Dear Amrita:

You shared in your post elsewhere, and here, that when you were a child, you always felt that you were an unwanted child, that people did not need you, and as a result, you went out of your way “in working or doing things for people just for that appreciation, that I am important at some place… I go to a maximum limit of helping people or doing something for someone just for having a place in someone’s life”. You currently have a good job, but “there is always a feel that I lack something. I always feel unwanted in a group may be family, workplace or friends”.

My input: for a child to feel okay, the child has to be considered important to her mother, or if the family consists of more than just the mother, then the child has to feel important to the family. A child cannot feel okay otherwise.

The reason for this is that we people are social animals, like coyotes and domestic dogs, or elk and even bees. In a social group, an individual has to have a role, something he/she does that is valued by the group. The guard dog feels valued when successfully guarding his human family’s property. In the bees society, the male bees, once they don’t have a role in the hive, they are kicked out! In other societies as well, individual animals who are not valued by the group are expelled and even killed.

All it takes for a child to feel valued in her family, is for family members to smile when they see her, to say a kind word, in a kind tone, sending the child the message: I am glad you are here. It makes me feel good that you are a part of this family! And then, it takes giving the child little jobs, like clearing the table, and saying: good job; you made my life easier, thank you!

It doesn’t sound like much, does it? And yet, it is too much for so many parents to do, these simple things. What was your experience, in your family?

I will  be glad to share mine.

anita

Dear Amrita:

In my own experience, when you don’t get that “she is happy/ proud of me” feeling from your mother as a child, for months and years.. it creates an emptiness in the heart, and that emptiness hurts and yearns to be filled.

People react to this painful emptiness in all kinds of ways, some, like you, “go to a maximum limit of helping people or doing something for someone”; others get angry at everyone they meet, sooner or later, arguing and fighting. There are people who do both. Others perhaps stay away from people.

A child’s need to be approved/ liked by her mother has a time limit to be filled, and that time limit is in earlier childhood. By the time you are a teenager/ an adult, even if your mother changed and liked you, and was proud of you- she can no longer fill the emptiness that she created, nor can anyone else.

The way to fill that painful emptiness is sometimes in quality psychotherapy where you express how this emptiness feels, how it was created, how it felt all along, and after enough expression and a growing understanding, you will finally be able to accept some people’s liking of you, to really take it in and feel that you are indeed  liked, and that you like yourself, and that emptiness will be filled.

I am glad you invited me to ask you questions. Here are my questions:

1. Are you currently in a relationship/ married?

2. Are you a mother: do you have a child or children?

3. Are you living with your mother, or close to her (same town/ city)?

4. What did you do for your mother as a child, so to make her happy/ proud of you?

5. What are you still doing for your mother, as a 40 year old woman, so to make her happy/ proud of you?

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by .

Dear Amrita:

You wrote this about what I believe to be your strongest motivation as a child: “I wanted her to feel and show that she is happy/ proud of me”- you most intensely needed and wanted your mother to feel that she is happy that you are her daughter, that she thinks of you as a valuable part of her life, someone she is proud of. You needed her to feel these things.

You did everything you could to make her feel this way about you: you were shy, didn’t really want to dance in front of people, but she wanted you to dance (and you wanted more than anything that she will be proud of you), so you joined dance classes.

She wanted you to perform well academically, so you “put in extremely long hours of study”.  She wanted you to wear certain clothes, so you wore them.

But all your efforts failed: your mother was still unhappy with you, still not proud of you, “she was never satisfied”. After so many efforts, so much time, frustrated, you reacted angrily at the woman who will not give you what you need, no matter how hard you tired and for how long: “slowly I developed a habit of doing the opposite of what she asked me to do and anything she asked me to do, I would react with a negative answer”.

As an adult, you got married, divorced, no children, and lived with your mother, in the same house until a year ago, when you were 39. At 40, you moved out of the house so that “she would be happy/ proud of me as I am able to do something for myself on my own without depending on her”.

In my life, as a child and as an adult I needed and wanted more than anything that my mother will be happy, and that she will be happy that I am in her life, that she will look at me with pleasure and affection on her face. I did all that I could (as little as is objectively possible for a child to do),  but all that I could do-  wasn’t good enough for her. She kept on and on and on, complaining to me how I was not what she wanted. Over time I became very, very angry at her, for not wanting me.

For decades I believed that she didn’t want me or like me because I was unworthy, lacking, defected. You mentioned dancing: I used to daydream that I was an internationally known dancer, dancing in front of large audiences and broadcasted on TV all over the world, people everywhere cheering, clapping hands, in awe of my dancing.

If I received this one person’s smile (my mother’s), a smile that expressed to me that she approved of me- I wouldn’t be daydreaming of millions of people vocally and enthusiastically approving of me. These daydreams express how intensely a child needs her mother’s approval when not receiving it for so long, when chasing it and never getting it. A child figures: she has to achieve something BIG (ex., international fame) so to finally get her mother’s approval.

