Dear Junsheng:

You asked if you should try to win her back- only if there is a chance of success and if the prize of success is indeed a prize. When you win something you get a prize, a reward. If you won her back, is she indeed a reward, something positive in your life, this is the question.

The pain in your chest, the nausea you feel, naturally you want that to be gone, that will be a reward. Only if she is not a reward, the relief of that pain will be temporary and more pain added to it.

Regarding communication, you wrote: “she stopped feeling the love from me”, this is what she told you. But maybe it is not true, maybe she stopped loving you as she was starting to love, or get close, to the other guy.

You wrote: “She told me she no longer have any patience for me, but that she still loved me”- love is patient. Having no patience for you at all, regularly,  and loving you still, I don’t see these two things together as true. Do you?

anita

Dear Junsheng:

My definition of patience in the context of a loving relationship is: the ability to experience distress without mistreating the person you love. Probably most people don’t love this way. It takes being emotionally healthy and aware to be able to tolerate, or endure one’s distress without lashing out, without talking angrily at another.

People refer to love as that emotional attachment to another. I refer to loving someone as a quality that is more than that automatic attachment.

Thing is this: if a person you love is causing you distress by mistreating you, you should not tolerate that distress. Any mistreatment in a relationship needs to be stopped, if it is a loving relationship. If, for example, your girlfriend was in the habit of blaming you for everything, if she called you names, if she punished you with silent treatments and so on, then she was not loving and you shouldn’t be patient with those behaviors. If, on the other hand, she had a difficult day at school or at work and seems upset, then you being patient with her means that you let her be unhappy and not say something like this to her: what is wrong with you? Why are you upset?

See the difference?

To summarize: a loving relationship means to not mistreat another and to not be mistreated by the other. If there is no mistreatment, then be patient.

anita

Dear Junsheng:

You become a better person, a healthier person by becoming aware of how you think, feel and behave, an awareness that you already started. Basically, you learn how you operate and then re-learn a more effective way to operate, such that will work for your benefit and for the benefit of the one you love.

It is most important to choose a girlfriend who is not abusive, who is also working on awareness and being loving to you.

Such awareness can be gained through interactions with others. Sometimes it may be necessary to interact with a quality psychotherapist. It is not something you can do all by yourself.

anita

Dear Junsheng:

You are welcome. Post again anytime you would like my input, if you do.

anita

Dear Junsheng:

Tell me more about “feeling like this”, tis feeling you hate feeling. Tell me what thoughts accompany this feeling.

How often do you feel this feeling, how early do you remember yourself feeling this way?

anita

Dear Junsheng:

I am continuing to explore, for a reason.

You wrote earlier that you lose patience with your parents. Will you tell me in what circumstances you lose patience with them; what is it that they do to anger you?

anita

Dear Junsheng:

You wrote that you are “working on being very mindful about those instances as (you) do not want to hurt (your parents)”-

Children are motivated to please their parents, definitely to not hurt them. Reason is biological: children of any animal species where the parent/s do take care of their young, need that caring, so they are eager to follow, to please. Same with you, when you were a child. And you still do.

Unfortunately, parents do not have the same inborn motivation. Question to you: you are working on not hurting them. How did/ do they hurt you?

anita

Dear Junsheng:

You wrote about your behavior toward your ex girlfriend: “I did not call her names, physically, or verbally abuse her – but I have often been unable to keep my temper in check whenever I am in distress…I have also been guilty of shutting her out (silent treatments)”.

I suppose your mother gave you the silent treatment that time, when she didn’t speak with you for a few weeks.

When people experience distress, they respond in different ways: some respond in overtly aggressive ways, others respond in covertly aggressive ways. The loving way to respond, when one is angry at another, is in an honest, assertive and responsible way. To talk about it (not to execute the silent treatment), to gather and verify information (not to assume and automatically blame), to consider one’s responsibility for the problem as well as the other’s, and to allow oneself and the other the opportunity to correct their behavior, when wrong.

If you hold on to the perception that your parents are “absolutely wonderful people”, then you figure that your impatience with them is evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, that you are an unloving man, a bad person, perhaps.

It is a big step toward mental health and future healthy and loving relationships to figure see reality more and more closely to what it is. It is only when you see your parents as less than absolutely wonderful, perfectly perfect, that you are able to see yourself as one who was born good and loving.

anita