Formative young adult years
April 18, 2022 3:00 PM Subscribe
I've posted previously and extensively about my feelings of grief about having grown up in a religious and culturally conservative Muslim family and only finding the strength to move out at the extremely late age of 28.
A few people accurately pointed out that my jealousy of my boyfriend's ex (see previous posts) is probably more to do with my grief around my lost potential and missed opportunities.
I think this is very true because when I think of her and my boyfriend the jealousy arises and centres around their shared university experience. In particular I fixate on the fact they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars. The sense of freedom, as I imagine it seems unparalleled.
It cannot compare to the adult sense of freedom which is weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities.
I've identified this as being the thing that really torments me and gets under my skin; the terrible realisation that I missed out on this formative experience and all it entails.
I envision that had I moved out, it might not have been the same as I was quite damaged, depressed and very socially anxious but at the very least I would have experienced being free from my parents and family. I most likely would have had sexual experiences too; I feel very sad that I didn't.
I get the awful and I think, accurate sense that had I taken this step it's highly likely it would have precipitated me to move out much earlier as I would have got a taste for freedom.
I appreciate that I can't know what would have happened, that things might have gone bad. But I think my assumption above is a highly likely and reasonable one and it torments me.
I feel an unending and terribly destructive jealousy for my boyfriend and his ex and anyone who got to experience this. I know no ones experience is perfect but I think almost any experience would have been better than mine.
I continued to live in a cramped and dirty home with an abusive father who had access to my bank account and took all my money. I never made any real friends or went out; I went to Nandoes once with some acquaintances on the last day of uni. I was so socially anxious that I couldn't wait outside lecture halls as my face would go red. I would spend all my time alone in the library or in the toilets. I had no hope, no friends, there was no meaning in my life. I was so depressed, my life lost all sense of coherence. I, who previously was academically successful without much effort, almost failed the degree; I scraped a pass.
I was so ashamed about my background, my life and myself. I was just walking shame; there was nothing else to me. When I left uni, I so lacked in confidence that I was on the dole for months.
I sobbed as I walked to the station on my last day for the sense of loneliness and despair; knowing that I had had zero meaningful experiences in the 3 years I was at university.
When I compare that to my boyfriends experience of going to uni as a shy kid, meeting a girl in his shared accommodation on his first day who would later become his girlfriend who he would lose his virginity to and enjoy a healthy sex life with, going to parties and coming out of his shell; doing whatever he wanted, the emotional pain is close to unbearable.
His ex also was doing amazing, getting top marks at med school every year, competing in uni dance competitions, captain of the squash team and had a vibrant active social life judging from Facebook photos and my boyfriends accounts of her being the most high functioning person he had ever met (again see previous post).
They were so vibrant, alive, active, full of hope and accomplishment. I was practically a dead young woman walking for the same period of my life (about 5 years). Words can't express the pain I feel now about this, as at 33 I emerge from a decade of being in such a state.
To close, I feel tormented by the feeling that I missed out on a formative young adult experience and that the window has closed forever. This might sound ridiculous but I feel that I can never be a whole person for this reason, not in the way those people who have had the experience can.
University feels like the perfect and only chance to get to have these specific experiences, at that specific age.
Firstly, I wanted to ask in truth does anyone think that some of my thoughts and feelings are true; that such experiences are hugely formative and that I genuinely have missed out and my grief and pain is proportionate to the loss?
Secondly, any advice or thoughts on whether you think there's something more going on here and how I might come to terms with this loss? I hope I have conveyed the minute by minute agony of what I feel daily.
I think this is very true because when I think of her and my boyfriend the jealousy arises and centres around their shared university experience. In particular I fixate on the fact they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars. The sense of freedom, as I imagine it seems unparalleled.
It cannot compare to the adult sense of freedom which is weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities.
I've identified this as being the thing that really torments me and gets under my skin; the terrible realisation that I missed out on this formative experience and all it entails.
I envision that had I moved out, it might not have been the same as I was quite damaged, depressed and very socially anxious but at the very least I would have experienced being free from my parents and family. I most likely would have had sexual experiences too; I feel very sad that I didn't.
I get the awful and I think, accurate sense that had I taken this step it's highly likely it would have precipitated me to move out much earlier as I would have got a taste for freedom.
I appreciate that I can't know what would have happened, that things might have gone bad. But I think my assumption above is a highly likely and reasonable one and it torments me.
I feel an unending and terribly destructive jealousy for my boyfriend and his ex and anyone who got to experience this. I know no ones experience is perfect but I think almost any experience would have been better than mine.
I continued to live in a cramped and dirty home with an abusive father who had access to my bank account and took all my money. I never made any real friends or went out; I went to Nandoes once with some acquaintances on the last day of uni. I was so socially anxious that I couldn't wait outside lecture halls as my face would go red. I would spend all my time alone in the library or in the toilets. I had no hope, no friends, there was no meaning in my life. I was so depressed, my life lost all sense of coherence. I, who previously was academically successful without much effort, almost failed the degree; I scraped a pass.
I was so ashamed about my background, my life and myself. I was just walking shame; there was nothing else to me. When I left uni, I so lacked in confidence that I was on the dole for months.
I sobbed as I walked to the station on my last day for the sense of loneliness and despair; knowing that I had had zero meaningful experiences in the 3 years I was at university.
When I compare that to my boyfriends experience of going to uni as a shy kid, meeting a girl in his shared accommodation on his first day who would later become his girlfriend who he would lose his virginity to and enjoy a healthy sex life with, going to parties and coming out of his shell; doing whatever he wanted, the emotional pain is close to unbearable.
His ex also was doing amazing, getting top marks at med school every year, competing in uni dance competitions, captain of the squash team and had a vibrant active social life judging from Facebook photos and my boyfriends accounts of her being the most high functioning person he had ever met (again see previous post).
They were so vibrant, alive, active, full of hope and accomplishment. I was practically a dead young woman walking for the same period of my life (about 5 years). Words can't express the pain I feel now about this, as at 33 I emerge from a decade of being in such a state.
To close, I feel tormented by the feeling that I missed out on a formative young adult experience and that the window has closed forever. This might sound ridiculous but I feel that I can never be a whole person for this reason, not in the way those people who have had the experience can.
University feels like the perfect and only chance to get to have these specific experiences, at that specific age.
Firstly, I wanted to ask in truth does anyone think that some of my thoughts and feelings are true; that such experiences are hugely formative and that I genuinely have missed out and my grief and pain is proportionate to the loss?
Secondly, any advice or thoughts on whether you think there's something more going on here and how I might come to terms with this loss? I hope I have conveyed the minute by minute agony of what I feel daily.
Please don't blame yourself. Instead give yourself creadit for leaving when you did; I'll bet it was difficult. What was good about your family? Maybe it was close and loving. Try to be grateful for whatever good was there, and look forward. I don't mean to be glib. My family was lacking in closeness, caring, all sorts of basic stuff. It's possible to move beyond the things that you didn't get, and value the things you were given.
posted by theora55 at 3:28 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by theora55 at 3:28 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
University feels like the perfect and only chance to get to have these specific experiences, at that specific age.
You keep setting up these impossible scenarios and standards, and the universal thread is that someone else had something you didn't that you can never have. You had a really terrible, shitty living situation, and I'm sorry. That doesn't mean there's no way to try to begin to have better experiences now. Your jealousy of them is a way of avoiding moving forward with your own life. If you can convince yourself you can't ever have good and exciting relationships and experiences, then you'll be in this rut forever.
Your grief is real. Also, there are plenty of people who didn't have these experiences in college. Have you ever heard about the term second adolescence for people who come out as gay as adults? There are plenty of gay folks who don't date in college and then come out after college and go on a dating whirlwind.
A friend of mine talks about how, right after a separation/divorce from a long marriage, many of his friends seem to go through a time of dating and having exciting, casual sex. We're talking about people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, not young adults at all.
Other people learn about their kinks and sexual preferences later in life and they jump right in to exploring this.
I think you can accept that all of these things are true: you didn't have the college experience that you wished and you are jealous of people who did; not everyone had that fantasy college experience; you can move forward and have experiences now.
posted by bluedaisy at 3:32 PM on April 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
You keep setting up these impossible scenarios and standards, and the universal thread is that someone else had something you didn't that you can never have. You had a really terrible, shitty living situation, and I'm sorry. That doesn't mean there's no way to try to begin to have better experiences now. Your jealousy of them is a way of avoiding moving forward with your own life. If you can convince yourself you can't ever have good and exciting relationships and experiences, then you'll be in this rut forever.
Your grief is real. Also, there are plenty of people who didn't have these experiences in college. Have you ever heard about the term second adolescence for people who come out as gay as adults? There are plenty of gay folks who don't date in college and then come out after college and go on a dating whirlwind.
A friend of mine talks about how, right after a separation/divorce from a long marriage, many of his friends seem to go through a time of dating and having exciting, casual sex. We're talking about people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, not young adults at all.
Other people learn about their kinks and sexual preferences later in life and they jump right in to exploring this.
I think you can accept that all of these things are true: you didn't have the college experience that you wished and you are jealous of people who did; not everyone had that fantasy college experience; you can move forward and have experiences now.
posted by bluedaisy at 3:32 PM on April 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
I know people whose lives had barely begun when they were 33! You are just the exact right age to start living in the way you dream you could.
I am a couple of years older than you and this is by miles the best time of my life, barring the pandemic. In my experience even the people who were living it up in college, having fun, doing well in school, in relationships and having sex, were just as emotionally tortured, unhappy, stressed and anxious as any adult, and less self-aware about it.
You are in therapy (judging by past Asks), you are not living with your family, you are asking all the right questions and exploring your trauma, you are doing the important work - NOW is your time. You are amazing, just exactly as you are.
To answer your questions very briefly: your grief makes so much sense to me. You don't have to justify the weight of it. It just is. It's not your fault, and I hope it eases, and you don't have to worry if it's disproportionate. I do not judge you for feeling it. I hope you can let go of that nasty voice in your head that says you should feel ashamed.
You're in therapy, so my only other answer is this: you can come to terms with this by doing all the things you wanted to do... NOW. Sounds like you're having amazing sex! Good for you! Many people are never so lucky, so hooray! Can you join a meet up or group based on a hobby or interest? Go out with your sisters? Make some new friends? Can you ask for more feedback at work, or look for a new job if yours isn't fulfilling? Can you look yourself in the eye in the mirror and say: "I love you. However you are today is okay. You are good, you are growing, you are safe, you are free."? When thoughts of jealousy arise can you say: "that's interesting! And so painful! Gosh, it sucks that I'm feeling this. But it's not relevant at the moment. Now what am I having for lunch..."?
In my experience... those things work over time. I have also found loving kindness meditation super helpful, when practiced regularly. Good luck. My heart is with you today. <3
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 3:32 PM on April 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
I am a couple of years older than you and this is by miles the best time of my life, barring the pandemic. In my experience even the people who were living it up in college, having fun, doing well in school, in relationships and having sex, were just as emotionally tortured, unhappy, stressed and anxious as any adult, and less self-aware about it.
You are in therapy (judging by past Asks), you are not living with your family, you are asking all the right questions and exploring your trauma, you are doing the important work - NOW is your time. You are amazing, just exactly as you are.
To answer your questions very briefly: your grief makes so much sense to me. You don't have to justify the weight of it. It just is. It's not your fault, and I hope it eases, and you don't have to worry if it's disproportionate. I do not judge you for feeling it. I hope you can let go of that nasty voice in your head that says you should feel ashamed.
You're in therapy, so my only other answer is this: you can come to terms with this by doing all the things you wanted to do... NOW. Sounds like you're having amazing sex! Good for you! Many people are never so lucky, so hooray! Can you join a meet up or group based on a hobby or interest? Go out with your sisters? Make some new friends? Can you ask for more feedback at work, or look for a new job if yours isn't fulfilling? Can you look yourself in the eye in the mirror and say: "I love you. However you are today is okay. You are good, you are growing, you are safe, you are free."? When thoughts of jealousy arise can you say: "that's interesting! And so painful! Gosh, it sucks that I'm feeling this. But it's not relevant at the moment. Now what am I having for lunch..."?
In my experience... those things work over time. I have also found loving kindness meditation super helpful, when practiced regularly. Good luck. My heart is with you today. <3
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 3:32 PM on April 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
You don't say anything in this post about therapy. There's really no way to fix any of these unhealthy thought processes without going to therapy.
does anyone think that some of my thoughts and feelings are true
Feelings can't be true or false. They just are. And whether or not your thoughts are true, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK. But you are thinking a lot of things while lacking evidence either way, and that's counter-productive.
Yes, for many people, college is this great period where you can be footloose and fancy-free, without obligations to your parents or to the world. But you have to realize that it's not like that for most people. Most kids in college are coping with all sorts of anxieties — the stresses of being an introvert in an extroverted realm, the fear of not measuring up to peers, impostor syndrome, the fear of parents/families going without so that they can have an educational opportunity they don't fully enjoy, the fear of not being able to afford four full years, having to work themselves to exhaustion at one, two, or more jobs plus school because they don't have supportive parents, or they have parents who don't have a financial wherewithal to help...
