Dear miyoid,

I didn’t know those details about your sister, e.g. that she’s 11 years older and that she went to boarding school when you were little, so you practically didn’t live together. Also, that she suffered abuse by both of your parents. Was it physical abuse?

This all paints a different picture. When you said she was narcissistic, I thought she was spoiled and got what she wanted. But that’s probably not true – it seems she didn’t get much, even though she may be better at asking for it.

Anyway, I made some wrong assumptions. I thought your mother was overburdened by having to take care of 2 small children, and this is what made you feel rejected, causing your fear of abandonment. But it seems it was more complicated than that, and that it was your mother’s character (i.e. her own wounds) that made her abandon you, both physically and emotionally (you said you were “emotionally and physically abandoned by both of my parents several times“).

Probably now these same wounds make her “adore” cats but not love her partner enough to take his needs into consideration. It’s good you’re aware of that mechanism and that you made her aware of it too, even though she might not be willing to change…

I guess I should try to neutralize myself and try to get a better grasp of what I might need.

I don’t know what you think of the exercise I suggested in my previous post – to make a list of your needs (e.g. your relationship needs), and see if you can say I need this, and I deserve it. Are you able to say that you deserve it? How does it feel?

Dear Ashmitha,

I can see how I’m settling for less than I expect.

yes, and you’re afraid to even bring it up:

I’ve vocalized that I want more real dates (going hiking, doing an activity), but I’ve mentioned it more playfully,

I am going to bring it up to him. Withhold intimacy? Ask for weekend dates? Ask for phone calls? It seems like a lot.

When you did request daily check-ins, he agreed at first but it soon tapered off:

I did tell him that I’d like to have a check-in at least daily. He agreed he could do that and it lasted for a few weeks, then tapered off (which usually happens when I bring things up).

The only good thing about him, it seems, is that he’s not rude and aggressive with you. He calmly listens to your complaints, respectfully acknowledges his mistakes, changes his behavior for a brief time, and then – nothing. Same old, same old:

When I bring up complaints, he just listens and never raises his voice at me. He acknowledges his mistakes. I appreciate his calmness because I’m used to seeing men around me with anger issues.

What you’re getting from him is a different communication style than it was of your father’s. He’s calm, never raises his voice and seemingly listens to you (but doesn’t really follow through). He doesn’t get angry or violent with you, he doesn’t threaten you, he doesn’t even quarrel with you. He’s giving away a completely different vibe than your father, and it gives you a sense of safety that you never had at home. We’ve talked about it before. You crave this safety, and that’s why you can’t be long without a partner.

So, this safety, and him being a different temperament than your father is what keeps you hooked. But he’s not giving you much else. He isn’t interested in spending time with you, he doesn’t want to bond with you except through sex, his family and friends are more important to him than you. He gives you attention once per week, but other than that, it’s almost like he forgets about you.

If you really want to get to the bottom of this, you’d need to work on your fear of being alone, because it seems to me it’s the main thing that keeps you with him. That’s why you can’t even demand things for yourself. But in this case, I don’t think there’s even a point in demanding anything, because you’ve already tried it, and it didn’t work out. And if he doesn’t want to do it spontaneously, because he loves you and cares about you, then what’s the point? Do you want someone who needs to be reminded to give you attention on the other days of the week too?

As anita says, you’d need to tell him it’s not working for you. I know it’s hard for you to let him go because of the promise of safety that he offers. That’s why you’d need to work on those deeper issues (your fear of being alone, and your fear of having any argument in a relationship), to change the pattern and open the door for a deep, satisfying relationship.

Dear Terri,

I agree with anita – your husband doesn’t care about you and he isn’t willing to change either. He told you he won’t stop going to bars (is this why the two of you separated?), and that you’re not his boss. Which means he’s not willing to change one iota. You say you would like your marriage to work. But it cannot work if he isn’t willing to compromise at least a bit. And he isn’t and won’t be for quite some time, as it seems…

You’re 50, you still have many years ahead of you, many years that you can enjoy, either alone or in a loving relationship. Or you can waste that time waiting for him to notice you, and in the meanwhile worry, be anxious and hurt, lose sleep, not be able to concentrate etc. So basically, have those remaining years, more likely decades, destroyed by your inability to let him go.

I know it’s easier said than done, and that it’s not easy for you to let him go. If you’d like to explore why it’s not easy and how you can still help yourself, you can start a new topic, as anita suggested, and we can talk about it some more.

Dear Umm,

thanks for replying, I am glad you didn’t mind those questions.

