Dear Paradoxy,

as I am thinking about your situation, two main things come to mind. One is that she is accusing you, unfairly, of making her prostitute herself, and “ruining her self-esteem”.

She told you that she was heart-broken after you asked her if she was a gold-digger, and this made her sleep with a married man for money.

B also told me that she was heart broken and in pain cause of the break up, saying she felt abandoned by me

I’ve explained to you why this is bs, because no heartbreak can cause a normal person to humiliate themselves like that, unless they are traumatized and broken inside to begin with. Her reaction to your offense was disproportionate, and there is no way that a normal person would do what she did. She is blaming you and guilt-tripping you for something she should take responsibility for.

She is also blaming you (and your parents) that you ruined her self-esteem:

She also kept accusing me and my parents of being racists and ruining her life and self esteem etc by discriminating against her cause of her skin tone

First, nobody forces her to stay with you. She is the one begging for a second chance. If she believes you are ruining her life, she is free to go.

And second, at the age of 24, she is an adult, she either has self-esteem, or she doesn’t. And you can’t ruin it for her. Based on how she behaves, it seems that her self-esteem has already been ruined in her childhood and youth. That’s why she could sleep with a guy for money. That’s why she sees herself as a sex object and craves male attention. So again, it is very unfair to blame you for her lack of self-esteem or for “ruining her life”.

To summarize, B is blaming you and guilt-tripping you for something that is NOT you fault. She has wounds and self-esteem issues that predate you, but instead of admitting it and taking responsibility for it, she found someone to blame: you. She keeps transgressing (to use a Bible term), but instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she keeps blaming you. Very unfair. And abusive.

She is abusing you in two ways: one is by her hurtful actions, such an lying, cheating, sexually explicit behavior etc. And the other is by BLAMING you for it. So she is hurting you twice.

Another problem, which makes your conflicts more explosive, is your attitude towards women, which you adopted from your father, and which frankly is misogynist. It would hurt every woman to tell her that “most women are gold-diggers”. Or “women do stupid things, and it’s normal for them.” It is very offensive.

However, I don’t want to put the stress on that right now. That’s another topic. What I want to emphasize right now is that B is abusing you, not only by her actions, but by unjustly blaming you for those actions.

Can you see that?

Dear Paradoxy,

The factors that affected you will not be the same factors that affect me, and therefore the solutions you suggest won’t work in certain situations

The funny thing is that regardless of where we were born, and in what circumstances, every child needs the same to be happy and healthy. The basic needs of a child are to be loved, appreciated, seen, validated, supported and encouraged by their parents of primary caregivers. These needs are like sunshine, water and soil for a plant to thrive. Without them, we will wither. Maybe not physically, but emotionally for sure.

Unfortunately you had very few of those needs met. And that’s why your inner child is hurting and still wants to have those needs met.

Some of those needs were met by B, and that’s probably one of the reasons you grew so attached to her. This is what you said about B:

she tried her best with my emotional needs as well, I just didn’t think of listing them which is why I said etc. She tries to motivate me whenever the stress of medicine gets to me. She even supported my music development, computer engineering projects etc.

So she encouraged you to do what you love…. whereas your parents discouraged you:

They have never listened to me. Always discouraging me from what I wanted to do. Even this med career was their fault. I never wanted this. I wanted to do music or computers.

Being encouraged meant a lot to you (it means a lot to everyone!). It also includes being seen for who you are, appreciated for who you are as a person, not trying to change you. You spoke more about it here:

I was never offered a chance to show my real personality to anyone, so they all pushed me away. The one person who didn’t push me away was B.

She saw you and accepted you for who you are. She didn’t reject you, like your parents did. You felt seen and accepted by her, haven’t you?

She is the first person to have ever loved me. … She was the only person who treated me like I meant something,

She was the opposite from your parents in some aspects, and it felt so good to you (and your inner child). You felt loved when she treated you like that. So loved that you were willing to disregard all the hurt she caused you by having sex (or sexting) with other men after each of your (very frequent) fights.

I know I am repeating myself, but I’ll say it once again: I think that she might be using sex (or sexual behavior, such as sexting) as an emotion regulation strategy, as a coping mechanism, when she feels bad about herself. That’s why I suggested it might be like an addiction, because she kept doing it, even if she promised she wouldn’t. I believe the only way for her to really stop is to a) admit she has a problem, and b) starts working in it in therapy.

