Dear laelithia:

You are welcome. I am glad you will be seeing a doctor next week and “start the ball rolling with an antidepressant”. Maybe the guy in Switzerland (let’s refer to him as S, for convenience) felt like a dear friend, maybe he is suited to be a friend, but not a live in partner in life.

If you feel that you let him down talking about your past and burdening him, well, you won’t anymore, not if this long distance friendship-like relationship is over. No more guilt in this regard for you then.

“I feel lonelier than ever”- I think you felt lonelier-than-ever many times before and you survived it. Try to not fear that feeling of lonelier-than-ever. It is only a feeling, not a real-and-present danger in it.

“I wish I had just booked this (trip) instead of constantly asking him if it was the right thing to do”- no, it wasn’t a good idea to have this trip, it was not the right thing to do.

Regarding my statement before, that S was not going to work out for you- like I wrote earlier in this post, maybe he could be a friend to you, not a live-in partner for life. He is not willing to financially support you if needed (beyond paying more than his share of rent for a while, if I understand correctly), he is not likely to leave Switzerland away from his mother and you don’t want to live there forever, he doesn’t have emotional regulation skills, you wrote. These are a few of the reasons why it was a bad idea  to make this trip and attempt to live with him, even if you didn’t have your issues (obsessive thinking, being stuck-on-regret, being confused and indecisive).

I don’t think that what I wrote above will do a whole lot to stop you from being-stuck-on-regret. The Regret Theme can apply to any choice you make, even the clearly good choices. Let’s say you visited a particular place and didn’t enjoy it, you may regret not  going back a second time just in case that you will enjoy it the second time. It would make sense to visit instead a place you didn’t visit before, maybe you will enjoy that new place. But being stuck-on-regret causes you to think: maybe a second time I will enjoy that one place, better I go back there and make sure…so I don’t regret it.

I hope the SSRI will help  with that, put an end to that ongoing regret-obsession.

anita

Dear laelithia:

I will read and reply to your recent post when I am back to the computer in about three hours or less.

anita

Dear laelithia:

“I did not respect this person, definitely couldn’t trust him, yet the passion I felt and the desire to make the relationship work long term was so strong”-

-like I wrote to you long ago, I believe it is the passion and the desire to make your relationship with your mother work long term has been projected or transferred to this man. As a result, you are no longer aware of that passion (non-sexual) you had for your mother (still have underneath your awareness), but you are aware of your passion for this man.

You don’t respect your mother anymore, or trust her to be a good mother, but you still desire her to be a good mother to you. This desire for her fuels your obsession with this man.

“It seems like my psyche is intent on making me miserable”- no, your psyche is intent on making your mother love you, fixing that early life relationship so that you can be happy.

“The only thing I truly desire is to not have been treated badly in the first place by this or any other person“- the most powerful person by far in your life who treated you badly was your mother. She is in the “any other person” in your sentence.

“I feel truly upset that this one particular ex will probably always stick out in my mind”- until you address who has been stuck in your mind way longer than this man has been.

Your father observed correctly, of course: “it seems like I am unhappy in relationships… when I’m in them, I am unhappy or focused on what isn’t right about it. He thinks that perhaps I should accept that I might be alone for the rest of my life”- unless you heal your emotional wound created in your early life relationship with your mother, a relationship that has not been healed or resolved.

Psychotherapy with a competent, quality therapist is next, if you do want better emotional health for yourself and a future healthy relationship with a man who is also capable of having a healthy relationship.

anita

Dear laelithia:

Welcome back to your thread!

I am glad you are seeing a therapist. I will respond in this post to some of the things (not all) that you brought up:

“She mentioned that all my major ‘regrets’ in the last couple of years involve my parents. I thought about this, and it’s true”- I agree.

“she said something that deeply affected me. She said.. I need to accept that they essentially cost me someone extremely dear to me, J.. Even that horrible night where I lashed out at him happened after my parents got involved and told me they did not want me to be with him long term”- of course, you should never again share your private life with your parents and receive their input.

“I have decided that at the very least, I will not let my parents dictate any more of my decisions in the future. That I will keep more of my private life just that, private from them”- excellent choice!

