Dear El:

As I was reading your latest post this morning, a moment ago, I realize I was a bit scared, a bit fearful of your anger or irritation about me- it stemms from my childhood fear of my mother’s anger toward me. You see, El, I write here not only hoping to be helpful to another, but to be helpful to myself, to pay attention to what I feel as I read a post, and to learn more about myself. Even though I am not in your physical presence and you can’t physically hurt me, I feel fear. Or felt it. Will see.

Back to our correspondence otherwise: yes, I am often suspicious about people, knowing my own distorted thinking and observing others’ I am quite aware of how much inaccurate interpretations we all place of reality. Some more than others. But lots. Some people intentionally lie, others are … here I read your last word: “confused.”

I think AS I type. Now I wonder if you are entertaining inaccurate projections- often THE problem, in this situation. You wrote that previous absences from his life made him realize more- do you mean that temporary absences from his life caused his behavior to improve? Maybe he SAID he realized more but his behavior did not improve?

Maybe with a calm state of mind (calm is necessary to clear viewing), with a “beginner’s mind” – that is peeling of previous assumptions (example, the assumption, maybe, that previous absence/s from his life brought about improvement in his behavior) and seeing things anew. The confusion means you don’t see things as they are and/ or emotions run high- and these two are related!

I would say the answer to you is in the reality, in what-is. Remove what is not, what is not so, and you will be left with what is.

anita

Dear El:

I wish I could be of help. I don’t think I have been of help to you so far… and yet I am still trying… To my question, you answered that he did change in the past after some separation from you, that it is not that he only said he realized something but that he really changed. Well, I suppose separating from him, even for a longer time than before, is a good idea. It definitely couldn’t hurt.

Thinking about your own self interest is also a very good idea. Loving a person who is on a self destructive path is a big problem and heartache. Your last sentence, you wrote he hot so much better… So I am confused, but that is okay. I give up on trying to understand more about your situation. I “hear” your concern, your attachment to him, you wanting the best for him so very badly. You are sick with concern for him, from love for him, from wanting things to be different. If you choose the absence for a longer time next, I hope you have the strenght to follow through./

How about taking a week of absence from his life at a time. Will yourself to have no contact with him for about exactly a week and re-evaluate the situation in a week. Decide then whether to extend the no contact for another week. Break a difficult task into manageable pieces, one week at a time?

anita

Dear El:

Don’t worry about confusing me. I am responsible for getting confused because I choose to continue to interact with you although confused. I am not that confused though. Congrats for three weeks. I think you are doing the right thing simply because not doing anything, which is what you are doing, that is not doing anything like trying to change him, control his behavior, rescue him, all that – not doing any of these, not attempting to do these- is the right thing to do.

Sometimes when being faced with a problem, one needs to do nothing. And in this regard, you withdrawing from contact and therefore doing nothing, I believe, is the right thing to do at this point, and about that- I am not at all confused.

anita

Dear El:

You are the one feeling it, not him. We can’t feel what another one is feeling. We have our brain, not theirs, so we feel what we feel. We then project into another what we feel. What we project may be completely inaccurate, accurate enough or partially accurate.

Here is my most intense experience with projecting: i watched my mother break down in pain many times. It was heart breaking for me, as a child, to see the person I loved the most in the world, the person I would do anything for – and did- hurt as much as I saw her hurt. I saw her crying, I saw so much pain in her eyes. I saw her desperation, her crying for help. I heard her voice, her words, talking in a shaken voice, volume going up and down, out of control, highly emotional, telling me of her misery, intense misery, on and on. I heard her say she would rather be dead. And i heard her say that in addition to all the misery she had since childhood and in the present I also added to it, how disappointed she was in me, how I brought her more pain. I wanted with all my heart and all my soul to make her life worth living. So much so that i decided at one point that my life is not important. that the only important person is she and only if i make her happy, will i have the right to attend to my own life. I believed having added pain to her, I had no right to live unless I first give her the happiness I was responsible for taking away from her.

All my life I saw her in my mind’s eye as a hurting little girl. I saw her as the good, innocent, hurting little girl. It was only in the last couple of years or so that I understood that i was seeing ME in her, that I was the innocent, hurting little girl I saw in her. It took me forever to understand that as she wanted to hurt me, that she intended to hurt me when she hit me with her open hand, back and forth on my face, telling me I was a big zero. And she was hurting me when she blamed me for hurting her. That it provided her with a temporary relief when she did so.

What does all that have to do with your boyfriend? I finally took responsibility for me being hurt. I sort of extracted MYSELF from my image of her and owned my own pain. In a similar enough way, maybe, what your are feeling that HE is feeling, it is you that are feeling it. That pain you believe he is feeling, it is you who is feeling it.

He is feeling whatever he is feeling. If you could implant yourself in his brain, you may be astonished, amazed. While he is feeling some hurt he may be feeling other things mixed with that hurt that you had no idea he was feeling.

Back to my example: while my mother was feeling hurt she was also feeling relief by hurting me, punishing me. I did not know that. I thought she was innocent. I thought she was feeling what I was feeling because it was me that was innocent. I had no idea she MEANT to hurt me, that she was FEELING A DESIRE to hurt me.

You don’t know what he is feeling, and unless he honestly tells you what he is feeling every moment, you will never know. In the meantime, while you imagine what he is feeling (because of you) you are feeling the deep hurt for being ignored. You are the one feeling desperate for someone to love you, to attend to you.

Does it make sense to you?

anita