Dear Seaturtle:

I was just reading through your post before last and I thought to myself; boy, she (you) is so intelligent! and then I thought: I’ll tell Seaturtle what I just thought, so I just did. I’ll be back to you Wed morning when I am more focused and rested (I woke up too early this morning). Good evening and night, high vibrational/ very intelligent Seaturtle!

anita

Dear Lou92:

“He had an overbearing stepmother that ruined the relationship he had with his Dad and treated my husband terribly. He was desperate to get out of there at any given opportunity“- I ask questions because I am trying to understand and hopefully offer you something helpful:

– At what age and for how long was his stepmother in his life?

– Can you give me an example or two of her overbearing behavior?

– Is she still in his life/ still married to his father? And if so, how did the relationship with his father change from being ruined to wonderful?

anita

Dear Lou92:

Welcome to the forums, I’m glad you are here and I hope that you post again.

“I have been in a relationship for 10 and a half years and got married in a couple of months ago… In the months leading up to the wedding, our relationship started showing cracks.  He suddenly became very close friends (very quickly) with a female coworker, where they were texting excessively, morning and night, despite spending all day in the office together… he has never had a female friend in the time I have known him and is now suddenly very close with on“-

– After marriage became a definite plan and six months before the planned wedding, he did something he never did in the 10 previous years: excessively communicate with another woman.

You shared that the last 5 or 6 years of your relationship with this man were “powerful and solid…  I made him feel like the centre of my world, and he made me feel like the centre of his“. But before the wedding and after the wedding, he is: “appearing distracted at home with me and not being as present in the evenings or weekends“, no longer having you in the centre of his world.

“This experience has affected me because this situation was coupled with him appearing distracted at home with me… has led me to the realisation that I have an anxious attachment style due to my Dad..“-

– I think that any woman in your place, having had an attentive man changing into a distracted man who excessively texts another woman, would be anxious regardless of attachment style.

“He still appears distracted at home, he is still talking to this female co-worker much more than I am comfortable with… I get the bare minimum from him these days, and I feel he gives his best self to his colleagues and friends at work and then I get the leftovers. He barely makes conversation with me… I no longer feel like the centre of his world, more like a spare part that is just ‘there’ when he comes home at night“- he is inattentive and distracted with you but attentive to, and focused on this female coworker, and other colleagues and friends at work.

“He said he was just being there for her as she was going through a difficult time and that they were just friends“- maybe his coworker is going through a difficult time and needs a friend, but the same is true to him: he is going through a difficult time and he needs a friend. Unfortunately (I feel sad to be typing this), you are not the friend that he is seeking. The question is why…?

One night, “he took our dog out for a walk at 7pm and didn’t come home until 4am, after being drunk driven home by a friend“- what made him not want to go home to you that night..?

I don’t think that either his depression nor your attachment style explains, by itself, this change in him. I think that the main explanation for the change is the wedding itself. Seems to me that he felt caged-in with you as a result of anticipating the wedding and then following the wedding. Maybe feeling that the marriage was really going to happen, and then it taking place triggered his childhood experience where he was stuck in his original home with an unpleasant or distressing parent or two, older siblings perhaps. Maybe as a child and teenager, he wanted out of the home for a long time. Fast forward, he wants out of the home he shares with you as his wife.

If the possibility above is correct to a large extent, then he is not seeking you as a friend because he sees you as someone unpleasant from in his past. Let’s say that he sees you as his overbearing mother (just an example, I know nothing about his mother/ original family) because he projected his mother into you once the wedding felt real enough. Next, he is trying to survive living with.. his overbearing mother by distracting himself and focusing on life outside the home.

