Hi again,
Well I have just consumed 'A General Theory of Love" and it has confirmed so much of what I have intuitively felt about bonding, attachment, the emptiness of placing career achievement over connection and many other things.
I have to say that reading the book brought up a lot of stuff for me emotionally especially since I longed to nurture a child ( I intuitively knew that sleeping with baby was the right choice) and,as with my nephews, have found it delightful and absolutelyy natural to be curious about their world, enter into it with them, really listen to what they are saying etc. I watch my sister trying to control them over matters that are not particularly important and see the pointlessness, counterproductiveness of control for control's sake.
A child wants to know why they should do something, they need to feel why it make sense not juts hearing a tired and intense adult telling them they should do something because they are being told to. ( I know I know kids can absolutely drive you to the brink of reason but there are ways to not make things worse: ie self-management)
I couldn't wait to gaze into the eyes of my precious child and had committed to really listening seeing and letting my child speak long before I knew of Dr Grossman and this board and even knew about Narcissicm because I have know firsthand how it felt to feel unseen, dismissed, not seen, not felt, not marveled in by my own family ( except my mother who despite her super distractedness managed to give me some good love despite its becoming somewhat enmeshed). Unfortunately that baby did not make it. I hope for another. And I do baulk when every other person tells me to mother myself.... yes that's all well and good but it is not the same especially when you know about needing to resonate with another being and you have a history of aloneness.
This book has put into words everythign I have felt about the primal drives that keep some of us wanting to stay attached to people who may not be good for us ( my N that I have been writing about) because at least he was a connection however unhealthy- and probably similar to my family of origin stuff.. The 'addictive' pull to stay connected to someone unhealthy is extremely hard to unravel when the
alternative is returning to the void of loneliness ( if like me you are one of those insecurely attached persons who still longs to bind primarily with one person and scans hypervigilantly for that person in your field.. I'm working on it).
I really related to those little rhesus monkeys who were separated from their mothers and at first shrieked in alarm and then became despondent and then fell into deep despair.
IN my particular history the N factor was there for sure but I wonder if many of you out there also suffered 'accidents' of abandonment too.
I was separated from my mother at birth. She heamorrhaged just after she delivered me then we were separated for a week since she developed a fever. So no contact was permitted. My N grandmother made a scene in the hospital that created a lot of stress between my mother and father and she went on to be a very toxic, influence in our family ( Her N mother had rejected her).
My father was a doctor at the hospital and worked very long stressful hours. I was placed in a downstairs bedroom away from the rest of the family (big sister, Mom and Dad slept upstairs) and was well aware of this from a very early age. I felt vulnerable being alone downstairs and I know I cried and cried and cried because Dad ( who was exhausted after long shifts) told me later he wanted to "strangle" me because I cried so much. (He said this affectionately and I know how he must have felt. sleep deprivation is the pitts, but it still made me wonder what a hypersensitive infant might pick up)
Maybe if they hadn't kept an already insecure infant so isolated, I wouldn't have cried so much. The decision to keep me downstairs was also made so my big sister would not be upset or displaced.I can see why they made that decision however, this set up a
lifelong dynamic where her need seemed to be put above mine ( and she has a divaesque personality as a result much as I want to love her).
So I already had a predisposition to be insecure and it took me a while to settle down and think ok, no big surprises. However , unfortunately I got very sick a few times when my parents were away and then when I was starting to get very selfconscious at around 9/10 my grandmother, whose toxic anxiety and snobbishness and overcompensation was never confronted, told me one day, for no real reason that I was " a parasite who didn't deserve" my mother. Alas, I didn't go to my mother and report this because I was so mortified and thought it must be true. ( and now I see that my own grandmother was jealous of the love my mother was giving to me).
The denial and inability to be real in my family bred in me a kind of hopelessness. .Well Dad was never there always working and when he did come home he demanded affection which, when I wouldn't respond the way he wanted, caused him to accuse me angrilyy of "always rejecting him" whereupon he'd stomp out of the room, I'd feel horribly guilty and my mother would say, now dear can't you be a little nicer to your father.
It wasn't that I wasn't being nice it's that I felt invaded the way he wanted to hug me and also I was really only attached to my mother and found him almost an alien being, so little time did we spend with each other. I feel sad about it now but at the time I did not want his
sloppy kisses and overwhelming hugs and his highly irritating tickles which actually overstimulated my already hyperalert nervous system. I can't recall once my Dad quietly approaching me and asking if it was ok to give me a hug or enquiring about why I was 'rejecting' him. I can't imagine not having the curiosity to know what my child was feeling. AND there is a chance they did ask me and I was not able to tell them but I can't recall. I do know I started to go into a deep funk soon after and a few years later,one year after my sister had been sent abroad to school ,I was also sent away at age 13 to a boarding school in a different country. NOT the same one as my sister strangely.
