How are you Caroline?

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

In response to your Nov 28, 12:41 pm post: I wrote to you:” Or.. N appears to understand and has better social skills than your friend’s boyfriend“. and you told me about your friend’s boyfriend being “very immature and yes, bad people skills”, yelled at her, shoved her out of the house. One evening, your friend’s boyfriend was playing basketball in a bad area where there are frequent arrests and violence. He texted her at 7:30 pm that he was wrapping up the game and was on his way home, She called you terrified at 9 pm because he was still not home, gunshots were reported in that area, and there was no response to the texts she sent him. He did make it home at 10 pm, saying he got caught up with another basketball game.

“She was absolutely furious and crying, she told me he had no idea why she would be upset, he said ‘I was just hanging out with my friends why are you freaking out.‘”.

When you told this story to your boyfriend N, he said that when he was growing up, no one cared about his whereabouts and he knew that if he was stranded, no one was coming to help him: “you learn that in life no one will save you“.

“He went on to say ‘In our relationship I had to make the decision to allow you to care about me, and tell you where I was and when I would be home. My initial reaction was the same as [my friend’s bf], I would shudder at you caring about me and my whereabouts, but I learned you just cared about me and so I still to this day work on telling you against my instincts.‘ I found this all very interesting but psychologically made sense to me. What do you think about this?”-

– You caring about his safety made him shudder, his word. To shudder= to tremble convulsively as a result of fear or revulsion/ to violently shake in horror or extreme disgust (online dictionary).

It is against his instincts (against anyone’s instincts) to unnecessarily be filled with fear or revulsion/ disgust. It is against N’s instincts to tell you about his whereabouts (where he was and when he’d be home) because it makes him feel either fear or disgust, or both.

This is one explanation (in addition to him being a workaholic) why he was late to the first date with you and why he didn’t show up at all to your third date (“he was late for the first date… our third date he..  stood me up” (7/29). And why he has been repeatedly late since (“Last weekend he was an hour late to my house and him being late is a pattern in our relationship“, Oct 11). I figure that in his mind he is resisting being controlled by you when he is late or a no-show.

By being late, he keeps you.. in your place, so to speak, a place of depending on him to show up- or not- and when. He doesn’t shove you, like your friend’s boyfriend did to her, an overt act of asserting one’s power over another. N.. does it covertly by making you wait, never knowing when he will show up.

N’s motivation to assert power over you was very evident at the grocery store recently, when he harassed you about having more cash in your wallet that he figured you should have. That was an overt behavior of asserting unfair power/ control over you. This is why that and the other example were game changers for me.

Back to your yesterday’s post: “Speaking of N, knowing how to act as a good person, and when he is tired is his more real self is very concerning, and I want to make sure I don’t accuse him of this (in my head, not to him) and it not be true. Because accusing someone of having these sociopathic tendencies is very serious to me. My dad has many sociopathic tendencies and I definitely want to avoid this in a future partner. But perhaps it is the reason I have had such doubts about N, yet it is hard to be sure of this”-

-(1) “It is hard to be sure of this“- N’s controlling behaviors are usually covert. This is why it’s difficult to be sure. The example in the grocery was an exception. I suppose he was too tired to operate covertly at that time. Plus, N is a complex person: sometimes he considers what you say.. maybe he does. I don’t know and can’t know what goes on in his brain at all times. It took the two OVERT examples of late to lead me to understand a part of him that he usually keeps in a Covert State.

(2) “Speaking of N, knowing how to act as a good person, and when he is tired is his more real self is very concerning, and I want to make sure I don’t accuse him of.. having these sociopathic tendencies is very serious to me“-

– “sociopathic tendencies” sounds like an extreme term to a common behavior of trying to appear like a good person in public, so to be liked and to promote one’s interests. It takes effort. This is why it’s tiring. Then in private, when living with someone 24/7, let’s say, a person is too tired to execute an appearance 24/7.

I just got your most recent post of a minute ago:

“for responses that you bolded parts yourself I am going to leave them as is so I don’t change the message, let me know if it is as all confusing!”- that’s fine.