It seems there might be a pattern in your relationships, either romantic or friendships, where you tolerate and don’t want to let go of the person who doesn’t treat you well:

I always have an urge of helping people, and stay put, it doesn’t matter of any mistreats from others to me. Maybe I’m not strong enough to let things go., and to be honest, I dislike that sometimes about myself.

People around me, could see a bigger picture of that, but I couldn’t. I just didn’t want to let go of this friend.

When I have a friend, I will fully put my heart and effort in loving and wanting to spend times with that person.

You give them your love and attention, you’re kind to them, even if the person might be “hot and cold whenever they feel like it”, or “treat you however they want to treat you”. You’re accepting their bad treatment for a long time, being there whenever they need you, and not protesting even if they hurt you. Perhaps you excuse their bad behavior, telling yourself that they’re wounded (like your depressed male friend), or that they might have been hurt before, like your boyfriend.

You say you have an urge to help people. That’s nice, but it seems to me that you’re trying to help difficult, wounded people, people who have a hard time loving and returning your love. But you still stay put, giving them one more chance, hoping that some day, they’d change and love you back the way you’d want them to.

Now you ask about your boyfriend: but is it that impossible to being with someone who has a bad temper? I always believe in giving people chances.

You want to give another chance to a very difficult person, who is jealous and insecure, who has bad temper, who wants to control you – in short, who cannot love you truly, maturely, the way you’d want to be loved. But you still want it… I believe it’s related to your childhood, and the way you were loved (or failed to be loved) as a child. Would you say it’s true? Is there a similarity?

Dear Kibou,

you’re welcome, I am glad you felt heard. Sure, I’ll wait for your reply to anita.

Dear Kibou,

Thank you for your detailed reply. It does paint a little different picture about your relationship with your mother. It appears she was a very loving and caring mother, and provided emotional support to you – up until she got unwell. You said she was your best friend and provided a sense of stability amidst all the moving and “nomadic lifestyle” during your childhood (“My mum has always been the most “constant” person around me“.)

You started suffering from depression before your mother got sick, and it seems it wasn’t because of your mother, but because of your father (was it because he wasn’t around too much?) and because of your school friends.

In your earlier posts you shared that those friends were rude or jealous towards you, but you didn’t hold it against them, rationalizing that “hurt people hurt people”. Btw, now that I know a little bit more of your story, I wonder if you started rationalizing only after your mother got sick and you had compassion and understanding for her, and by extension, for your school mates as well?

Your depression might have been caused also by the fact that you moved a lot in your formative years. You said you moved 4 times by the time you were 7 years old. You moved once at the age of 4, before your brother was born, and then again when you were around 6, before your sister was born. You remember how on the day your sister was born you were alone in the house for a while, everybody being at the hospital with your mother, and you felt alone.

I guess it was a new house, in the new city, that you had just moved to prior to your sister’s birth? You say you don’t remember it with negative feelings, but still, it was another big change for you. In fact, it was the second time in 2 years that you moved house and a new sibling arrived to the family. Both of those are big changes (new sibling and a new environment), and it happened twice for you in 2 years.

Even though you said your mother loved you the same and you didn’t feel neglected even after your siblings were born, these kinds of changes can be hard on a child. You might have still felt alone, but you didn’t have anybody to blame because those were “the circumstances”. Your mother did the best she could, she was giving her all to you and your siblings. Perhaps you did blame your father for causing those moves to happen, or for not being home too much?

In any case, I believe your first depression has a lot to do with the frequent moves and changes of the environment and the circumstances you lived in. You felt neglected a bit, perhaps abandoned a bit, but you couldn’t really express this disappointment to your mother because she was doing her best. And besides, once when you expressed it – when you told her she doesn’t care about you – she started crying. And you were made to apologize. If you expressed your negative feelings to your mother, she would be hurt, and you knew she doesn’t really deserve it either.

Maybe this is why you started getting depressed – because you felt guilty for having those negative feelings. You said you felt like a burden for having those feelings. You didn’t want to share them with anyone, but once you made something that made your parents alarmed – when you swam far out in the ocean, hoping to get a cramp (and perhaps drown?).

That’s when you told your parents a little about how you’re feeling, and they took you to a therapist. But when you blamed your father for your depression, he got very sad (“looked like he was about to cry, a face I had not seen before on my dad”), and you regretted mentioning it. You decided not to share your negative feelings again because it hurts people.

