Hi Anita,

I think i mostly feel sadness!

i never used to feel so intensly angry at situations..i guess when i was younger i thought things might change and things would happen differently but they didnt. Im not sure why i attract negativity from others but i do. And it just seems to get worse. At work some years ago i used to regularly get abusive comments from clients, some about me being foreign, some sexist, it was a relief in a way when i became, i guess..more unattractive to get that attention. But that was also probably another reason for my ex to leave..so you cant win.

I think im prone to being bullied because i dont speak up, cant seem to…its like i have a stupid fascination to see where its going, to fall headlong into the pain of rejection from someone. Maybe i create the disasters in my life but i dont seem to have the will to fight back.

i started to feel some years ago that people are expected to be a little nasty in one way or another: jealous or competitive. That this is healthy. I dont get that. i know i sound stupid. I dont really get jealous….i can see other people´s beauty and i can see the things they have…but my default is to think that they too may have problems. I guess that has kept me going in a lot of ways as my nose gets rubbed in other people´s fortune quite a lot. I know there are people who WANT to make me jealous but it wont work…im not wired like that. Maybe that makes them angry.

I´m not the typical average person in that i dont have a partner and i dont have kids, so a whole easy way of meeting people is lost to me. On the other hand i think that the way i live is getting more and more common. No kids. No man. Through my 30s i had the thoughts like most women do, that i may be judged for not being partnered up..but once you get past 40 people literally dont notice you anymore and it becomes less of an issue. I guess you could say they conclude you are a loser then. Even women who have been divorced are more desirable but to me i see some women´s desperation to find a man and its a little sad. But i dont really care anymore..i accepted a lot of things i didnt want to accept, i can deal with it. I would only be with someone if they were right for me, after all the experiences and the pain i suffered after, its just really not worth the effort unless the guy is 100% right. My mom constantly says i should meet some old guy so i can be taken care of. She has said that before but luckily she doesnt push too much.

I thought about leaving the country a lot of times. Just talking to my friend reminded me how HARD it is to make a success of being where i am. He started pointing out the negatives and it just got me down. But i dont see a path outside where i am just now..

I see what you mean about the anger, keeping me in a tense state of reaction. Ive tried to suppress my true feelings a lot i see. When someone hurts me, i dont react but pretend i didnt hear or that i dont care. But i do. I dont like people being disrespectful but they often are..i just want to get through the day. But being creative, enjoying a moment, these things seem to be slipping from me and that just makes life all about work and nothing else.

A colleague and I have been planning to start a business away from our work, nothing great…rentals. But we are both sick of the dynamic at our work place. So this is a slow project. This year is hopefully the worst. Only problem for me is that im not too excited about the work…id like to do other things but i just dont have confidence. I have to say that she has also complained a lot about work situations and probably we have sat with the negativity a lot. I felt bad for her too though, its unfair a lot of the things that have happened.

I STILL think a lot about my ex. I am conscious of his problems and also believe it would not work, and yet…yet. still miss him, still feel that we are compatible in some way.

i know that being in my workplace has become unhealthy, and my colleague also felt that too for her…we just need to try and get out and maybe things will look better.

Hi Anita,

Thank you for your perspective, its quite a problem for me, being mostly alone and trying to interpret what is going on around me. I also do not always follow what people are saying because of the language barrier so sometimes i know i come across as dumb, because i dont always understand. Its frustrating but ive become used to that. So the bullying and negativity are a combination i know fairly well.

I know other people who simply speak their own language and dont bother to learn but if im honest, ive done really well to get so far and having some knowledge, it is going to be an advantage when the world turns to shit, as it might.

And with regards to my friend looking for work and a place to call home, i feel a great deal of empathy beause i know how he feels even though he looks a lot like the local people and i dont. He says he has experienced a lot of racism but i know he is also antagonistic sometimes. You need the patience of a saint sometimes. Culturally speaking i think he is a better match for a country like the States. When i first moved here, it was a recession and no one had any money. There were literally no young people and i thought i had come to the end of the line….but…..i found through my patience, that people were kind, gentle, sweet and helpful. I just felt gratitude because i had nothing. I think im talking about older generations mainly though. I think the younger generation here is impatient, greedy and does not have time to understand other cultures. There´s a difference. And there are new visitors too, impatient, demanding….its sad sometimes but that is what an increasingly succesful economy attracts, no one has time to stop.

