Dear Tineoidea,

His mother basically dumped him when he was little and his father eloped shortly after he was born if I remember correctly, so he was raised by his grandparents.

So he was almost an orphan.

Not sure if this affected anything though.

It almost certainly contributed to his possessiveness. And it could be that you sympathized with him, because you too were abandoned by your father when you were very young. You two are similar in that sense, only you had the luck that you had a loving and caring mother, and he didn’t.

It seems to me that you took pity on him, but also saw yourself in him. As you were caring for him, you probably were also caring for your own inner child – the little boy who was abandoned by his father. You didn’t want to be like your father, so you could never abandon him. That’s why loyalty was so important to you.

So it’s not that you didn’t have a healthy model of love, as I assumed earlier (you did, thanks to your mother), but rather, you loved him as your own child, because you recognized yourself in him.

Does that make sense?

Dear Tineoidea,

“To whom was she absolutely loyal and caring, no matter what?”

To me of course.

Have you done something that would warrant her to stop being absolutely loyal and caring to her own child? The way you phrased it, it sounds as if you caused problems to her, but she remained loyal and loving to you regardless.

Dear Tineoidea,

My question is, why? Did I actually do something monstrous to deserve all of this?

No, you haven’t done anything to deserve this. You as a toddler who was abandoned by his father and left behind without the bare necessities in a cold winter – didn’t do anything to deserve it. You were an innocent little boy, who needed and deserved love and affection. You as a little boy who, together with his mother was hurt and threatened by the members of his own family – didn’t do anything to deserve it.

Why did it happen? Maybe you heard the phrase “hurt people hurt people”: people who suffered abuse in their childhood are prone to become abusers as adults. If your father had been abused as a child (which is possible since he had a cruel mother), it wouldn’t be a surprise if he’d turn into a cruel, heartless man, who would even harm his own son. It’s not your fault whatsoever, it’s his blindness and his emotional scars that made him behave like that.

Are all the wonderful experiences of the past and all I have contributed to those two, just nothing at all now, as if it none of it ever happened?

We can have wonderful experiences even with people who will later harm us. It’s known for example that narcissists love-bomb the person in the beginning of the relationship, to get the person open up and get attached to them, only to later start displaying their selfishness. Or if someone is emotionally wounded like your ex, she was wonderful and selfless for a while, until her wound got triggered. Once it got triggered, she became very defensive, almost like a different person.

With your former friend, you also said you had precious memories, but they were interspersed with his possessive behavior, as well as irresponsible behavior which endangered your livelihood. The relationship with him was a mix of pleasurable moments (I guess when you did everything like he wanted) and frustrating moments, when he was emotionally abusive to you.

You allowed this abuse to happen because you didn’t even register it as abuse, and I believe it’s because you thought that’s how love looks like. Growing up, you didn’t have an experience of a healthy, loving relationship, but it was interspersed with harm, suffering and abuse. So having a friend like that probably felt familiar to you. At least he was loyal to you, he wouldn’t abandon you like your father did. And you valued that a lot.

Now, after all this, you would need healing. The little boy in you needs healing. Because probably a part of you (that little boy) believes that he did something to deserve all the abuse he’s been put through. You’d need to tell him he did nothing wrong. And you’d need to give him the love and appreciation you never received as a child.

How do you feel about this?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tee.

Dear Tineoidea,

I don’t really recall when it started but it may go back to when my father abandoned us during a cold winter, taking with him things such as my clothes, toys, my mother’s stuff.

This is rather heart-breaking and very very unfair. First, your father cheating on your mother, and then leaving you without even the basic necessities in the cold winter.

When I saw myself, my friends or my mother being subjected to treatment I considered unjust, it made me feel pretty bad.

And you’ve experienced such a treatment quite a lot while growing up. You said you’ve experienced humiliation, slander by your father’s family and his new woman, and even a murder attempt (“his side of the family plus his new woman always tried to hurt and slander us in one way or another, going as far as trying to kill my mother and me“).

You have also shared that your “best friend” is now slandering you (my “friend” is now slandering me to people involved in my project). During your conflict over your ex, you said he even wished you were dead (“At a point, he even wished that I died“). Do you see the commonalities here: slander, humiliation and even the feeling that someone wants you dead?