Though my Mom was and is a brilliant and frequent letter writer and they moved to the same country ( but not the same town the following year,), iI often did not see them for months. We did live together in the holidays but that was also stressful since we'd moved from a beautiful old house which I adored to a cramped flat . Something in me shut down and as a result I was ambivalent/passive in forming friendships ( though popular) and devastated when my first boyfriend at age 15 abandoned me wihtout even breaking up ( right after I lost my virginity to him). So patterns were already formed about feeling insecure about attaching and then feelign very fretful once attached that the person I loved would leave. I know this is the nature of life but it has been very hard to relax in a relationship.
So that's a bit of what came up for me reading the book. One of the biggest issues I have is in choosing. That and knowing I will be ok. Yes, I know that if something goes wrong I will probably survive but what is the quality of the survival. I have developed something of a dread/intolerance/ almost a phobia about being without deep connection in my life. The kind that one's own family, a baby can bring. ON my first post, Vunil without knowing my story wrote that having a newborn was hugely healing for her. When I read that I felt that awful awful feeling of knowing I was on the right path for myself and then not following through . (This kept happening hence my initial feeling that the Universe was punishing me or I was punishing me for going against the flow of life; just before my due date the neighbor returned from out of town hugely pregnant and gave birth the same week I'd have been due. Right next door was the constant reminder of what I had destroyed. I almost went out of my mind. No I did go out of my mind.
Since it is such a huge emotional investment picking a therapist and/or partner I become very split because I have not learnt how to trust my decisions.And I seem to make so many painful mistakes ( ir not recognizing a good trustworthy candidate because I don't seem to have the right receptors for it).
I stand now at 45 looking back at the huge chasms of lonliness in my life and excruciating decision- making and the enormous opportunites missed, the largest being my decision not to go ahead with that pregnancy because my partner seemed so unsupportive and scary but the truth is... though the setup was not ideal the primal part of me primed to be a mother knew that there would be a powerful healing and rebirth in overcoming the patterns I had and the ability to bond and grow myself thorugh being a mother to a being I am confident I innately knew how to
rear ( at least initially) and that would be loved and cherished and adored . Maybe I am being naive. Maybe it takes naivete to raise children or noone would do it. I grieve almost everyday to feel the love and joy I had ready in my entire being to give to this child- sleep deprivation,hormone swings, not perfect N partner notwithstanding. With hindsight, we should have had counselling and he should have worked on his anger issues. N that he is/ was he is not an evil person. I do think he is capable of feeling and he was devstated when I left and ended the pregnancy. What I'm saying is, I overreacted hugely. And yes, I did to him something terrible, I dismissed him, did not see him, did not feel him .... he admitted he walked me down the plank but he says rightly that he didn't make me jump. I was so indignant about what kind of a partner would walk their pregnant girlfrend down the plank that I lost the point. It was horrible he walked me down the plank but what were all of my options...
The ultimate irony of my story is my own mother began pressuring me to have an abortion... while I was wondering if it was wise to continue the pregnancy. I was not prepared for her alacrity in forfeiting her own grandchild despite my protests that I didn't know if I could live with myself if I terminated the pregnancy. Her pressure came no doubt from being concerned that my N partner would complicate my life and my life would become a nightmare ( catastrophising) but some small part of me was hugely dismayed that my mother was not saying, have the baby We'll get through this as a family and things will smooth out. The fatal mistake I made was in backing down from my heart's desire and giving in to catastrophizing. And being so agitated that I communicated only by email with the father and did not dare see him in person to tlak with him because I was so anxious about being swayed.
So.... don't know if anyone is still reading and I know this was longwinded. As of today, the girl in Hawaii still hasn't ended her pregnancy. Has plans for Monday but is having a sonogram today and I have a horrible feeling she won't be able to go through with a termination even though the two of them have broken up.. It's really none of my buisness anyone... juts more torture. I do think one look at that sonogram and she/they won't be able to abort. I do believe where there's life there is hope. I know that with adopting I will not have the same biological connection and possibly absorption with a child.. since I tend to be so ambivalent and know what I want absolutely very few times in my life. I see now when split in that tortuous place of absolutely wanting my baby ( from the second of conception) to feeling like I could not be connected to the father ( from a highly reactive agitated place after those two weeks of emotional attacks) I went against the flow of life and was trying to 'protect'.
I don't know what the future holds or what healing is possible but I am grateful to have a place to put my feelings..
And I promise this is pretty much all of the story.