You wrote: “The emptiness I feel is unexplainable to say”- this emptiness led me, as an adult, to make so many wrong choices, robbing me from opportunities to live a functional life that made sense. This emptiness was my misery.

You wrote that you (40) are in a relationship with a man (30) who is married to another woman, a “happily married man.. having two kids who is extremely devoted to his parents and family”- do you mean that you are okay with this relationship because it doesn’t take away from his wife and children?

anita

Dear Amrita:

You described a married man and father who has or has had a romantic/ sexual relationship with a woman who is not his wife, as a man who is “extremely devoted to his parents and family”- I don’t think that he is a devoted husband or a devoted father, let alone extremely devoted. If and when his wife finds out, she would be very upset, and in turn, his children will be very upset, seeing their mother upset. A devoted husband and father does not unnecessarily endanger the mental health of his wife and children.

“it’s a long distance one presently”- so you don’t get together with him anymore since you moved, or do you still get together with him, only not as often?

“Honestly I even don’t understand what this relationship gives me, whether I feel wanted and loved to whom I mean the whole world, or whether it is that me, like I would not be in a committed relationship”- I didn’t understand part of the sentence, can you re-write this sentence, and elaborate on it? (And.. did he tell you that you “mean the whole world” to him?)

anita

Dear Amrita:

Thank you for inviting me to let you know when I need clarification of what you meant to say. I offer you the same: if you are not clear about anything I write to you, let me know.

So, this relationship is long distance and infrequent, a call once a week or once in 15 days or even a month. You never initiate the calls. You meet every six months for half a day or a day.

You clarified that you understand that this relationship will not last long, that he will never leave his family so to be with you. And you shared that “he would always say that I trust and love you a lot, don’t break my trust in you”. By trust, he means that he trusts you to not tell his family about the relationship?

I wonder.. what is it about him/ the way he treats you that you like so much?

anita

Dear Amrita:

“I feel what he means by trust here is that if I feel and want to go into another relationship I should tell him about it!!… repeatedly asks me if I am in a relationship with someone else”- he wants you to only be with him (one man), while he is with his wife and with you (two women, maybe more).

You shared in your various posts  that you suffer from feeling unwanted, from unexplainable emptiness, and from “general anxiety and.. extremely low self esteem”.

You wrote about this relationship: “There were many situations where he always doubted me and has hurt me but I always end up going back to him… at the end of the day I feel too exhausted with these thoughts of where have I gone wrong in this relationship or what did I do today that he has not spoken to me or has not texted me.. what do I like or love about him? .. I really don’t understand because I never feel that intense longing for him, but yes I am happy when he is by my side and when he is not judging me!!”-

– As to why you are with him, it probably has to do with what you mentioned, that extreme low self esteem. When a woman thinks so little of herself, feeling of such low value, feeling unwanted, then she feels good when wanted by anybody, doesn’t matter whom, as long as someone wants her, in some way.

There is something else: “He doubted me and has hurt me but I always end up going back to him.. where have I gone wrong in this relationship.. has not spoken to me.. judging me“-

– hasn’t this been also your experience with your mother: she doubting you, hurting you, not speaking to you, judging you? And did you not wonder, as a child, where you have gone wrong in the relationship with her/ what you have done wrong.. and did you not end up going back to her, living with her at 39, a year ago?

anita

Dear Amrita:

It is natural for any child to want her mother to be happy with her, so no wonder you too, wanted your mother happy with you. It is also  natural for a child, when her mother is not happy with her, to wonder what she did wrong and what she should do different to make her mother happy, so no wonder you too wondered the same thing.

“even today it is the same case, I still think about whatever decision I make if my mother is with me, will she approve or appreciate the decision or what will I answer/ reason if she says she does not like it”-

– notice you wrote “if my mother is with me”- but she is with you, unfortunately: she lives inside your brain, in that space in between your two ears. There you still chase her for approval; there, you still hope that she will be happy with you; there you have conversations with her.

“The same with him I guess… (he) hurts me!! but the moment I calm down.. I again go back to.. liking him!! What are the ways I could stop getting repeatedly in the same cycle!! I understand that if I don’t change myself it’s troubling me!! But all I learn to do is adjust along with the pain but unable to break!!”-

– here is the key problem: “unable to break!!”- unable to break away from your mother, and from this man.

Imagine your mother no longer living in your brain, imagine no longer wanting her approval, no longer caring that she was not happy with you. Imagine not talking to her anymore, in your head. Imagine that you finally believe that she was not happy with you not because there was something wrong with you, but because there was something wrong with her.. if you can imagine these things- this is what it would be like if you mentally broke away from your mother.

If you manage to accomplish the very difficult challenge of mentally breaking away from your mother, it would be so easy, in comparison, to break away from this man.

I was very much trapped with my mother in my head, and I will be glad to help you over time, in any way I can, here on your thread, with this very difficult challenge.

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by .