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Dear Laelithia (last post in this study):
In January 11 this year, 2021, you shared about yet another man, another very rushed relationship. You met a man for the first time on December 20, 2020. Twenty two days later, on January 11, you have already determined that he is “everything I could ask for in terms of a relationship partner”, and within these 22 days, he fully committed to you: “Although I only met him on the 20th, he has fully committed to me”. By January 26, a month and a week since he met you for the first time, he told you that “he wants and needs me in his life, that I have become his rock and he loves me completely”.
At first, you were elated, told a friend within a week of meeting him, that you may have met your future husband, excited that “for once the man was reciprocating my excitement/ eagerness”. Next, you started doubting yourself and panicking: “it may be too soon… terrified at the prospect of settling down long term”, and you wavered “from feeling very secure/ happy/ grateful.. to terrified/ worried scared that I jumped too soon… concerned about my past history of rushing into things and then losing interest”. At first, you felt “completely head over heels for him, very attracted”, but then, “I have big doubts and find myself perseverating in his flaws”.
In doubt and afraid, you suggested to him to slow down the pace of the speed-of-light relationship, but unlike previous men, he was rushing man, and at your suggestion to slow down, he appeared “hurt and scared at this prospect”. He told you a bit later that “he almost broke down at work due to.. the fear of potentially losing me”. As a result of his reactions, you felt guilty for hurting him and you withdrew your suggestion to slow down, focusing on his well-being, not on yours.
By March 10, not yet three months since you met him for the first time, you were unexpectedly pregnant by him. You were mostly terrified but he was “pleased with the news and noted that he felt more secure in our relationship now”-
– When you expressed to him your fear about the relationship going too fast, a valid concern, he did not attend to your fear; he attended to his fear of losing you. When you told him that you were pregnant and that you were afraid, again- he did not attend to your fear, but to his own, telling you that he is less afraid/ feeling more secure.
He told you that you have become his rock, a month and a week after meeting you for the first time. If he meant it, then he must have been very desperate and in need of a rock, any rock that appeared good to him.
He pushed you to buy an expensive new car even though you were uncomfortable doing so- again he did not attend to your fear (regarding the unnecessary expense); he attended to what he felt like should be done with your money.
You wrote: “I started to feel resentful… knowing that the resentment I was feeling wasn’t entirely fair, because, in the end, I did not say explicitly no to any of it. I did not stand firm to my boundaries”- your resentment is fair because you expressed your fear to him and he ignored it. A loved person does not have to stand firm and insist on one’s boundaries because the one loving you will respect your first No instead of pressuring you to change your No to a Yes.
As I see it, marrying B is the wrong choice for you. If you decide to keep the baby, I imagine that you will be raising a child as a single mother, having no choice but to have the child’s father in your life for at least until you are 50 years old, being that you turned 32 this month.
The main problem all along has been your Emptiness which you’ve been temporarily and unsatisfactorily filling in with the elation, excitement and euphoria on new and rushed relationships with men you don’t know (not having had the time, nor the mental objectivity needed to get to know a person).
Your Emptiness is this emotional experience: “I.. felt Wrong as a child, a problem, a burden”, “I was causing her distress”, her= your mother (Jan 2019). Repeatedly disapproved by your mother, you felt very sad and at times, very angry. During the elation part of a rushed relationship, you get to feel Right (not Wrong), a solution (not a problem), an asset (not a burden). But the elation is interrupted by the same sadness and anger that accompanied your childhood, when you were “an extremely angry and sad teenager”. In Jan 2019, you wrote: “emotionally I still am that angry and sad girl”.
In Jan 2019, you also wrote: “I have spoken to my mother in adulthood.. her account of my childhood is totally different.. she is not able to provide me with the validation I so desperately have sought”-
-no, she is able, but she is not willing. She really did disapprove of you, she remembers that, but she doesn’t want to admit it because it will make her look like a bad mother. So she prefers to lie to you.
In Jan 2019, you wrote: “Believe it or not, my current relationship with my mother is a lot better. I think in me talking with her about my feelings and my account of the past (and although she doesn’t agree with it), she has become more sensitive to me and my feelings. I can tell she is trying”.
In January 2021, you wrote: “I’m concerned about now if I can trust my judgement on if someone is a good potential mate for me or not… I don’t trust myself in making decisions or even knowing how I feel about things and so I tend to outsource those decisions”-
– your mother, by disagreeing with what really happened in your childhood, by denying what you correctly perceived, created and has been fueling your doubts and distrust in your own perceptions and ability to evaluate people and situations.
