Chris is right. I am totally dealing with a very similar situation Kkasxo.

The only way forward, is through. I buried my original trauma for almost 40 years. It got free and I dealt with it finally. But there was another trauma I had not dealt with. And it very well may cost me my family and my marriage of 15 years. But my wife calling my attention to it has allowed me to zero in on it and deal with it. I have now learned from experience that you may be able to bury these things for awhile, maybe with the use of chemical and alcoholic intervention, but sooner or later, it’s coming back. And the longer you take to deal with it, the worse it’s going to be when you have to.

Think of it as a literal wound. Imagine you had a gunshot wound, and the trauma, the bullet, was still inside you. You could technically ignore it assuming you weren’t bleeding out. But that bullet is gonna move through your body as your body attempts to expel it. It might come out the other side and rip open a new wound. It might burrow its way to your heart and you drop dead. But, if you take the time to get the bullet out while the wound is fresh, you do less damage in the long run. It’s gonna hurt either way. You might as well deal with it while already hurting.

Just know this. You are loved. You may not feel like it. You may think you are alone. You aren’t.  Not just talking about all of us strangers here on the internet, either. Those around you love and care about you as well. My thoughts have often gone to the darker side, but I have never once made plans to follow through. If you ever feel that way, please get in contact with someone. Call a hotline, a friend, a family member, post here and wait a few hours before doing something. Please.

The end result of what those thoughts entail are a very permanent ending to a very not permanent problem.

This too, shall pass.

Dear Kkasxo,

You are welcome. The event in question seems to have been of significant proportions for you to be affected the way you are.

Given that it has been such a huge thing for you, I assume that what had happened then is still impacting many aspects of your day to day functioning. Even anything that is remotely connected to it is disturbing for you.

You seem to have lost the ability to trust and therefore prefer to avoid people. You prefer to be alone but even in solitude you are not comfortable as you feel the situation has also changed who you are.

I am in no position to totally understand exactly what you are going through however I will share some of the things that helped me deal with a life changing situation. In my situation in the beginning I was stuck trying to change whatever I could, to try and get my situation to get back to how it was before the event happened. I was in a bind, struggling between the reality of the situation and my desperate and futile attempts to get back my past. What helped was a gradual process of acceptance, a decision to not keep my life on hold irrespective of what emotions I was going through.

I allowed myself to feel the uncomfortable feelings of regret, loss and hurt but made myself continue with my life despite those feelings. Mindfulness and meditation helped. Seeking and acknowledging the presence of a higher power helped. A decision to let go of the past and make the best use of what I have in the present helped. This is not to say that the pain is gone, I still feel it at times. But it is in the background whereas I function in the foreground.

You mentioned about reading self help books and finding it difficult to apply. Have you tried readings related to CBT?

Dear Kkasxo:

You are welcome. I would have been okay with you sharing what happened here only if it would have been okay with you, if you thought it could help you. Wishing you healing and feeling better soon!

anita

Dear Kkasxo:

I read some of your recent posts on the other thread today and I think I have some new understanding this morning. I thought before of your situation as a breakup, but I think it is a story of betrayal. The main issue is betrayal, with a capital B, Betrayal. It happens when you blindly trusted another person and he (or she) betrayed your trust in a severe way, with no way back to trusting that person. No way to blindly trusting anyone, anymore.

There is a shattering of one’s knowing of oneself, others and life that happens with a Betrayal. It is like a major earthquake with many after shocks. There is a sense of not knowing anymore. The knowing is now in the past, in the before-the-Betrayal, and nothing is the same anymore, all is strange, foreign. Is this how you feel?

If it is, then there is only one way to heal and that is to start from the beginning.

Mindfulness, do anything you do  daily mindfully, with a “beginning mind” state of mind. Do all your routine tasks with that beginning mind, brushing your teeth, washing dishes, pay attention as if you were doing each such task for the first time. Learn about you, about others, about life… from the beginning. You will be building a new foundation to stand on, one to substitute for the foundation shattered in that major earthquake.

Today is the first day of the second part of your life, a new beginning. In this beginning, your ex boyfriend must have no part, no contact whatsoever. Not for the purpose of weakening the emotional attachment to him, but because his Betrayal of you is unforgivable and you should not live with more shaking under your feet.

If indeed he betrayed you, with a capital B, in real life terms (the details of which I don’t know, but you do), he must be out of your life completely, in no uncertain terms.

Make today, this very moment, your new beginning.

anita

Dear Kkasxo:

There is no woman more powerful in a boy’s life than his mother. When a boy’s mother abuses her power, her boy becomes .. well, her man, that is, still a boy forever more, loyal to her. And so, his loyalty to her was a betrayal of you. And he lives with her, I understand, currently.

You view it from a different perspective than he does. For you, he betrayed you. For him, he was loyal to his mother.

You mentioned the word mistake in your recent post. What I referred to as betrayal with a capital B is not a mistake. A mistake is limited in time and is a singular main event. Betrayal is ongoing, months and years of it, multiple major events.

anita

Dear Kkasxo:

Having the limited information I have (reading thoroughly though), imagining I am in your shoes, I can see myself forgiving him because it was one event, not many, and because I will understand his motivation: loyalty to his mother (not betrayal of you). I have such a deep understanding of the power a parent has over her child, that yes, I will forgive him. And if he is a good man and the relationship I had with him was indeed so loving, I would consider a relationship with him… if he shifted his loyalty from his mother to me, his wife-to-be.

I wouldn’t want to live in hostility, that is, exposed to hostility by his mother, wouldn’t want to live in conflict every time he chooses her well-being over my own. Wouldn’t want to see him neglecting our own children so to provide for her. I wouldn’t want to observe this sort of.. slavery, my husband enslaved to his mother.

anita