Dear Smiley:

* Regarding loaning him money- a bad idea because you wrote that he breaks his promises. It is reasonable to expect that he is likely to break a promise to return money given. Also, since the money considered is your family’s money, not entirely yours, it will be dishonest to give it away without your family’s consent.

Otherwise, I support your decision to place this man and your three month relationship with him in the past and keep it there. And I support your thinking about not availing yourself further for his manipulative behavior. However you can arrange to put him in your past and not avail yourself to further guilt-tripping/ manipulation on his part- please do so.

You wrote: “I hate to hurt anyone, that’s my weak spot”- your primary responsibility is not to hurt yourself. It is unwise to allow harm to yourself so not to hurt the feelings of a person who brings you harm/ is likely to continue to bring you harm.

Exiting the relationship with him now will prevent you from experiencing more harm to come.

anita

Dear Smiley:

Yes, you did the right thing, to do-no-harm to yourself is the right thing.

You observed correctly: when you want to know what a person says about you when you are not present, listen to the common theme in what they repeatedly say about others to you when they are not present.

I think that the reason you doubt yourself about blocking him being the right thing is that you feel empathy for him and hate to think he is hurting. Correct? If so, (and following what you wrote earlier:“I hate to hurt anyone, that’s my weak spot”), this is an important opportunity for you to do what is right for you in the future regardless of this “weak spot”. In the future, there will be other people who will harm you, or their behavior would be likely to harm you later. You will need then to withdraw from these people. Because of your weak spot (appropriately referred to as weak, because it takes away your strength), you will feel guilty, not wanting to hurt them, and you will be drawn to put yourself in harmful situations so not to hurt others.

This is an opportunity to do just that: withdraw from a harmful person who promises to be more harmful as time progresses.  Avoid hurting others as an action. But as a reaction to them hurting you, withdrawing from them is the right thing to do.

When a person already established a behavior that is harmful to you, as he has, when you withdraw from him, blocking him in this case, you are reacting, and appropriately reacting.

If you blocked a person who was good to you, that would be an action on your part that is hurtful. When you block a person that is bad for you, harmful, that is an understandable, healthy reaction.

Do you see and agree with the difference?

anita

Dear Smiley:

“only passively hurting” you is… hurting you (the word hurting is there still, the verb!)

“intentional or semi-intentional or totally unintentional” hurting someone is… hurting someone. Same thing.

I will go for the extreme to make my point: of all the murderers in prison, many passively murdered someone (poisoning can be considered a … passive act of murder) and many didn’t intend to kill… maybe just for a split second.

Yet the dead person, the victim is … dead nonetheless.

Hope you feel at peace with blocking him.

anita