Dear John:

“about what life brings next”- pick and choose from what it brings next. You don’t have to take everything that is brought to you. Evaluate what it is that is brought to you; don’t automatically receive it.

One more thing: you are probably going to feel longing to this woman just like before, or maybe more. Understanding things, the insights you mentioned, take a lot of time to sink in emotionally. It will take you reminding yourself what makes sense repeatedly, so to not give in to the same-old-same-old inclinations of the past.

anita

You are welcome, John. Post again anytime.

anita

Dear John:

The breakup with this woman hurts more because as you wrote, “I saw the whole world in her”.  When you discovered that she was a dishonest woman, you still saw the whole  world in her and you tried very hard to … fix her dishonesty, an impossible endeavor.

This woman manipulated you through guilt (“you are leaving me, my children”) while she was the one hurting the relationship and her children were not yours but hers.

When you talked to her about the married man she was still seeing/ sent naked selfies to, she turned the talk against you, blaming you for not loving her (“why you talk to me kindly like you really loved me”),  saying the same thing in other occasions: “if you really loved me… when did your love disappeared”.

She minimized the wrongs she did and called you sick: “it was just a small thing and you blow it out of proportion- you must be sick”.

She called you were sick so to make you feel bad, to defeat you.

She tried to make you feel jealous: “she says she sometimes fancies a guy at the dinner table”.

She cried and begged and didn’t change her wrongdoings.

I think you were caught in a trap, loving her so much and being stuck in her dishonesty, not knowing what to do with it, trying to … make her honest. I think you were trapped there because you lived with another dishonest woman who manipulated you through guilt, who lied to you, tried to hurt you, even enjoyed hurting you, pretending to be dead and then smiling when she saw you panicked.

You were trapped as a child with this woman, loving her even though she was dishonest and you were trapped as the man that you are,  loving another dishonest woman who hurt you. I think that this woman awakened the emotional desire you had as a child for your mother and this is why it hurts you more.

What do you think?

anita

Dear John:

You do  it by learning who the woman is before getting too emotionally involved. Take the time needed to get to know her, pace yourself, don’t rush.

Ask yourself: who is this woman? Does she lie or tell the truth; when she says she’ll do something, does she keep her word? Does she take responsibility for her mistakes or does she blame me?

Is she seeing someone else while she is seeing me?

Has she been involved with a married man before, knowingly and for a long time?

Find out who she  is. Keep yourself as objective as possible while you learn who she is. Only if and when you find out, over time, that the woman is honest, responsible, trustworthy, then allow yourself to move closer toward her.

anita

Dear John:

You met her in July 2017. In September 2017 she told you that she had a friend with benefits, a married guy with whom she had “3 years of affair with her before she met me”.

In your recent post you wrote that you spoke to her for over a year before meeting her, I don’t remember this at the moment therefore I ask: what kind of communication did you have with her before you met her, approximately  2016-July 2017?

* I will be back to the computer in about fifteen hours.

anita

John,

As you have found out that you cannot really know someone until you spend in-person time with them.  When I was online dating, my preference is to first see if I can have a short phone conversation with the woman then set up a face-to-face.  If she does not want to do that until she “really gets to know me” then I move on.  That tells me that she is in too much fear and not really ready to date (me at least).  I did not have the patience to chat/text/email for to me, you are ready to date or not.  Dating is the in-person experience of getting to know each other.

Mark