Dear K8tyB:

My mother too was very hard working, often three jobs a day and those were cleaning jobs, scrubbing bathrooms and such. Her hands were raw, bloody looking, from scrubbing. She was divorced, when I was five or so, no financial help from the man she married or from anyone else or anything else. And she too came home from her many jobs, and often hot, sweaty days, miserable. She also had a very abusive childhood and a very difficult life. At this point, if it wasn’t for the extensive damage she caused me through the years, severe damage throughout decades of life, into the present, I would still feel as much empathy for her as I have felt.

Your ex boyfriend is not the same person as your mother, or mine. But you having the mother that you have had (and have) is the reason why you tolerated and endured his otherwise insufferable behavior.

I am thinking… does it … almost make you feel loved when he dumps the guilt on you? It is a sort of attention, a kind of attention you got from your mother and was the closest to love in your experience, isn’t it?

Thank you for the hug. It means a lot to me. That night when I was five or so and went into the night looking for her body because i believed she was going to kill herself that night… when I finally found her on the street I exclaimed: “You are alive!” I remember I was very, very happy and excited and relieved. But she didn’t hug me. She looked at me angrily, with condemnation (as she so often did) and she asked angrily: “Why wouldn’t I be?”

You wrote: “I grew up wanting to be the ‘good child'” I think that you no longer need to be the ‘good child’ in the same way you did then, by taking in the accusations, the assertions of the one blaming you. That is not love and you accepting it is not your way to deserve “love”.

anita

Dear k8tyB:

You wrote “nothing good grows in a toxic environment (as far as I know).” Are you suggesting that there …might be something good growing out of a toxic environment such as if you lived with that man? For you or for a child?

I am glad you are feeling relief and are eating and sleeping better. This is very telling: you made the right choice and your body is letting you know that you made the right choice!

…And, like I wrote before, there is a reason and a… logic, however distorted, to why you were with him all this time, why you participated in the pattern, trying to please him by submitting to him again and again. That motivation in your brain, a motivation and a logic born in childhood, still exists in you and will come to the surface again. When it does, please do not react to it by going back with him or move that way. Post here instead.

The distorted logic i am referring to is what you stated: that there is something YOU can do to please him long term. It is only something HE can do by going to therapy himself. You can please him temporarily, via complete submission and apologies. But that is the pattern, based on the temporary relief, being his “fix”.

Let’s keep talking, post anytime when you feel like it, when you have the time, when something comes up, anytime.

anita

Dear k8tyB:

I like the “Dearest Anita” – thank you!

Please don’t be angry with yourself … not for long. Be gentle with yourself instead. The reason you accommodated this man’s pattern is because you were trained to do so as a child. Have compassion for that child that you were, she didn’t choose this pattern, she only reacted as children do, automatically.

Now, you still feel like reacting automatically, the same way and this is where being an adult, mature enough comes into play: you no longer have to automatically react. Instead you notice the urge to automatically react, you understand where it comes from and you resist it, talk sense to yourself, clarify reality to yourself. And you choose what makes sense.

Yes, he needs help but he doesn’t think so. He disagrees. So what are you going to do? Give him the help that he believes he needs: you admitting once again that you are wrong, that you are bad, that he is good, that he was right all along, always right. This is the help he believes he needs. Will you keep giving that to him? That temporary fix?

No different than a heroine addict: will you give him the next injection, the next feel good injection?

It is not even helping him, only keeping him stuck. And as far as you are concerned, giving him his next heroine fix, gives you the high of being temporarily rewarded with that loving feeling.

Like two drug addicts: he is seeking his fix of “I was wronged: apologize! Admit you are wrong!” and you seeking your fix: “I was wrong. I admitted it. And now he loves me. ah… that feels good, to be loved again..”

Yes, keep posting, K8tyB!

anita