We now have a lot of wealthy older foreign people from all over …expensive cars and more increasingly younger couples who want to live a cleaner life by the sea. That is the marketing speak though. There is another side and that is the people who are searching for answers or running away from something. The ocean is a great attraction for the lost.

What im trying to understand in myself is why i am struggling through this life when, like my friend i could just say “this isnt working, im going”. I know its not as simple maybe, i have elderly parents i have to think of  who are vunerable here but its more the fact that im already older, tired of living in different countries. It would have probably all fallen into place if i had met the right guy i think as most women fall into a routine that way. Being alone is very hard, i have to be very strong all the time.

Its good to hear your perspective that i am misinterpreting situations as this makes me hopeful that things arent as bad as they seem. But they still seem bad! I dont feel there is much doubt that the family member at work has made my job harder and so forced me to look at other options, he would prefer me to leave. Ive let other people´s issues affect me and its poison for the mind. Also influenced by my colleague, i guess we have come to our own conclusions. When in doubt you refer to your instinct about situations and coincidences rarely exist do they?

And my ex is long gone. Ive hung on and on with the dream-like imagining that i am special somehow. It seemed preferable, understandably when you consider the lonely reality, to believe that i have some hold on him. I guess i wanted to feel wanted by someone that i was attracted to. But there is no magic there, he is a narcissist who is probably abusing the woman he is with. In fact i think one of the best things i did was to talk to one of the women he left me for (the first time around) because i could then see the delusion in her for myself. I try to remind myself of that. She left him soon after and i must admit, i think i saved her from a lot of pain. But i suffered it. I got back with him and then he left me again for his current girlfriend. he was my drug like nothing i had experienced before. Crazy that this can happen and you think you are so rational as a person but around him i would lose myself.

Hi Anita,

My frustration over this obsessing about my ex is that i understand both the good and bad about him. I feel i almost have the full picture of him, apart from his true thoughts, which he basically seems to hide from everyone. I am aware i got involved with someone who was destabilizing to my mental state, that was already in a fragile state when i met him. I felt that he had a tough time going through his younger years, some bad experiences. From what he has told me of his past relationships i think he learned he could use women but he is also blindsided by them and a little frightened of them…he struggled to understand emotions. This is why i think he fits the profile of a Narcissist. I think he would talk to his friends about not understanding women he was with and they would give their leveled opinion..of course, some of those men were also just as childlike when it came to relationships. But others i met knew exactly what problems he had and just accepted it. Sometimes i felt he was bullied by his friends as they discovered he was easy to manipulate.  it drove me nuts that some random woman he had just met would find she could influence him, or that suddenly he had bought something expensive like a house or a car because it was a good idea at the time. As a friend he was good entertainment i think.

….there is the bad side i experienced, the mood swings he had, the temper, impatience and frustration he had. He  told me about his frustrations with previous girlfriends..but not with much detail, one was anorexic, so was another, one slept too much he said, the other made him jealous with the way she dressed and that seemed to really hurt him, that she might be flirting with someone else. He asked me if i was cheating on him many times but not in an angry way, just in a very insecure way. He expected me to work for him for free, being his side kick in most of his business. It was sometimes exhausting as he had a lot of energy. He told me one ex girlfriend was annoying because she slept all the time, i could understand. I think these girls threw themself into everything, im more reserved and perhaps stubborn…i wouldnt do everything he wanted, i didnt have image issues and i didnt take drugs. But mentally i felt i gave a lot to him…which is why the damage was all there.

On the good side, he was creative and energetic and clever, he was innovative and always had new ideas, he was attractive to me in every way and we were compatible in most ways except for one…that i didnt need to socialise so much and he really did. When were just at home i was very happy, i never felt as good with other boyfriends. He would help me with my own ideas and encouraged me to do things although he would also quickly get frustrated with me. When i say he had a lot of energy, i mean he needed stimulation all the time, ideas, sex, travel, friends, business and fun etc..I found the pace pretty hard to keep up..i think others did too. But this counteracted my natural depressive nature and i preferred it to my natural state. he had some few quiet moments too. He always said jokingly that his ex girlfriend always liked it when he was sick, because then he was calmer and wouldn´t be running off somewhere…thats why i understand it was not just me. He was also the kind of guy that would call up and say that he had broken his surfboard or his car or part of him. Just carelessly. That was hard to deal with, that he was so energetically erratic, but in return for the other good stuff i accepted that about him.

In some ways i wondered if in fact we were mirroring each other. If in fact we were too similar to work out.