You’ve known him for a long time. Is the above a possibility, Lou92?

anita

Dear Josh:

(I am adding the boldface feature to the following quote): “For a long time I have wondered what self-control really means…  I consider myself… enslaved to my own (instinctual) emotions and impulses… I can understand, know, recognize and think about how what I am doing is wrong, without being able to stop myself from doing it… I am torn about the reason why I cannot trust myself… I procrastinate heavily, normal household tasks are difficult and more personally, I often indulge into internet pornography. These are things I heavily regret during my everyday life… I do not trust myself that I can follow through on what I think is right. I feel as a slave to my own impulses that overwrite any rational thought that I may have”-

– maybe (?)  when you were growing up, Wrong and Right were confused: what was supposed to be Right resulted in Wrong.  For example, let’s say that you were told by your father that hard work is a very positive value (Right), but then you saw him working hard and suffering for it, getting injured or his health suffering (Wrong). Or let’s say, your mother was passive and submissive and your father considered it to be Right, as in her being a good wife, but he repeatedly cheated on her and she suffered for it (Wrong).

Fast forward, you are not motivated to do what’s considered Right (ex., household chores), and instead you do what feels Right in-the-moment (ex., internet pornography).

Anything like that?

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

As I am re-reading about how you felt living with N, I am thinking this morning: there really is no (good/ healthy) reason for you to place yourself in that situation again, for crying out loud!

“The thing I want more than anything in my life right now is friends who are like me in this way, like you, but I need people in person…  I am ready to meet people who can raise my vibration and teach me“- maybe a Buddhist community in your area will be such a place where you can meet in-person others with chakra/ vibration-level awareness?

“Interesting. So it’s the dynamic of someone having expectations for me, and my desire to complete them and win their love. I need to be careful of this dynamic“- yes. If you tried hard, early on, as a hatchling, to make your (figuratively blind) father SEE you, and you failed, the desire to make him see you didn’t die. It awakens with the next figuratively blind person in your life (N) who reminds you of your father in some ways (such as his focus on making money).

“When I tried to tell N I was on eggshells he thought that was ridiculous. Both N and F think they are very approachable, but in fact they are the opposite (of approachable). Because if what you approach them with falls outside of their logic, then it is hard to get them to understand“- they have a narrow logic/ understanding and when SEEING you requires a wider logic on their part, they don’t try to expand their understanding, but reject the required understanding as ridiculous, something not worthy of their time and effort.

“However I think my dad has possibly expanded his ability to see…“- hmmm… really?

“So when I arrived in Portland last weekend“- wait, I thought that your parents lived in WA… they don’t?

“My dad picked me up from the airport… I told him about the cash situation and the c-word situation. I felt energized by the conversation, and I went on to the deeper reasons, I talked about how I had been doubting the relationship for a long time, I talked about this forum and you Anita. I told him… ‘this relationship was only holding me back from the growth I wanted in my life.’ My dad listened and responded, asked questions… Most significantly, he messaged me randomly on Wednesday ‘Hey, I just want you to know I’ve been thinking about you and our conversation a lot this week. A lot of things have been on my mind but the one that stands our the most is just how damn proud I am of you.!! You took the time and went through the pain to search yourself and ultimately find the voice of your truest self. You honored your whole self. The result is less important than the patient process you allowed yourself to suffer through… you are tougher than you think, kid (kissing emoji) Love you, proud of you (heart and kiss). ‘ I don’t want to want his validation, but there is still a part of me that wants F to see me and I honestly feel like he did see me a bit here, right?“-

– I hope so.. I am impressed by his wording, wow.

“It is confusing because he still gaslights and is someone I have to be cautious of but in these moments I feel like there is a part of him that I can have a relationship with. Am I being naive? Is he all Shark?“- I don’t know. It is difficult to say because an important part of his work is one-to-one PR, isn’t it? And being as successful as he is, suggests to me that he is versed in saying all the right things to the right people, talking their language so to draw them in.. I don’t want you to confuse Style (him talking your language, the italicized above) and Substance (him believing in the italicized above).

It’ll be interesting to hear (or read) how he talks to people who think very differently from you…

“Perhaps it is easier but isn’t it more painful? I am not Teflon, so perhaps I just don’t relate at all. Is his MO, Teflon?“-

– I have a more fitting Teflon imagery in regard to N (and others) following reading this morning what you wrote above (“if what you approach them with falls outside of their logic, then it is hard to get them to understand“): if N is a frying pan, only a small part in the middle is not covered with Teflon, that’s the limited understanding of you that he takes in. The rest of the frying pan is covered with Teflon which rejects any part of you that doesn’t fall exactly on the limited area in the middle.