College is never perfect, and I say that as someone who had a fairly lofty college experience. My parents paid for school, I didn't have to have a job, and I was encouraged to get an unpaid internship rather than a j-o-b job. I had a boyfriend when I wanted to and didn't when I didn't. And still, I had anxiety so bad that sometimes I couldn't eat (or couldn't keep food down) and I worried ALL THE TIME that I was a failure, and though my family could not have cared less about my grades, I internalized that anything less than an A was failure. And I would never, ever have judged anyone else by the judgments I placed on myself.
Other friends flitted about, enjoyed friendships, but spent entire semesters in fugue states of misery because they slept with their boyfriends who then broke up with them, or they DIDN'T sleep with their boyfriends who broke up with them, or they wanted to break up but feared they'd never be happy again even though they already weren't happy.
Some people had tight circles of friends like you see in the movies, and others had one good friend and a few acquaintances, and others had none. I loved my closest gang of college friends, all guys, until all but one in the group was a total dick (no better term) to me for our second-last semester, and it was like my entire college experience was a lie. And then some of it got fixed because one-by-one they realized how immature they'd been, and some of it didn't and 35 years later, I get a sour taste recalling things they did.
There is no perfect college experience, just like there's no perfect marriage or perfect childhood. But feeling like you've lost all hope and possibilities because for four (or for you, I guess, three) years wasn't what you wanted or hoped is only going to further wreck your chances for growth and happiness in the future.
You can't change the past, but to damn yourself for the next 60-70+ years because earlier years sucked isn't helpful. Yes, it's understandable, but it's not helpful. It's like never trying to get a better job because you're obsessed with a bad first one.
Please, please, please get yourself a good therapist, and if you don't mesh with one, get another. If you've got one, show them this post so they see the kinds of things you're ruminating about.
It's never too late to find a friend group. My grandfather was practically a hermit until my grandmother had some mini-strokes and had to go into a nursing home; so in his early 90s, he went into the portion of facility for spouses of those more physical and cognitive issues, and he became social for the first time in his entire life. Don't wait until you are in your 90s.
Beyond the university thing, YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING about your boyfriend's ex-girlfriend beyond what he has told you. You don't know if she had internalized anxiety, if her father financially abused her mother, if she lives in fear of getting breast cancer like her aunts...she is this imaginary mannequin on which you're hanging imaginary clothes of your own design. As they say on the internet, "you're comparing your insides to her outsides." Stop that. For the love of all things holy (in a non-religious way), please stop that. Not because of her, not because of him, but because of you.
I know it's hard, but your resentment is hurting nobody but yourself. Your thoughts are based in insufficient evidence. It doesn't matter if you're 0% correct about your past vs. other people's past, or 50% correct, or 100% correct. All that matters is what you do now.
I'm reading Daniel Pink's The Power of Regret, and it has some things that might help you. You can use your regrets to make better decisions in the future, or you can wallow in your regret. But either way, ONLY YOU can determine the positive or negative trajectory of the rest of your life. The past might have sucked, but it didn't suck as much as it might have, and it wasn't as good as it might have been.
Get a good therapist, please, and work every day to take positive steps toward what you think about, and what you DO about your future. Many people (including yourself) are responsible what didn't feel good in your past, but only you can take the necessary actions to make it better. And you absolutely do have the power to change. (Professionally, I work every day with people whose bad experiences in their lives have lead to bad situations in their physical environments. I help them change. Change is not always easy, but it's easier than being miserable.)
Consider stop telling yourself the story of your past, at least outside of therapy. Just stop. Pretend you were born today, with a pretty impressive ability to speak a language and walk and do arithmetic, at least for a newborn. Talk to strangers to make acquaintances. Nurture acquaintances to make friends. When you're tempted to bemoan your upbringing and your constricted life and your college years, just tell yourself something...anything...else. You already know that story, and it's not a useful or helpful one. Tell yourself a better story. Recite the lyrics to a song or count to 100 in a language you're learning or talk to someone and ask about their life.
Recognize that EVERYONE'S experiences are different, and nobody's experiences are like what you see in the movies. Not relationships, not families, not college. Everyone has something that sucks. Everyone has something that someone else envies. Focus on what you want, not what you had, and you'll have more of what you want and less of what you had (and didn't want). But the only way you can have the future you want is to stop living in the past. I know it's hard, but it's easier than tearing yourself apart like this.
Sending you good thoughts.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 3:43 PM on April 18, 2022 [12 favorites]
does anyone think that some of my thoughts and feelings are true
Feelings can't be true or false. They just are. And whether or not your thoughts are true, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK. But you are thinking a lot of things while lacking evidence either way, and that's counter-productive.
Yes, for many people, college is this great period where you can be footloose and fancy-free, without obligations to your parents or to the world. But you have to realize that it's not like that for most people. Most kids in college are coping with all sorts of anxieties — the stresses of being an introvert in an extroverted realm, the fear of not measuring up to peers, impostor syndrome, the fear of parents/families going without so that they can have an educational opportunity they don't fully enjoy, the fear of not being able to afford four full years, having to work themselves to exhaustion at one, two, or more jobs plus school because they don't have supportive parents, or they have parents who don't have a financial wherewithal to help...
College is never perfect, and I say that as someone who had a fairly lofty college experience. My parents paid for school, I didn't have to have a job, and I was encouraged to get an unpaid internship rather than a j-o-b job. I had a boyfriend when I wanted to and didn't when I didn't. And still, I had anxiety so bad that sometimes I couldn't eat (or couldn't keep food down) and I worried ALL THE TIME that I was a failure, and though my family could not have cared less about my grades, I internalized that anything less than an A was failure. And I would never, ever have judged anyone else by the judgments I placed on myself.
Other friends flitted about, enjoyed friendships, but spent entire semesters in fugue states of misery because they slept with their boyfriends who then broke up with them, or they DIDN'T sleep with their boyfriends who broke up with them, or they wanted to break up but feared they'd never be happy again even though they already weren't happy.
Some people had tight circles of friends like you see in the movies, and others had one good friend and a few acquaintances, and others had none. I loved my closest gang of college friends, all guys, until all but one in the group was a total dick (no better term) to me for our second-last semester, and it was like my entire college experience was a lie. And then some of it got fixed because one-by-one they realized how immature they'd been, and some of it didn't and 35 years later, I get a sour taste recalling things they did.
There is no perfect college experience, just like there's no perfect marriage or perfect childhood. But feeling like you've lost all hope and possibilities because for four (or for you, I guess, three) years wasn't what you wanted or hoped is only going to further wreck your chances for growth and happiness in the future.
You can't change the past, but to damn yourself for the next 60-70+ years because earlier years sucked isn't helpful. Yes, it's understandable, but it's not helpful. It's like never trying to get a better job because you're obsessed with a bad first one.
Please, please, please get yourself a good therapist, and if you don't mesh with one, get another. If you've got one, show them this post so they see the kinds of things you're ruminating about.
It's never too late to find a friend group. My grandfather was practically a hermit until my grandmother had some mini-strokes and had to go into a nursing home; so in his early 90s, he went into the portion of facility for spouses of those more physical and cognitive issues, and he became social for the first time in his entire life. Don't wait until you are in your 90s.
Beyond the university thing, YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING about your boyfriend's ex-girlfriend beyond what he has told you. You don't know if she had internalized anxiety, if her father financially abused her mother, if she lives in fear of getting breast cancer like her aunts...she is this imaginary mannequin on which you're hanging imaginary clothes of your own design. As they say on the internet, "you're comparing your insides to her outsides." Stop that. For the love of all things holy (in a non-religious way), please stop that. Not because of her, not because of him, but because of you.
I know it's hard, but your resentment is hurting nobody but yourself. Your thoughts are based in insufficient evidence. It doesn't matter if you're 0% correct about your past vs. other people's past, or 50% correct, or 100% correct. All that matters is what you do now.
I'm reading Daniel Pink's The Power of Regret, and it has some things that might help you. You can use your regrets to make better decisions in the future, or you can wallow in your regret. But either way, ONLY YOU can determine the positive or negative trajectory of the rest of your life. The past might have sucked, but it didn't suck as much as it might have, and it wasn't as good as it might have been.
Get a good therapist, please, and work every day to take positive steps toward what you think about, and what you DO about your future. Many people (including yourself) are responsible what didn't feel good in your past, but only you can take the necessary actions to make it better. And you absolutely do have the power to change. (Professionally, I work every day with people whose bad experiences in their lives have lead to bad situations in their physical environments. I help them change. Change is not always easy, but it's easier than being miserable.)
Consider stop telling yourself the story of your past, at least outside of therapy. Just stop. Pretend you were born today, with a pretty impressive ability to speak a language and walk and do arithmetic, at least for a newborn. Talk to strangers to make acquaintances. Nurture acquaintances to make friends. When you're tempted to bemoan your upbringing and your constricted life and your college years, just tell yourself something...anything...else. You already know that story, and it's not a useful or helpful one. Tell yourself a better story. Recite the lyrics to a song or count to 100 in a language you're learning or talk to someone and ask about their life.
Recognize that EVERYONE'S experiences are different, and nobody's experiences are like what you see in the movies. Not relationships, not families, not college. Everyone has something that sucks. Everyone has something that someone else envies. Focus on what you want, not what you had, and you'll have more of what you want and less of what you had (and didn't want). But the only way you can have the future you want is to stop living in the past. I know it's hard, but it's easier than tearing yourself apart like this.
Sending you good thoughts.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 3:43 PM on April 18, 2022 [12 favorites]
This?
"...they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars [without being] weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities."
Is not how it was for everyone. It was not like that for me because, like most people in their teens and twenties I didn't have the requisite funds for that kind of college experience. I could and did do a bunch of idiotic hedonistic stuff. But I had to pay bills and rent, too. I paid multiple times in multiple ways for my too-exorbitant adolescent "entertainment budget." There were the near-lethal, multiday hangovers that come along with early experiments with alcohol. The STD terror and pregnancy scares. The ruinously expensive extra year of school because my attention was divided between scholarship and partying and I couldn't fix on a major or figure out that you can't skip every single session of your 7:25 A.M. math class and still hope to pass it. And there was crippling poverty, actual food insecurity, and at times very real fear of homelessness. It sounds like what you're worried about having missed is a specific kind of adolescent experience that is reserved for pretty rich people. It isn't something everybody gets to do except you. Only people with money can spend it lavishly and irresponsibly and not suffer.
I think two things. One, I think that, contrary to the way it seems based on their facebook accounts, most people were just like you were in college: buffeted by changes and periodically rendered immobile by anxiety and depression. That time of life is really hard for most people. The world is very hard on adolescent people. And most adolescent people work low-wage, schleppy, demeaning jobs that leave them poor, dispirited, and sad.
Two, I think that you, like me, can be like the people Isingthebodyelectric talks of--my fourth decade was my most enjoyably hedonistic by far, because I had both money and sense by then. I don't want to oversell it: I had not a lot of either one, but I had enough of both to avoid the hideous pitfalls I'd fallen into in my twenties. Plus I'd worked through a lot of my social anxiety and found other people like me that were fun and whom I liked and who liked me. That was much much easier in my 30s than in my teens and twenties. Quit devoting your energies to the highly-functional ex; she sounds unbearable, anyway. Go find your fun, creative, hilarious, partyfriends. You have about ten years to do this before they all realize they have to quit drinking and you all end up hanging out at the gym together instead of staying up 'til five a.m. three days a week and taking the Red Coach to New Orleans. (The gym years are fun, too, but I'm glad I had that boozy fourth decade so I'm not wondering if I missed out on anything.)
posted by Don Pepino at 4:12 PM on April 18, 2022 [9 favorites]
"...they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars [without being] weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities."
Is not how it was for everyone. It was not like that for me because, like most people in their teens and twenties I didn't have the requisite funds for that kind of college experience. I could and did do a bunch of idiotic hedonistic stuff. But I had to pay bills and rent, too. I paid multiple times in multiple ways for my too-exorbitant adolescent "entertainment budget." There were the near-lethal, multiday hangovers that come along with early experiments with alcohol. The STD terror and pregnancy scares. The ruinously expensive extra year of school because my attention was divided between scholarship and partying and I couldn't fix on a major or figure out that you can't skip every single session of your 7:25 A.M. math class and still hope to pass it. And there was crippling poverty, actual food insecurity, and at times very real fear of homelessness. It sounds like what you're worried about having missed is a specific kind of adolescent experience that is reserved for pretty rich people. It isn't something everybody gets to do except you. Only people with money can spend it lavishly and irresponsibly and not suffer.
I think two things. One, I think that, contrary to the way it seems based on their facebook accounts, most people were just like you were in college: buffeted by changes and periodically rendered immobile by anxiety and depression. That time of life is really hard for most people. The world is very hard on adolescent people. And most adolescent people work low-wage, schleppy, demeaning jobs that leave them poor, dispirited, and sad.
Two, I think that you, like me, can be like the people Isingthebodyelectric talks of--my fourth decade was my most enjoyably hedonistic by far, because I had both money and sense by then. I don't want to oversell it: I had not a lot of either one, but I had enough of both to avoid the hideous pitfalls I'd fallen into in my twenties. Plus I'd worked through a lot of my social anxiety and found other people like me that were fun and whom I liked and who liked me. That was much much easier in my 30s than in my teens and twenties. Quit devoting your energies to the highly-functional ex; she sounds unbearable, anyway. Go find your fun, creative, hilarious, partyfriends. You have about ten years to do this before they all realize they have to quit drinking and you all end up hanging out at the gym together instead of staying up 'til five a.m. three days a week and taking the Red Coach to New Orleans. (The gym years are fun, too, but I'm glad I had that boozy fourth decade so I'm not wondering if I missed out on anything.)
posted by Don Pepino at 4:12 PM on April 18, 2022 [9 favorites]
I should've read your previous jealous-of-his-ex posts.