“wow, it is scary for me to imagine that his honest state is authentically angry. How do I know this for sure? There are times I want to bring up a topic, regarding something in our relationship, like him being late or a lack of something in the relationship, and I have to walk on egg shells to speak about it cause it will upset him“-

– (1) I wrote the above about him being late as a way to control you BEFORE you submitted the latest post. Isn’t it amazing. So, yes, being late is his way to keep you anxious (waiting for him) and therefore, under his control. Another way he controls you is to express being upset when you bring up a topic he doesn’t want you to bring up. A person walking on egg shells is a controlled person.

(2) “How do I know this for sure?“- you know for sure by his overt behaviors: the recent example in the grocery store and the one while driving are overt. There are people who never say the words and otherwise display the overt behaviors that he exhibited on those two occasions.

“I don’t feel like it was always this way though. When we lived together and I told him something that bothered me, he felt sad that he hurt me…I have seen genuine authentic sadness in his eyes… He teared up as well and was wiping away tears as he saw me so sad. Is this not a sign of authenticity?“- it can be a sign that he is qualified to play Shakespeare on the stage with you. it is only recently that I criticized someone in real-life, someone who was repeatedly rude. He was sitting in front of me. He started sort of crying and saying that he wants to be a good person. He looked very upset. I think it was an act. And I was wondering the morning after, remembering the scene, how he appeared so genuine. I figured that in his act, he brought into his awareness some real, genuine sadness that he felt before.. so he really felt sad, but not about my criticism.

His motivation was to make me feel sorry for him because my opinion about him matters to him in regard to a certain self-interest he has (I don’t want to elaborate on it here).

“So the question is, is he being polite because he genuinely understood our conversation that words do matter? Or is he pretending he understands“- you are asking this about a man you’ve been in a relationship since Aug 2021, a man you doubted as the right man for you since Dec 2022, soon to be a whole year of doubting him and thinking about breaking up with him. For a long time- because of the gloriously positives you shared about him vs the .. minor-sounding dissatisfactions you expressed about him- I thought it was all your projection of F into N. After your two recent examples of his overt major misbehaviors on his part, I changed my mind. (I say major as in the difference between the way you described him before and his behaviors in these two examples is MAJOR)

“How can I be sure about this? I don’t want to incorrectly accuse him here.“- it is impossible for anyone to read his mind and know if at any one moment he means what he says. Rely on the overt examples and other overt examples you never shared about, if they exist.

“When we first met I was making a lot more money. I worked at Verizon and did very well in sales… N met this version of Seaturtle. I paid 50/50 for a lot of things we did…  we went to a Hawaiian BBQ place for dinner…  about 2 months before officially moving out. It was like a ‘house-cleaning’ I had with my dad. He told me he felt taken advantage of, he said I lived in a fantasy world… He did pay for the majority of things now… a day or two later…  he said it wasn’t about money, oh yea he said ‘I am not asking you to pay rent, it is not about money..”- it WAS about money.

F’s motivation during those “house cleaning” sessions was to control you through guilt. I don’t know if N wants to control you through guilt about spending money on you. What is clear to me is that N really dislikes or hates spending money on you for some time, by now.

“It is just hard for me to imagine N being someone who is more invested in style. I guess what do you mean by style?“- by style I mean appearances, trying to create a favorable impression of oneself in others with no care for the connection or lack of connection between the appearance/  impression and authenticity.

“N is off-put by people trying to tell him what he wants to hear. He is actually constantly alert of others not being authentic with him….hm“- it is common for people to get annoyed by other people doing what they are doing.

“For example at my cast party dinner after opening night, we sat at a table with several cast members. I saw him staring at this girl.. He responded ‘I was trying to tell if she was acting a certain way to impress us.’“- she was doing what he is in the habit of doing. He doesn’t like to see/ be confronted by his own motivation and behavior, is my guess.

“I responded to him ‘Well she is only 16 and the rest of the cast is older I think she was trying to fit in and be her mature self,'”- N is invested in appearing mature.. Same motivation as hers.

“he nodded in agreement. If someone can spot someone not being 100% authentic, does that make then authentic or not?“- if one gets angry at another’s behavior, a behavior that is not rude or abusive or destructive in any way, it’s likely because they see their own behavior in that other person and feel shame about it, or some kind of other distress.