Back to Jan 2019: “she is trying. She usually now verbalizes her dissatisfaction more with confusion and sadness at my state of mind, as she.. is utterly perplexed that I focus on the past and doubt myself and my decisions so much. She is the type of person that can immediately forget and move on from the past and never ruminates”-
– when she expresses confusion and being utterly perplexed about your state of mind, she is sending you the message that there is something utterly Wrong with you, the same message she sent you when you were a child. And it is not that she forgets the past, it is that she denies it to accommodate herself, at your expense.
“As to her account, she has simply said over and over that no one in the world has loved their children more than she has, and she would always go to the end of the world for them. She has said in the past anything I remember about her not loving me or liking me is crazy, because of how much she loves me”-
-again, she is sending you the message that there is something Wrong/ crazy about you. As her adult child, I bet it feels good to hear your mother say that she always loved you so much.. but it is not true. She didn’t love you as a child when she sent you the message that you are Wrong, and she doesn’t love you as an adult when she sends you the same message.
The proof is in the pudding: if you were a loved child, like your mother falsely claims, you wouldn’t have “a hole, a deep longing that never seems to go away”- that hole, that emptiness is not about love, it is about the lack of love in your childhood. You’ve been rushing so desperately to fill this emptiness in relationships with strange men, just so to have a moment here and there of of feeling loved.
If she loved you as a child, you wouldn’t be having that Emptiness, and if she loved you now, she wouldn’t be denying the truth to accommodate herself, at the expense of your emotional/ mental health.
Right here is what your therapy should focus on. Your mental health depends on you seeing the truth, and no longer accommodating your mother’s lies.
I will close with the metaphor of The Garden of Eden (followed by your words in June- Sept 2020): we can’t go back there, all of us humans are Exiled from the early life illusion of eternal safety, love and calm, all good feelings forevermore. No man can get you back to The Garden. Trying to get back to a place that does not exist brings at best a short-term elation followed by great disappointment and suffering. We all need to endure this reality, that there is no such place. There is pain in this understanding, but there is also hope because when you know there is no Garden, you can fully attend to reality, to life as is and make the best of it.
“they provided some sort of high. They distracted me from the Emptiness… the Emptiness is not good at evaluating men. Often, it chose the worst of them to pick as the partner… it picks and chooses such minute and often superficial details of a person to make a picture that doesn’t exist… It’s still hard for me to.. not crave the Fantasy and want that euphoric feeling to wash over me… Despite trying so hard not to, I have this silly belief that one day when I meet my ‘Prince Charming’ I will be so fulfilled, I will be so happy, and I will live ‘happily ever after’… I’m afraid that one day.. I might find that in reality.. life will still have its challenges, that I will never have that perfect idyllic Fantasy life I have been yearning for so long”.
anita
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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I can’t believe it has been so long since I’ve last visited this thread, and more importantly, wrote to you Anita. I hope you have been doing well. I have thought of you often, I have resisted the forum a few times to read, but have not found much time in the last year to reply. I have very little alone time these days. I know you will likely be so kind to say that I don’t need to, but I do deeply apologize for being away for so long and not replying to your thoughtful posts. Hopefully, you will understand once I update you on how I’ve been.
Firstly, I am now a mother to a beautiful, sweet, intelligent (she’s only 6 months, but I, I’m sure with bias, believe I can tell!) lovely baby girl. She is the light of my life. Interestingly, the moment I had her, I understood my mother and her treatment of me even less. I would do anything for my daughter, to save her any discomfort or pain, and I have tried. Oh, how I’ve tried. Looking back, I think I tried even before she was born. I tried by trying to make the relationship with her father work, despite having obvious concerns which I shared with you. Unfortunately, most of those concerns and worries came to fruition. He lost his job in May of last year, and to say that it has been stressful since is beyond an understatement. He ended up then moving in with me, I became the sole breadwinner as I worried would happen, and unfortunately, that has not changed really since then.
Shortly after this, I unsurprisingly felt extremely unhappy. Having B move in with me, in my small apartment, was not an enjoyable experience. Not to mention the pandemic and quarantine continued on in my country, meaning we were both very isolated from others but around each other all the time. B was quite happy with this, but I was not. I think my resentment towards him, to him not considering my feelings early on in the relationship, to becoming pregnant, to me knowing I was in a relationship with someone I didn’t want to be with yet ended up with anyway, to financially having to support us both, it all became too much. Unfortunately, I believe the stress wore on me, and I developed a serious medical condition in pregnancy called pre-eclampsia. I suffered from headaches, nausea, exaggerated swelling in the limbs, numbness in my arms, etc. To say the pregnancy became uncomfortable is an understatement. To make matters worse, rather than being able to take some time off work and slowly reduce my caseload, I had to continue on, as B did not find employment, as I had worried would be the case. I worked literally until I had to go into surgery to have an emergency c-section once my blood pressure was too high and I was at risk of stroke.