This bit from the first one really stands out.
He said "she was really talented but not ambitious", then he sighed and said "she wanted to settle down with me but I wasn't ready and I guess we want pain".
Eyeroll.
The thing about these DTMFA metafilter sagas is, a bunch of anonymous people in a thread can't do what your counselor would do in person in this situation. If you were in therapy to solve this, the therapist would have you describe your boyfriend as you've done in these threads and then they'd cock their head in a certain way and fix you with a stare or do whatever patented move they do that causes the scales to fall from your eyes and you to hear what's just come out of your mouth, whereupon you say, "my god he is a dud"
So you will have to go back and read, not what all of us have been saying, but what you have been saying. Not about her--she's largely fictional, anyway. You only know her from stories he tells and stories she tells on facebook.
Read what you say about him.
If it were true that you like him, that you love him, that you need him in your life because he provides something valuable, that you have anything left to learn from him, then your characterization of him in the multiple threads would reveal those things. But lo. Over and over you write the opposite story. If you go back and simply read what YOU wrote, maybe as if it had been written by someone else, about a stranger, then who he actually is may become as clear to you as it is clear to your friends listening to you and to all reading what you write.
His old girlfriend didn't want to "settle down" with him. They had a frolic while they were in school but after she grew up a little there must have been a moment when she looked at him and realized she'd outgrown him. Look at the facts: she is not the settling type. He made up this more flattering version of events because who wouldn't. But look at the facts. He dumped her? It's almost impossible that that is true. Read what you've written about who he is. She would never settle for that--and you don't want to, either. That's why he comes off as a supremely punchable jerk in every character-assassinating description of him you write.
He's probably not the monster he's coming across as in these descriptions, but the fact remains you're extremely unhappy with him. It isn't fair to either of you to remain with him given that obvious fact. This relationship is doneso and it's holding you back and keeping you sad and convincing you you're stuck. Well, you're not. Kick him to the curb and free yourself. Go forth and frolic!
posted by Don Pepino at 5:22 PM on April 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
This bit from the first one really stands out.
He said "she was really talented but not ambitious", then he sighed and said "she wanted to settle down with me but I wasn't ready and I guess we want pain".
Eyeroll.
The thing about these DTMFA metafilter sagas is, a bunch of anonymous people in a thread can't do what your counselor would do in person in this situation. If you were in therapy to solve this, the therapist would have you describe your boyfriend as you've done in these threads and then they'd cock their head in a certain way and fix you with a stare or do whatever patented move they do that causes the scales to fall from your eyes and you to hear what's just come out of your mouth, whereupon you say, "my god he is a dud"
So you will have to go back and read, not what all of us have been saying, but what you have been saying. Not about her--she's largely fictional, anyway. You only know her from stories he tells and stories she tells on facebook.
Read what you say about him.
If it were true that you like him, that you love him, that you need him in your life because he provides something valuable, that you have anything left to learn from him, then your characterization of him in the multiple threads would reveal those things. But lo. Over and over you write the opposite story. If you go back and simply read what YOU wrote, maybe as if it had been written by someone else, about a stranger, then who he actually is may become as clear to you as it is clear to your friends listening to you and to all reading what you write.
His old girlfriend didn't want to "settle down" with him. They had a frolic while they were in school but after she grew up a little there must have been a moment when she looked at him and realized she'd outgrown him. Look at the facts: she is not the settling type. He made up this more flattering version of events because who wouldn't. But look at the facts. He dumped her? It's almost impossible that that is true. Read what you've written about who he is. She would never settle for that--and you don't want to, either. That's why he comes off as a supremely punchable jerk in every character-assassinating description of him you write.
He's probably not the monster he's coming across as in these descriptions, but the fact remains you're extremely unhappy with him. It isn't fair to either of you to remain with him given that obvious fact. This relationship is doneso and it's holding you back and keeping you sad and convincing you you're stuck. Well, you're not. Kick him to the curb and free yourself. Go forth and frolic!
posted by Don Pepino at 5:22 PM on April 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
This?
"...they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars [without being] weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities."
Is not how it was for everyone
Thirded, fourthed, fifthd. A lot of us went to college and had meh-to-awful experiences while silently resenting the people who flitted around living charmed lives. We didn't all have tons of sex or go to clubs or get to enjoy a life without bills or responsibilities. My college experience was pretty sub-par on a lot of levels, and I spent a lot of it resenting people who had it better/easier. But if you looked at me, in my life now (or in fact, at a lot of points since then), you would never be like oh, wow, definitely her life was ruined.
If you're in therapy you're probably just at a point where you're having to fully confront what you have lost, and that's why everything is so very very hard right now. And that's fine and normal! It is normal to grieve lost time and opportunities. But what you have to remember is that almost everyone you see, every day, everywhere, has experience with at least one big, sad, loss. Usually more! They just don't go around broadcasting it constantly and letting it suck all the joy and life out of their day. It's entirely possible to enjoy your present and plan for a future, even if some part of your past was terrible. But it takes work, and maybe medication.
And...I hesitate to say it because this isn't your question, but...break up with that fuckin' boyfriend already. He and his weird Captain Marvel ex are just something you're using to torture yourself. They are barely even real at this point, they're just monsters you keep under your bed.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 5:28 PM on April 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
"...they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars [without being] weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities."
Is not how it was for everyone
Thirded, fourthed, fifthd. A lot of us went to college and had meh-to-awful experiences while silently resenting the people who flitted around living charmed lives. We didn't all have tons of sex or go to clubs or get to enjoy a life without bills or responsibilities. My college experience was pretty sub-par on a lot of levels, and I spent a lot of it resenting people who had it better/easier. But if you looked at me, in my life now (or in fact, at a lot of points since then), you would never be like oh, wow, definitely her life was ruined.
If you're in therapy you're probably just at a point where you're having to fully confront what you have lost, and that's why everything is so very very hard right now. And that's fine and normal! It is normal to grieve lost time and opportunities. But what you have to remember is that almost everyone you see, every day, everywhere, has experience with at least one big, sad, loss. Usually more! They just don't go around broadcasting it constantly and letting it suck all the joy and life out of their day. It's entirely possible to enjoy your present and plan for a future, even if some part of your past was terrible. But it takes work, and maybe medication.
And...I hesitate to say it because this isn't your question, but...break up with that fuckin' boyfriend already. He and his weird Captain Marvel ex are just something you're using to torture yourself. They are barely even real at this point, they're just monsters you keep under your bed.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 5:28 PM on April 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
Hah, on preview, what Don Pepino says. Heed them, they are wise. Your boyfriend sounds like a whole toolbag.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 5:33 PM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 5:33 PM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
I feel tormented by the feeling that I missed out on a formative young adult experience and that the window has closed forever.
Let's imagine that this is true (it's not, but let's imagine it anyway). Let's imagine you've missed out on a necessary and sufficient component of happiness, that it is time-sensitive, and that you therefore definitionally will never have access to it again. Will it change anything to torment yourself about it constantly? Will that make time travel possible? Will it bring back the ability to make choices you didn't make, or have a family of origin you didn't have?
This vision of perfect early adulthood is a fantasy you've forged as a weapon against yourself; you're dwelling on it because dwelling on it is the point, because that's what it's for. It's something you've created to dwell on because you don't feel comfortable or at home if someone isn't telling you that you don't measure up, so you take over the job yourself (although frankly your boyfriend is making a good go of it too). That's a habit of mind that your upbringing prepared you for, and it sucks and it's not fair and I'm sorry. But if that vision weren't a fantasy, if you were truly having a reasonable and proportionate response to a definitive loss, then you would have to recognize that you can't change anything by harping on that loss every minute of your life.
You certainly have reason to grieve the happy childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood that you didn't get, regardless of whether everyone else has it (they don't), regardless of whether it's the only thing that can make a person whole (it isn't). But, to oversimplify: every other grief eventually moves out of the bargaining stage. Why hasn't yours? What are you getting from keeping it here?
posted by babelfish at 6:03 PM on April 18, 2022 [15 favorites]
Let's imagine that this is true (it's not, but let's imagine it anyway). Let's imagine you've missed out on a necessary and sufficient component of happiness, that it is time-sensitive, and that you therefore definitionally will never have access to it again. Will it change anything to torment yourself about it constantly? Will that make time travel possible? Will it bring back the ability to make choices you didn't make, or have a family of origin you didn't have?
This vision of perfect early adulthood is a fantasy you've forged as a weapon against yourself; you're dwelling on it because dwelling on it is the point, because that's what it's for. It's something you've created to dwell on because you don't feel comfortable or at home if someone isn't telling you that you don't measure up, so you take over the job yourself (although frankly your boyfriend is making a good go of it too). That's a habit of mind that your upbringing prepared you for, and it sucks and it's not fair and I'm sorry. But if that vision weren't a fantasy, if you were truly having a reasonable and proportionate response to a definitive loss, then you would have to recognize that you can't change anything by harping on that loss every minute of your life.
You certainly have reason to grieve the happy childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood that you didn't get, regardless of whether everyone else has it (they don't), regardless of whether it's the only thing that can make a person whole (it isn't). But, to oversimplify: every other grief eventually moves out of the bargaining stage. Why hasn't yours? What are you getting from keeping it here?
posted by babelfish at 6:03 PM on April 18, 2022 [15 favorites]
"...they lived away from their parents and could do almost anything they wanted; eat whenever, hang out wherever, have sex, visit places, go clubbing, go to bars [without being] weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities."
This was not the case for me either, for the record, and I am someone who comes from the same socioeconomic background I am inferring your boyfriend and his ex come from.
I hated college, it sucked. I had friends, kind of, but I'm not in touch with any of them and this year will be my 15 year reunion, I will not be attending. I am subscribed to my college's alumni quarterly publication only to hate-read the class notes. My only relationship in college was toxic as hell with a guy who refused to break up with his hometown girlfriend. I was depressed and drank too much and spent a lot of time alone. I graduated. I was glad when it was done.
I didn't find the kind of independence and community you are describing until my early 30s when I began pursuing music and most of my nearest and dearest now are from that. I've had a few relationships, some casual, some less so, one extremely bad, and ultimately ended up with the love of my life who I met in my first job after I graduated college.
Life is full of these surprises. Good ones. Ones that upend your life in a good way and open your heart and your world and IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY HAPPEN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 18-22 ON A BLOODY COLLEGE CAMPUS.
I am sorry, genuinely, for the abuse and misery you grew up in. I am South Asian, my parents were not like your folks but I have friends who did grow up in circumstances like yours. I have seen it, and it hurts my heart.
But you have to stop telling yourself this story that it all would have been better if you'd lived in a dorm and gone bar hopping and bed hopping and all this other stuff you assume everyone did in college.
Take steps to live your best life now. Starting by getting rid of this boyfriend with whom you are clearly unhappy who says unkind things to you and reinforces this narrative you have created around the mythic beautiful university experience. Stay in therapy. Find hobbies or sports or music or other things that make you happy and you will find your people there, and maybe a partner too. It's never too late.
posted by nayantara at 6:18 PM on April 18, 2022 [6 favorites]
This was not the case for me either, for the record, and I am someone who comes from the same socioeconomic background I am inferring your boyfriend and his ex come from.
I hated college, it sucked. I had friends, kind of, but I'm not in touch with any of them and this year will be my 15 year reunion, I will not be attending. I am subscribed to my college's alumni quarterly publication only to hate-read the class notes. My only relationship in college was toxic as hell with a guy who refused to break up with his hometown girlfriend. I was depressed and drank too much and spent a lot of time alone. I graduated. I was glad when it was done.
I didn't find the kind of independence and community you are describing until my early 30s when I began pursuing music and most of my nearest and dearest now are from that. I've had a few relationships, some casual, some less so, one extremely bad, and ultimately ended up with the love of my life who I met in my first job after I graduated college.
Life is full of these surprises. Good ones. Ones that upend your life in a good way and open your heart and your world and IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY HAPPEN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 18-22 ON A BLOODY COLLEGE CAMPUS.
I am sorry, genuinely, for the abuse and misery you grew up in. I am South Asian, my parents were not like your folks but I have friends who did grow up in circumstances like yours. I have seen it, and it hurts my heart.
But you have to stop telling yourself this story that it all would have been better if you'd lived in a dorm and gone bar hopping and bed hopping and all this other stuff you assume everyone did in college.
Take steps to live your best life now. Starting by getting rid of this boyfriend with whom you are clearly unhappy who says unkind things to you and reinforces this narrative you have created around the mythic beautiful university experience. Stay in therapy. Find hobbies or sports or music or other things that make you happy and you will find your people there, and maybe a partner too. It's never too late.
posted by nayantara at 6:18 PM on April 18, 2022 [6 favorites]
Is this your boyfriend from your previous posts? If so, you feel like you missed out on formative young experiences because you’re missing out on them now. You are mired in a relationship with someone who makes you feel terrible, and part of you is aching to break away from it and have the life of support and joy and dignity that all people deserve.