“I am feeling appreciative of your support right now Anita”- you are very welcome.

As to your question: “Can you help me come up with a post-breakup plan? Or is this something between Seaturtle and hatch only?“- no, I can help you, Seaturtle.

It’s been almost a whole year, if I count 8 months back from the time of your first thread, July 29, 2023: “Please help me, my mind hasn’t rested in 8 months“, that you’ve been considering breaking up with him. I don’t think that you are currently ready to break up with him, are you?

Whether you break up with him or not is .. or should be totally up to you and not at all up to me. So, I will help you best I can in putting your mind to rest following a year of unrest in whatever way it takes: breaking up with him or… (don’t know the option, I mean, if there is an option)…?

anita

Dear noname:

My goodness!!! This is you!!! I m obviously excited to see you back here but I am also sad to read that your cousin was murdered back in March 2022,  a month or two after you posted here last.

Your last post here was on January 29, 2022, exactly 1 year and 10 months ago, being that today is Nov 29, 2023. On that day, you shared: “This week has been a rollercoaster“. Today, you wrote: “The past couple years have been a rollercoaster“.

A year and 10 months ago, you were about to meet your old therapist/ mentor for tea and guidance. You were still a beginning therapist about to take your licensure exam in a couple of weeks later. You felt bitter about some of your clients making way more money than you did as their therapist, regretting that you didn’t choose a lucrative career instead of psychotherapy. You were still struggling back then, and needed support with feeling “worthy and lovable“. You wondered on that day “if cutting back from alcohol, porn, and weed.. has anything to do with the intensity of the emotions” you were experiencing.

Today, you shared the very sad news that your cousin was murdered while trying to help his friend. He is on your mind and heart every day, and you miss him.

You are currently in an okay relationship, “overall a positive experience no matter what the outcome may turn out to be” and still “continually stressed about finances“.

You shared that the housing market is at an all time high. “The majority of my stress has to do with not having secure housing, and not being able to afford psychological help despite doing it for others. My day to day existence is overwhelming and unenjoyable but I have no one to blame but myself for being a therapist instead of an engineer or businessman. Oh well. I hope I can hold on, the lack of emotional and financial support is drowning me. Such is life.“-

– Don’t blame yourself, noname. Please don’t. Empathy for yourself (not blaming yourself) will give you much needed relief from much of your stress. It will tune down the volume of the overwhelm factor. Directing empathy toward yourself is the emotional support that you need and have needed for so long.

You ARE worthy and lovable and you deserve to rest in this truth.

“Anita how have you been?“- there are challenges in my life too and I am doing okay. As far as mental health, I am better than ever in my life, and a big part of it is directing empathy toward myself. Any time that I notice that I feel badly about something, if I figure that it is invalid guilt that I am feeling, or an exaggerated guilt considering a wrong I committed, or guilt that is not useful anymore and all it does is to make me suffer.. I am able to stop indulging in that guilt and to care enough for myself to .. wish myself to not suffer unnecessarily.

Back to you: the housing market being at an all-time high is a sort of necessary suffering, being that you have no control over it. But blaming yourself for choosing a (notable, valuable) career is an unnecessary suffering.

I am so glad to read back from you after all this time: you made my day, noname. Thank you!

anita

Dear Dave:

I know about your scapular winging and a whole lot more because we talked about it when we communicated for years in your previous accounts. So yes, I know a lot about you. More than anything, I know about your anxiety. But I can’t stop your anxiety: I don’t have that power. All that I can tell you in my efforts to help you, I already did.. over and over again.  This is why I keep recommending that you see a mental health specialist.

Again, I wish you well. There is nothing else that I can do but wish you well and,, recommend, once again, that you see a mental health professional so to treat your long-term anxiety.

anita

Dear Matt:

I feel some empathy for him, as I read your recent post.. Still, he’s done you wrong and I feel more empathy for you for having been betrayed by the one you loved and trusted.. what a shame. I wish it didn’t happen.