In order to have some income while I was not working after I had my baby, we worked on expanding my practice and I hired several therapists to replace me with my clients. Two of those therapists have ended up working well, but the third did not. I still have very many sad memories of that, as I genuinely liked the therapist, a middle-aged lady with children of her own, but somehow the professional relationship deteriorated with miscommunication (I assume, I am still not sure), and we ended up having to let this therapist go. It was horrible on me, and I am still sad about it now. That being said, I now have 4 therapists working for my practice, and it seems to be going alright. My take-home pay with these therapists is not as high as it was when I was working full-time, but it is enough to get us by each month. I have also continued to work reduced hours myself, to bring extra money in. That being said, it has been very difficult on both me and the baby, as she doesn’t like to be away from me for hours on end and has trouble taking a bottle and cries often while I’m working since she is hungry. I wish she didn’t have to go through that. B assures me he will find a good job again, but I simply don’t know if that will ever happen. To give him credit, he does help out in areas that he can. He cooks and cleans, he does the laundry, cares for the baby while I’m working, he helps my ailing parents often. I believe he tries to make up for his lack of help financially as much as he can. He speaks kindly to me. There’s at least that.
A few months ago, after my parents told me they were worried about me, about how sad I looked, I told them that I was suffering in the small apartment with the new baby and my partner. Yet, with B not able to contribute financially, I had no ability to move either by renting or buying a home while still providing for the now 3 of us. They took pity on me and helped me enormously financially to buy a home. A home that we started moving into yesterday. Sadly, this was not a good day for me. I had no excitement at the idea of moving into a larger space with B. To make matters and my anxiety worse, B was offered a job via email, and he immediately declined it, claiming it wasn’t a fit as his resume demanded higher pay. I was hurt and devastated by this. I couldn’t believe he would turn down any work, let alone without running it past me.
That all being said, I still believe it was the right choice to move as the small apartment and being cooped up with B and the baby was not good for my mental health, but I am so sad that I am not happy there with my “new little family”, as my mother calls it. I am sad that it is not The Garden of Eden, that I wished it could be. I love my daughter with my whole heart, but it is complicated in my mind. It is hard for me to not look back and regret the choices that led me to be with B and being now how my worries were mostly valid. I can’t help but think back on how before dating B, I dated a sweet man in the city I wanted to move to. I think back on how I let B dictate to me that I had to end things with that man to be with him. That I did it, just as he says, that I didn’t follow my heart once more. Looking back, I honestly cannot even remember why I met B in the first place, why I was dating again in my home city, a place I had written to you many times about not wanting to live anymore. I don’t recall fully why I would do this, why I would end a healthy relationship with a kind and generous man in the city I wanted to move to, other than I didn’t 1) feel I deserved such a man, and 2) didn’t feel comfortable with the slower pace of a healthy relationship and instead preferred the lightning speed one.
I feel sorry to think about and write all of this to you, Anita. I desperately wanted to be able to write to you about how happy I was, how I was finally living the life I always wanted to. But instead, I feel this idyllic dream-life I have tried to create with this situation has become a nightmare. I feel like I am now moving into a home that I don’t particularly love, yet B does (although truthfully there weren’t many other options as the housing market in this city is much more a sellers market than buyers), living with a partner that I am not sure I will ever feel that I truly love, that I will be left to pay for the mortgage on this house, that I am now fully rooted in a city that I desperately wanted to leave. The hardest part about all of this is that I feel very alone. I have not told most friends and family how I really feel about B, as I believed maybe it was still possible to create that dream life with him. I tried so, so hard. I tried to help him keep his CEO role, I tried to help him in his job search after he lost that role, but it hasn’t panned out positively. That being said, in the summer while I was still pregnant, he was offered a decent job in the city I wanted to move to. He declined the position as he believed it was lower than what he should be paid. Looking back, it was a good offer (since he has had no formal other salaried offers since), and it would have given us the chance to move to the city I wanted to. That being said, perhaps I wouldn’t have anyway, given having a new baby and being away from family and support. I suppose we will never know.
