Hi Pandanator

You posted on the 13th, I’m finally reading this on the 15th. Sorry for the delay in replying. The forum is unusually busy and your post was pushed back to the 2nd page. I don’t believe that may people have seen it yet.

I’m sorry to hear about the difficulties with your breakup. How are you coping with it?

You mentioned that the relationship was toxic. Considering the messages he sent you post break up. That seems very clear. It sounds like he got back in touch with you to hurt you. Why do you feel guilty about protecting yourself when he was trying to hurt you? You did the right thing!

It’s good to hear that you can reflect on your own difficulties in the relationship. Being able to do so, helps to work on those issues in the future. You seem to be overly blaming yourself though?

You mentioned overthinking? Are there any specific parts that your mind is stuck on?

It seems to me that what you suspect – he’s playing games with you and trying to hurt you – is true and valid.

Please take extra care of yourself during this difficult time.

Wishing you all the best! 🙏

Hi Chris

You posted on the 13th and I’m finally seeing your post on the 15th. It looks like the forum has been really busy recently and your post was pushed to the 2nd page. I don’t think many people have seen your post for this reason.

I’m so sorry to hear about your break up.

I’m glad that things were going better since your previous break up. I know it’s painful and hard because you love her. Considering her diagnosis I would trust her reason for breaking up.

How are you coping with the break up? Please take extra care of yourself during this difficult time.

Please share whatever thoughts and feelings you wish to.

Wishing you all the best! 🙏

Hi Robyn

You posted this on the 6th and I’m only now seeing your post on the 14th. This has started happening recently. Perhaps your post was bumped straight into the second page during a busy period? This means that your post may not have been seen by many people.

I’m sorry to hear about the difficulties with your family and that you lost your mother.  And there are difficulties in your apartment building too. No one should feel unsafe in their own home.

You have no obligation to your father after what he did.

I feel like the mistake was blocking your brother. Did you have a reason to the first time you mentioned that you did it here?

People do get upset when they’re blocked in general.

Changing your number without telling him and not giving it to him was a mistake too. This upsets people as well.

From his perspective you ignored him twice then asked him for a favour. It’s not surprising that he’s not receptive. Yes, he handled being upset poorly. But if the first time you mentioned you blocked him you didn’t have a good reason, it was understandable for him to be upset.

You used to be close, but clearly aren’t anymore. If you want to repair this relationship you’d have to put some work into it. Be consistent, not block him, ignore him or change your number.

Do you have the ability to see a therapist or pursue medication to help with your mood? You’ve really been going through the wringer recently with a lot going on at once. It sounds like you could use some professional support.

Please take care of yourself during this difficult period and bear in mind that alcohol is a depressant. It will ultimately worsten your mood.

Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Wishing you all the best! 🙏

Hi Seaturtle

My heart goes out to you for your difficulties with trauma. ❤️

It’s good to learn that you’ve already seen a therapist before. That explains your impressive level of self-awareness.

It sounds like your trauma is extremely active for you. Affecting you in a variety of normal situations. It doesn’t sound like your partner either doesn’t understand or isn’t aware of how bad your trauma was. Potentially both.

You mentioned that your partner had some experiences of trauma but he often had the opportunity to escape. This is a very important insight. As the oldest child with multiple siblings I expect that you also had childcare responsibilities for your siblings? This is pretty common when parents struggle to cope. There was no way for you to escape your situation.

It’s not simply not fair of him to call your trauma response during arguments an excuse even when he is upset.

So a good way to communicate that this isn’t appropriate might be. Please don’t call my trauma response an excuse during arguments. I would bring this up next time he does this.

It does sound like your trauma is impacting the relationship which isn’t your fault. There are potentially some things that you can do to help.

Phrasing is very important when communicating triggers. Currently, your partner feels blamed and like he is doing something wrong when you communicate triggers. The reality is that often your triggers occur during situations that others would perceive as normal. So in fact most of the time he is doing nothing wrong. Just accidentally and innocently stepping on a trigger.

Making an effort to watch your phrasing and try to avoid mentioning your partner making you feel a certain way will help him to not feel to blame for your emotional response to a trigger.

You did a good job comforting him after the tickling situation.

I have experienced similar communication issues with my husband. I have PTSD from trauma and need to communicate my triggers too. It has taken some time to figure out a style of communication that helps us both to feel at peace.

An example of communicating a trigger might be. I feel upset because I had a trigger and describing the event that occurred in the past.

Communicating a need will be received better than a perceived complaint. (How he experiences it)

So when you feel an emotional need to be cared for because a trigger has made you feel uncared for. Think about what your partner could do to show you he cares. Going with the hug example.

Could I get a hug? I’m having a trigger. You could maybe explain the past trauma while getting a hug.

I think taking some time to process might be important when you feel upset too. As you pointed out its not always immediately apparent what the trigger is until you reflect on it.

