Dear Jane,

“I think back then I was trying to accept some responsibility for the way my son had grown into the person he was. When his father and I split I didn’t handle it well. At that time in my life I was dealing with so much other stuff maybe I overlooked the impact it was having on him. He was a teenager at the time and we had always been close, but eventually he went to live with his father. He always blamed me for the split.”

You and your late husband’s divorce must have impacted your son a lot, especially since he was in a sensitive age. You say you were close before, but then I guess he got distant, to the point he chose to live with his father? There must be a lot of anger and resentment on his part, which he hasn’t processed.

You say he has mental health problems – what kind of problems, if I may ask? You said he’s claiming there’s nothing wrong with him, and that professionals say there’s nothing wrong with him either. Has he visited at least one counselor?

I must say I feel compassion for him, and maybe I am partial, because I know that people often engage in self-destructive and irresponsible behavior, because they haven’t received something from their parents. They’re in pain and their behavior is a mirror of that pain. It doesn’t mean you should blame yourself for his actions, since he’s an adult and is responsible for his own life, but just perhaps try to see him beyond his current demeanor and understand that he might be hurting.

Dear Inquisitive Soul,

It appears to me you’re caught in a conflict of whether to choose yourself or others. When you’re with others and socializing, it usually turns out to be a bad influence on you and you’re forced to cut them off. In other words, if you open up to others, it might cause you harm. But if you’re alone, in your “shelter”, you feel lonely and you harm yourself in different ways, by e.g. indulging in video games. So you end up feeling bad in either scenarios. Am I guessing this right?

You say: Whenever mom sends me a message “how I’m doing?” I always answer “okay”. I’ve read your other thread, and based on your discussion with Anita there, it could be that you’re repeating the pattern you’ve seen in your family. They were trying to protect you from family problems, and now you’re trying to protect them from your own problems, by not telling them the truth of how you’re feeling. But the price of that is loss of closeness and intimacy.

Maybe you’ve got that pattern going on with your friends and acquaintances too – perhaps you’re showing a particular “front” to them, e.g. of a busy person, or a successful person, while you’re not really sharing your deeper thoughts and feelings, perhaps your doubts and struggles too. This might be why you attract a certain type of friends, which later turn out to be not the best influence on you.

Do you think this might be a part of what’s going on?

Dear c,

it’s reassuring to know that maladaptive daydreaming is indeed related to childhood trauma and that it can be healed by working on our traumas. It’s fantastic that you’ve managed to heal it, and are now able to regulate yourself with breathing and centering, when you feel the tendency to “escape”. Good work! I hope Javairia can benefit from your experience too.

Dear Neverdyed,

thanks for clarifying. Anita once noticed (and you confirmed it) that sometimes you use vague language, because you don’t want to reveal that you still care about this man. You’re a little ashamed that you still have feelings for him. But please know that the first step in healing is actually to admit all your feelings, even if they’re immature or inappropriate or illogical, or whatever. We can’t switch off our feelings on command, because they reflect our deeper needs, our wounding, our hopes and dreams. We need to work through and process those feelings, and only then can they transform. Only then can we let go.

I’m sure that there can be a friendship between a man and a woman, because I do have such a “pure” friendship going on, just wondered if I could be like that with that man, and you probably would agree that it’s not too possible as long as I still “hold on” to a degree.

Yes, as long as you have feelings for him and e.g. expect him not to contact you when he’s with other women, it means it hurts you when he’s with other women, so clearly, it can’t be friendship on your part. If you would be honestly unaffected and could even be happy for him if he’s happy with someone else, that would mean you could be his friend. But you don’t need to be his friend. It’s okay not to be friends with men you’re attracted to, where you cannot necessarily keep a “pure” friendship.

And yes, it upsets (or upset) me to think if he has chosen other women over me, I think it left me feeling not good enough.

OK, so one issue could be your sense of not being good enough. Do you often criticize and judge yourself that you’re not good enough?

As for what I need from him, I read the question as “what did he give to make me stuck on this connection?”, and thought the answer were the good old times, but what I remember better now are those bitter moments.

What was good about the “good old times”? How did the relationship look like? How did you feel back then? Answering these questions will help you identify what it is that you really miss now.

Dear Javairia,

you’re welcome. Yes, if you could slow down and notice all the little details around you, plus enjoy the fresh air, that would be winning! 🙂

Dear Neverdyed,

no worries, take your time 🙂

I must admit I had trouble understanding parts of your post, for example this:

“And I tried to see if I’d avoid interacting with my married male colleague, the result seemed to be no, probably because I’m aware that nothing can develop between.”

Have you interacted with you married male colleague, or you’ve avoided interacting? What was the nature of this interaction – romantic or just friendship?

