Learned desperation

Now I know where I learned to use desperation and contradiction in my personal relationships. Of course. My father. He modeled these behaviors quite vividly, and I picked them up, him being my father and role model when I was a child. I realized just now that I enter the same panic mode when being ignored that he does. Only his acting out field is with his eldest daughter, while mine is with lovers. Definitely food for thought.

I say this because his correspondence is becoming more frequent now--I am sensing the panic--he jumps from angry to fearful and back again. The last correspondence that I talked about was the box of old memories he was "getting rid of." Well, yesterday, came a Hallmark card. Presumably for Mother's Day (I don't even open letters these days). That was less than two weeks between correspondences. He tried the disowning tactic, then the anger and guilt, then the "go around me to get to my daughter" tactic, and now, something different, I am assuming. It reminds me of my childhood a lot. Anger, silence, ignoring, then love and affection through different venues. This echos of the same thing but through other media.

I couldn't ignore him before, obviously, as I was living under his roof, but now, I am free to do so. And the more I ignore, the more correspondence he's sending, the more panicked he's getting, the more "clingy" he's becoming. His major mistake here was assuming that I care now. I did care, desperately, before, and was constantly being crushed by his demands--holding his affection hostage until I did what he wanted. Now, though, he can hold back, threaten, guilt, etc as much as he wants and I'm not listening. I don't need to. But I am observing his actions, and they remind me of what I have been doing in my sex life. This would be the arena in which I play out this drama, not surprisingly, given the covert incest. There's the connection I've been trying to make all this time.

My behavior toward my lover has been reward-based, angry at times, and trying to arouse guilt to get what I want. He completely ignores all of it : )  Which I love, deep down, because it forces me to look at my actions and grow up. With my "soul twin," my actions were so much worse--the same things, but amplified. I would throw "tantrums," threaten to abandon him if he didn't act the way I wanted him to, claim that I was the best friend he'd ever have, be there for him so much I humiliated myself, then become resentful...and then repeat the cycle over and OVER and OVER. He also was like this. Get two people with the same dysfunctional behaviors together and you have the perfect storm.

Dad and I were the perfect storm until I got the courage to let go. I miss having a dad in my life, but every time he acts out, I remember what my ragged body and mind went through all those years, and I don't miss this particular dad THAT much.

The same goes for my soul twin. I'll always be grateful for the experience, and ironically, I'm attending the same therapy retreat this weekend as I did when I was struggling with him a few years back. It will be so different this time--my focus is now on being the mother I need to be and all that goes along with it. It will be intense, but different intense, and I am looking forward to it.

My old nemesis visited this morning

The old familiar panic visited me this morning as I was sorting my baby's laundry. The voice that says I can't live without my father, that I am doomed to be miserable the rest of my life because he has rejected me. The terror of being abandoned. Right there in the laundry room...I wanted to head directly under the covers for the rest of the day.

And then all this work I've been doing the last few years kicked in...I recognized this feeling, this panic, this guilt, and the fear and urge to blame myself, the desire to punish myself...and it led me back to the experience that brought me to Breakthrough...and then I remembered how I believed I would die without this person, and how I didn't die, and how things turned out just fine in the end. It was like someone threw cold water in my face. Things aren't going to turn out just fine with my father, but I don't need him, either. I don't need any man. I want my husband's support. I want the company of male friends. I would like to have my father in my life and in my daughter's, in the best of all worlds. But I don't NEED. I can survive, quite well, without.

I am no victim. 

The point of what his wife did--following my blog until the opportune moment, then exposing it to my father, was an attempt to victimize. Manipulate and victimize. For revenge. Yes, I was caught off guard. Yes, it stings. But if she thought she was doing permanent, major damage to me, that was a faulty assumption. I think she believed I needed him in my life and she had the power to take away something essential. I think it says more about the kind of person she is and her disregard for her spouse's well being than about anything else. She must not have considered that my father was the one making overtures, that he wanted to meet his granddaughter, that he wanted us in his life. So, by introducing poison to him(not to me, as my writings are my own and I am proud of them), she destroyed his hope. What does that say about her? Something not at all flattering.

This life I have been given has made me stronger than I ever thought possible.