Dear Stacy:

“I appreciate your curiosity in trying to better understand me“- I appreciate your appreciation of me, thank you!

I read your most recent post, and in this reply, I will tell you what I understand about you, and you can let me know what you think of my understanding:

You are a very intelligent, well spoken, patient, kind and gracious young woman who is absent from her own awareness.  It is as if you are not a factor in your own mind and life. As if you didn’t yet take center stage where a person belongs in one’s own life, as if you are sitting in the audience. And who is on the stage where you belong? This guy, just a guy (not a national or religious leader that lots of people focus on).

Sept 6, 2023, you started your thread with: “Hi, everyone. My boyfriend who I met on Hinge”, and you continued: “HE asked me… he… him… He..”. Fast forward 3 months and 23 days (yesterday, Dec 29) and: “He joked about… he asked me.. He had trouble… He was reluctant… then he goes into detail.. He told me… he scoffed and said”, etc.

On Sept 10, I wrote to you: “You’ve been giving him too much power over how you feel about yourself, power he didn’t earn and does not deserve: WHO is he to determine your worth?… What did he DO to have this power to determine your worth..? He is just a guy you knew nothing about a year ago. It doesn’t really matter what he thinks, what he meant when he said this or that.. except that it matters to you because you give him power that he does not deserve“.

Eight pages later, I think and feel the same as I did in the above quote.

Limerence: “the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship” (online dictionary).

“Limerence is a term that describes an infatuation or obsession with another person. It stems from romantic attraction that involuntarily develops into obsessive thoughts. You might feel unable to stop thinking about that person, spending much of your time in thoughts, fantasies, and ruminations that center around that person… Replay and rehearsal involves obsessive thinking about interactions you have had, or wish to have, with the love object… the love object is the main focus of your attention” (psych central/ ocd and obsessive thoughts about another person)

“Limerence is the desire to be desired… The experience of limerence can include… an irrationally positive evaluation of that person’s attributes… Limerence has also been tied to trauma. Early childhood abandonment or neglect may correlate to the likelihood of experiencing limerence, and it has been associated with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder (psychology today).

I don’t think we discussed limerence before (I just went through your 8-page thread and saw no mention of it), but it fits, doesn’t it?

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

I wish you safe travels back home today, this Friday afternoon, and I am looking forward to read from you by tomorrow (or the next day, whenever it’s the right time for you). I missed you here, Seaturtle!

anita

Dear Shepard Moan:

This is okay. Maybe you only thought that you were controlling (which sounds negative, to be controlling), while you were just trying to be heard, to make him understand (while he was not interested in understanding you)?

I’ll be back to the computer in about 12 hours from now.

anita

Dear Shepard Moan:

I am sorry that you are going through this difficult time and I hope that you will be feeling much better soon. I want to place what you shared into categories that I will name. I will be adding the boldface feature selectively to the quotes in this post.:

1) His Wrongdoings, Apologies and Promises:

“Early in our relationship, my ex was sleeping with someone else. He confessed that to me and I forgave him… One day, I found out that he has been shitty talking about me to his female best friend and I also found out that he was still chatting with the girl he slept with, despite of him promised not to do it. He apologized and promised not to overshare our relationship to his best friend and to cut off this girl…My ex apologized to me for telling an incomplete stories to his female best friend.. He kicked me out from his flat mid night… few days after that he apologized …”-

– His apologies and promises do not indicate that he thinks that he did something wrong and intends to correct his wrongdoings. His apologies and promises are dishonestly manipulative, meant to resume the part of the relationship that he wanted to resume, with no consideration of what is true and what is untrue.

2) His Lies and Gaslighting of you:

“One day, when we were working together, I saw a chat from a girl name ‘A’ (different girl he slept with) with a flirty chat from him that he said it was not flirty and she just a friend… He called me insecure and I blamed myself at that moment to not trust him… every time I expressed my feeling to my ex, he just said that I was insecure. Many times when I communicated my insecurity, he dismiss my feeling… I felt like I was crazy for asking a bare minimum… He blamed me for looking at that video in his computer…Many times when I communicated my insecurity, he…  said that he didn’t want to help, he said I need to go to my therapist not him… The worst thing was his best friend asked him if the video was real and my ex said that I was a liar, they both called me ‘mental’. Meanwhile, I could swear that the video was real and I have many proofs of that. I was so broken to be called mental…I self blamed myself thinking that the reason why we broke up was because I checked his computer“-

– Gaslighting is  form of dishonest manipulation where he (the gaslighter) tells you  (the gaslit) that what you CLEARLY saw or heard, didn’t really happen: that what you saw, you didn’t see, that what you heard, you didn’t hear, that what you clearly understood, you understood wrong… that you are insecure, therefore only imagined that he did something wrong. Or that you were wrong about the way you found out the information about his wrongdoing, therefore .. there was no wrongdoing on his part.

The gaslighter leads the gaslit to doubt her own sanity, and to feel confused, guilty, broken, crazy and mental. And/ or a liar.

