Dear nextsteps:

About the friend you had, you wrote (he)

“made me laugh, who seemed to see me for me and not just in a particular role and …he just seemed to notice little things about how I was feeling that other people didn’t and made an effort to know me as a person well not just in a shallow level and genuinely seemed to know how I was thinking/ feeling on the inside  i.e. Not ok rather than the ok I was trying to be on the outside.”

And you wrote about him (his) “positive attitude, courage, determination and patience I really admired …so positive and courageous about going for what you want in life… He knew himself really well after making decisions that sometimes went against the opinion of his friends/ family but he did what was best for him each time and he came out of it really happy with a life exactly how he wanted it and I, at the time, felt like I was living my life for others and rarely thought what I wanted so I looked up to him I guess. I wished I could be like that.”

I believe these two items, the above two paragraphs, are what home is about, what you yearn for, what you need, and what you can find/ create for yourself:

What you had in your original “home” and currently in your relationship and in other friendships is shallowness. You are not SEEN for who you are and you are not expressing who you are. You have been behaving according to the role of a daughter, with your parents, and currently, in the role of a girlfriend. What you need is to behave in ways that are authentic to you, being yourself.

You admired about this guy the traits you wish to have, the courage to be your authentic self, the courage to reject roles and prescribed behaviors, the courage to show yourself and the privilege of being seen and accepted for who you truly are.

You can find this home elsewhere with another man OR you can create it with your current boyfriend. Couple therapy with your boyfriend may be the way to go so to do what you can do to create the home you need.

I hope you post again.

anita

Dear nextsteps:

You wrote above: “The problem is when I am honest with my boyfriend about how I feel he says that I am ‘not as nice a person than I was before’ and that I have changed as a person…. recently I have been trying to stand up for myself more and what I would like and because that wasn’t how it was between us at the start, he is surprised by this and doesn’t like it.”-

Clearly, he likes the nice you, that “particular role”,  “the ok I was trying to be on the outside”, as you wrote earlier. He is not interested, at this point, to know your authentic self. It is understandable, to me, that he met the particular role that you presented to him, fell in love with it and wants it to stay the same.

Thing is, your experience with the friend, gave you a different life experience, how life can be when you are authentic, how it makes you feel connected and Home. Now you have a choice: to stay Nice in this relationship and perhaps find a friend with whom you can be authentic so to make life more bearable, to gradually present your authentic self, a bit at a time, and give him the chance to adjust and like the authentic self (may not work if he resists), or to leave the relationship.

anita

Dear nextsteps:

Yes, I do have thoughts about your last post.

You wrote: “The issue is it would mean giving up a stable life… I am scared of, NOT finding someone that I feel at home with..  I know that’s not a rational thought it’s just how my mind thinks when I think about leaving”- if you leave you might not find Home. It is a real possibility and therefore your thought is rational, not irrational.

You wrote: “I have talked to my family about this and they are very much like’ you are so lucky, you have a stable life…” Your family did not provide you with the Home you need, therefore, they are the wrong people to talk to about your aim of finding a place/ person you can call Home.

More thoughts/ advice: if you do leave him and the life you currently have, sometime in the future you may (or not) find the relationship and place that you can call Home. If you are successful, there will be struggle before you are successful. There will probably be moments of regret, self doubt, anxiety. Competent psychotherapy may be required. A successful relationship will be needed. It will not be easy.

It will be a journey with no guarantee of success. This is why your choice of staying or leaving is highly personal. No one should pressure you one way or another.

Basically, there what you have is struggle if you stay and struggle if you leave. If you stay and he is very resistant to accepting your growing authenticity, the struggle in you staying may be more difficult to endure than the struggle of you leaving.

From personal experience, there is nothing more worthwhile than the freedom to be authentically oneself. You know that experience, you know now how that feels.