“Can there be a friendship which I keep in touch with somebody without leading to a formal romantic relationship?”

Are you asking if there can be a friendship between a man and a woman without it turning into a romantic relationship?

“These days I’ve been so over the “connection” or the idea of reconciliation (even though I’m sure that I will neither initiate nor respond to him further), it still upset me a little when reading something suggesting a third party.”

Are you saying it upsets you that he was seeing other women as well, and not just you?

It seems you’re having a hard time letting him go, and it means you still need something from him. In my previous post, I asked you what is it that you need from him, and I speculated that if might not even be love, but respect. That’s because you seemed quite disturbed about him not replying to your chats, suggesting that it means he doesn’t value you as much as you do him (“in the last contacts, I noticed that he’d respond in rather long hours (please note again that in the first year, he replied quickly and almost daily), which is opposite to what I often did, and that shows an imbalance of how I and he values the connection. Maybe I simply expect to be valued equally.“).

By him not replying, he showed he values you less, and this seems to be the most painful part for you.

“Can you please give me an example of “start valuing yourself”?”

Valuing yourself may manifest in e.g. not accepting an open relationship but looking for men who are capable of a committed relationship. Valuing yourself can also mean expressing your needs in a relationship and not keeping quiet, fearing that your needs might be selfish.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Tee.

Dear Nar,

you asked me:

“Do you have any residue of anger left towards your mother? Would you say you have forgiven her completely?”

No, I wouldn’t say I have any residue anger, but it didn’t happen over night. I used to get triggered by her a lot: she would make nasty comments, and I would explode and start yelling and tell her nasty things too. Then she would accuse me of how horrible daughter I was, claiming she didn’t mean anything wrong, when she was clearly provoking. The result: I would end up being the bad guy, and she would be a poor victim.

I’ve realized she could provoke me so easily because a part of me believed in her accusations. A part of me believed that I was no good and hopeless, and then the other part of me came to rescue by attacking her. But it wasn’t balanced, I’d lose my cool and later felt bad about myself. It just kind of confirmed how “bad” of a person I was.

Now looking back, I think two things helped me change this dynamic: one was to start valuing myself more and stop believing her depictions of me, and the other was to work with my anger in therapy.

For dealing with anger, there was one particularly useful exercise where you need to separate the good qualities of your mother (e.g. the caring, the financial and material support etc) from the bad qualities (criticism, shaming, not having faith in you etc). The “good mother” was represented by one pillow, and the “bad mother” with another one. The task then was to push away the bad mother and to embrace the good mother. That helped me to sort out the ambivalence and the love-hate relationship I had with her. Because I do love some of her traits, but I don’t love and don’t need those other traits.

That also helped me keep my boundaries better and to stop her (calmly) when she starts condemning me and shaming me. She isn’t able to do that any more, because I don’t let her. But as I said before, all that resulted in being distant from her, keeping guard, and hardly communicating with her.

Dear Neverdyed,

“I think I do have become obsessed along the way, and all the contradictions contributed to the thread title.”

Yes, I think the contradictions were because you didn’t really know what you want. For example, Conflict #4: “I don’t want him to contact me when he’s with someone, but then it’d probably result in a long absence as he’s not going to be alone for sure.”

This conflict assumes that you need a man who dates other women and only gets in touch when he isn’t with someone else. But do you really need such a man? Do you want to depend on his breadcrumbs or you want someone who loves you and is committed to you? See what I mean? Your conflict would be resolved pretty quickly if you decided what you want and what you don’t want in a relationship.

Or Conflict #1: I hope to keep in touch with him, but I have no faith in keeping a formal relationship.

Do you want a formal, committed relationship, where your partner is eager to communicate with you, or you want an open relationship where he can just pop up whenever he feels like, but also disappear if he fancies to? Do you want commitment and constancy or you accept whatever he gives you, even if it leaves you hurt and frustrated? It’s on you to decide. Once you know what you want, the conflict will resolve by itself.

“It’s true that I feel if there was someone else here, I wouldn’t be so “stuck”, but I still don’t want to go meet people especially just to get over the situation. Also, it’d be worse if there was someone else here, yet my mind continued to focus on him…”

Yes, it’s better to let go of him first, before you venture out to meet other people. If you’re still stuck on him, you’d need to understand what it is that you expect from him, what are you hoping that he would give you, which you can’t give to yourself?

“Maybe I simply expect to be valued equally.”

Perhaps this is the answer to the mystery – perhaps you don’t even need love from him, but respect? That he values you? Perhaps what hurt you the most in his silence and not replying to your messages was that he showed lack of respect for you? What if the solution is to start valuing yourself, regardless of him?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Tee.