Also, you mentioned that your livelihood might be in jeopardy, and that it has been before too. So that too is similar to your childhood situation, where you lived in poverty and starvation.

So for me, I cannot not notice the similarities to your childhood. It’s like your childhood experience being repeated again. Have you thought about it before?

Dear Tineoidea,

I’d like to revisit something you said about this whole situation being unfair:

The strong negative feelings I do feel are deep disappointment and a feeling of “unfairness” (and not necessarily towards me).

To whom is it unfair? Is it towards your family, specially your mother?

Because earlier you said that your family counted on your ex-girlfriend’s help and was blindsided by her plans:

Like I said already, I have never asked about her finances or for any of this, she herself pushed it strongly. I kept refusing this “help” for quite some time until she finally made me cave in with that projected honesty, then me and my family got involved and blindsided by her “plans”.

So perhaps you’re feeling a sense of unfairness because of what her turning against you will do to your family?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Tee.

Dear Dave,

I am yes, definitely feeling the pressure to not mess things up next time, but I think I am also feeling a sense of calm, that I definitely know what I want and need from a relationship, and will be able to choose carefully before becoming too involved, and also to be honest with people I date about this.

This is great that you know what you want from a relationship, and will be able to choose wiser, not so much from your wound but more from a sense of wholeness and knowing yourself.

Thanks for the advice, I have joined two meetup groups in my area and have planned to go to two events in the next few weeks

Good for you, I hope you have a good time!

I’m a little nervous about telling my friends about these, as I’m not sure if they would judge, but then again, they are all in couples, so it would be hard to understand my position right now.

Maybe you don’t need to tell your friends, if you feel they’d judge you. Tell them only afterwards, if things work out fine.

Wishing a speedy recovery to your father!

Dear Tineoidea,

He wasn’t the only one. There were two more I’ve known for a longer time and was closer to, but one died and the other ended up drifting away, marrying and going on with her life. There’s another also whom I’m pretty close to and we talk often.

OK, so I guess those were the friends that your “best friend” (M) was jealous at… You now have one online friend whom you talk often, the others are gone from your life. How is it with your offline relationships, if you don’t mind sharing?

Hate is somehow an alien feeling to me. I don’t know how exactly it feels to hate and I don’t hold grudges. The strong negative feelings I do feel are deep disappointment and a feeling of “unfairness” (and not necessarily towards me).

Disappointment is kind of a rationalization, but behind it can be both sadness and anger. A sense of unfairness is similar –  both anger and sadness can be underneath. I told you already that you seem a bit detached from your emotions. It’s quite possible that those feelings (stemming from your childhood) would be too much to bear, and you protect yourself by suppressing them, not allowing yourself to feel them. I also believe that unless you can attend therapy, it’s better not to start digging too much into those feelings, because they might indeed overwhelm you.

You said in your first post:

At the start we helped each other a great deal emotionally, unraveled each other’s issues, helped each other heal and bloom, become confident and full of life.

How much did you talk to her about your past and the trauma you’ve experienced? Do you feel confident at present in yourself and your abilities to create a better life for yourself?

Because it seems to me you’d need to do some more healing and processing before you can get out of your present hardships and start anew, confident and full of life.

Dear Tineoidea,

thank you for sharing about your childhood. It hasn’t been easy for you, you were exposed to multiple stressors: frequent moving, poverty and starvation, your father betraying your mother and leaving when you were just a toddler, humiliation and abuse by your father’s family, including their attempt to kill you and your mother (?!) It was a very harsh childhood, and I am sorry you had to go through all that.

I basically spent them growing up online, which to me was a good way to escape the pain of daily life, make actual long-term friendships and so on.

Have you met your former friend also online, or you knew him in person?

What comes to mind is that loyalty might be important to you because your father wasn’t loyal to either you or your mother, and you didn’t want to be like him. And constantly moving didn’t allow you to form deep bonds with people, so you craved for loyal, long-term friendships, for people who would be there for you through thick and thin and wouldn’t abandon you. And so you ended up with your former friend, who truly was “loyal”, but to the point of possessing you and not letting you breathe. So his loyalty was distorted – but at least he never abandoned you… and you appreciated it.

What do you think? Would you say this is true?