You are still deliberating whether to give her another chance, because to paraphrase you, “everybody deserves another chance”, “things are complex”, “I need to consider all factors” etc etc. Well, you already gave her plenty of chances, and as I’ve explained above, people with addiction/compulsion cannot change unless they truly heal and transform from within. Which she hasn’t done, and she cannot do without a serious dedication on her part and professional help. You explaining to her why it is wrong, or begging her not to do it, won’t cut it.

Anyway, as I said above, I think the real reason why you can’t let her go is because she was meeting some of your unmet childhood needs (such as the need for acceptance and validation).

And it felt so good, to the point that you thought she was “wife material”, completely disregarding the entire range of very un-wifey behaviors, such as lying to you, sleeping with other men, sexting etc.

But your reaction is not strange. In fact, this is what typically happens when we have unmet childhood needs, because we then blindly stick to the person who gives us even a fraction of what we needed as a child. Even if they are abusing us in other ways.

She was a mix of positive and negative (quite negative, I should say), but you were tempted to endure the negative, just so you could have the positive.

Your inner child wants her (the positive aspects of her), and then your rational mind is trying to find excuses why you should give her another chance. These rationalizations are driven by your inner child – by your emotional hunger – not by any sound logic.

This is why it’s important that we meet our unmet emotional needs from childhood – because they are like hungry wolves, howling and wanting, even if it goes against our own well-being. Mind you, those needs are legitimate, but they need to be met by proper inner work and healing, not by expecting others to meet them for us.

You said one of your subjects is psychology. There is a great video by a licensed therapist Kati Morton, who is talking about those unmet needs. It’s on youtube, titled 10 things you parents should have provided. It’s worth watching…

Hi Helcat,

I found it affirming to learn that very physical physiological changes occur in the body due to stress. The mind body connection is very unique!

Yeah, I knew about it before, but now, with this particular condition, which involves chronic pain, it really hit home. It was incredibly helpful to learn that physical pain can be exacerbated by how we think about it. If we view it as catastrophic, if we believe we are in danger (e.g. of a greater injury, of surgery, of becoming disabled etc), then every pain signal will activate the stress response and we will become hyper sensitive, leading to even more pain sensations.

Learning that I am not completely helpless when it comes to my pain – that I can in fact view it differently – was a great help.

It doesn’t help that stress is an inherent part of life. It would be nice to just magic away sometimes. Unfortunately, there is only so much we have control over.

Yeah, nowadays I need to consciously remind myself, when I have a flare-up, not to go down the catastrophizing/panicking route, but to calm myself down. This condition taught me the need for emotional regulation, which before I only knew in theory 🙂 So that’s kind of a silver lining…

Dear Paradoxy,

I have been having exams for the last few weeks and I have been focusing on them. I tried my best not to let the break up affect my studying. The way you tell me to heal makes it sound so simple.

It’s not simple. I think it would need a paradigm shift (mental shift), as well as emotional healing. And it’s a long process. But you are only 19, your adult life is only beginning.

I think perhaps one of the starting points could be to realize that there are some serious deficiencies in your father’s wisdom, in his approach to life. Because someone who is not in touch with their emotions cannot be a wise man, per definition. You mentioned his wisdom several times:

my father’s wisdom was passed down to me over the years that he taught me.

I have chosen to forgive my parents because they do not know any better and their wisdom still taught me to be a good man to the best of my ability.

What your father passed on you is probably a set of moral codes and rules for life. But he wasn’t able to pass on you the wisdom of the heart: compassion, empathy and understanding for others. You have those qualities inside of you, but if you start believing that the best way is to cut off your feelings, so they don’t bother you, then the wisdom of the heart – which you do possess – will be lost on you too.

But that trauma has made him compassionate enough to WANT to understand, but he is INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING.

he asks me to open up but his inability to understand forces me to never open up to him because all he points out is how my feelings are wrong instead of understanding why I am feeling the way I feel.

He asks you to open up, not because he wants to understand you, but because he wants to prove how wrong you are. He doesn’t really want to understand. He is stubborn (your own words) and believes he knows better. That’s not a sign of any kind of compassion: his trauma seems to have made him very stubborn and defensive, very closed to a different perspective.

You said: They have never listened to me.