But this terrible dynamic is also what feels knowable and normal to you on another level because of the abuse you endured. These ideas are too overwhelming to confront at once, and so instead you are pushing that dissonance onto this fantasy of what your college years could have been like. You’re ruminating on that because it is safer than ruminating on what is currently occurring, which is the exact same thing: not having the life you want because someone is harming you.
You can make friends, go on dates, have adventures, be on a damn squash team right now. You can have all those formative experiences, plenty of 33-year-olds are doing so today and every day! But you won’t have them while tethered to this shabby kind of love you can’t.
posted by Charity Garfein at 6:36 PM on April 18, 2022 [22 favorites]
But this terrible dynamic is also what feels knowable and normal to you on another level because of the abuse you endured. These ideas are too overwhelming to confront at once, and so instead you are pushing that dissonance onto this fantasy of what your college years could have been like. You’re ruminating on that because it is safer than ruminating on what is currently occurring, which is the exact same thing: not having the life you want because someone is harming you.
You can make friends, go on dates, have adventures, be on a damn squash team right now. You can have all those formative experiences, plenty of 33-year-olds are doing so today and every day! But you won’t have them while tethered to this shabby kind of love you can’t.
posted by Charity Garfein at 6:36 PM on April 18, 2022 [22 favorites]
Oh, wow, what Charity Garfein said just rings so true to me. That's what your story about missing University being "missing the window" and a ceiling on your forever happiness is doing for you now: it's letting you stay where you are, in something that is better than you had before, and convince yourself that you don't need to make the terrifying leap again of reaching for more - it won't work anyway, where you are now is as good as you can expect, etc.
You don't have to break up with your boyfriend necessarily, you don't have to wait on that before you can start. Just try to live your fullest life. Get out there and do the things that you're drawn to do, try a bunch of sports or dance groups or meetups, look in the local paper for whatever community festivals or art shows or theater performances are happening and go check it out. Even in time of pandemic you can find some things that may interest you to try. It's not about the boyfriend, so don't let him stop you either. Maybe he'll be awesome and encouraging and have great ideas. Or maybe he'll get annoyed at you for being too busy or having hobbies he doesn't share and that'll be an answer too. But you can decide to go live that life - it's a gift to him to reach for it and not treat him like a shackle, give him the chance to surprise you for the better. And if he doesn't treat you well, that will become more obvious too.
posted by Lady Li at 7:35 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
You don't have to break up with your boyfriend necessarily, you don't have to wait on that before you can start. Just try to live your fullest life. Get out there and do the things that you're drawn to do, try a bunch of sports or dance groups or meetups, look in the local paper for whatever community festivals or art shows or theater performances are happening and go check it out. Even in time of pandemic you can find some things that may interest you to try. It's not about the boyfriend, so don't let him stop you either. Maybe he'll be awesome and encouraging and have great ideas. Or maybe he'll get annoyed at you for being too busy or having hobbies he doesn't share and that'll be an answer too. But you can decide to go live that life - it's a gift to him to reach for it and not treat him like a shackle, give him the chance to surprise you for the better. And if he doesn't treat you well, that will become more obvious too.
posted by Lady Li at 7:35 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Your grief is not excessive or false or wrong, it just is. You're entitled to feel whatever you feel and there are no feelings police officers telling you to stop.
What you're doing, however, is very harmful: ruminating about your losses, rueing what might have been, refusing to allow your wounds to heal, failing to make the most of the life you do have, stalling your personal growth, going around in circles wondering what you should have could have would have been if only...
Your feelings aren't the issue. Instead make one good change in what you DO next. Like, sign up as a regular weekly volunteer at your local hospice or animal shelter - committing to this one good action which is focused on something other than your own rumination and rueing and stalling and circling is going to create meaningful change in your life. When you change what you're doing even just by making one firm commitment per week to focus on helping someone else, you'll create the necessary momentum to escape your doom-spiral thoughts enough to make other better choices in what you do the rest of the week as well.
Don't use your feelings as the excuse to keep doing the harmful things you're doing. Let your feelings be.
posted by MiraK at 7:43 PM on April 18, 2022 [11 favorites]
What you're doing, however, is very harmful: ruminating about your losses, rueing what might have been, refusing to allow your wounds to heal, failing to make the most of the life you do have, stalling your personal growth, going around in circles wondering what you should have could have would have been if only...
Your feelings aren't the issue. Instead make one good change in what you DO next. Like, sign up as a regular weekly volunteer at your local hospice or animal shelter - committing to this one good action which is focused on something other than your own rumination and rueing and stalling and circling is going to create meaningful change in your life. When you change what you're doing even just by making one firm commitment per week to focus on helping someone else, you'll create the necessary momentum to escape your doom-spiral thoughts enough to make other better choices in what you do the rest of the week as well.
Don't use your feelings as the excuse to keep doing the harmful things you're doing. Let your feelings be.
posted by MiraK at 7:43 PM on April 18, 2022 [11 favorites]
Regrets are really hard. I have a lot of regrets that mostly revolve around decisions my parents made for me until I was 21 and they piss me off to this day because of who I could be now, how successful, how happy, blah blah blah. The only thing we can do is make the best of what we have today.
I'd be super-stoked to have a PhD in Physics now but it didn't happen for various reasons, but I found work that I enjoy that I got based on the skills and education I have. I think every adult has regrets and part of growing up is being able to find counter-actions that will quiet them.
I will never not recommend finding a therapist to talk things through with.
A couple other thoughts...
1. This is a datapoint you may find relevant: one huge thing I learned for the first time in college was about people whose identities were different from mine: LBGTQA, differently-abled, and many others. It was a big step in my education and learning not to prejudge people new to me.
Recently I became good friends with a young woman who had voluntarily left LDS and one of the things that impresses me about her is that in rejecting her church she became totally non-judgmental of people with experiences different from hers. When she left the church she wiped her slate of prejudices clean.
I don't know if that makes sense or if I'm explaining it well, but you've gained a major formative experience a lot of people get in college just by leaving your parents' home.
2. It cannot compare to the adult sense of freedom which is weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities.
I know I'm not the only one who had a burden of bills and rent when I was in college. That was part of leaving my parents' home and I wouldn't have done it any other way. I'm guessing that whenever you chose to leave your parents' home in college or afterwards you would have had to pay most of your own bills.
posted by bendy at 7:50 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'd be super-stoked to have a PhD in Physics now but it didn't happen for various reasons, but I found work that I enjoy that I got based on the skills and education I have. I think every adult has regrets and part of growing up is being able to find counter-actions that will quiet them.
I will never not recommend finding a therapist to talk things through with.
A couple other thoughts...
1. This is a datapoint you may find relevant: one huge thing I learned for the first time in college was about people whose identities were different from mine: LBGTQA, differently-abled, and many others. It was a big step in my education and learning not to prejudge people new to me.
Recently I became good friends with a young woman who had voluntarily left LDS and one of the things that impresses me about her is that in rejecting her church she became totally non-judgmental of people with experiences different from hers. When she left the church she wiped her slate of prejudices clean.
I don't know if that makes sense or if I'm explaining it well, but you've gained a major formative experience a lot of people get in college just by leaving your parents' home.
2. It cannot compare to the adult sense of freedom which is weighed down by the burden of bills and rent and other responsibilities.
I know I'm not the only one who had a burden of bills and rent when I was in college. That was part of leaving my parents' home and I wouldn't have done it any other way. I'm guessing that whenever you chose to leave your parents' home in college or afterwards you would have had to pay most of your own bills.
posted by bendy at 7:50 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for all your responses.
I just wanted to add to the original post an important point. I think I haven't developed a proper sense of self due to my abusive and controlled upbringing and not having escaped earlier.
I am now tasked with creating myself, building my low self esteem, learning to love myself, learning to form connections. What people normally develop over the course of the first 25 years of their life with the help of their parents, I am having to learn on my own at 33 and starting from a really bad place too, on my own.
I think the fear and dread this instils in me, the difficulty of it is so enormous that rather than trying to make improvements it is easier to regret the past and wish I had moved out for university and started this journey back then. So yes, these thought patterns are perhaps an avoidance strategy, a wish that my younger self took on this challenge rather than my present self. I recognise it would have likely been easier when I was younger; it is easier to develop friendships and romances at uni than in adult life.
My boyfriend has helped me improve in huge ways in the time I've been with him. I also tend to agree with his opinion of me, therefore I do trust his opinion of her. I am less accomplished, successful, motivated and high achieving than his ex. Those are just facts, sadly. Her LinkedIn and Facebook show that what he said about her accomplishments is absolutely true. Why would he then lie about the other stuff about her character?
There is also a part of me that realises I might need this obsessive comparison with the ex to push myself to achieve and do better in life. Its horrible to say, but it's actually working. I am taking actions, real practical ones as a result of this jealousy.
posted by Sunflower88 at 12:27 AM on April 19, 2022
I just wanted to add to the original post an important point. I think I haven't developed a proper sense of self due to my abusive and controlled upbringing and not having escaped earlier.
I am now tasked with creating myself, building my low self esteem, learning to love myself, learning to form connections. What people normally develop over the course of the first 25 years of their life with the help of their parents, I am having to learn on my own at 33 and starting from a really bad place too, on my own.
I think the fear and dread this instils in me, the difficulty of it is so enormous that rather than trying to make improvements it is easier to regret the past and wish I had moved out for university and started this journey back then. So yes, these thought patterns are perhaps an avoidance strategy, a wish that my younger self took on this challenge rather than my present self. I recognise it would have likely been easier when I was younger; it is easier to develop friendships and romances at uni than in adult life.
My boyfriend has helped me improve in huge ways in the time I've been with him. I also tend to agree with his opinion of me, therefore I do trust his opinion of her. I am less accomplished, successful, motivated and high achieving than his ex. Those are just facts, sadly. Her LinkedIn and Facebook show that what he said about her accomplishments is absolutely true. Why would he then lie about the other stuff about her character?
There is also a part of me that realises I might need this obsessive comparison with the ex to push myself to achieve and do better in life. Its horrible to say, but it's actually working. I am taking actions, real practical ones as a result of this jealousy.
posted by Sunflower88 at 12:27 AM on April 19, 2022
You are right in large measure. College wouldn't have been what it was for her, but you would have started this painful growth process earlier.
But it is also true that you may not have learned things that you learned from the experiences that you had. You may have relapsed and gone home again. Also, the pain you endured can be a source of compassion and strength. You might think about what you learned -- It may help if you can find a narrative about how you went through darkness and emerged strong as a result.
posted by slidell at 1:20 AM on April 19, 2022
But it is also true that you may not have learned things that you learned from the experiences that you had. You may have relapsed and gone home again. Also, the pain you endured can be a source of compassion and strength. You might think about what you learned -- It may help if you can find a narrative about how you went through darkness and emerged strong as a result.
posted by slidell at 1:20 AM on April 19, 2022
It's only now, after seeing her in realising this wasn't my style at all. I also would have loved to celebrate my healthy attractive blossoming body and worn those kinds of clothes. It doesn't feel the same to do this at 33.
I'm also jealous of the things they did together. They went sky diving together, she ran the London marathon. He cycled everywhere.
It's striking to me that while I agree that there are college experiences that you might have trouble recreating in your 30s, none of the things you listed here are even slightly odd to be doing at your (our, I'm 34) age.
Anyway, if it helps-- I understand where you're coming from and I don't want to diminish the pain of what you experienced during your younger years! But-- count me as one more person who didn't have that fairytale college experience. I worried about money and agonized over choices (should I transfer, what should I major in, what am I going to do after college). But mostly I had a hard time making friends, I felt out of place, I beat myself up for not having that time of coming out of your shell and finding your people that I thought everyone had in college.
I wish I had made those Hollywood lifelong friendships, but I'm reality I am not in touch with anyone from college ten years later. I had some fun times but I also carry a lot of regret for the things I didn't do in college and I'm trying to do some of those things now.
posted by geegollygosh at 4:39 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm also jealous of the things they did together. They went sky diving together, she ran the London marathon. He cycled everywhere.
It's striking to me that while I agree that there are college experiences that you might have trouble recreating in your 30s, none of the things you listed here are even slightly odd to be doing at your (our, I'm 34) age.
Anyway, if it helps-- I understand where you're coming from and I don't want to diminish the pain of what you experienced during your younger years! But-- count me as one more person who didn't have that fairytale college experience. I worried about money and agonized over choices (should I transfer, what should I major in, what am I going to do after college). But mostly I had a hard time making friends, I felt out of place, I beat myself up for not having that time of coming out of your shell and finding your people that I thought everyone had in college.
I wish I had made those Hollywood lifelong friendships, but I'm reality I am not in touch with anyone from college ten years later. I had some fun times but I also carry a lot of regret for the things I didn't do in college and I'm trying to do some of those things now.
posted by geegollygosh at 4:39 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
All I know is that I feel like everything I experience now is pointless because I didn't get to experience it when I was in the youthful prime of my life 18/19. I know this doesn't make sense and that 33 is still young. But something adamantly and resolutely inside me says it's just not the same.
It's not pointless. There is nothing at all particularly special about 18/19. People are barely adults at that age.
You're right in that it's not the same because you are older and have been colored by the abusive life experiences you had in your 20s. But my 20s sucked too. I graduated into the recession. I struggled to find work. I was stressed about money. Every ignored job application, every interview that led to a ghosting, made me question my worth to society. These things were stressful and painful.
