Hi Anita,

I hope this trip would help me grow too! Yes, I have travelled before and quite extensively actually. I have been to this part of the world before also but previously I was with friends. On this trip, I am alone plus it is the longest I will be away from home. I have also travelled alone before but that was for about 11 days and in a country nearer to my home. I guess the main difference is being alone and being here for a longer period of time.

Okay, sure! I am quite curious where that thought is leading to.

Yes, that is the gist of what I said that I thought my childhood was a happy one and all was well at home. I think before therapy, I thought my father was just not expressive and he was a good father at the end of the day. So while I was not very close to him emotionally, I did not have much feelings towards him. Probably mostly appreciation and gratitude towards him for bringing us up. No overwhelming affection there but no strong negative feelings too.

Not-so-lost-star

Hi Anita,

Aww! Thanks for thinking of me – it brings me comfort to know that you were thinking of me and it seems to help me feel like distance is not that big a factor. Even though I am far away from people, people care and people can send their warmth too!

Reading your paragraph about anxiety made me smile.. cos essentially that means to surrender to the process right? 🙂 Which relates to my topic that I started out with. There is no controlling the anxiety, it may be triggered at anytime.. and it is something outside our sphere of control.. and it is to surrender to the healing that comes naturally.. the more i try to control it.. the more anxious i feel. it will be a false sense of control to think that I can anticipate anxiety and be able to be one step ahead of it..

so are you also saying that healing of anxiety will come naturally and that the intensity lessens by itself over time?

yes that is right! the fear of more fear is what I am experiencing now. and i feel if i do not focus on the anxiety, it is alright. but when my mind turns to the anxiety then it spirals into more anxiety.

the last time i experienced severe anxiety was one night when I had caffeine in the evening.. and I am quite sensitive to caffeine n it sent my mind into overdrive. i remember not being able to sleep that night and I was worrying about this trip. I wonder if I would be in any danger.. if I would somehow put my life in danger.. would i end up depressed or having some kind of mental illness.. what if i felt super lonely.. what if someone kidnapped me.. and all kind of scary and worrying scenarios came to mind..

oh actually i also experience some anxiety a few days back when I was visiting this church and they had a very narrow stairway to the tower. and i felt super anxious suddenly and felt like the walls were closing in on me.. and in that moment of intense fear and anxiety. .i thought whether i should turn back and go to the entrance.. and i told myself to just breathe n keep walking.. and i reached the top shortly after. i thought that scenario is kind of similar to the anxiety i am experiencing now.. that there is this fear .. n i feel like should i turn back and go home? but i know i do not want to do it.. it is the anxiety that is making me fearful.

the last two months have been really intense as I was preparing for this trip.. i thnk there was a lot to occupy my mind with.. alot of planning. .alot of tying up loose ends at home.. and I had mixed feelings of excitement, reluctance, anxiety about this trip.

maybe it is the sudden lull of thoughts and activity now that I am finally here. there is that contrast between the super busy and active life back home.. with now when I have so much free time. with an idle mind.. anxiety seems to creep in.

not-so-lost-star

Hi Anita,

Wow! First smile of 2018 and I am smiling back at that! May we have more reasons to smile in 2018 and may our smiles spread more smiles to others too 🙂

Take care!

Smiles,

Not_so_lost_star

Hi Anita,

I have no other words to return your WOW with except with a WOW back at you! Your comment about “In my few years of heavy posting on this website, these Forums here, communicating with hundreds of people, I did not come across someone like you, not even close. I have never seen so much healing, insight, openness, and … well, agreement with what I believe is true.” rendered me speechless as it is huge and means alot to me. My heart is glowing with pride and joy at what you say so it says wow!

I am in agreement of what you believe is true because alot of it, if not all is congruent with what I have read up these years and also what I have learnt through my years of therapy. But what you present Anita, is your gift to be able to point things out that I have never noticed before and the questions you ask leads to so much deeper thinking and insights. Your gift to do it so succinctly,gently and being able to sieve out the important things through what I have shared.

It is this gift, that has allowed this lost star to find her way again. You illuminated the map of where I have been and light up these dots and then helped me to connect them to help me make sense of what is going on. My years of therapy probably helped to lay out the map but the magic you did was to light up the way and show me how the dots all connect together. You opened my mind and let me see what has been there that I missed.

And with this, I am able to find my way again and I can move forward.

I do hope to hear from you if you have any new insights along the way. Maybe a random thought as you are up on your mountains 🙂

And I hope to continue updating you with my new adventures and more things to come!

Like I have mentioned before, I marvel at the beauty of human connection and thank you for being part of the beauty in this world! Truly appreciate all your insights and input and your wonderful gift. The world is a better place because of you Anita 🙂

Namaste,

Not_so_lost_star

*In yoga, my yoga teacher said namaste means the light in me honours the light in you and I thought it is quite apt and meaningful to use it here 🙂

Hi Anita,

I am taking a while to reply you as I wanted to have time to sit down and answer your questions.