“That is something about him that likely won’t change?“- no. His Teflon is his childhood reaction/ adjustment to his childhood experience. It is now habitual, his MO, part of his DNA, so to speak.

“When I say more painful, I mean ignoring the meaning of why something happened.. not wonder about why or where they came from, being numb to the world sounds like the most lonely and pointless life, a waste of life itself if I may“-

– Being mostly Teflon (not asking why or listen to the whys) is his way to NOT feel pain . Understanding further (asking why) is your way to.. not feel pain, or to lessen your pain. Same is true to me: the more I learn and understand, the lesser my pain.

“This Sunday I woke up a little stressed and here is why. Yesterday I asked my mom to text N asking for my flight confirmations, after all she did pay for it“- your mother paid for yours and N’s flight?

“I can see his flight information as well and we are sitting next to each other“- I bet you can ask at the ticket counter- if not earlier- to be seated elsewhere and you can explain why. I assume the flight crew is interested in preventing conflict between passengers.

“My knee is moveable… I no longer have a fever or sore throat but I have just been too congested to go to work still, and I have a persistent cough… I have done stretching each day, short time, but yesterday I did some core exercises and pushups. Today I will look at some heart chakra yoga on YouTube“- be patient with the process of healing and recovery, it’s happening and will continue to happen.

“Precisely, and I fell out of love with the man who did not want to grow with me and instead wanted to question my growth and hold me back  from it“- wait, are you saying that you fell out of love with N?

“Anita, do you think any two, man and woman, at their high vibrational selves can fall in love? Or that there is a special, maybe a few in a lifetime, special match for each of us. A match that many times, and I personally think, we never meet if we don’t meet our own high self.. what do you think of this?“-

– I think that all people are .. shall I say, created-in-the-image of a high vibrational self, and then things happen that lower the vibrational level for the great majority of people, beginning with conception (ex., a genetic abnormality in the egg cell), then pregnancy (ex., too much of stress hormones in the pregnant woman’s blood reaching the fetus), then birth (ex., oxygen deprivation during birth), and so on and on. Which reminds me- I JUST realized- my personal connection to sea turtles from the time I was a child:

I saw a nature movie about sea turtles and I never forgot it. I remembered that movie for decades although I remember very, very little of my childhood. In the movie, the camera followed sea turtles from the time they hatched out of their eggs on the shore, to the time they reached the ocean and after, detailing all the dangers they faced along the way, showing that only a small percentage of hatched sea turtles make it to adulthood. This is how I view mental- emotional health/ vibration level: it’s lowered and lowered for most from the time we come to be as a zygote (egg + sperm) to adulthood.

I don’t believe in destiny, as in there is someone special for you, pre-destined for you. I hope that as you date again, you will look for the vibrational level of the man, not expecting perfection, of course, but enough of that vibration to make the relationship work for you and for him, making each other shine brighter together than alone.

“I feel like if/when we do run into each other he will see this. If he ran in to me today he would see it, I am lighter without him. Even my literal physical skin has cleared since moving out and then ending the relationship… I know the relationship was having a toll on my physical body”-

– amazing, I wrote the above (“making each other shine brighter together than alone”) before reading this. So, indeed, you are better alone than together with N, and the right man for you is one with whom you will be better together than alone.

You wrote yesterday: “Speaking with you on this platform has raised my vibrations“- same here: speaking with you has raised my vibrations, thank you!!!

“I would absolutely love to meet you“- you are living in AZ and your parents in OR?

anita

Dear Rosie: How are you? I would like to read more from you. Perhaps you would like to reply to Natalia who posted in your thread today?

* Dear Natalia:

I am glad you posted for the first time and I hope that you post again.

“Since a very young age I’ve felt like I had to look after my younger brother and my parents instead of them looking after us children“-

– This is role reversal/ parentification: the child taking on or given the role of a parent. There is an article in psychology today. com, called: “The Pain of Parent-Child Role Reversals: 4 Core Themes Many things can go wrong when children are ‘parentified’ and grow up too fast” that may interest you. I want to summarize and paraphrase the article, with some quotes, and in parentheses comment on how it applies to me, and how it may apply to you:

When a child finds herself- or himself- in the position of giving the parent practical and/ or emotional support that is inappropriate to the child’s age, it is called parentification.