It’s so sad and hard for me to admit my regrets, yet as you accurately pointed out previously, I know I would regret no matter what. Yet, it is so complicated. Because I cannot fully regret meeting and being with B, as he at the very least, gave me my daughter. She is so, so sweet. I will keep trying to make the best of my situation for her, I will do whatever it takes. Yet on late nights like today, I cannot help but find my mind wandering to what if. What if I continued to slowly date the man I met in the city I wanted to move to right before I met B. What If I was living a comfortable life (that man was financially well off, generous, albeit somewhat emotionally closed off, but I suppose how open should someone be after only 3 months of dating-mostly long distance?) and truly happy? The last year has been the most difficult I have ever been through, and I found myself retreating socially to hide my unhappiness in my relationship. It was my birthday recently, and I noticed very few people reached out to wish me a happy one. I believe this is in direct result of me retreating socially to hid my embarrassment and sadness. I think I did this from this forum, as well. It feels somewhat permanent, that there isn’t really a way of this situation improving, so I felt there was no point in sharing, in being so negative. But today, I find myself wanting support again, wanting to continue to try to be hopeful in some way, I believe I owe that to my daughter.
Once again Anita, even though I have not written frequently, I am so grateful for your continued support. I hope you are doing very well!
Anita,
Thank you again as always for your thoughtful reply. I have missed conversing with you! I am sorry my return to my thread isn’t a more triumphant one. I was quite upset when I wrote my last post, I suppose I still am but more composed.Thank you so much for your kind words about my daughter, she is absolute perfection.
I also wanted to mention that I did read the series you wrote in March 2021, albeit a few months after that. I cried reading it because it was so well-written, so accurate, and ultimately, so sad. I suppose if I were to sum up how I am feeling now, more than anything, it’s sad. I feel very, very Sad for myself.
As much as I would not like to admit it, I agree with your assessment of B. I do want to add the caveat that I do not feel he does this maliciously. I believe B has many great qualities (helpful when asked, good-natured/very polite, hard-working on tasks he is passionate about, hands-on with the baby, etc.), and I believe that he does not come by these problematic behaviours with ill intent. I believe he has much self-reflection to do, and that he would engage in negative coping mechanisms (denial, delusion, deflection and repression) to cope with traumas from his own life. That being said, looking back I feel I need to take responsibility for enabling much of his negative behaviours. From the beginning of our relationship, I covered expenses of his as I felt at the time I had an abundance in comparison. It’s very sad to me that now, only a year and a few months later, I am in a completely different financial situation than I was before. So much so, that I had to accept a great deal of monetary help from my parents to purchase this home I do not love in the city I have dreamed of escaping-the last thing I ever wanted to do. I am so sad to admit how far I feel I have fallen from where I was just before meeting B. I’d like to write to you about that experience. I wrote to you extensively about a man, S, whom I have long realized was never serious about me. And as such, I shouldn’t have been so serious about him. I find it very sad that I barely mentioned another man, G, whom I dated briefly after things with S fell through. I find it very sad in fact. Sad, because when I comb through my posts with you, I am almost exclusively writing about problematic relationships/men, and almost never mention the men that I have met and dated that are kind, relationship material, until, as is titled of this thread, it’s too late. I believe G was one such individual. He was extremely generous, handsome, thoughtful, and most importantly a gentleman. We dated from September 2020 until I began seeing B. Why do I bring this up now? I do because I am realizing now that I believe I have made a critical mistake in my happiness.