So basically, the message you received from both of your parents was: you make me sad if you express your negative feelings. You mother cried (when you were 7 years old), and your father almost cried (when you were around 11-12, I guess?) The conclusion: If I share my negative feelings – if I am authentic – I will hurt the people I love.

It’s very similar to: “People only want authenticity if it’s according to their own liking”. Your parents could tolerate your authenticity only if it didn’t make them feel bad. You related this belief to a school debate when you had to debate in favor of an idea that you opposed to. It made you feel inauthentic. However, it could be that the core of that belief is related to your family and that you couldn’t really be authentic with them.

Soon after your first depression, your mother got unwell and you needed to take over a lot of responsibilities:

Although it did feel a bit better coming open with my difficulties it was not long till I found myself saying “take a grip” to myself and started to worry about my mum primarily and the rest of the family.

You didn’t have a chance to deal with yourself, nor did your mother have a chance to perhaps help you cope. She got sick and suddenly you lost her support and the only constant person in your life:

I always had my mum thought to count on, and at a time when I needed her a lot (my depression), she was not available.

As longs as I had my mom, I was fine, but when she was not available it really did feel like I had no one. My mum has always been the most “constant” person around me.

With your mom getting sick, you felt truly abandoned, your felt like you had no one:

The sentence “No one cares about me” is something I would start to say early during my early teens. The time when my mum got unwell.

You had to cope with caring for your siblings, and you were also your mother’s only support:

There was no one else there to help, no friends, language barriers so no professional help, my dad had tons of things going on and between the two it was tense at that time, she only had me who she trusted and felt safe to talk to. Doctors that she went to, well they prescribed the wrong medication which made her condition worse.

And given all the other things that happened or needed to be taken care of, I honestly to this day do not see who could have supported her beside me.

You had to become the care-taker, and suppress all of the negative feelings you had, both the old ones and those newly occurring due to your mother’s illness and the new circumstances you found yourself in.

And then another trauma happened: you had to flee Cuba, literally overnight, without much explanation by your parents. You returned with your mother and siblings to Germany (if I understood well?), while your father stayed on Cuba for another 2 years.

You weren’t warmly received in Germany (“Our arrival back home was messy and disappointing.”) I remember you shared that when you returned to your old school, your old school mates hardly wanted to communicate with you. So you lost at least one close friendship from Cuba, and arrived to a cold and unfriendly place, which was your “home country”.

I see how the trauma accumulated over time, and how it was difficult for you to even be angry at anybody, because no one did anything wrong, and yet you suffered, and your needs weren’t met – due to the “circumstances”. Perhaps your parents’ decisions had brought about those “circumstances”, but anyway, there was always some excuse, some reason why things are bad and no one is to blame – which led to your rationalization. And specially with your mom getting sick, you needed to rationalize a lot, and suppress your anger for suddenly losing your childhood and having to care for your siblings and your mother (at least emotionally).

I will stop here, because this post is long already, but these are my thoughts for now. I’ll wait for your reply before writing more.

Dear Murtaza,

that believe is based on evidence and a lot of observation

yes, you’ve grown up surrounded by people who were sending you this message, and maybe even the whole society sent you this message. You don’t know anything else. But somewhere in your bones, in the depth of your heart, you know there’s something else. You know that something is wrong with the belief system you grew up in. That’s why you’re writing on various forums, searching, probing… and that’s fine, don’t give up your search!

all this, suggest that i at least think differently from you, and you might have a trouble understanding

In fact, your thinking is not that different than mine, because like you, I wouldn’t be able to settle if I’d need to deny my need for love. I wouldn’t want to change the core of my being so that I could please the society. Because what if the society’s beliefs and a view of love is distorted, and not you?

However, there are aspects where our thinking differs, and it is in the notion of free will. You don’t believe in freewill, I do. If you believe you’re a victim of some programming, and you can’t change the program, then you’re doomed. However, if you can change the program – refuse to believe in certain limiting ideas – you can be free. You have the free will to believe differently, to step out of the “matrix”.

But, you might find it extremely difficult to start believing differently, because this might mean that you need to go against your family, against the norms of your society. This might mean “fighting” and “struggle”, which you absolutely don’t want. You want the easy way, because you saw it around you when growing up. The easy way is to accept those norms and live according to them. And forget the longing of your heart.

i actually have a somehow a decent life, an easy one, one that i don’t have to do anything, one that i live by my rules in it, not other people rules,

Would you care to explain that a little? You have a decent and easy life, you don’t have to do anything, and yet, you don’t live by the society’s rules. How is that possible for you?