Post again anytime.

anita

nextsteps,

Again – I just want to say how much I can relate. I have that same terror (feels like panic!!) of being alone forever and that’s what’s kept me in relationships when they weren’t right. I was engaged to a really, really good man who I would’ve had a secure and loving life with. But I just couldn’t convince myself to get happy or excited about it…in fact, I felt like I was signing away my life and any possibility of ever feeling like myself again. It didn’t make sense and still doesn’t really, except to put it down to us just not being right for each other, and me not feeling the feelings for him that I wanted to. Like you, I had moved far away from home and any family or friends to be with this guy, so the thought of ending it all was super scary and overwhelming. But I did end it….and my life went on. That was 4 years ago, and truthfully while I am still struggling to find “home” now, I KNOW I made the right decision. I had to look at it a couple ways…firstly, it felt easier for me to figure out my conflict and confusion on my own rather than holding him back while I figured it out. Yes I was really scared that in that time he would move on and meet someone else and I would realize I’d made a mistake and it’d be too late…but if he was able to meet someone else he was happy with then was it really a mistake even if I thought it was? Surely he deserved happiness and all he wanted out of life too (and he did find it!).  Also, I feel like fear is a horrible motivator but usually the easiest thing we let drive us.  So when I’m feeling fearful it’s sometimes a sign to me that I need to do exactly what it is that I am most afraid of. Fear was keeping me in that relationship, so it made sense to me that I needed to explore life outside of it.

That fear of being alone forever sucks. I love being intimate with a partner…emotionally and physically, and to think of never having that again – like I said, it makes me panic. BUT I truly don’t think that’s rational. There has been nothing in my past to indicate I will be alone forever, in fact quite the opposite…I’m sure this is true for you. And while our lives really are short, when you count them in days and all the people you will meet…there is just so much possibility and so much more reason to think “I know I WILL meet someone sometime, when the time is right” then to think “I will NEVER meet anyone ever”…you know?

Like Anita, said, it has to be your decision as you are the only one who really knows how you feel…but I just wanted to share some of my experience and thoughts because of all the parallels I see with you.

Dear nextsteps:

I am very impressed by the empathy and thoughtfulness you expressed in your recent posts on other members’ threads, investing so much time and thought reading and commenting, suggesting things that may help others. And so, I went back to this thread of almost a year ago. I hope it is okay with you, to get this attention from me. Please let me know if it is, at this time.

You stated on this thread: “I am lucky to have the life I do and have a wonderful boyfriend and live in the country and have a stable job etc.”

The problem in living this life with your boyfriend is the price you pay:

Placing your boyfriend’s feelings and needs ahead of your own (not having the opportunity to become adequately aware of what your feelings and needs are at any one time), acting nice regardless of how you feel, so to make him feel comfortable; feeling unsettled and off kilter, feeling not at home, not seen or understood by your boyfriend, lonely and disconnected in the relationship and otherwise.

In your family of origin you didn’t feel at home either. There too you felt lonely and disconnected.

With your friend, at the time, you experienced something different, a connection not only to another person but to yourself: “he just seemed to notice little things about how I was feeling… made an effort to know me… to know how I was thinking/ feeling on the inside”.  While your boyfriend cared how you acted, on the outside, wanting that nice behavior to stay the same, your friend cared how you felt, what motivated you, what your experience was, on the inside.

My input: there is no way for us, people, to know what we feel unless there is someone on the outside pointing to our inside, asking, inquiring, caring. We need another’s caring, and another’s input so to feel settled, to be aware and settled with what we feel.

You wrote: “The problem is when I am honest with my boyfriend about how I feel he says that I am ‘not as nice as a person that I was before’ and that I have changed as a person”- you haven’t changed as a person, you only changed your behavior, what you said to him and how you said it (and you said nothing mean to him, you wrote that). It was not comfortable for him, so he rejected your honesty, that is, he rejected you.

Your life seems great (I am using present tense, assuming you still live in the same circumstances). And it is indeed comfortable. When you compare your life circumstances to many other people’s lives, it does seem desirable, the envy of many. If you moved out and lived on your own, your life circumstances may have been worse: discomfort and no authentic being.

And if you moved out and got into a relationship with a man who was like your friend, one promoting your authentic being and becoming, it would still be a difficult and long process, to become your authentic self. It may even require effective psychotherapy.

“What to do when nowhere feels like home”- when home was not established in our brain early on, in the context of our lives within our family of origin, it is not easy to come by. Some places feel quite and peaceful, but not for long. We are unsettled until we find our home in the context of a relationship. Or relationships.

Got to have someone interested, motivated to see us, to know how we experience life on the inside, like your friend.

anita