But I came out of it finally stronger, even though I also came out of it mentally damaged. And I think you did too, when you finally broke free. You are not worthless without your boyfriend. Your parents brainwashed you into thinking that you are. And your boyfriend's negative comments about you are more brainwashing. If you feel you've improved with his influence I believe you. If you are happier with yourself now because of his influence that's good.
But you don't sound happier with yourself. You sound just as miserable, if not more so. And that's because your motivation to "improve" is jealousy of a woman he dated over a decade ago.
Maybe he's not lying about her skills and abilities and accomplishments. Fine. Good for her. But it is totally unhealthy and unhelpful for him to compare you to her, especially a version of her she may not be anymore. Just because she's accomplished now doesn't mean she's the same girl he dated ten years ago. People change. Their priorities change. They grow up.
He's keeping you bogged in his past by comparing her to you. That in turn is keeping you bogged in YOUR past. From your prior questions about this guy, you've said that he constantly says she's better than both of you, she's smarter than both of you, and he is very afraid of his family's opinion of yours which makes him hesitate to take this relationship further into a deeper commitment. This is judgemental and disrespectful to you. You are not your family, and he thinks his family's relative lack of dysfunction makes them and him by extension superior to you. This is classic desi man misogyny. This is toxic as fuck. This will not help you actually be better. This is "log kya kahenge" which is the WORST of toxic Indian families.
You feel comfortable with him telling you in so many words that
you are worthless because that's what your family made you believe. Even if you'd had this mythical beautiful college experience, that would not change. We are informed by our trauma and our family culture. Wherever you go, there you are. College sucked for me because of my own unresolved trauma.
Stop fixating on a version of college that multiple people here have told you is not a universal or realistic one. You can't flip a switch, but you can take steps to heal from your trauma. Trauma focused therapy will help. So will leaving a relationship with a man who reinforces your trauma instead of supporting you in overcoming it.
There is nothing special about the ages of 18/19. Nothing.
posted by nayantara at 5:48 AM on April 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's not pointless. There is nothing at all particularly special about 18/19. People are barely adults at that age.
You're right in that it's not the same because you are older and have been colored by the abusive life experiences you had in your 20s. But my 20s sucked too. I graduated into the recession. I struggled to find work. I was stressed about money. Every ignored job application, every interview that led to a ghosting, made me question my worth to society. These things were stressful and painful.
But I came out of it finally stronger, even though I also came out of it mentally damaged. And I think you did too, when you finally broke free. You are not worthless without your boyfriend. Your parents brainwashed you into thinking that you are. And your boyfriend's negative comments about you are more brainwashing. If you feel you've improved with his influence I believe you. If you are happier with yourself now because of his influence that's good.
But you don't sound happier with yourself. You sound just as miserable, if not more so. And that's because your motivation to "improve" is jealousy of a woman he dated over a decade ago.
Maybe he's not lying about her skills and abilities and accomplishments. Fine. Good for her. But it is totally unhealthy and unhelpful for him to compare you to her, especially a version of her she may not be anymore. Just because she's accomplished now doesn't mean she's the same girl he dated ten years ago. People change. Their priorities change. They grow up.
He's keeping you bogged in his past by comparing her to you. That in turn is keeping you bogged in YOUR past. From your prior questions about this guy, you've said that he constantly says she's better than both of you, she's smarter than both of you, and he is very afraid of his family's opinion of yours which makes him hesitate to take this relationship further into a deeper commitment. This is judgemental and disrespectful to you. You are not your family, and he thinks his family's relative lack of dysfunction makes them and him by extension superior to you. This is classic desi man misogyny. This is toxic as fuck. This will not help you actually be better. This is "log kya kahenge" which is the WORST of toxic Indian families.
You feel comfortable with him telling you in so many words that
you are worthless because that's what your family made you believe. Even if you'd had this mythical beautiful college experience, that would not change. We are informed by our trauma and our family culture. Wherever you go, there you are. College sucked for me because of my own unresolved trauma.
Stop fixating on a version of college that multiple people here have told you is not a universal or realistic one. You can't flip a switch, but you can take steps to heal from your trauma. Trauma focused therapy will help. So will leaving a relationship with a man who reinforces your trauma instead of supporting you in overcoming it.
There is nothing special about the ages of 18/19. Nothing.
posted by nayantara at 5:48 AM on April 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
And you may want to consider that those of us imploring you to abandon the mythical college experience fantasy because we finally became into our own when we were your age now are not talking out of our asses. It's true for us. Many of us here also experienced trauma. We found ourselves when we were in our 30s. This is probably my own trauma talking, but everytime you glorify that young age range you are invalidating the happier life I am telling you I 100% found in my 30s. That's why I keep saying 18/19 isn't special. It's not. The age at which you learn to love yourself without the approval of others is the special age. For me, that was 31. I'm 37 now. I have still struggled with my trauma. I had a severe mental health crisis three years ago due to my trauma. I came out of it stronger because I felt I deserved a good life. It benefitted my relationship. My boyfriend supported me the whole way, not by comparing me to other more functional people, but by just being kind, encouraging, and supportive of my therapeutic journey. Would your boyfriend stand by you this way if you had a crisis? Based on what you tell us, I think the answer is no. I think he'd run for the hills. Log kya kahenge.
Focus on therapy and improving for yourself, not for him, and not based on some woman you don't know that he dated a decade ago.
posted by nayantara at 5:58 AM on April 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Focus on therapy and improving for yourself, not for him, and not based on some woman you don't know that he dated a decade ago.
posted by nayantara at 5:58 AM on April 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
This might sound ridiculous but I feel that I can never be a whole person for this reason, not in the way those people who have had the experience can.
That is definitely melodramatic. 99% of the people on this planet will never even have the chance to have those experiences, and you can rest assured that many of them are or will be whole people.
Grief has made your world very small, which is usually the way grief works. You need to process as you can process, but don’t lose track of the fact that there are 7 billion life stories out there.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:56 AM on April 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
That is definitely melodramatic. 99% of the people on this planet will never even have the chance to have those experiences, and you can rest assured that many of them are or will be whole people.
Grief has made your world very small, which is usually the way grief works. You need to process as you can process, but don’t lose track of the fact that there are 7 billion life stories out there.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:56 AM on April 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Best answer: You had it harder than others, and it wasn't fair, and of course you're feeling some way about it. That's pretty natural. You just escaped a horrible trap and you had to fight tooth and nails to do it - of course you're still reeling. You're licking your wounds.
See, I suspect this is what's happening - you're newly free, but you don't feel free yet, and you're looking for reasons why. You've finally made it to the port, but you still can't see a destination, so you tell yourself you missed the boat. But I don't think that's the reason. I think it's much more likely that you just need a bit more time to reorient yourself. You were trapped in the dark for so long, of course you can't see any promising perspectives yet - your eyes first need to get used to the light!
But that means more waiting, more hoping, more risk of hoping in vain. Hope is so exhausting and can bring so much pain. After a while it gets very tempting to give it up. I think that's what you're trying to do here, you want to rationalize your resignation and for that purpose, you might be buying a bit too much into the fetishization of youth.
But the glamour of youth is mostly a product of editing. Our notions of youth are inevitably distorted - not just because the festishization of youth is a multi-billion dollar business. Not just because it's the bedrock of patriarchy (no better way to trap a woman in a thankless role than making her feel she's out of options after 25) . But the people who had a shitty time just don't like to talk about it much, and the people who have fond memories will increasingly glorify them as time passes - the good gets heightened in the retelling, the dull and tiresome gets whittled away; that's just the way memory works if you actually want to remember; each act of remembering falsifies the memory a bit more. And the Don Drapers of this world know how to exploit that for commercial purposes.
A weird thing I've noticed about myself - I think a lot less about my past now that I have a lot more of it. But maybe it's not that weird. I have a well worn story of how I came to be who I am; it's not terribly exciting (mercifully! I should remember to be more grateful for that), but it makes sense to me, and that's really all it has to do. You're still finding yourself, of course you're obsessed with your past. Once you're somewhat at peace with where you are in your life, your concern for the past will diminish. People tend to have a strong recency bias when they are not currently hunting for a narrative. "It will shock you how much this never happened" - Don Draper might sell nostalgia to the unwashed masses, but that's what he tells you if he actually likes you. (Mad Men was one of my favourite shows). It's not always the healthiest strategy either, but it works. I'm confident you can find a good middle ground.
Lots of people spend some part of their youth in a bit of a wilderness. They become parents too early, they get injured or sick, they have a burnout, get distracted by drama, stay too long in jobs and relationships. Life holds so many traps. And traps are not designed to be easy to spot or easy to escape. You did it anyway. And you're obviously not giving yourself enough credit for that. Start with that! It's not a fun first chapter, but plenty meaningful.
posted by sohalt at 8:26 AM on April 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
See, I suspect this is what's happening - you're newly free, but you don't feel free yet, and you're looking for reasons why. You've finally made it to the port, but you still can't see a destination, so you tell yourself you missed the boat. But I don't think that's the reason. I think it's much more likely that you just need a bit more time to reorient yourself. You were trapped in the dark for so long, of course you can't see any promising perspectives yet - your eyes first need to get used to the light!
But that means more waiting, more hoping, more risk of hoping in vain. Hope is so exhausting and can bring so much pain. After a while it gets very tempting to give it up. I think that's what you're trying to do here, you want to rationalize your resignation and for that purpose, you might be buying a bit too much into the fetishization of youth.
But the glamour of youth is mostly a product of editing. Our notions of youth are inevitably distorted - not just because the festishization of youth is a multi-billion dollar business. Not just because it's the bedrock of patriarchy (no better way to trap a woman in a thankless role than making her feel she's out of options after 25) . But the people who had a shitty time just don't like to talk about it much, and the people who have fond memories will increasingly glorify them as time passes - the good gets heightened in the retelling, the dull and tiresome gets whittled away; that's just the way memory works if you actually want to remember; each act of remembering falsifies the memory a bit more. And the Don Drapers of this world know how to exploit that for commercial purposes.
A weird thing I've noticed about myself - I think a lot less about my past now that I have a lot more of it. But maybe it's not that weird. I have a well worn story of how I came to be who I am; it's not terribly exciting (mercifully! I should remember to be more grateful for that), but it makes sense to me, and that's really all it has to do. You're still finding yourself, of course you're obsessed with your past. Once you're somewhat at peace with where you are in your life, your concern for the past will diminish. People tend to have a strong recency bias when they are not currently hunting for a narrative. "It will shock you how much this never happened" - Don Draper might sell nostalgia to the unwashed masses, but that's what he tells you if he actually likes you. (Mad Men was one of my favourite shows). It's not always the healthiest strategy either, but it works. I'm confident you can find a good middle ground.
Lots of people spend some part of their youth in a bit of a wilderness. They become parents too early, they get injured or sick, they have a burnout, get distracted by drama, stay too long in jobs and relationships. Life holds so many traps. And traps are not designed to be easy to spot or easy to escape. You did it anyway. And you're obviously not giving yourself enough credit for that. Start with that! It's not a fun first chapter, but plenty meaningful.
posted by sohalt at 8:26 AM on April 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Also, if the ex is inspiring you to try out new things yourself, that's great actually! It's useful to have role models! Why not frame that inspiration as admiration rather than jealousy? (You should probably still tell your boyfriend to cut it out about her, if he keeps raving about her to you unprovoked; that does seem sketchy to me.)
One of the smarter things I started to do when I was younger was seeking out other women I found a bit intimidating at first. Maybe a bit of it was jealousy too, but the admiration part was also genuine and I just decided to focus on that. We didn't always become close friends, but I did often learn a lot. I often got to know them well enough to see that their life also held many struggles and regrets and that did help me put things in perspective.
I'm not really suggesting you befriend the ex (or maybe just do that after you ditch the boyfriend, in case you might be considering that), but she seems to represent something very specific to you, and you might find another woman who hits a similiar note and you might be able to work something out.
posted by sohalt at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
One of the smarter things I started to do when I was younger was seeking out other women I found a bit intimidating at first. Maybe a bit of it was jealousy too, but the admiration part was also genuine and I just decided to focus on that. We didn't always become close friends, but I did often learn a lot. I often got to know them well enough to see that their life also held many struggles and regrets and that did help me put things in perspective.
I'm not really suggesting you befriend the ex (or maybe just do that after you ditch the boyfriend, in case you might be considering that), but she seems to represent something very specific to you, and you might find another woman who hits a similiar note and you might be able to work something out.
posted by sohalt at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
From following along with your questions I just want to say it's admirable to see how you're doing such great and challenging work on realising where you are in your life and processing all the really difficult things that have happened to you.
It is, still, rather upsetting (even as an internet stranger) to read these words: "then my boyfriend might love me more; he might love me in the way he loves and speaks of his ex". Can you imagine a friend, someone you love and care about, talking about herself and her relationship in these terms? Wouldn't you tell her she deserves to be loved fully and for who she is? That she'd be better off alone than with a boyfriend who undermines her sense of self so thoroughly and excoriatingly?
You have done amazingly to be where you are despite everything that has been in your way. It is very sad that you are being kept chained to this woman by tortuous comparison. Seriously, if she is so bloody wonderful why is he not with her? He is being very cruel. He is not a good partner. He is actively undermining your self esteem to keep you with him.