As you know, I think for a very long time, I’ve made life decisions based on what I thought others (mostly my parents) would want me to do, or what’s best for them. I’m saddened to see that I never updated you about this, but in September of 2020, I found my dream apartment in the city I wanted to move to. It was newly renovated, never lived in yet, close to the beach and exactly the location I wanted to be. I viewed the apartment with a close friend of mine, and she could not believe I had found such a great apartment. The landlord was an amazingly sweet lady, and I was so excited about beginning my move to the new city. My friend warned me even then, not to broach it by my parents. She had seen firsthand how many decisions I had made that were with their best interests in mind, rather than my own. So, I didn’t contact them to tell them of the development. Not initially. However, I feel as though once the sweet landlady offered me the apartment, I became afraid, and I told my parents. Of course, they came up with reasons why I should not take the apartment, and somehow against my better judgement, desires, and instincts, I turned the apartment down. A few weeks after that, my sweet dog passed away. And I think after that happened, I no longer believed I deserved to date someone like G. Someone who had their life together, someone who only wanted to be kind to me, someone who had invested in me and treated me for a change. And for reasons still confusing to me know, I began a relationship with B instead, that felt like obligation, guilt, and beholdenness. I suppose a relationship very similar to the one I have with my parents. I let B push my boundaries, and worst of all, I let him dictate to me that I was “his now” and I had to end things with G. And so I did, in a short and callous text, with no warning or indication there was reason to end our budding relationship. G responded: “Thank you for telling me. This is so hard. I do wish you the best, you are so perfect, smart and so sweet. It’s hard doing a long-distance relationship. So I get it.” I immediately felt horrible, I remember a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, it wasn’t how I would have wanted to do it, and worst of all, I knew I had hurt someone who had only treated me with the kindness and care I had always wanted. Someone who moved at a healthy pace in a relationship. Reflecting now, I think it was too foreign to me, that I had always been used to dating those requiring “fixing” or help. Relationships starting and moving at warp speed. I did not know how to be on the receiving end of such good treatment. At B’s request and my friend’s suggestion, I never even replied to that last message from G. And for that, I am so, so sad. I have thought about him periodically throughout my relationship with B. I have even missed him, but once I found out about my pregnancy, I tried to push these thoughts and feelings away. Although it has been a year now, I considered messaging an apology in how callously I handled the situation with no explanation. I wonder if this is more self-serving if anything, I’m not sure.
Looking back, I should have taken that apartment in the new city when I had the chance. At the time I could have easily afforded it, and I could have tried moving which is what I really wanted to do. I would have continued my relationship with G, and I believe it likely would have deepened in time. And even if it didn’t, I would have tried to be in a relationship where I was treated well from the beginning. But it’s complicated. I know deep in my heart I don’t regret having my daughter, because I love her more than anything. Yet if I’m really honest, I regret being with B. After our first couple of dates, he basically told me we were going to be together. I remember thinking it was too fast, I remember seeing some red flags and not being as interested in him as much as he was in me, and I remember him pushing my boundaries, especially physically.
The saddest thing is I actually was wanting to end things with B right before I found out I was pregnant. I wanted to message G again, to see if that could be repaired. I wrote to you around this time, because I didn’t know how I could end things after he had told me he didn’t want to lose me and if he did, he would be so upset he could lose his job. And the irony is he lost that job anyway. I feel like as soon as I met him, I had this huge obligation to take care of this person, emotionally, financially, physically. And it wasn’t that I wanted to, it was just that I felt I had to. I didn’t want to hurt him after he was already so wounded from his divorce. Yet I feel like I was still finding myself, I was still learning to speak up for myself, to put myself first. And then he came into my life and it became all about him. Now I find myself locked into a big mortgage in a house I don’t love, that is not new and shiny and warm like the apartment I turned down in the city I adore. I have such a drastically different life now than the year before. It is difficult for me. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do, Anita. It’s hard not to make the comparison between the two men. G was established in the city I loved, educated, kind, thoughtful. We had similar views and values. I feel it was a much more compatible match. I wish I had listened to my gut at the time, and if I’m honest, throughout our relationship I would think about this choice that I made and regret it. The choice that didn’t really feel like a choice in the first place. I wish I had just walked away from B after so many red flags. However again, it is so complicated because if I had done that, I wouldn’t have my daughter now.
I’m so sorry for always writing such similar regrets to you. But I feel like I have to tell someone these realizations to keep myself accountable. I have actually shared all of these thoughts (some very difficult to speak of, but I believe I owed it to B and to myself to once and for all be completely honest and speak up for myself ) to B and he has surprisingly willingly listened and suggested that I take more time to myself to figure out what I really want. In a very ironic turn, he was also offered a very lucrative position from, believe it or not, a former executive client of mine from 5 years ago. It’s a small world, I suppose. This development leaves me feeling somewhat hopeful, yet I still find myself thinking about all that I have written here about my past. I know my particular vice seems to be Regret and Rumination, but I truly am very sad that I let my parents talk me out of that apartment, which in turn led me back to my home city where I met and became entangled with B. I can’t help but think now of the life I wanted, that I was so close to having. I am upset with many people, but worst of all, I am disappointed in myself that after I had promised myself and you many times, I still let my parents make a major life decision for me, one that ended up having very serious consequences. I’m not sure how to get past all of this, and more importantly, how and what direction to move forward.
Thank you again a million times over for your unwavering support for me and now my daughter, Anita. You are appreciated more than you will ever know.
-L
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 