Dear mamaof2kids:

If he is a man in search for hookups (his term), then if he shares that a woman he was intimate with, or a woman he was interested in being intimate with has herpes, he is lowering his chances of hooking up, isn’t he? It is him associating himself with herpes, not likely that he shares, if he is at all reasonable.

And then, if he didn’t record your phone conversations in the past, and it was not possible for him to anticipate that you will tell him something interesting this time, why would he record. Also, if you have no evidence of him sharing personal things about you to others, or sharing with you personal things about others, it is not likely that he will do something that is not in his habit doing.

What do you think?

(Regarding you having lots of anxiety lately, do you want to share more about that?)

anita

Dear mamaof2kids:

Anxiety is the toughest thing to deal with, it rains on the parade of life, so to speak,  like nothing else, spoiling our good times, causing us so much unnecessary distress and then, it brings us absolutely nothing positive. Anything and everything we fear- is more likely to happen because we are anxious. We are less attentive when anxious, more impulsive, and therefore more likely to make mistakes.

But we have to do all we can to deal, manage, decrease the anxiety and engage in the slow, oh so very slow process of healing from  it. At this point in my experience, I don’t think I will live long enough to no longer experience anxiety, if that is at all possible for a person to go from years of anxiety to none.

I don’t even know if there is a person in the world who does not suffer from anxiety. There may be none, and so, it may be the human experience, to be anxious.

But work on it, we must, because we can make our lives better, and when you are a mother of two kids, yes, better do all you can do to decrease your anxiety and engage in that healing process.

One thing to do as part of this process is to pay attention. This paying attention is referred to as Mindfulness by many. Let’s look at the incident you shared about in this thread. If you didn’t tell him you had herpes, you wouldn’t be worrying about it following. So before sharing information, pause and think: will I be worrying about it later, regretting that I shared this? Then proceed according to your answer.

We can communicate more and more about anxiety if you want. If you do, keep posting and I will reply.

anita

Dear mamaof2kids:

Yes, it is hard to do. It takes more than one thing-to-do when dealing with anxiety. It takes multiple things to do. Once you learn different ways, different skills, you can have a sort of a tool box. When you feel anxious, or more anxious, you can use this tool or that tool, see if this works, if that other tool works.

You can have tools such as these in your tool box (you can make a list of these things and more): take a long walk outside, take a short walk, listen to guided meditation, do yoga, post here, type away elsewhere, listen to music, talk to someone, do a CBT written exercise.

It is also helpful to understand the origin on one’s anxiety, although it is far from enough, but it can be helpful in a practical way. For example, if you figure that a certain childhood relationship that is still going on created your anxiety and gets re-triggered, you may choose to end such a relationship.

anita