Life is bigger than you, your boyfriend, and his ex. You don't have to go to Somalia to find examples of people who you can relate to, admire, look up to, and find motivation from who aren't this ex girlfriend who keeps pushing all of your buttons. Please widen your sphere. A good place to start is exiting this horrible threesome that is holding you in such an unhealthy worldview and opinion of your self.
posted by Balthamos at 9:07 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
It is, still, rather upsetting (even as an internet stranger) to read these words: "then my boyfriend might love me more; he might love me in the way he loves and speaks of his ex". Can you imagine a friend, someone you love and care about, talking about herself and her relationship in these terms? Wouldn't you tell her she deserves to be loved fully and for who she is? That she'd be better off alone than with a boyfriend who undermines her sense of self so thoroughly and excoriatingly?
You have done amazingly to be where you are despite everything that has been in your way. It is very sad that you are being kept chained to this woman by tortuous comparison. Seriously, if she is so bloody wonderful why is he not with her? He is being very cruel. He is not a good partner. He is actively undermining your self esteem to keep you with him.
Life is bigger than you, your boyfriend, and his ex. You don't have to go to Somalia to find examples of people who you can relate to, admire, look up to, and find motivation from who aren't this ex girlfriend who keeps pushing all of your buttons. Please widen your sphere. A good place to start is exiting this horrible threesome that is holding you in such an unhealthy worldview and opinion of your self.
posted by Balthamos at 9:07 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
We are all seeing and saying mostly the same thing here. If you want to heal and feel better:
Break up with your boyfriend.
(I suspect you are so attached to him because he's replaced your parents as the primary critical attachment figure in your life. You aren't going to be able to move forward until you disconnect from people who put you down, whether parents or lovers.)
Stop looking at anything to do with him or his ex. Block them, unfollow, whatever. Whatever you have saved, remove. You can't remove the memories, but you can start to replace them by filling your life with positive relationships and experiences.
Here's the thing: you know how you are lamenting your wasted college years? If you don't shift your focus, then in another five years you are going to regret wasting THIS TIME RIGHT NOW in your life, spent ruminating over this bad dude and his ex.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:15 AM on April 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
Break up with your boyfriend.
(I suspect you are so attached to him because he's replaced your parents as the primary critical attachment figure in your life. You aren't going to be able to move forward until you disconnect from people who put you down, whether parents or lovers.)
Stop looking at anything to do with him or his ex. Block them, unfollow, whatever. Whatever you have saved, remove. You can't remove the memories, but you can start to replace them by filling your life with positive relationships and experiences.
Here's the thing: you know how you are lamenting your wasted college years? If you don't shift your focus, then in another five years you are going to regret wasting THIS TIME RIGHT NOW in your life, spent ruminating over this bad dude and his ex.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:15 AM on April 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
If I had got it *right*, then my boyfriend might love me more; he might love me in the way he loves and speaks of his ex.
Break up with him now or in a couple of years you're going to come back with another post with all the same grief, but this time it's going to be about how your life would be so much better if only you'd ditched your shitty bf earlier.
I'm serious. I had an ex like this and I regret all the time I wasted on him. If you're sad that you've lost your youth, let me tell you, every additional moment you spend with this guy, you're losing even more of it. FUCK THIS GUY.
posted by airmail at 9:26 AM on April 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
Break up with him now or in a couple of years you're going to come back with another post with all the same grief, but this time it's going to be about how your life would be so much better if only you'd ditched your shitty bf earlier.
I'm serious. I had an ex like this and I regret all the time I wasted on him. If you're sad that you've lost your youth, let me tell you, every additional moment you spend with this guy, you're losing even more of it. FUCK THIS GUY.
posted by airmail at 9:26 AM on April 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
And, if you are not going to break up with the guy, at the very least: stop looking at anything to do with her and draw a firm boundary with him about speaking about her.
But I think you're not going to emerge from this until you start writing your own, positive story about yourself.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:27 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
But I think you're not going to emerge from this until you start writing your own, positive story about yourself.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:27 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I know that 99% of the world will never have access to those opportunities but we compare ourselves to those most similar to us. She is *directly* comparable to me,
No, she very much isn't. Your home life was *extremely* different by your own account.
My point about 99% has nothing to do with counting your blessings, it's that people go through a near infinite number of upbringings and many of them become whole. At this age we have no idea if it's even worked out for your immediate circle -- when their first marriages end up in bitter custody battles you may re-evaluate how "complete" they are.
Your relationships with your family have shaped who you are far more than any prep school. If you want to find people who are *directly* comparable to you, find people who have gone through what you did. There are (regrettably) many of them, so many that there are support groups in some communities.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:49 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
No, she very much isn't. Your home life was *extremely* different by your own account.
My point about 99% has nothing to do with counting your blessings, it's that people go through a near infinite number of upbringings and many of them become whole. At this age we have no idea if it's even worked out for your immediate circle -- when their first marriages end up in bitter custody battles you may re-evaluate how "complete" they are.
Your relationships with your family have shaped who you are far more than any prep school. If you want to find people who are *directly* comparable to you, find people who have gone through what you did. There are (regrettably) many of them, so many that there are support groups in some communities.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:49 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Your relationships with your family have shaped who you are far more than any prep school. If you want to find people who are *directly* comparable to you, find people who have gone through what you did. There are (regrettably) many of them, so much that there are support groups in some communities.
Seconding this. And I'm also seconding Tell Me No Lies' point that this woman is not directly comparable to you at all, based on what you have described. I'm sorry if that sounds hurtful, but my hope is that by reframing the you vs. she narrative in this way you'll see how much you are harming yourself with this obsession with her, and how much your boyfriend has harmed you for introducing the concept of her into your consciousness.
posted by nayantara at 9:53 AM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Seconding this. And I'm also seconding Tell Me No Lies' point that this woman is not directly comparable to you at all, based on what you have described. I'm sorry if that sounds hurtful, but my hope is that by reframing the you vs. she narrative in this way you'll see how much you are harming yourself with this obsession with her, and how much your boyfriend has harmed you for introducing the concept of her into your consciousness.
posted by nayantara at 9:53 AM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
"I know that 99% of the world will never have access to those opportunities but we compare ourselves to those most similar to us. She is *directly* comparable to me, we both went to girls' grammar schools, both from immigrant families, both lived just outside London, both from an educationally middle class background. I wouldn't be comparing myself to a teenager in Somalia, because that wouldn't make any sense."
I'm about your age and I've struggled a lot with envy for my entire life, it's something that I've only begun "conquering" over the past two or three years. I didn't compare myself too much to my peers at school or neighborhood, but I compulsively compared myself to my cousins growing up. I could go into the whys, but I grew up with a mentally ill mother and it made me seethe with jealousy to see my cousins with their "normal" parents doing all these things I wish I could have done more easily (make friends, date, etc. also, I lived on campus for the first 2 years of my undergrad and I was miserable the entire time, made no friends, actively hated engaging with anyone I could have been friends with, etc. it wasn't the "typical" fun university experience).
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that something I've only just begun to understand is that my cousins and I had different lives. We had different parents, different expectations placed upon us, different goals, different personalities, different temperaments, different everything. Although economically and socially, I'm quite similar to my cousins, it still doesn't make sense to compare myself to them. I had different struggles and different barriers that they didn't have. Alternatively, I have *no idea* what their struggles were. It's not a race or a contest, they don't win a prize for having a more "normal" mother than I do and struggling less in their early adulthood.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 10:02 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm about your age and I've struggled a lot with envy for my entire life, it's something that I've only begun "conquering" over the past two or three years. I didn't compare myself too much to my peers at school or neighborhood, but I compulsively compared myself to my cousins growing up. I could go into the whys, but I grew up with a mentally ill mother and it made me seethe with jealousy to see my cousins with their "normal" parents doing all these things I wish I could have done more easily (make friends, date, etc. also, I lived on campus for the first 2 years of my undergrad and I was miserable the entire time, made no friends, actively hated engaging with anyone I could have been friends with, etc. it wasn't the "typical" fun university experience).
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that something I've only just begun to understand is that my cousins and I had different lives. We had different parents, different expectations placed upon us, different goals, different personalities, different temperaments, different everything. Although economically and socially, I'm quite similar to my cousins, it still doesn't make sense to compare myself to them. I had different struggles and different barriers that they didn't have. Alternatively, I have *no idea* what their struggles were. It's not a race or a contest, they don't win a prize for having a more "normal" mother than I do and struggling less in their early adulthood.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 10:02 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sunflower88 I know some of us have been a bit more "tough love" than others (I think I fall into that category) but I think it's safe to say that we are all responding to the obvious pain you feel and have been through (in this post and in your past ones) and want to try to help you move forward as best you can because we can feel your hurt every time you reach out to ask about this. I just want to commend you for being in therapy and working relentlessly to unpack this and understand yourself. This is the work of recovery and it is so hard. I've done a version of it myself, I think many of us have. I'm still doing it in fact. I still have my own regrets and ruminations and struggles and fears and when I'm not careful I can go off the rails. Work in progress. But I am glad to hear that we have been helpful and I am rooting for you.
posted by nayantara at 2:18 PM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by nayantara at 2:18 PM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
You say this:
I basically want to be the ex, because that would mean being loved and respected by my boyfriend.
but you've also told us he said this:
she wanted to settle down with me but I wasn't ready
We don't know how she felt, but I suspect your boyfriend will always treasure more the "one who got away," who will never ever be the woman he's with. I am not convinced at all that the ex felt loved and respected by the boyfriend. We do know she wanted more, just like you. I suspect you have more in common with her than you realize.
And let me say this again, in a new way: the love and respect you need and should cultivate is from yourself.
You are filling your head with this woman, but it's a fantasy you've created. I think it's time to start realizing that Fantasy Ex is not Ex! Fantasy Ex is an escape for you, a world where you dream you have what you want, because your boyfriend has convinced you that's him.
posted by bluedaisy at 3:50 PM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I basically want to be the ex, because that would mean being loved and respected by my boyfriend.
but you've also told us he said this:
she wanted to settle down with me but I wasn't ready
We don't know how she felt, but I suspect your boyfriend will always treasure more the "one who got away," who will never ever be the woman he's with. I am not convinced at all that the ex felt loved and respected by the boyfriend. We do know she wanted more, just like you. I suspect you have more in common with her than you realize.
And let me say this again, in a new way: the love and respect you need and should cultivate is from yourself.
You are filling your head with this woman, but it's a fantasy you've created. I think it's time to start realizing that Fantasy Ex is not Ex! Fantasy Ex is an escape for you, a world where you dream you have what you want, because your boyfriend has convinced you that's him.
posted by bluedaisy at 3:50 PM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
So I do think I have something in common with her. I suspect if I break up with him, he wouldn't be anywhere near as glowing in his recollection of me.
Oh, are you kidding? When you finally dump this jagbag he will be telling the next girl you won the fucking Nobel Prize for Physics. You want him to think of you as the best creature to walk the earth, to whom none mere mortal woman may compare? Tell him to pound sand! He isn't capable of having deep respectful love for a human woman who is standing there in front of them, because he's a little sad babyman who can only love his fantasies. (And secretly respects women a little bit more when they see through him.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:46 AM on April 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
Oh, are you kidding? When you finally dump this jagbag he will be telling the next girl you won the fucking Nobel Prize for Physics. You want him to think of you as the best creature to walk the earth, to whom none mere mortal woman may compare? Tell him to pound sand! He isn't capable of having deep respectful love for a human woman who is standing there in front of them, because he's a little sad babyman who can only love his fantasies. (And secretly respects women a little bit more when they see through him.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:46 AM on April 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
nayantara wrote...
I just want to commend you for being in therapy and working relentlessly to unpack this and understand yourself. This is the work of recovery and it is so hard.
I just wanted to echo this. Metafilter can be a harsh place, but the work you are doing is so important and so admirable that it's hard not to get too enthusiastic in sharing a perspective. Many of us have done or are doing similar work and know that you are headed the right direction to find some well-deserved peace. Thank you for letting us be part of your journey.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:58 AM on April 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I just want to commend you for being in therapy and working relentlessly to unpack this and understand yourself. This is the work of recovery and it is so hard.
I just wanted to echo this. Metafilter can be a harsh place, but the work you are doing is so important and so admirable that it's hard not to get too enthusiastic in sharing a perspective. Many of us have done or are doing similar work and know that you are headed the right direction to find some well-deserved peace. Thank you for letting us be part of your journey.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:58 AM on April 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is probably my own trauma talking, but everytime you glorify that young age range you are invalidating the happier life I am telling you I 100% found in my 30s.
My forties were even better than my 30s and now at 51.75 this decade will be my best yet. Lots of love Sunflower88, you can do this.
posted by bendy at 7:49 PM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
My forties were even better than my 30s and now at 51.75 this decade will be my best yet. Lots of love Sunflower88, you can do this.
posted by bendy at 7:49 PM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
>I'm sorry my posts might be exasperating. I think I'm circling closer around whats happening for me and what I need to do about it.
This is awesome and congrats on that. I've seen posters ask multiple questions about the same issue as a way to process. No matter what, there will always be super helpful and insightful people here. And we're all rooting for you, even if it might not seem like it.
Thus, my thoughts on your post, which I hope will help:
>I basically want to be the ex, because that would mean being loved and respected by my boyfriend.