Your father never tried to understand you. He pretended he wanted to (he would ask you to open up), but then he would invalidate your feelings. And it seems he had a skill of being very convincing:

there were moments like guilt-tripping and other similar circumstances where they would manipulate me into doing what they want without complaining (my father is a pro at psychology, and he is so rigid that everyone, whether it be his own boss, his friends, or our own relatives, knows that he should not be messed with because he always speaks the truth and can put anyone in their place by using pure logic.)

Your father seems to be pro in convincing you (and others) to accept his views and opinions. He seems like someone who is convinced that only his stance is right, and no discussion about it. What he does then is a kind of mental coercion. In his mind, there is no space for listening to a different opinion: his word is “the truth”. End of story.

I guess he used similar methods to convince you to study medicine, listing all the reasons why medicine is the best choice. But to be a good doctor, you have to love what you do. And you already have some doubts about it:

The career path to become a doctor gurantees that I will be successful in life especially since I can handle the work load to a degree, but will I be happy doing this? Probably not. Though I like helping people, I don’t think med is the best way for me to help people.

I am not saying to stop studying medicine, not at all. I am just saying to stop accepting that you need to be unhappy for the rest of your life, just to please your father, or your parents.

Your father might have convinced you, with his “pure logic”, that medicine is the best option for you. He convinced you to give up what you love, for what is useful or opportune. And you accepted it: you accepted that your life must be as your parents construed, and nothing else. You accepted that you need to obey your parents’ wishes, even if it makes you miserable.

I would like to invite you to challenge that stance of complete submission to your parents. They proved that they don’t know what’s best for you. For example, they know nothing about mental health. They’re not able to give you guidance on true happiness and fulfillment, which is still achievable for you. So please don’t accept everything they tell you, don’t give up on your own wishes and desires.

I’d encourage you to re-evaluate things, e.g. see what subjects you like better, see your preferences. Allow yourself to feel your likes and dislikes. Just feel them, don’t crush them immediately. That can be the beginning of your healing.

Dear Paradoxy,

You are right that my parents did not need to crush the person who is having the suicidal feelings. But they did what they did and I consider that the past, something that I have moved on from a long time ago.

It is not the past unfortunately. The pain your spoke about and the feelings of emptiness and wishing you were never born, which you’ve shared here, are all the consequences of being treated like that by your parents. Your pain is current, it is still ongoing, even if the events happened quite a few years ago.

My father is not highly educated. Both of my parents only had a community college level basic education.

I was referring you what you said that your father has “a highly respected and high-earning job as a marine electrical engineer in cruise ships and cargo ships“. He has college education, as does your mother.

For someone with college education, living in the 21st century, they should know that when a child or a teenager has suicidal ideations, and even attempts suicide, is an alarm bell that something is going on in their psyche and that it should be carefully addressed. Berating and shaming their child in such a sensitive moment, instead of seeking professional help, is to me a sign of wilful negligence, I have to say. Their reaction is an example of severe emotional abuse.

What is worse is that your father had childhood trauma himself. You said:

He was … abandoned and belittled and treated like trash by his own family and distant relatives too, and he was traumatized by an incident when he was 5 where he was falsely accused of stealing 10 cents and was tortured for weeks with physical beating by his teacher until he had to admit to stealing to stop the pain, even though he did not steal the money.

You went on to say:

The trauma from that incident was so severe that I have seen him cry about it even now and he is almost 50 years old. But these harsh situations made him grow his resolve to be better than everyone who treated him poorly, to the point that he was the only person to have a highly respected and high-earning job as a marine electrical engineer in cruise ships and cargo ships, while everyone else had average engineering jobs or teacher jobs etc.

As a result of his severe childhood trauma, your father got better in terms of his career, his professional success, than any other member of his family, or perhaps even a wider community. However, his trauma unfortunately hasn’t made him more compassionate, neither towards himself nor his own son.

He clearly suppressed his pain and marched on, having no time for stupidities like emotions. He was of the conviction that men “do not have time to feel pain. We have responsibilities and other issues to worry about.”

And he believes that those who can’t simply shake off their pain and their trauma are idiots. If you are a man and you can’t clench your teeth in the face of pain and proceed with your responsibilities – you are an idiot. That’s approximately the message he has given you.

Can you see this?

And now, you are being drawn into the same kind of reasoning. At least one part of you is: the part who is making excuses for your father and saying that the best is to just press on and clench your teeth:

It is too late to be Godwin-the-child, I have a med degree to finish and I am too old to be behaving like a child. I should be focusing on my future career and etc. Med is already a pain on my behind so I do not have the time nor energy to share to Godwin-the-child.

