Hi roberto516,
I was touched reading your personal inventory. Thank you for sharing. I can relate to it very much. I was, and am, very close to my mother. My father was physically absent until the age of 7, then emotionally absent after he moved in with us. I have only recently discovered that I must have felt alone growing up, although I had a good upbringing and my mom was always there for me. I think I know why now, but this is not the place to go into it.
Just wanted to let you know that I share some of your feelings.
What did I do as I got older (in my teens)? I started to help my mom clean around the house. I started to go out with her on weekends to shop or go to bookstores where we would just browse around. I became my mom's best friend. Deep down, I wanted to help her from her emotions. This definitely set me up as an adult to do two things. 1. Swear that any woman I was with would be treated like a queen like how I believed my dad should have treated my mom. 2. I was naturally drawn now to women who needed rescuing or who really wanted my attention and sacrifices and really built me up with kind words because of those things I was doing.
It really makes a lot of sense. And naturally, you would try to take the opportunities to recreate, and then effect a different outcome to, the situation you couldn't change as a child.
So how did I spend crucial formative years of my youth? By myself. It probably explains my introvert nature but, and I absolute hate to admit this, I wasn't really shown attention or love. I didn't want to disturb anything. So how did I learn to feel good and gain attention? By doing good for others.
This breaks my heart for little roberto. Yes, doing good for others to gain attention and love. I think many of us here can say a big fat yes to that. Learning to value ourselves simply for
being, not doing, can be such a challenge. I'm working on it, too.
And after all of this a part of me does hurt.
Of course it does.
For 2 years between relationships I really believed I learned to love myself. I loved being alone again and was very self-sufficient emotionally. But I had failed to pay attention/gain insight into my relationship patterns which I guess primed me for another BPD relationship.
This is a very good insight. That emotional self-sufficiency and feeling good alone is something I know very well, too. Then, when I enter a relationship, suddenly the vulnerable heartandwhole who needs love and care comes out full force—yikes!
How can we continue to grow emotionally when we are
not in an intimate relationship? Is that the time to strengthen boundaries, practice self-care, build other types of relationships? I struggle with this, because romantic relationships seem to be THE accelerators for emotional growth, in my experience.
It's painful to admit that the loving parents and perfect parents I had were not. I don't blame them. It's what they learned and how could they have any idea any of this would have played such a role in my development. But I know it's growth. I know it's something I needed to face about myself. Thanks for reading.
It IS growth, roberto516. And I think part of the grieving process is realizing that we often didn't have the environment we needed growing up. It's a difficult and painful lesson, but also a liberating one. With experience, and hopefully wisdom, my empathy and understanding for my parents have grown. That doesn't negate the hurt inside me, but it gives it context and helps me stay connected to them and myself.
heartandwhole