Hi Anita,

What i mean by the full picture is the outward behaviour and actions, an assessment of that. Whereas his thoughts are something i could never know for sure. He didn´t “confide” in me as such but small truths leaked out over time as though he had already told me about them….for instance about his drug use. I suppose he didnt tell me at first because then i would surely leave. Again, this fits the narrative of a Narcissist, as it seems to describe them as people who go from one to another person but can´t bear to be alone and are frightened of being alone.

I remember he asked me in the beginning if i was a very jealous person and that it was good i wasnt…but i think he was insincere..he in fact WANTED me to have a tantrum about other women so he could feel more loved, more wanted. When i met him for the last time and he told me his current girlfriend was very jealous and would not want him to be friends with me. Was he bragging? or was it honest. Because i feel he would always flirt and there is no reason for him to change.

There is something else. I have a strong feeling that he keeps check on what i am doing..this is a feeling i have always had around him but i have no proof apart from the things he said to me. I never had the same feeling with other boyfriends. i dont think its because he wants to get back to me but rather, he wants me to stay alone. As we talk of coincidence, i recently listed a house and was talking to the owner, she told me that another agent had tried to list it after i went (in order to have it exclusively) and that the woman had been very aggressive so the owner didnt go for it….ive very little doubt, this was his current girlfriend and i wonder how that just happened to be. You may say this is delusional but things keep coming up and i am not looking for them..if anything, im trying to get on with my life.

I feel this sense of people trying to bait me lately. As i mentioned for example, at work with this male family member. Today i asked a question to my team on social media and time passed, i got no reply. usually when others ask something a reply comes in 2 mins. Even my boss noticed and made a comment which is rare, after which two of them jumped and replied immediately like they had been bitten…..it was another humiliation from people i have personally helped A LOT but ive come to expect nothing but the worst. I feel they are making this example to the newer staff to show how i should be treated and its working, the young girl doing my old job is now similarly dismissive and follows suit…its ugly and i feel it could even be classed as racism at the very least developing a bullying culture. But i can´t do much to change that. It makes me depressed and sad that this is the example for a successful business life. The family member never helps me when i ask, pretends he doesnt know information etc. And at group meetings he is very fake, polite and helpful but at the same time makes a point of demeaning my influence…no doubt he is afraid of my influence on the boss because he wants total control. I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about it. The problem is that this behaviour only makes me shut the door on empathy for them…so how does that improve the business?

As you can see, i just run around in circles with these two things..but i think that this helps..i feel less of an attraction to the man i once really adored. it was an unfair relationship and i was treated badly. And it also is about my relationships with people..why the negatives all the time and why do i seem to get so many jealous people in my life? its really no wonder i feel the way i do.

Hi Anita,

Today. I started writing another brick of text and it sounded too complaining. I can’t seem to stop..Im overtired. I don’t have a break from work much at all.

More bad experiences at work, more feeling hopeless and like I might just collapse.

Is this as good as it gets for me? Is there a light at the end when you work this hard? Or am I just being stupid staying here? Maybe im just too smart to be here and ive been underachieving or maybe this is all I can get.

Jealousy as a core belief. Yes probably I got it from my mother, who had reasoned that people were jealous when I felt self conscious of people staring at me on the street….which has affected me a lot when I was younger. She concluded it was because I was attractive. I could never be certain of that, so my mind would dissect the information and look at all possible other explanations.

I think I mentioned I thought she fit a narcissist profile, that I gathered this opinion over the last 4 or 5 years, and that this was probably why I put up with my ex’s behaviour as he was similar to her in behaviour.  Loving, building up and then tearing down and insulting. So in a way, analyising my ex has led to other realisations.

In the last few years I also came to see some awful jealous behaviour in her regarding what little successes I had. The main one being apartments I renovated that she refused to even visit until it was done, then looked unhappy when she finally came. And for some reason I would always want her opinion when I should know better. It seems she also has a need to be more knowledgable than me on subjects I have more experience in..my work mainly. These toxic exchanges are so common to me really that I don’t even think of it. But I know this is part of the problems I have. My mothers relationship with my father is also toxic. He never contradicts, he is subservient and feeds her need to bully.

Im unsure of my own opinions, I have trouble making decisions..these are things they say are as a result of this kind of relationship where you are made to doubt yourself.

Maybe jealous is really not the only word but I use that because I feel it describes other people’s behaviour..there is envy, spitefulness as well.

im tired of sitting on the fence on everything, being so amenable and nice, letting others take advantage and being so unhappy about it all.