You asked me how to heal. By acknowledging that there is a wounded part in you, your inner child, who is still very much alive and very much influencing you, even if you don’t care to admit it. And then getting in touch with him and his emotional needs, which have been suppressed and dismissed all these years.

Dear Paradoxy,

And due to that level of self control, I am able to lead a much more normal life, with less pain and suffering. It’s just everything is dull now. .. It’s like I literally feel nothing. No pain. No joy. No sorrow. No anger. Its like I am numb to all of it. Do you understand what I mean?

Yes, I do. I think that’s called dissociation. It’s a coping mechanism – how we cope with uncomfortable emotions. It can be okay for a short while, not to get overwhelmed. However it’s not good on the long run, because as you said, you feel numb. It’s like being a robot. You can function and complete your tasks, but you are not really living, because you’re not feeling anything.

The problem is that we cannot selectively switch off just the unpleasant emotions while keeping the pleasant ones – we have to switch it all off. But if we do that, it makes us less alive and less fulfilled.

My father never said that, I actually heard other men say it, but my father said it through his actions.

Okay, so he did send you that message.

Besides you should know it is a common stereotype that society built of us men. Men are these strong unwavering figures that never cry and women are these weak emotional creatures etc. (I am exaggerating a bit but you get the point).

Hmm, maybe it was like that 50-70 years ago in the modern Western society, and still is in other societies and cultures around the world. I don’t know where you live, but in the West, this stereotype is no longer valid.

But I did notice remnants of this stereotype in your writings. For example, you said this about B:

She displayed all the characteristics that I was looking for in a good wife, excluding the stupid things that most woman do, like overthinking and not listening etc, which I did not mind cause I knew it was normal for women.

This is a negative bias towards women: that women do stupid things, and that it’s normal for them. That’s an attitude that you probably picked up from your father, and basically, it’s male chauvinism. You saw B through that lens too. And you actually used it as one of the excuses for forgiving her, because she, as a woman, cannot help but do stupid things. I am not sure if you aware of this bias, but it is present in your writings.

That is the type of view that society has normalized, to the point that women just choose to leave their man the moment they see them cry, cause they see them as weak and etc.

I don’t know of this new “normal”, where women leave their man if he shows tears. For all I know, women are happy to have a partner who is in touch with their emotions. Where did you hear or see that women don’t want sensitive men?

Men should be allowed to feel pain, but it has been normalized that men shouldn’t feel pain. Men have to hide their tears, show a strong face whenever something bad happens. And unfortunately, I am a victim to that too.

It was like that in the old times. You did say that your parents are old school (It is just that their methods are a bit too old fashioned. They are too narrow minded to accept change in life style.) So I guess they’ve brought you up with this outdated stereotype about how a true man and a true woman should be.

And yes, you are a victim of that stereotype, specially the part where you as a man are not supposed to show emotions and vulnerability.

Besides, I do not plan to let anyone see me in my vulnerable state of misery that I am in right now. It is just better this way.

Yes, because your parents told you a man shouldn’t show vulnerability to anyone… But there is no true intimacy, emotional intimacy, without vulnerability. I believe that a good, loving husband should be able to show vulnerability in front of his wife. It doesn’t mean he is weak, but that he has a beating heart and that things affect him.

That is very true, but sometimes, for certain decisions to be made, you need to cut out your emotions. I would not have been able to detach from B if I didn’t shut out my emotions.

Good that you managed to do that, because your pain was really overwhelming. But you yourself said it made you numb. So it’s not a good state to stay in on the long run.

You can’t really heal in this numb state (you said “But now that she used up all her chances and made me break up with her, I am slowly healing.) True healing will only come if you process this pain, slowly but surely, in a safe, controlled environment (in therapy). We can’t really heal if we have suppressed emotions.

Emotions such as fear and love and anger can end up causing you to make the wrong decisions, B being the prime example. Despite knowing that what she was doing was wrong, her fear and love for her aunt made her go along with her plan. Look at where it got her.

Indeed, emotions can cause us harm. If we fall in love with a wrong person, it can cause us harm too. But is the solution not to fall in love at all? Or is it rather that we heal enough, so we can recognize who a good, healthy partner is, and who isn’t?

*correction: it started hurting for no apparent reason