Practical parentification involves, for example, taking care of younger siblings, cooking and cleaning, and Emotional parentification involves the parent using the child as a confidante, friend or even a spouse-type figure, seeking the child’s emotional support.

In a study of 19 women who experienced this role reversal as girls, both practically and emotionally, the analyses of the results identified the following reasons for parentification: the parent has been physically or mentally impaired, and/ or lonely and lacking social support.

All 19 women reported that they were pulled into their parents’ relationships as mediators, hearing one parent’s complaints about the other parent, as a confidante, and the majority of the women said that they were manipulated by one or both parents, via being shamed and made to feel guilty (very much applies to me).

A participant shared about her mother: “She was a terribly fragile, disappearing parent. Like, no intimacy, no emotional world. My mother went out of her room at seven in the evening, made us an omelet and salad, and went back to her room“- (I wonder if this partly applies to your mother about whom you wrote that she “wasn’t really ‘present’“?)

One participant remarked: “I was always very attentive to my mother, she could collapse, fall apart, get into bouts of hysteria with crying and shouting, anger, and sadness. I had to make sure she was stable.“- (it is as if I said these words about my mother).

One of the themes that the study uncovered is that of  “Merging and enmeshment” with the parent, not having a separate identity, or a separate emotional existence from the parent. “One woman in the study recounted: ‘It’s simple, the inner experience was not mine. I did not exist from age zero, totally, there was nothing.’”- (this very much applies to me!)

Another related theme: “Nothingness and nullification…  On the more extreme end, the women expressed feeling…  that they were nothing more than an object, and their ‘self’ had been obliterated“.

Another theme: “Endless intrusion and aggression: Given the lack of boundaries and seizing of psychological control, participants felt that their world was an aggressive one in which their parents ‘plundered and swallowed’ them. They described the parentified relationship as intrusive, attacking, and devastatingly painful“- (very true to me. I felt that my life was a stolen life, stolen by my mother, and indeed my decades-long relationship with my mother was intrusive, attacking and devastatingly painful, for me).

All 19 women growing up parentified lacked the feeling of safety: “all of the women lived in survival mode. They were hypervigilant about their own safety and that of their family. A participant recalled: ‘It’s an experience of survival. All the time, you’re surviving, you are alert. All the time. All the time. You can never rest for one moment because you don’t know what will happen the next moment.’“- (again, this very much applies to me).

Another theme: “Extreme emotional swings; a dialectical movement between poles of the self... As one participant put things: ‘I felt brilliant and mature and interesting and at the same time worthless.’” (I relate).

(Do you relate to the above?)

Back to your post: “I remember saving every penny in my piggy bank and getting a babysitting job at 12 just to help out and my dad was an alcoholic and my mom was busy studying for her pharmacist exam and wasn’t really ‘present’“- reads like practical parentification. but of course, emotions are involved, so no doubt there’s a significant element of emotional parentification.

“Fast forward about 30 years and my parents are now long divorced , my dad lives on bare minimum, has numerous health issues and can barely afford rent in his tiny apartment…  He’s been renting the same place over 30 years now and it’s going downhill , the landlord is a slumlord who doesn’t turn on heat in winter and there are bugs in the building . It makes me so sad that my dad is so stubborn and wants to live that way… I wish he would just wake up one day and realize it makes no sense what he’s doing. He could live so much better“-

– this makes me think of the reason for parentification identified by the article, which is a parent’s physical and/ or mental impairment. I wonder if your father displayed mental/ emotional impairments since you were a child, and if he lacked social support, including support by his wife, when you were growing up..?

You mentioned that your mother was not “present“. I wonder if your father was present for you in comparison to your mother, and if you were therefore very present for him, very focused on his well-being early on.. and still?

I don’t know if you will answer my questions. I know that this is a painful topic, but maybe talking about it here will make it less painful…?

anita

Dear Seaturtle: good reading from you!!! I will reply in a few hours.

anita