These things are really tricky to navigate. You’re doing the best you can in each moment. Clearly, you are an empathetic and caring person. I think you’re doing a good job, these are just some tips that helped my husband and I to communicate about these things.

You’re resourceful by using a teddy to comfort yourself. I do that too! I’m actually bringing a teddy to the birth of my child because I don’t like to be touched during a PTSD trigger.

Love and best wishes! 🙏

Hi Seaturtle

Thank you for feeling comfortable sharing your thoughts and feelings! I don’t think you’re a narcissist or a taker. It sounds like you’ve experienced a lot of trauma in your life and simply don’t want to end up like your parents.

I can see how much pain you experienced as a child. Psychology is becoming more aware of the massive impact of verbal abuse. I believe this is what you experienced with your father. Repeated criticism can chip away at mental health and the negative messages that we’re told are learned and become a part of our psyche.

I’m glad that your relationship with your father has since improved. You did a very good job standing up for yourself with the car insurance situation.

I don’t know if your parents are narcissists. I’m not a psychologist. I’ve just received a lot of therapy because of my own abuse growing up. I found therapy to be really helpful for healing from trauma. I don’t know if this is something you would consider?

What I find is that some people are better at maintaining relationships from a distance and struggle to say live with others especially when their mental health is bad. I do believe that your father may have some kind of mental health issue. His behaviour is quite similar to my adoptive mother. But yes, people who struggle to live with others when their mental health is bad often take it out on those around them. It was never your fault that he behaved the way he did. Those mistakes are entirely his responsibility. He should never have treat you that way. Some people are not ready to look after children. He was one of those people.

I’m curious about how living with your father affected your mother’s mental health? Part of me wonders, if one of the reasons she cheated is because of your father’s issues. It’s no excuse for her behaviour. Cheating is an abusive behaviour and not okay.

So I mentioned that negative messages we learn can become part of your psyche. You mentioned a connection between how your father accused you of taking showers to avoid him and you experiencing negative thoughts when your boyfriend takes a shower when you’re around.

I would call this an intrusive thought learned from your father as a result of his verbal abuse.

One thing that has helped me when I experience negative thoughts and feelings is questioning, who in my life does this thought remind me of?

I think that you recognize that your father’s behaviour was unhealthy and unreasonable. But the intrusive thought persists because the situation is a trigger, a reminder of what you experienced as a child.

Your father falsely equated normal teenage behaviour with you not caring about him. This trigger causes you to feel uncared for too.

I think asking your boyfriend for a hug once he’s finished with his shower could be a good way to remind yourself that he cares. What do you think about all of this? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Love and best wishes! ❤️ 🙏

Hi Stacy

It might be important for your mental health to block your ex on social media or to take a break from it entirely.

It makes sense that you’re hurt by your ex taking his coworker out on dates. It sounds like he’s moving on quickly, which is painful to think about.

How not to take someone moving on personally?

Well it’s like your friend who took a mental health break from you for a month. It honestly says more about them than you. Someone being upset over a break up is expected. That your friend needed some time away tells me that their mental health is quite poor and that they’re not invested in supporting you during a painful time. That is what friends do, support each other when they’re having a hard time. It’s not your circus, not your monkeys, not your problem.

A concern I have is that you’re using this break up to put yourself down. He came into the relationship with problems that are not your responsibility.

You have a good understanding of healthy boundaries in a relationship. He used your lack of confidence in asserting your boundaries to avoid taking responsibility for his actions.

You did your very best, but he did his best to dismiss your concerns. Notice I said dismiss, because he refused to address them directly.

I don’t think your ex was really a feminist. I think he is someone that could talk about feminism.

It’s disgusting that he used the facade of supporting friends and uplifting women which is clearly a lie as an excuse for his behaviour of cyber stalking someone that he was attracted to and had a connection with.

I don’t like how he suggested that you made him act like this in an effort to cancel him. He directly blamed you and refused to take responsibility for his own actions.

He did have wandering eyes is the only statement of truth. Something that he made no effort to remedy and expected you to accept.

I think that a red flag in a relationship is when you feel the need to go through their social media because it means that you don’t trust them. Going through his social media confirmed your fears. That he was showing interest in others while you were dating.

When it comes to things like this, it’s a non-negotiable in the relationship. Porn fine, whatever every guy does that it’s not personal. Actively expressing sexual interest in people he has connections with is disrespectful. Either he stops, or the relationship ends. I’m not suggesting using ultimatums. Just that staying in a relationship like that actively causes pain.

Please don’t compare yourself to others, it’s harmful. You are a uniquely beautiful person.

I think one takeaway from this relationship is that it was healthier than your last one. I hope that your next relationship will be even healthier still! That’s how these things went for me. Keep working on getting to a healthier relationship until you actually find one with a guy who listens to and addresses your concerns.

You’re very polite and respectful about these things. You deserve someone who cares about being respectful to you!