Thanks for your personal wow again! It means alot to me to know that I am still thinking logically and still on the right track in  a way 🙂 And just to add on, even if my ex were to want a second try, this bit about “an even healthier and  functional relationship would consist of a man who has  the qualities of how my ex treated me AND a man who has healthy coping mechanism and would not leave” would also apply to him. It would not be enough for him to just want a second try with the qualities he presented with previously but he would also need to show me the AND part.

And yes, your summary is right and that is what I was saying in the previous post. And please feel free to ask me anything! I appreciate the respectful way you have asked with you asking permission and as always, I am open to your questions and they have helped me gained alot of insights.

Now to answer your questions in sequence:

1. You wrote that your mother felt that “as children there is that sense of responsibility that should be fulfilled”- was she referring to his responsibility toward you as a father or to…. your responsibility toward him as  a daughter? If it  is the latter, what did she teach you regarding the nature of such responsibility?

It is the latter – my responsibility towards him as a daughter. What she taught me was probably to compartmentalise my father’s behaviour. There is one part of him that is the dutiful father – being the breadwinner, fulfilling our basic needs, having a roof over our head, making sure we have our education and in essence fulfilling our physical needs. There is the other part of him which is the horrible husband/father in which he cheats, shouts at my mother, flares up easily and is unkind.

So what I learnt is while there were parts of him that was horrible but because he had parts of him that was the dutiful father, I cannot completely disregard my duty to him as a daughter. Since he fulfilled his part as a father to bring us up, I will also have to fulfil my duty to be a daughter now that I have grown up. It will not be right of me to not be filial to him.

2. When you identified with your ex’s “pain about the responsibility of fulfilling his duties as a son”- does this mean that you are currently in pain while fulfilling your responsibility to your father as a daughter?

Yes, I am torn while fulfilling my responsibility to him as a daughter. Whenever I am in the presence of my father, I think I disconnect emotionally from him. There is no depth to the connection I have with him and we go about life asking each other the same questions, checking in if we have eaten or some superficial conversations. Disconnecting emotionally is my way of coping and being in his presence.

3. In maintaining this “cordial relationship with (your  father)”, if this is the responsibility you are referring to, how does it feel to be in contact and to be cordial to a man who “betrayed us and it was  horrible”?

As mentioned in point 2, I don’t feel when I am in contact with him. If I were to feel, it would be anger, pain, disgust and that would be mixed with guilt of having such feelings towards him. And it would be helplessness as I cannot make these feelings go away.

4. Will you not be  true to yourself if you have no contact with your father?

To give you some context, I am still living with my father. Where I come from, it is difficult to get a house as a single and thus I have to continue staying with him. Which is why when I was together with my ex, he also represented my hope to get out of this situation with my father. I thought we could build our home together and I do not have to stay with my father anymore. So he represented a good man and the hope for a different future (not that I see my ex as just a way out of the situation but I was really looking forward to starting a different life/future with him).

But after that, I realised that the only person I should count on is myself and I will work on saving up to get my own house so that I do not have to live with my father anymore. Yes, rental would be an option but it is very expensive here and it does not make financial sense to spend that money when I can save that money to have my own house. I think things are not sooo bad until I need to move out now. So I will just work on my long term plan.

But of cos if my father ever show any signs again of being the horrible father he was, then I would go with no hesitation.

Right now, I kind of see myself as a tenant in this house and I just need to put up with this until I can have my own house. And what I do is to minimize the time that I spend at home and alone with him.

So no contact is not an option. And I think when I move out, I will still have minimal contact with my father probably having dinner with him once in a while together with my siblings instead of no contact.

You know, the phrase that came to my mind when you mentioned no contact with my father is “heavy duty guilt”. The words you used when I was talking about my ex. And the same heavy duty guilt is felt here. I may be true to myself if I cut off contact with him but I will also feel extremely guilty. Guilty that it is not right to disregard what he has done for us. I know there are many things he has not done for us but what he has done for us probably features more prominently due to what my mother has taught me in 1.

Hi Anita,

I smiled when I read the part when you mentioned the not-so-lost-star. Sometimes I feel lost and sometimes not so lost. But writing here certainly helps me to feel less lost.

Thanks for being so gentle with me too. I think I have a sense of what you are trying to tell me with regards to my ex in that maybe he was not as into the relationship as I thought he was and he is not as good as I thought he is and it was not the circumstances that led to the breakup. Those perspectives was what kept running through my mind the last year after the break up. I kept wondering if it was true, if the circumstances bit was just an excuse and was I just carried away with my feelings? And it made me very troubled to keep thinking about it with no real answer.

The point you mentioned about him not making an effort to reach out to me.. yes I agree this year he showed no interest or indication in resuming a relationship whatsoever. I do not feel as comfortable with the view that you feel the breakup resolution was not sudden though. I thought it is two separate things here. I mean it could be one of the perspective that he just did not want me in his life but I thought the other perspectives could be that he was still not ready to be friends and he was still overwhelmed. He is not completely aloof when we are in touch – he still asks about me and makes references to my social media and we do talk quite a bit. But I do know he does not initiate anything.