When I had my first quality therapy, my therapist at the time focused on emotion regulation skills. He assigned me with homework at the end of each session (or he’d email me a homework assignment after a session). Homework included listening to one of Mark Williams’s Mindfulness audio meditation series, every day. These are available online free of charge. I wonder if you’d like to listen to any one of them, the “Befriending” meditation perhaps. Maybe it will help you with your heartbreak. Maybe it will help your ex.

You wrote that “he kept pushing it deeper“, it being trauma, you mean. And pushing it in, suppressing it fueled a state of elevated stress which he tried to lower with excessive eating and cheating, as… emotion regulation un-skills..?

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

1st post: “N’s natural state is not rude, he is usually very sweet and I feel like his recent rudeness has been acting out of some resentment towards me“-

– (1) it makes sense that anger precedes rudeness. Imagine feeling angry and not acting rudely. (2) There is someone I knew whose usual very sweet state was dishonest and manipulative. On the other hand, her less frequent angry state was her honest state: she was honestly, authentically angry and vindictive.

“He apologized, said he felt badly that his work week was bleeding into Saturday… He texted me Saturday morning he would actually be over around noon… He gets to my apartment at 4pm… I cared more about the fact he said 3:30 and showed up at 4pm, this final act of disrespect? effected me more than the rest of his time changes, especially that he didn’t acknowledge this one. was slightly stand off-ish“-

– I wonder if his initial apology was sincere or if it was part of his effective social/ people skills, a social lubrication strategy. He may have good people skills, apologizing not because he regrets something he’s done, but because apologies work.

“Saturday night: We sat on the porch and I brought up the argument where he said words don’t matter. I said… He listened, but his responses told me he did not understand“- appearing to listen may be a social skill that he is good at.

“He said ‘as long as you don’t start speaking to crystals and such‘… I don’t know if it is important to be compatible in this area or we can just be different here, and him being more earthly and grounded can balance me? not sure”-

– on the surface, the balancing idea reads like a good thing.. except that if he often says – not what is true to him, but what works for him, the problem is bigger than incompatibility in regard to spiritual understanding.

“We went to dinner. He often tells me he works so hard for us with long hours and stuff like this… When we were getting ready for dinner I asked if we could go bowling after dinner, he said ‘if you can pay for it,‘ I then said… ‘You say that… you want to work hard so that we can do cool things… like go bowling?’… he said he didn’t understand how me and M don’t work more hours… He said he didn’t understand, ‘I would not be okay with only working three days a week while living in an apartment I rent’ as opposed to a purchased home… We got to the dinner spot and realized it was a place we had already been and he said the place was expensive…he paid… He got weird and did not hug me back”-

-he doesn’t want to spend money he doesn’t have to spend and that’s fair, he doesn’t have to. Problem is that he may be saying things that sound good (ex., I am working so hard for us), so that people think well of him, not what is true to him.

“On our drive he said the ‘c’ word again, but this time in a much better mood he caught himself and said ‘oh sorry‘ and corrected his wording. I appreciated this, confirming to me he had been acting out of a bad attitude before it is not who he is“-

– Or his motivation in saying sorry and correcting his wording was to say what a nice person would say, and he was in a much better mood to say what a nice person would say. It is only when he is angry/ or tired or in a bad mood that he says what’s true to him…?

“We then went home for some art, leftover thanksgiving food and cartoons. We smoked a bit of marijuana… it was not very relaxing for me… Or am I projecting again, since F did not understand me“- (1) I don’t know what part the marijuana had on how you felt (2) F did not understand you, but I am suspecting that N does not understands you either, that he is good at people skills: at appearing like he understands.

I wrote to you: “Ask Hatch what makes/ made her feel safe through the years… Let her speak to you in her own child-like words…?”, and you answered: “The tv show friends, being alone, dark rooms when I am panicked… pool days… my mom when she would solve things for me, when my dad would play crossword puzzles with me… my grandma… when I am trusted and believed, loved…  I will continue to ask myself this. Are these the type of answers you were talking about?“-yes, except that I would like it if Hatchling elaborated on one of the items on the list, expanding on it while in a kind- of meditative state of mind: very relaxed, uninterrupted, typing away whatever comes to her mind.