3) His gossiping and talking negatively about you behind your back:

“I found out that he has been shitty talk about me to his female best friend… My ex apologized to me for telling incomplete stories to his female best friend…”.

4) His cruelty (in addition to the above):

“he kicked me out from his flat mid night, he throw my clothes from his window. I was alone in a foreign country“.

5) His words: “All of his words calling me unattractive, moron, bitch, useless were dancing in my brain until now”.

6) Your Love:

“I really love him and I was doing everything I can to understand him. I just wanted to support him and made him happy. He was my first love and he came from a very difficult childhood and I just wanted to be there with him… I love him but I don’t like myself in our relationship… I feel really stupid for still loving someone who has been treating me that way… I feel so broken. But, I find it is hard to hate him.”-

– your first love story was a success in terms of your love for him: you felt empathy for him for having had a difficult childhood, you supported him emotionally and practically, you repeatedly forgave him, and more. You are a loving person: you have it within you to truly love another person.

Take this knowing with you as you move on and meet a man who will love you back: a man who will have empathy for you and treat you honestly, fairly and kindly, a man with whom you will like yourself and feel really smart for still  loving him. It can happen and it will.

nita

Dear Ben:

You are welcome and thank you!

(I am adding the boldface feature selectively to the quotes in this post): “I’m finding doubts are becoming quite pernicious. The other day I argued with him…(friend)   fills me with doubts, saying I am being deceived, led on, that I am being naive. If all the drama with the ex happened, how could I have been loved?…  I sometimes wonder if he really does love me or if perhaps he thinks he does. He says the right things, and I feel better. Then, doubt comes along and I start thinking ‘Oh but did he say this to the other guys?’…”-

– These ongoing, pernicious doubts and arguments within your head (does he love me? does he not? here is why not, etc.) read like a product of the very painful experience that you suffered as a boy, the throbbing of that boy’s emotional wound: “I was never recognized as a man by (your father), just as a sort of… idk… mistake…  I don’t love myself … I remember when I was 17, I shouted at him for at least an hour about all the pain he had caused me..  I was drunk after a party… I still create arguments in my head with him.. but… I want to love the world I live in and this negative energy is draining”, October 31, 2018.

This negative energy you referred to more than five years ago is still with you, fueling these doubts and arguments. The boy within you can’t believe, not for long, that he is loved because growing up .. he wasn’t loved by the man who- at the time, and for years-  was the most important person in this boy’s world.

I don’t know what’s on the mind and heart of your boyfriend. It reads, to me that he is sincere and that he loves you, but I do not know for sure, as in 100%. What I do know for sure (100%) is that as a boy, you sincerely and greatly loved your father and he broke your heart. This is and has been the emotional wound that’s fueling this negative energy, this pessimism about the possibility that.. it is possible that you are really loved.

I wish you had quality psychotherapy where this emotional wound can be adequately addressed and healed…!

“At the moment, he is coming to visit in January for a while… I can sense he’s giving me less attention… Even so, he’s called me more or less twice a day for the last week. He sends videos every now and then showing me around the farm and countryside. My mind focuses on the fact the calls are shorter. Then, enter the conspiratorial thoughts… ohhh he’s not talking as much because, now he isn’t alone in his room studying, he doesn’t need me anymore. This proves he doesn’t love me, merely thinks he does”-

– For as long as your emotional wound from childhood is not adequately addressed and healed, you will keep looking for the proof that he (or anyone in his place) doesn’t love you so to protect yourself from the pain of relaxing into love and then falling into despair. The logic of this self protection is that if you don’t relax into his (or anyone’s) love, if you keep yourself ALERT to his possible non-love, then the fall will not hurt as much.

“Maybe as its been a long time I feel a need to reconnect with him properly, without the ex lurking in the background. I hope the visit will help ease my mind somewhat”- It is interesting that it’s not his ex that is lurking in the background as much as it is the man who broke your heart long ago, that is lurking in the background.

I hope that your mind eases even sooner than his visit. I wish it eases today, or tonight and every day,  as you embark on the journey of emotional healing.

anita

Dear Natalia:

In regard to “I need to find out some resources here because I’ve never taken care of a sick older person before, don’t know what do expect“-

– there is a member in the forums who takes care of her sick old father, and seems to have lots of information, resources and experience on the topic. There is no way here to send personal messages to members, but if you start your own thread (go to Forums at the top of the page, scroll down to All Forums, choose a Category, etc.), and choose a title that makes the topic clear (caring for a sick, older parent), I bet she’ll notice and reply to you there.

I hope that you calm down best you can, and that you take care of yourself first, before attending to your mother or to your father. If attending to them distresses you too much.. don’t attend to them, at least not in ways that distress you more than you can handle.

anita

Dear DC:

It’s 7 degrees Celsius here, winter, USA, warmer than normal. It’s Mon 8:44 am here, Tues 12:44 am where you are at. I think that I wished you Merry Christmas a few moments before midnight of Christmas Day. Good night to you, DC, a pleasure to chat with you!

anita

Merry Christmas/ Happy Holidays, EvFran !!!

anita