Dear Kayla:

I would like to understand better, therefore I ask: during your “back and forth relationship with your boyfriend, were you at times, or often, angry at him, and if so, how did your anger at him express itself?

Was he ever angry back at you?

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by .

Dear Kayla:

I need to re-read your original post, read your recent post (and anything you may add to it before I return) and reply when I am back to the computer in about 12 hours from now.

anita

Dear Kayla:

For six years (about 22-28) you were in a relationship with a Chris, living with him at one point on. Throughout much of the relationship he gaslighted you.

* my note: in a relationship, K is the honest, well meaning person  and C is the one doing the gaslighting. When K honestly and gently brings a topic to C that bothers her, C  feels attacked and angry at K. He doesn’t respond by honestly looking at a possible validity of what K brought up, considering the possibility that he might have been wrong in any way. Instead, he automatically- without caring to examine what is true, and vehemently tells K that what she saw- she didn’t see, what she heard- she didn’t hear, what she understood- she misunderstood, and then he proceeds to accuse her for a variety of faults and past behaviors, that if true, are irrelevant to the topic K brought up, accusing K of thoughts, intents and motivations that she didn’t have!

Back to you: two years ago you found Chris’s phone open to a gay site. You begged him to tell you the truth (“I begged him to tell me the truth. If he was gay or bisexual or having sex with men I deserve to know”), but he denied and gaslighted you (“He kept denying anything and turned things around on me”).

You then ran away from him and the home you shared while he was at work, followed by him harassing you for months. Six months after you left him, you “started dating again and met a great guy”. But five months into this new relationship, you “started to look for signs that he might be gay and using me like my ex.. my hypervigilance was through the roof.. I had a severe mental breakdown that ended up with me in the ER”. This breakdown happened ten months ago.

After the breakdown, you told him everything about your past (including having been sexually abused by your grandparent as a little girl), and he was so supportive and stood by you, but through the ensuing months you “always end up pushing him away”, leaving him multiple times, asking him repeatedly if he is gay and lying about it and then crying and apologizing. He’s been very empathetic toward you throughout, never angry at you for leaving him and questioning him.

“2 days ago I told him I didn’t want him to fight for me anymore because I feel like I can’t trust him (even though he’s not done anything wrong). I just feel sick to my stomach for doing this to him and I have myself. “. You view him at times as a good man, and at other times “as a danger” to you (“worried that I’m going to be used as a gay coverup again”). And at other times, you view yourself as danger to him (“I’m the first woman he ever loved and I know I have probably completely messed him up”). You have “these extreme doubts” and you feel “so much anxiety when I think about a future with him”.

My input: You suffered psychological trauma with Chris. I say psychological to distinguish it from physical beating, for example. But psychological trauma is physical nonetheless because it involves biochemical processes in the brain and body that express themselves in the intensity of the anxiety that you are experiencing.

You experienced years of significant stress with Chris. Your stress level reached its climax during the gay site discovery event, then continued on a downward slope, yet significant,  for months after the event, while he harassed you,  reached some lower point while you were dating and at the beginning of your new relationship, and then your stress level started to go up again, reaching a new climax at the time or your breakdown ten months ago. During the last ten months, your stress level didn’t go down much.

What you are suffering from is similar to post traumatic stress disorder.

I am wondering: what has been the nature of your ten month psychotherapy, what did the therapist offer you so far?

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by .

Dear Kayla:

It may very well be a good idea for you to take a break from your relationship. You are too stressed to be able to have a healthy relationship with him or with anyone.

I don’t think that it is the gay issue that is your trauma. I think your anxiety is nesting in the gay issue. But the origin of your anxiety is probably in your childhood, exacerbated by being gaslighted by your ex boyfriend, and it found a home in the gay issue. You mentioned having been sexually abused by your grandfather. I don’t need the sexual details of the abuse, but if, and only if you want to answer the following, please do:

1. Do you remember the abuse?

2. Did your parents know about it at any time during your childhood, and if so, how did they interact with the abuser after they knew about it?

3. How did your parents interact with you regarding that abuse, what was their input on the matter?

anita

Dear Kayla:

Both your mother and your father knew that your paternal grandfather sexually abused you and eight years later, your younger sister.

Your mother contacted some authority and got him on a child molester database. Your father’s response to his own father sexually abusing his daughter was: “your grandpa made a mistake and you have to forgive him”.

Your sexually abusive grandfather bought you a car (“my grandparents bought me a car”), and your mother was financially dependent on your father (“after they divorced he had some monetary control over her”), so both your father and mother chose money/ the providers of money over their daughters’ mental health.  Your father, with your mother’s consent,  “continued to bring my grandpa around my sister and I and we just all pretended nothing happened” because of the monetary advantage.

“When I think about the gay issue, I think you are right that my anxiety is living in that issue.. I want a man to want me sexually and having my ex be interested in men was a huge blow to my esteem.. I love this new guy but my body goes into severe fight or flight and I come up with reasons he could be gay”-

It may be that you wouldn’t have been so intensely alarmed if you found a straight dating site on your ex’s phone, and if you imagined your new boyfriend looking at a woman’s behind. It is possible that the reason you were so alarmed about the gay part is that homosexuality is still considered by some to be a sexual aberration, similar to the aberration of incest, of a grandfather sexually abusing his granddaughters.

The gay issue therefore, may have triggered your sexual abuse expeirence (the abuse by your grandfather + your parents’ betrayal of you following that abuse), causing in you that “severe fight or flight” that you experience when you imagine your new boyfriend being gay.

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by .