This breaks my heart. I know you've been with the bf for a while, and being with him has helped you and being without him might be scary. I still hope that someday, when you're ready, you break up with this person who doesn't love and respect you. Being and staying with him is like living in a house that has leaks, mold, drafty windows and pests but it still gives you shelter and maybe you have a really comfy bed or couch and it has all your favourite books and things and you put beautiful art on the walls. And that's why you stay. Because despite its faults and harm to your health, you still want to live there. The stress of finding another place and moving, the cost is too much to think about. And also, you bought this house! And invested in it. Maybe you think you can fix all those things but then something happens and you find out that the foundation is beyond repair and that it's unsafe for you to keep living there. And then you have to face the decision head on: what will you do now? Maybe you'll curl up into a ball and cry but then - you'll figure it out. You'll have an insight about what to do, and then you act on it. And so it goes, one step in front of the other. Maybe one step forward, two steps (or more) back, but you'll figure it out. And - you already did do that! You moved out of your parents' house!!! You figured out how to do it at 28, so you can do it again. I know you'll say "but it was way too late" - listen. Better than 29, 30, 31... 40, 45 or never. It happens that some people never leave their parents' houses. But you were able to find a way out at 28. YOU FUCKING DID IT. That should be celebrated - don't beat yourself up that it wasn't earlier. Because what does beating yourself up do? How is that good for you? (more on that in a bit)
bluedaisy always has wise things to say and I agree 100% that you have to cultivate that love and respect in yourself. How, when your primary caregivers were abusive and never showed you love. I truly believe that every human being is capable of loving themselves, and knowing what love is. You are worthy because you exist. Capitalism will make you believe that you are only worthy if you're making money, or working or look a certain way or whatever. And it is hard, hard work to unlearn all the horrible things that you learned to believe about yourself, and start writing a new story, like The Wrong Kind of Cheese said. One way to show love to yourself is to imagine yourself as a baby, a little kid, a teenager - hold her in your mind, hug her, cherish her, tell her I love you. If you can imagine a whole life for someone you've never met for when they're aged 18-22, then you can imagine yourself as a baby, kid, teenager deserving love. Send yourself a gift in the mail. Or a letter. Write out "I love you [your name]" 100 times. Write out affirmations and stick them to your bathroom mirror so that you see them every time you go to the loo. If you're worried that your bf will judge you for that, then that says something about him. He should be 100% supportive of that, no question. Maybe all of these feel dumb, but it's waaaay better than how you're treating yourself right now.
I think you ruminate and obsess over the ex and beat yourself up because it's a lot easier to do this than to take responsibility for making changes to your life right now. You said it yourself "rather than trying to make improvements it is easier to regret the past." E.g. are you seeing an individual therapist who specializes in trauma? If not, why? I understand cost might be a factor, but still, you have to put in the hard work to find a therapist that's right for you. There are other ways you can help yourself heal - reading self-help books and journalling really helped me. However, finding the right therapist will help enormously. I really think this should be your main goal, if you don't already have a good individual therapist.
There's also a way in which you... argue yourself into staying in a stuck place. Saying things like, "I missed out on a formative young adult experience and that the window has closed forever... I can never be a whole person for this reason, University feels like the perfect and only chance to get to have these specific experiences, at that specific age... I also tend to agree with his opinion of me, therefore I do trust his opinion of her. I am less accomplished, successful, motivated and high achieving than his ex. Those are just facts, sadly."
You seem very committed to telling yourself these things and believing them, it's like you've built a religion around this. Stop praying at this altar all day long and build a new one. You're speaking in absolutes, which compounds the terrible feelings you have for yourself already. If you're going to speak in absolutes, try this: "I am worthy of love. I am a good person. I survived years of horrible abuse by my parents and yet I still found a way to move out at 28. I finished university. My father stole money from me, but I would never steal from someone else." etc. REPLACE THE SCRIPT. If you want to keep repeating "facts" about yourself, try repeating facts like these.
Right now, you don't have to make huge big changes like dump the bf, find a new place to live, find a better paying job or whatever. Change what you tell yourself about you. That's a small thing you can do, right now. It may feel weird, because doing new things always feels weird. But humans have an amazing capacity for adaptation. Commit to telling yourself nice things about yourself for at least 21 days, because that's generally how long it takes to build a new habit. Set a timer and spend 5 minutes of your time away from your own self-torture to talk kindly and lovingly to yourself (or some other ritual that you come up for yourself). Do this for 21 days and see how you feel. Maybe you'll only feel a tiny bit better. That's better than nothing. That's PROGRESS. You are already making progress - I can see it in your posts. It's small, but it's there.
>I know these bits of information but it feels like it almost doesn't matter in light of how he speaks about her now.
I think you're also focusing on her because you don't want to look at how not great a person and partner your bf is for you. It's definitely hard, because you don't want to realize certain truths about him. And deep down you know those truths, but maybe you think you don't, or you don't want to face them. She felt inferior and not good enough around him. She felt he didn't truly love her, and never compliments her. Please pay attention to what this says about your bf; don't focus on what he has been saying about her. Look at him in front of you, right now, not what he says about her, and not the life story you've crafted about her. It seems like you don't really want to see him for who he is, so you escape into your self-made torture. He speaks this way about her to make you feel bad about yourself and he knows how to play into your insecurities. You say it helps you, motivates you, etc. but if you're being chased by wolves, you're going to be motivated to run too. He doesn't know how to love you in the way you deserve, or maybe you feel like you don't deserve a better partner.
No matter what, you have got to start talking to yourself more kindly. No, it's not going to change things overnight, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Only you can free yourself from your own prison (and let me remind you again, you freed yourself from your parents' house!!!), and you absolutely can, if you want to. It's hard, slow, painful work, but think about that vs. what you're putting yourself through right now. It's really your choice and you may not realize it, but you always have the power of choice.
We're rooting for you and believe in you. I hope you can believe the same as well about yourself.
posted by foxjacket at 10:27 PM on April 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is awesome and congrats on that. I've seen posters ask multiple questions about the same issue as a way to process. No matter what, there will always be super helpful and insightful people here. And we're all rooting for you, even if it might not seem like it.
Thus, my thoughts on your post, which I hope will help:
>I basically want to be the ex, because that would mean being loved and respected by my boyfriend.
This breaks my heart. I know you've been with the bf for a while, and being with him has helped you and being without him might be scary. I still hope that someday, when you're ready, you break up with this person who doesn't love and respect you. Being and staying with him is like living in a house that has leaks, mold, drafty windows and pests but it still gives you shelter and maybe you have a really comfy bed or couch and it has all your favourite books and things and you put beautiful art on the walls. And that's why you stay. Because despite its faults and harm to your health, you still want to live there. The stress of finding another place and moving, the cost is too much to think about. And also, you bought this house! And invested in it. Maybe you think you can fix all those things but then something happens and you find out that the foundation is beyond repair and that it's unsafe for you to keep living there. And then you have to face the decision head on: what will you do now? Maybe you'll curl up into a ball and cry but then - you'll figure it out. You'll have an insight about what to do, and then you act on it. And so it goes, one step in front of the other. Maybe one step forward, two steps (or more) back, but you'll figure it out. And - you already did do that! You moved out of your parents' house!!! You figured out how to do it at 28, so you can do it again. I know you'll say "but it was way too late" - listen. Better than 29, 30, 31... 40, 45 or never. It happens that some people never leave their parents' houses. But you were able to find a way out at 28. YOU FUCKING DID IT. That should be celebrated - don't beat yourself up that it wasn't earlier. Because what does beating yourself up do? How is that good for you? (more on that in a bit)
bluedaisy always has wise things to say and I agree 100% that you have to cultivate that love and respect in yourself. How, when your primary caregivers were abusive and never showed you love. I truly believe that every human being is capable of loving themselves, and knowing what love is. You are worthy because you exist. Capitalism will make you believe that you are only worthy if you're making money, or working or look a certain way or whatever. And it is hard, hard work to unlearn all the horrible things that you learned to believe about yourself, and start writing a new story, like The Wrong Kind of Cheese said. One way to show love to yourself is to imagine yourself as a baby, a little kid, a teenager - hold her in your mind, hug her, cherish her, tell her I love you. If you can imagine a whole life for someone you've never met for when they're aged 18-22, then you can imagine yourself as a baby, kid, teenager deserving love. Send yourself a gift in the mail. Or a letter. Write out "I love you [your name]" 100 times. Write out affirmations and stick them to your bathroom mirror so that you see them every time you go to the loo. If you're worried that your bf will judge you for that, then that says something about him. He should be 100% supportive of that, no question. Maybe all of these feel dumb, but it's waaaay better than how you're treating yourself right now.
I think you ruminate and obsess over the ex and beat yourself up because it's a lot easier to do this than to take responsibility for making changes to your life right now. You said it yourself "rather than trying to make improvements it is easier to regret the past." E.g. are you seeing an individual therapist who specializes in trauma? If not, why? I understand cost might be a factor, but still, you have to put in the hard work to find a therapist that's right for you. There are other ways you can help yourself heal - reading self-help books and journalling really helped me. However, finding the right therapist will help enormously. I really think this should be your main goal, if you don't already have a good individual therapist.
There's also a way in which you... argue yourself into staying in a stuck place. Saying things like, "I missed out on a formative young adult experience and that the window has closed forever... I can never be a whole person for this reason, University feels like the perfect and only chance to get to have these specific experiences, at that specific age... I also tend to agree with his opinion of me, therefore I do trust his opinion of her. I am less accomplished, successful, motivated and high achieving than his ex. Those are just facts, sadly."
You seem very committed to telling yourself these things and believing them, it's like you've built a religion around this. Stop praying at this altar all day long and build a new one. You're speaking in absolutes, which compounds the terrible feelings you have for yourself already. If you're going to speak in absolutes, try this: "I am worthy of love. I am a good person. I survived years of horrible abuse by my parents and yet I still found a way to move out at 28. I finished university. My father stole money from me, but I would never steal from someone else." etc. REPLACE THE SCRIPT. If you want to keep repeating "facts" about yourself, try repeating facts like these.
Right now, you don't have to make huge big changes like dump the bf, find a new place to live, find a better paying job or whatever. Change what you tell yourself about you. That's a small thing you can do, right now. It may feel weird, because doing new things always feels weird. But humans have an amazing capacity for adaptation. Commit to telling yourself nice things about yourself for at least 21 days, because that's generally how long it takes to build a new habit. Set a timer and spend 5 minutes of your time away from your own self-torture to talk kindly and lovingly to yourself (or some other ritual that you come up for yourself). Do this for 21 days and see how you feel. Maybe you'll only feel a tiny bit better. That's better than nothing. That's PROGRESS. You are already making progress - I can see it in your posts. It's small, but it's there.
>I know these bits of information but it feels like it almost doesn't matter in light of how he speaks about her now.
I think you're also focusing on her because you don't want to look at how not great a person and partner your bf is for you. It's definitely hard, because you don't want to realize certain truths about him. And deep down you know those truths, but maybe you think you don't, or you don't want to face them. She felt inferior and not good enough around him. She felt he didn't truly love her, and never compliments her. Please pay attention to what this says about your bf; don't focus on what he has been saying about her. Look at him in front of you, right now, not what he says about her, and not the life story you've crafted about her. It seems like you don't really want to see him for who he is, so you escape into your self-made torture. He speaks this way about her to make you feel bad about yourself and he knows how to play into your insecurities. You say it helps you, motivates you, etc. but if you're being chased by wolves, you're going to be motivated to run too. He doesn't know how to love you in the way you deserve, or maybe you feel like you don't deserve a better partner.
No matter what, you have got to start talking to yourself more kindly. No, it's not going to change things overnight, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Only you can free yourself from your own prison (and let me remind you again, you freed yourself from your parents' house!!!), and you absolutely can, if you want to. It's hard, slow, painful work, but think about that vs. what you're putting yourself through right now. It's really your choice and you may not realize it, but you always have the power of choice.
We're rooting for you and believe in you. I hope you can believe the same as well about yourself.
posted by foxjacket at 10:27 PM on April 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
"For the first time in my entire life, I am experiencing a relationship with a (relatively) emotionally and financially stable male who has supported me and pushed me to achieve."
No, sweetie. You're not. This man is NOT EMOTIONALLY STABLE, he's mean to you, and he doesn't treat you well. Part of you knows this! More of you needs to realize it. I'm not saying this to be cruel, I'm just trying to pierce through your intense denial force-field. You deserve a better life than this!!!!
posted by Charity Garfein at 7:18 AM on April 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
No, sweetie. You're not. This man is NOT EMOTIONALLY STABLE, he's mean to you, and he doesn't treat you well. Part of you knows this! More of you needs to realize it. I'm not saying this to be cruel, I'm just trying to pierce through your intense denial force-field. You deserve a better life than this!!!!
posted by Charity Garfein at 7:18 AM on April 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've really got so much out of this relationship, despite my complaining and I don't know that I want that to end.
All right, fine; don't DTMFA if you're not feeling it. But this has to change right away:
I also have no real friends... so were I to end it with him I would have no one really.