I think I just got to the point that I thought there was no value to me to keep analysing his actions and what it all meant. I can never know what really went on in his mind when he broke up and subsequently in this year as well.  Only he has the concrete answer and I would not know the answer. Thus, I decided on a narrative of what happened between me and him and I would like to keep it that way. And I decided that cos of what I felt when I was with him, this gut feeling that I had when I was with him, that it was real. So I dont wish to go back into the cycle of doubting and wondering. I will just stick with my narrative that we were in love and the circumstances led to the breakup.

I think I would just like to focus on what I know for sure which is how I feel, how I can move forward and what I have learnt from the breakup. While I keep my narrative of how we were in love and it was circumstances that led to the breakup, I am also congnizant of the fact that it is not perfect and that there are some things I want differently for my next relationship. Like you said, the year after the breakup was not effortless and I do not wish to go through this again. I want the connection but I also want someone who stays.

So I feel that chapter has closed and I want to shift the focus back to myself and what I can work on. I am very willing to explore the part about pain and how I projected my own pain to him.

After reading what you wrote, I did some thinking and you are right. I do identify similarities in the pain that he felt and what I felt prior to meeting him. I think I did mention before that my family circumstances and his are similar just that mine is not to his extent that is still happening. The circumstances in my family is dormant and I suppose it is just all swept under the carpet.

I see the similarity in that I also feel the similar obligation to my father in having to be filial and fulfil my responsibility as a daughter even though I do have some resentment and anger towards him. I do not want to do it but I have to do it.

I think I never realised this when I was younger but I realised when I became older that my mother was subjected to some extent of abuse – verbal and emotional. My father never laid hands on my mother but he would threaten to and he was often mean to my mother with his words. He has a bad temper and if he is triggered, he would be extreme with his words and actions. He also had affairs when we were growing up. I felt that my mother did not have a good life with him and what made it worse was that she had cancer and passed away even before we could let her enjoy the life that she deserved. And she had lung cancer (and my father smokes while she does not) and there are times that I do wonder if his smoking caused the cancer.

But growing up, my mother would say to me that no matter what, he is my father and he did his part in bringing us up so we have to be grateful for that as well. And he does provide for the family and he never treated the children the way he treated my mother.

So within me, there is this part that feels the resentment towards my father for treating my mother the way he did and there is this other part that has the responsibility to be a good daughter. I know the part that he treated my mother had an impact on us children as well so he is not a good father in that aspect.

I guess the pain is so deeply entrenched that it seems easier to just let it remain and sweep it under our carpet. And for me to continue just fulfilling my basic role as a daughter.

Hi Anita,

Thanks for re-reading my thread and providing your insights! I also appreciate your concern about how what you might say would not sit well with me and how it may be painful. No worries about it though, I come here to get other points of view and I can accept what you share and I have an open mind to it as well.

I think I have moved forward when I wrote about the “betrayal” bit the other time. I agree with you that there has been no contract signed and he is not bound to me. I guess when I wrote about the betrayal part at that point in time, it came out from the hurt I felt from his abandonment.. it was part of the conversations that went.. how can you leave me? how can you not keep your promises? And now, it has been another 3 months from when I wrote about the betrayal bit in September, I can see it that actually ever since he broke up last Nov (2016) with me, there has been no obligations on either part of us to keep to whatever was said during the relationship.

During our relationship, he said he would make it work no matter how busy he got or how stressful life got. Well, he did not keep to this. He said he wanted to celebrate my birthdays with me forever. Well, he did not. He said he wanted to come home to me in future. Well, he did not.

So I can understand that alot of things said then do not stand anymore and it was the me then trying to hold onto whatever was left of our relationship. It all existed in my mind and I was trying to keep a connection to him when there was none.

I agree there is the possibility that he might have wanted to let me down gently by saying that if things got better we may give it a second try. But I do believe he meant it at that point in time because I believe in his love for me and I felt his sincerity. And given how I also saw how he cried for many hours with me when we had to break up, I know it was real. Having said that, I also know many things can change in a year’s time and it has been more than a year now and I can accept that now, even if he meant that then, it may not stand now as he have had new experiences , new insights which may have changed his mind and I have made my peace with that.

So I feel at this point in time, I am more in sync with reality in that our connection is zero and the possibility of me and him getting back together is as good as me getting together with another random stranger on the street. I am looking to have another loving relationship now, be it with him or other people. When I said this in my recent post, “And I know deep down,  I still want my ex and I miss him so”, I still love him but I know he is not in the same place as me now. So like you said before, I should not overly invest myself in waiting for someone and so I do not want to wait for him blindly. But if he does come back (a big fat if) then I would still  be open to him as a possibility of the someone to have a loving relationship with.

I suppose because he was the reference point of the person I had a loving relationship with, I struggle with re-entering the “dating scene”. It was so effortless with my ex that I feel the dread of the whole process of getting to know someone, going through the anxiety of oh does he like me the same way etc. I guess I wish it is as effortless as it was with my ex.

I wish I can have the connection with someone again but it is so difficult. I mean, before I met my ex, I already found it difficult. But now, with that reference point of things falling into place so easily with my ex, it made the whole process even more difficult.