2nd post: “(N) has avoided taking responsibility and has a pattern of deflection. However when he has calmed down and we discuss a few days later, he is able to see where he went wrong”- or when he is calm/ in a better mood, he is able to do a better job at making a good use of his people skills: appearing/ effectively pretending to see where he went wrong.

* I wonder: are you aware of him reading or having read certain books or watching You tubes about people skills, such as on how to resolve conflicts/ arguments, how to bring about desired outcomes via social manipulation?

“I don’t want to accidentally show him in a darker light than he is… he usually eventually understands, unlike my friends boyfriend who completely dismisses her”- Or.. N appears to understand and has better social skills than your friend’s boyfriend.

“He is suppose to come home with me this Christmas and I almost wish he was going to spend it with his family, not to be away from him but so he doesn’t miss his family Christmas for mine, if we are not meant to be“- You don’t owe him to be with him for the rest of your life: you made no such official commitment: the two of you are neither engaged nor married.

3rd post: “There is a little more to this. After I told him the ‘c’ word was offensive he said ‘ok well you have called someone a d*ck before why is that ok?’ (apologies for the crude language…I said it was different and he just sarcastically laughed”-

– well, it was different because he didn’t repeatedly tell you that the d-word offends him, and he didn’t repeatedly ask you to not say the word. And you didn’t tell him to get it through his head (which is what he told you) that words don’t mean anything and to therefore to not get offended.

“And one more detail to him saying…  I worry about small things that don’t matter‘ and he said ‘oh good’ then I said ‘and how I don’t think that is true’ then he laughed (true, not sarcastic) because he had jumped to the conclusion with ‘oh good’ that I agreed with him when in fact it was the opposite. Anyways just thought this detail would help you see that this has been something he has thought for a long time and made comments like this before”-

– You worry about things that matter, important things that don’t matter to him. Such as being authentic with him, talking and acting in congruence with who you truly are (and with who you are truly becoming, as you are not static).

“N thinks that he is superior to me in that he doesn’t let his feelings bother him as much as I do… For example our work schedules. I am on the end of calling out of work too much, driven by hatch… N is on the opposite N, never called out a day in his life...  I am not the best with money“-

-Being as driven as he is to make money.. I wonder why he is with you: a question you asked him yourself, something like why are you with ME?  He gave you only superficial answers, repeatedly saying that Love is a Choice. I wonder why he doesn’t choose to love a woman who makes a lot of money, a woman who is the best with money. Did you ever ask him this question?

“He has straight up told me before he doesn’t trust me with money“- maybe he wants to have full control of money, so he doesn’t want a woman/ wife who will take any control over where any of the money goes, and a money-driven woman who is good with money.. would want such control.. Hmmm.

“I now see this in N. One of my questions of if I am projecting or if he is genuinely similar to my dad“- It can be two things at the same time (both, not one or the other): projecting F into N AND reacting to who N truly is, which is similar to your father. They both use good or excellent people skills, don’t they?

“I feel misunderstood, but once I explain myself he will then understand me“- or.. appear to understand you by the expressions of his face and the words he uses..

“until he doesn’t anymore and I have to explain again”- until he is too occupied or tired to invest in appearing..  rinse and repeat.

“N does this very often in arguments. It drives me crazy why he asks me what’s wrong, it genuinely makes me angry and makes me (hatch) want to hit him… he is not understanding me and almost as if he is not even trying. I just want to shake some sense into him like ‘open your eyes!'”- imagine a person invested in appearing this way or that way: they are invested in Style, not in Substance.

anita

Dear Matt:

You are welcome.

“To me this is such a complex situation“- interestingly, this is what I was thinking after submitting my post and the edit, and before reading your reply: I was thinking that his situation may not as complex as presented, a result of his self-esteem issues, but simply a result of his undisciplined sexual appetite.

Male mammals are not monogamous, it’s an instinctual thing. For many humans, it takes emotion regulation skills/ self-discipline to.. not cheat. If your ex is lacking emotion regulation skills, and if he has opportunities to cheat.. he may cheat regardless of his self-esteem status.

anita