That's completely unsustainable in any relationship, so do something about it. Get out into the world and find your friends. Even were he not a "whole toolbag," (har!) even were he great in every way, being your sole source of support would be taxing. You say you've been running and cycling: awesome. Run and cycle with Other People that are Not Him. Join some stuff. Make some friends and start having all this fun you're jealous about already. He might be weirdly jealous about that at first. (Who am I kidding? He almost definitely will be jealous, given who he is--but even somebody without his... qualities... might have trouble at first just because it's a big change--and nothing is all bad, so he's probably actually comfortable and happy with some aspects of your being "his project" who has to be taught life lessons all the time.) Eventually, if you're right about him being essentially a good person with your best interests at heart, he'll be happy to see you make friends because it will be you standing on your own feet and taking care of yourself, which takes the burden off him. This will be all-around good. Good for you, good for him, good for your twosome, and good for your future friends.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:27 AM on April 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
All right, fine; don't DTMFA if you're not feeling it. But this has to change right away:
I also have no real friends... so were I to end it with him I would have no one really.
That's completely unsustainable in any relationship, so do something about it. Get out into the world and find your friends. Even were he not a "whole toolbag," (har!) even were he great in every way, being your sole source of support would be taxing. You say you've been running and cycling: awesome. Run and cycle with Other People that are Not Him. Join some stuff. Make some friends and start having all this fun you're jealous about already. He might be weirdly jealous about that at first. (Who am I kidding? He almost definitely will be jealous, given who he is--but even somebody without his... qualities... might have trouble at first just because it's a big change--and nothing is all bad, so he's probably actually comfortable and happy with some aspects of your being "his project" who has to be taught life lessons all the time.) Eventually, if you're right about him being essentially a good person with your best interests at heart, he'll be happy to see you make friends because it will be you standing on your own feet and taking care of yourself, which takes the burden off him. This will be all-around good. Good for you, good for him, good for your twosome, and good for your future friends.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:27 AM on April 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
Has he supported you, really?
All of your improvements in your life (and yes, these are significant ones) aren't from support, they're from him telling you you are inadequate. You aren't like the Magical Ex. You are a "project" for him and he resents that. He's not encouraging you, he's telling you that he thinks you suck, you are too much work, and you are responding to this "support" and "faith" by working hard to get "better" for HIM. But you have to do it for yourself. You are doing it in opposition to him telling you what problems you have, you are doing it because you want to be compared to Magical Ex more favorably, you are doing it because he tells you that you play the victim too much.
It's good that you are in a better place than you were before you met him but the way you are doing it is still unhealthy because it's a response to his criticism rather than his love and care. You aren't happy now even with all that you have accomplished after escaping your family. It's clear that you aren't. If you were, you wouldn't keep ruminating on the Magical Ex. You wouldn't keep chasing his approval. He has established a power dynamic where he is the "stable one" and you are the fuckup and you believe it because you grew up in a family that abused you and you believe that's made you a fuckup permanently. This kind of power dynamic does not make a relationship healthy.
And what's this business of him being "disappointed" that he has to push you so hard because his ideal would be to be with someone who is "ahead of him" and "encouraging him"?! He wants to be someone else's project??!!! This is NOT an emotionally stable man. He wants a mommy, not a girlfriend, and he resents you for it.
Take whatever motivation he's given you and reframe it. Do it for you, not him. Change the narrative. You say he's helped you improve but you are still so unhappy and insecure in this relationship. Do you see how that is a direct contradiction? And do you understand that your family culture and his behavior has indoctrinated you into believing that you can only improve in opposition to others, in competition with others, to win love and acceptance and support from people who will never give it to you?
Please stop putting him on a pedestal. He's making you feel bad about yourself, constantly.
posted by nayantara at 8:11 AM on April 21, 2022
All of your improvements in your life (and yes, these are significant ones) aren't from support, they're from him telling you you are inadequate. You aren't like the Magical Ex. You are a "project" for him and he resents that. He's not encouraging you, he's telling you that he thinks you suck, you are too much work, and you are responding to this "support" and "faith" by working hard to get "better" for HIM. But you have to do it for yourself. You are doing it in opposition to him telling you what problems you have, you are doing it because you want to be compared to Magical Ex more favorably, you are doing it because he tells you that you play the victim too much.
It's good that you are in a better place than you were before you met him but the way you are doing it is still unhealthy because it's a response to his criticism rather than his love and care. You aren't happy now even with all that you have accomplished after escaping your family. It's clear that you aren't. If you were, you wouldn't keep ruminating on the Magical Ex. You wouldn't keep chasing his approval. He has established a power dynamic where he is the "stable one" and you are the fuckup and you believe it because you grew up in a family that abused you and you believe that's made you a fuckup permanently. This kind of power dynamic does not make a relationship healthy.
And what's this business of him being "disappointed" that he has to push you so hard because his ideal would be to be with someone who is "ahead of him" and "encouraging him"?! He wants to be someone else's project??!!! This is NOT an emotionally stable man. He wants a mommy, not a girlfriend, and he resents you for it.
Take whatever motivation he's given you and reframe it. Do it for you, not him. Change the narrative. You say he's helped you improve but you are still so unhappy and insecure in this relationship. Do you see how that is a direct contradiction? And do you understand that your family culture and his behavior has indoctrinated you into believing that you can only improve in opposition to others, in competition with others, to win love and acceptance and support from people who will never give it to you?
Please stop putting him on a pedestal. He's making you feel bad about yourself, constantly.
posted by nayantara at 8:11 AM on April 21, 2022
As an example from my personal life - I struggle with CPTSD and myriad other mental health issues, I have terrible anxiety and low self-esteem. My boyfriend is aware of this. He encourages me to help myself, not by telling me he's disappointed in me not being someone else. He meets me where I am. He makes suggestions occasionally but they are not coming from a place of disappointment or comparison to others. He does it because sometimes I get stuck in an anxiety spiral and he tries to help stop the spiral. Never once has he compared me to an ex. Never once has he said he feels I am a project. He too can be blunt, and sometimes he says things in a way that sound a little harsh, but the core feeling behind what he says is wanting to uplift me, to encourage me to improve my self-esteem because it will be better for ME. Not because I am so lacking that I am a project. And he most certainly does NOT want me to be "ahead" of him so I can encourage him. That's not a relationship of equals.
I submit to you that your boyfriend's desire to be someone else's project means that he too has self-esteem issues, and by perpetuating your existing feelings of being a fuckup he can make himself feel better. He doesn't respect you. You have told us that yourself.
This is not a healthy man, this is not a healthy relationship.
posted by nayantara at 8:25 AM on April 21, 2022
I submit to you that your boyfriend's desire to be someone else's project means that he too has self-esteem issues, and by perpetuating your existing feelings of being a fuckup he can make himself feel better. He doesn't respect you. You have told us that yourself.
This is not a healthy man, this is not a healthy relationship.
posted by nayantara at 8:25 AM on April 21, 2022
"she was just better, she's better than both of us".
this should be INTOLERABLE TO YOU. If the exalted ex were in your position--yes, yes, she never would be because she is perfectly perfect and has no match on this earth or anywhere in the universe, but let us just perform the nearly impossible feat of imagination that would allow us to consider what would happen if SHE were in YOUR position and HE said THIS FUCKING THING to HER. Would she stand for that?
NO.
She would disappear instantly in a puff of smoke and he would be left shattered on the floor sobbing constantly and only stopping for the odd instant to let his eyes clear of tears so he could read of her adventures in The British Journal Of Supremely Fit and Well-Organized Artistic Dance Medicine.
So why will you stand for it, you who are madly jealous of her and want to achieve everything she has achieved? Why do you accept this from him? She would not; therefore if you want to be like her, you must not. Call the question. Speak, and not in code. "I do not want to be with someone who thinks I'm not good enough or that he is not good enough."
posted by Don Pepino at 9:30 AM on April 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
this should be INTOLERABLE TO YOU. If the exalted ex were in your position--yes, yes, she never would be because she is perfectly perfect and has no match on this earth or anywhere in the universe, but let us just perform the nearly impossible feat of imagination that would allow us to consider what would happen if SHE were in YOUR position and HE said THIS FUCKING THING to HER. Would she stand for that?
NO.
She would disappear instantly in a puff of smoke and he would be left shattered on the floor sobbing constantly and only stopping for the odd instant to let his eyes clear of tears so he could read of her adventures in The British Journal Of Supremely Fit and Well-Organized Artistic Dance Medicine.
So why will you stand for it, you who are madly jealous of her and want to achieve everything she has achieved? Why do you accept this from him? She would not; therefore if you want to be like her, you must not. Call the question. Speak, and not in code. "I do not want to be with someone who thinks I'm not good enough or that he is not good enough."
posted by Don Pepino at 9:30 AM on April 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
Stop measuring yourself, then. Stop comparing yourself to anything and throw away every metric. You've just got to stop it however you possibly can. You are good enough right now, merely and simply because you are a human person who is doing her best with what she has. You have lived upon the earth for over thirty years and have not become Augusto Pinochet--like, not at all! Not even a whit! You retain all the potential you were born with and have a lifetime to achieve things if achieving things is what you decide you want to do after you offload the self-hate that's getting in your way. However, it is not necessary to achieve things to be good enough. It is only necessary to be--and to not be Pinochet, of course. (I just picked him out of a hat; sub any of the rabid dog monsters of history you like.)
posted by Don Pepino at 9:47 AM on April 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Don Pepino at 9:47 AM on April 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
You see failings. Here's what I see:
1) Someone who experienced a childhood and partial adulthood in a toxic, abusive family system who ESCAPED. Whose father stole from them, whose siblings were unable to escape. It doesn't matter how long it took. There are cultural factors at play that make perfect sense to me (as a fellow desi) as to how long it took for you to escape. But escape you did.
2) Someone who was gifted but crippled by factors out of her control (abuse, financial difficulties) who understandably struggled in school because of those factors but still pulled through, graduated, and have been working steadily, even if they were jobs you hated or felt embarrassed by. (If you want to see my resume from my early career, trust me, you'll see jobs like that too.)
3) Someone who is capable of deep love and affection and care despite being deprived of it in their childhood.
4) Someone who recognized that they were struggling in their adulthood and sought professional help, stuck with it, and continues to look for answers so they can heal in a thoughtful, reflective, open-minded manner. THIS IS HARDER THAN IT LOOKS. It took me a decade and a severe mental health crisis for me to seek out the therapy I needed to recover. You did this without a hospitalization as a wakeup call.
5) Someone who is, rather smartly now, taking a break from a relationship where they know their needs aren't being met to regroup and try to build a support network outside of a romantic relationship. This is you starting down the road to self-respect and fixing low self-esteem and self-loathing.
You are not a failure. Everything I listed above I is true from what I can see and points to you being a lovely, thoughtful, intelligent woman who has been through a hellish youth and is recovering. You are not a failure. Class rankings, grades, marathon times, the weight on a scale are measurements that you should abandon, as Don Pepino says. Look at the measurements I listened above. They aren't quantitative, but they speak to someone who is stronger than they think they are. You are not a failure. You are a survivor.
Keep doing what you're doing. We all want the best for you.
posted by nayantara at 10:09 AM on April 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
1) Someone who experienced a childhood and partial adulthood in a toxic, abusive family system who ESCAPED. Whose father stole from them, whose siblings were unable to escape. It doesn't matter how long it took. There are cultural factors at play that make perfect sense to me (as a fellow desi) as to how long it took for you to escape. But escape you did.
2) Someone who was gifted but crippled by factors out of her control (abuse, financial difficulties) who understandably struggled in school because of those factors but still pulled through, graduated, and have been working steadily, even if they were jobs you hated or felt embarrassed by. (If you want to see my resume from my early career, trust me, you'll see jobs like that too.)
3) Someone who is capable of deep love and affection and care despite being deprived of it in their childhood.
4) Someone who recognized that they were struggling in their adulthood and sought professional help, stuck with it, and continues to look for answers so they can heal in a thoughtful, reflective, open-minded manner. THIS IS HARDER THAN IT LOOKS. It took me a decade and a severe mental health crisis for me to seek out the therapy I needed to recover. You did this without a hospitalization as a wakeup call.
5) Someone who is, rather smartly now, taking a break from a relationship where they know their needs aren't being met to regroup and try to build a support network outside of a romantic relationship. This is you starting down the road to self-respect and fixing low self-esteem and self-loathing.
You are not a failure. Everything I listed above I is true from what I can see and points to you being a lovely, thoughtful, intelligent woman who has been through a hellish youth and is recovering. You are not a failure. Class rankings, grades, marathon times, the weight on a scale are measurements that you should abandon, as Don Pepino says. Look at the measurements I listened above. They aren't quantitative, but they speak to someone who is stronger than they think they are. You are not a failure. You are a survivor.
Keep doing what you're doing. We all want the best for you.
posted by nayantara at 10:09 AM on April 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
It's a hard thing to answer because there's no right or wrong when it comes to feelings. We feel what we feel. I do feel that you have paid enough in suffering about this. Eventually (when you're ready) you can figure out how to move forward with the life you have now, and make it into the life you want to have. It's never too late to start. People often have rocky beginnings & turn them around over time.
I had a similar experience at college though not as severe or for the same reasons. But I felt bad about it too, and other things from my childhood. Eventually I decided (after a lot of therapy!) I was done being a slave to the past. The present and the future are much more interesting, because we can change them.
*therapy worked for me because it's a dedicated time to get stuff off your chest, slam it down on the table, sort through it, and get rid of what isn't serving you anymore. Sometimes people just need that.
finally I think a great thing to work on is to forgive your boyfriend & his ex. They didn't do anything except live their own lives. It's not really fair to him to be the target of all of these negative emotions of yours.
posted by bleep at 3:24 PM on April 18, 2022 [5 favorites]