Hi there Dr. Turndorf, just wanting your advice on a subject that has been affecting me for a long time. I’ll try to make it brief.I am recently divorced as of July/04. I divorced my ex-husband because he did not want to have a family after 11 years of marriage. Afterwards, he suffered a heart attack and sort of placed the blame on me.I filed for divorce back in 2002 and I ended up having an affair with one of his friends. I know what I did was very wrong, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I began dating this friend of my ex-husband and he wanted all of the same things I did and we planned to get married once my divorce came through.In May/04 my ex-boyfriend broke up with me out of the blue, he claimed he was tired of waiting and that he needed to get on with his life. I was devastated. I had already gone through the death of my dear father, so this just added more stress to my life.I eventually got my divorce in July/04. I am still-in-love with my ex-boyfriend. I have written him a letter explaining that I have been divorced since last July and that I still love him.My problem is why am I so afraid of mailing the letter to him?I heard through the grapevine that he was dating someone who wasn’t Jewish (I am), and that she was studying to convert. . . When I found this out I was even further devastated, but I still wrote him the letter in hope of rekindling the relationship. I have not been in contact with him since last June/04.Please advise me on what is the best thing to do. . . Thanks so much,
You said that your problem is that you are afraid of mailing the letter to your ex-boyfriend. Your fear is an unconscious warning signal telling you that mailing the letter is dangerous to you. What could the danger be?From reading your letter, it seems that you risk feeling even more hurt if you write to him. It seems that this man has moved on and is seriously involved with his present girlfriend. If she’s studying to convert she clearly intends to marry him.Your story is so sad. You gave up waiting for your husband to come around, you separated, filed for divorced, then dated your husband’s friend only to find that your beloved boyfriend refused to wait for you! After all your waiting and patience, it feels like a terrible punishment that this man didn’t give you back the loyalty and patience that you freely offered to your husband.In reading your story, I wondered if your unconscious chose this boyfriend because on some level you knew that he wouldn’t meet your needs either. I see a pattern here. Your husband let you down and didn’t give you what you wanted, then this man let you down. Both men ultimately refused to give to you.I sense that your fear of sending the letter is due to your not wanting confirmation that –once again–you aren’t going to get your wishes fulfilled. The only way to make sense of this pain is to learn and grow from it. Find out why your unconscious chooses men who won’t be responsive to you.The answer lies in your childhood. I am sure that you were emotionally frustrated and deprived as a kid. This experience would train you to pick husbands and lovers who won’t give you to you. Read my articles on unfinished childhood business and repetition compulsion to understand why we humans choose partners who replay the worst, most painful aspects of our childhood.In short, we all are driven to recreate the most damaging relationships from our childhood in the hope of working through the pain of the past and of achieving a happier ending this time around. Repetition compulsions don’t actually succeed in providing the happy ending precisely because we unconsciously choose partners who emotionally resemble parents who let us down.The result: our partners aren’t capable of giving us any more or any better than our parents did.Out of your simple question, why are you afraid to write, I have taken you on a journey of self-discovery. The ultimate destination of this journey is your being free of the repetition compulsion, free to choose a lover or spouse who will truly loves you back.