Wishing you all the best! 🙏

Hi Seaturtle

You’re welcome! I appreciate that you understood my intent which was to encourage you to share more about how you feel about your partner.

I’m going to reply in a couple of different parts because it’s getting late. But I can share my immediate thoughts now.

You seem like a very intelligent and self-aware young woman. You’ve already made some really important self-discoveries, well done!

There’s an idea about soulmates that I quite enjoy. Probably different from how you use the term. Still, I wonder your thoughts about it? Basically, soulmates can be friends, lovers, family. Anyone with a significant impact in our lives. The idea is that many different souls come into your life to teach you different things.

I really enjoy this idea, since I think who we choose to spend time with and why is very important because we learn from them as we spend time with them.

In some ways, I think we all teach each other when dating because it’s very much about compromise. Not every guy you date is the same and vice versa. We all have different preferences and needs. Dating is all about communicating and meeting each others needs.

By reading about how you feel about your partner you clearly love your partner, despite your differences. I think that you’re more decisive than you realize! You dump unsuitable guys very quickly, which is a great thing. It sounds like you chose to stay with your partner for a reason.

At any time please feel free to share your thoughts if you disagree. You know yourself much better than I do and I can very much be wrong!

Do you notice a pattern in how you feel about your partner and how your parents raised you?

For example, your father’s love being conditional. And your mother’s overcomforting doing her best to provide you with anything you wanted.

This could link to to the theory about learning from the people that we spend time with I mentioned earlier. Quite often we learn a lot from our parents, whether we like it or not.

Throughout your life you were taught that you deserve to have anything you want from your mother. Meanwhile, your father taught you that you should reject people when they “let you down”.

These messages could translate to the conflicting feelings that you have about your partner? What do you think?

For example, he should be perfect and share my favourite interests with me, spirituality and comedy. But he doesn’t! So maybe he’s not the right person for me.

I hope that I haven’t hurt you by simplifying it to these points. I really just want to know if you see a pattern since you brought up your family history.

I hope that you feel comfortable enough to share any thoughts you have. ❤️

I will be able to share the rest of my thoughts tomorrow.

Wishing you all the best! 🙏

Hi Luna

That’s quite alright! There is no rush 😊 I’m sorry to hear that your week had a lot of ups and downs. I’m glad that things seem to be calming down.

At the moment, I’m enjoying the chocolate apples available for Halloween. Here, the children go trick or treating and the adults get drunk at parties. My sister loves Halloween and enjoys dressing up for it. Usually, we watch horror movies together for Halloween. Do you have any favourite horror movies? The local woods are stunning this time of year now the leaves have changed colour.

Something special is happening for me. My husband and I are having our first child. I’m very nervous, as well as excited. The hormones are crazy! Ups and downs all of the time. I read a story about a pregnant lady crying over running out of orange juice early in the pregnancy and thought “That’s silly. I’ll never be like that…”. Well now I understand how she felt. 😂

Good luck with your poetry! If you would like to share any here you are welcome (it doesn’t have to be written by you, it could just be something that you enjoyed reading). I enjoy poetry too.

My favourite piece is by DH Lawrence:

I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Some may find it a little bleak. But for me it’s a nice reminder not to feel sorry for myself when things are difficult.</p>
That’s honestly fair! Everyone deserves to be treat with respect when they are courageous and brave with sharing their feelings. I think that you have a very positive view of rejection. I agree. The way I think about it is there are billions of people on the planet. We’re all looking for compatibility. It’s down to luck who we bump into and if they’re not compatible, it’s no ones fault. Good luck meeting someone that they are compatible with!

That’s a really healthy view of a relationship. That’s honestly how I feel with my husband and why I married him. It was the first time I’d ever felt like that. I felt like he even accepted the parts of me that I didn’t like about myself. In a way, him loving me; being kind and supportive taught me how to love myself.

I stumbled through relationships for a while wondering what love was. It’s great that you already intuitively understand it. You already know what you’re looking for! Be patient because these types of relationship can be hard to find.

I’m glad that you didn’t find my story distressing. Dating isn’t always sunshine and roses. I think it’s important to be aware of difficulties on the dating scene too. I’m okay and happy to share these stories with you. ❤️

My next relationship was a long term one. My first long term relationship. It was long distance, we met online and enjoyed talking. I visited him and we even planned for me to move to be with him. I had a difficult family life, so I wasn’t sad to leave it behind. But still it was a big decision. Where this relationship broke down is that this partner didn’t communicate very well in-person. Whereas online he was very communicative. So it was like two different experiences in-person vs long distance. He couldn’t cope with having important conversations and shut down, so I ended the relationship. It was difficult because I loved him, but sometimes love alone isn’t enough.

I’m curious about your forward thinking. I’m only just starting to plan for the future, I was in survival mode for a lot of my life. I don’t want you to share things that you don’t feel comfortable with though. As you said, it is a public forum, so I totally respect your privacy.

Love and best wishes! 🙏