I agree with your therapist that your parents have cost you a whole lot, including the possibility of a healthy, loving relationship for years, but I don’t think J was the guy for you. I don’t think a healthy, loving relationship was likely to happen with him regardless of your parents’ input.

When you wrote your recent post, you once again placed J on a pedestal where he doesn’t belong, and looking at him up there, where he doesn’t belong, maximizes your regret, as you think incorrectly that you lost the Best, the Most, the Highest, the Irreplaceable One and Only.

This is some of what you wrote about the relationship with this imagined super, high and mighty man on page 1 of this thread: “The relationship was full of extreme highs and devastating lows, usually centered around him staying in contact with his ex and his inability to fully commit to me. From January until May 2016, we dated on and off… I was more of an option, someone he enjoyed to spend time with but did not feel the need to commit.. in July, he was keen to see me again.. We met a few times after that, but again it seemed clear he was not ready to settle down, at least not with me.. September.. He assured me that he would date me exclusively as well, and deleted all his dating apps… Us being ‘officially’ together was very short- lived“, then you had dinner with him and he wanted to go to “a club that was known for having raves and drugs readily available”. After some alcohol and recreational drugs there, you and him had an argument and you “exploded in an angry tirade”. You continued to date until before Christmas, when he told you that he didn’t think you were “The One”. A week or so of no contact followed and “he was going on dates with other women”, later he blocked you.

With all due respect to however negative what you told him that night in the club, it was not the cause of the breakup of a wonderful, committed relationship because it was never a wonderful committed relationship. He never dated you exclusively, had active dating apps, and was not at all into settling down, not even for a single night when he was not content with having dinner with you and spending the night with you alone. He wanted to party and have other women around, which led to that club.

Your inclination to (1) get intensely attached to some men (2) very quickly, then (3) place the man on a pedestal and (4)glorify the relationship  is so strong that after the above story with J, during an off time with J,  you met another man and wrote about him (previous thread, May 2017): “I met a man.. it was wonderful. I have never felt so strongly for someone so quickly in my whole life”, and after a single weekend and a few days together, “we were even beginning to plan our future together (including babies and marriage!)”.

A few days later, “my perfect man was saying he wasn’t sure if he was ready for a relationship after all”. After a total of 13 day-relationship, you wrote: “I miss the caring, attentive, wonderful man he was to me.. I felt so close, so attached and safe with him.. All my life I have longed for a love I did not feel I received, and this was by far the closest I’ve ever gotten“-

-so you see, J was not the closest.. you met another man later and he was the closest.. all within 13 days.

“I truly feel like I destroyed my one true shot at happiness”- you wrote this about the 13 day man, after J. So you see, J was not your one true shot at happiness. Fast forward, today you seem to think that J was your only true shot at happiness. Well, I disagree.

The reason you get attached so intensely and so quickly to some men is because you were so lonely as a child. You wrote regarding your parents: “I longed s deeply to be seen by them, to be heard, to hear loving words of affirmation… I tried so hard to get (your mother’s) attention, I would clean the house as a child during the nights to surprise her, I worked so hard at school.. but she was emotionally aloof, and often deferred to spending time with my sister.. she (your mother) often identified being similar to my younger sister.. and told me I was more like the girls that bullied her in school”.

I think that the reason you have focused in the past on the woman in J’s life after you, and in your most recent post, this focus remains (“It breaks my heart knowing he is doing all of that now with the person he saw right after me”), is that your childhood reality where you were terribly hurt and jealous about your mother paying positive attention to your younger sister, and expressed disapproval of you, gets reactivated in the context of romantic relationships.

In summary: most recently, in your post today, you expressed having places J on a pedestal, once again, imagining a glorious relationship that did not exist, imagining there was a closeness in that relationship that didn’t really exist at the time, and regretting what .. didn’t exist. All because you are so hungry for closeness, so needy of the warmth of positive attention, that when you experience any of it, you magnify it and bask in the warmth of a made up glorified story of a perfect man and a perfect relationship that didn’t really exist.

What you are regretting is not being your sister, isn’t it, your 18 months younger sister who got all the attention from your mother that you craved, isn’t it?

I hope you take this to your next therapy session. And please do post again, anytime.

anita