I will not add a post on the above before tomorrow. I hope that you continue the work, shining light into the confusion (“Confused about relationship..“, title of your thread). It takes courage and perseverance to do this kind of work, and you have what it takes!
anita
April 2, 2024 at 6:00 pm #430497anitaParticipantDear antarkala:
I decided to post this evening (here). I hope that the above post about ROCD will be of some help to you. This evening I reread your posts as a preparation for my current reply. I tried to locate the core issues, to understand better. The following may be disturbing to read. I am sorry.
“I did tell my mother about my boyfriend and she told me he is not good enough for you“- I think that when she told you that he is not good enough for you, she delivered the almost certain kiss of death to the relationship.
“my boyfriend not being very social.. He is a monotonous person… he is not spiritual… I did get thoughts like ‘maybe he is not strong enough’, ‘maybe is not qualified enough’, ‘I don’t think he is manly enough’… “Am I settling for less?‘”- your mother’s message he is not good enough for you! was and is very powerful.
“She told me her instinct says he isn’t right and that she (suspected) that we planned to come to the USA because there was something going on – while in reality, there was nothing!… She said she suspected my boyfriend was trying to get me since in India… It took me a while to trust him after all that my mother said“- in addition to sending you the powerful message above, she also expressed inappropriate possessiveness of you, a sort of competition with your boyfriend, competition for your focus in life.
“My father was not a great husband… yes! I am that friend/ confidant of her. She shares everything with me. I started supporting her as I grew up and pushing her to stand up for herself and even stood up against my dad and my grandparents demanding she should be treated better for everything she does for the family. She gradually started doing that my dad keeps joking she gets courage in my presence and never listens to him“-in some significant ways, you took on the role of a man, a man fighting for your mother. In the context of daughter and mother, she was weak, you were strong; she was the woman, you were the man.
So much so, that your manly role extended to other contexts, you felt like a man, walked like a man and took on a lady don persona: “My school teacher once described me as a lady don to my dad and I once remember one of my teachers telling me my walk is too manly.. could never relate to girls having crushes.. The concept of having kids never appealed to me”.
A daughter’ relationship with her mother, when inappropriate (I mean emotionally inappropriate, not sexually inappropriate), can have lasting implications on the daughter’s gender identity and (dys)function within romantic relationships. This has been true in my case.
You wrote yesterday: “I’m still unable to decide and sometimes feel like something is missing, especially attraction. Is this just a very close friendship?… I’m tired of going in circles and feeling anxious from time to time that I feel like breaking up unable to take it anymore, but I know that I want to breakup with this anxiety and uncertainty more than the person.“- your mother is winning the competition with your boyfriend. Her powerful message is winning. Please arrange to see a competent psychotherapist who is willing to explore the idea that a relationship between a mother and her daughter (through no fault of the daughter) can be inappropriate. I think that you need clarity about your relationship with your mother before you can have clarity about your relationship with (any) boyfriend.
Things can get better, antarkala, it’s just that we have to be tough and go through what we need to get through .. so to get clarity, understanding and calm, best we can.
anita
April 5, 2024 at 1:29 pm #430635
antarkalaParticipantHi Anita,
My sincere gratitude to you for taking the time to go over my responses again and responding.
Sorry for responding lately, I’ve been feeling a little under the weather. I will read this and reply tomorrow – but I cannot deny what you’re saying!
April 5, 2024 at 1:34 pm #430636anitaParticipantDear antarkala:
You are very welcome, Antarkala, thank you for the note. I hope that you feel better soon, and looking forward to reading from you!
anita
April 8, 2024 at 7:02 pm #431446antarkalaParticipantHello Anita,
Sorry for the delay, I am feeling better now. I will leave my boyfriend’s place tomorrow – we had a great time together! I have been thinking about what you said and it is very true.
” I think that when she told you that he is not good enough for you, she delivered the almost certain kiss of death to the relationship.” – this thought occurred to me before and it does not shock me. 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. 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. My sincere thank you again for taking the time and effort to point this out and help me out through my journey! It really means a lot and you will be in my thoughts and prayers. I wish more strength to you to go through your healing journey that in turn inspires people like me 🙂
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, it took us so much work to be where we are today, at a better and happy place with better understanding of each other. Both of us have decided that we need to work on ourselves and build more self-confidence which will ultimately reflect in all the areas of our life including our relationship.
But the feeling of missing the attraction and spark is still there. My mind says everything is going well but my heart keeps saying something is missing – my heart doesn’t say yes! 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. Like I mentioned before, I keep getting thoughts like “Am I settling for something less?”, “maybe I can get someone with better compatibility”, “am I going to regret this decision”, “i don’t feel inspired enough around him”. The thoughts have definitely decreased this time but still come to me from time to time.
But I will start with working on and trying to heal my relationship with my mother – thank you for your insights!
April 8, 2024 at 7:26 pm #431449anitaParticipantDear antarkala:
You are very welcome, and thank you for expressing your appreciation of my input! I will re-read and reply to you Tues morning (it is Mon evening here).
anita
April 8, 2024 at 7:38 pm #431452antarkalaParticipantNo problem! It is Monday night here as well. I just called my boyfriend with a different name and he is extremely upset. This happened twice before but with a different name. I don’t know why this happens, it accidentally happens with other people too but I really don’t like it when it happens with my boyfriend.
April 8, 2024 at 7:57 pm #431456anitaParticipantDear antarkala:
It’s almost like your mother interjecting, calling him by a different name, so to cause a separation. Better not call him by any name, so to not get it wrong. Back to you in the morning.
anita
April 9, 2024 at 5:29 am #431463antarkalaParticipantYes I think! I am leaving today and I feel sad that the doubts did not leave me yet, that I still have questions on my mind and that I am unable to stop overthinking. I feel this is unfair to my boyfriend, why should he go through this? He has told me today morning I am overthinking too much and it is not helping things. He said his best friend and cousins also think the same – that I am overthinking which hurts me. This has never happened to me. I wish I could do something and stop it.
April 9, 2024 at 6:23 am #431464
RobertaParticipantDear Antakarla
It is quite a common thing to misname someone, I guess I have to ask you, the names you used, are they people actually n your life. I have 3 friends called Stuart, Sandy & Struan and I am often interchanging their names or doing a combo of the names. When my children were young I had my 2 nephews also living with me and I had to call all four into the room and then point at the one I wanted to give an instruction/ information to/from. I still get my sons name mixed up 30+ years on. I think it may be a genetic thing as my grandmother did it to me and her grandaughter whose name began and ended with the same as mine.
If one feels loved & secure in a relationship it should not be a problem, but if there are other issues this verbal hiccup can add to the feelings of rejection.
April 9, 2024 at 9:20 am #431465anitaParticipantDear 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
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