I'm So Frustrated!

by Tanikia
(Hyattsville, MD USA)

As a child my parents never paid me any attention. I was always on my own throughout everything. I have a younger sibling. He should have been the only child, because he had everything given and taught to him.

I always had to walk to school while he was driven. At that age I just felt like a lot of things with my brother and me just wasn't fair. They played favoritism with us. I never made good grades in school. My parents didn't care, because I didn't know how to read and didn't know how to count. My mom never taught me anything. I was just a confused child.


As I became a teenager she never taught me about sex education or young lady issues such as puberty. Too bad I had to learn the hard way! As I became an adult I would just fall for any guy. Most of it was wrong, sleeping with guys because I wanted to feel loved.

Now I have three kids by three different men. All of my relationships have been very conflictual, to the point were we would fight in front of the kids.

So now I'm with a guy who I love dearly, but I don't know if he feels the same. He feels that it's okay to talk to other women while he's with me. when he comes home from work, he may stay for 1 hr. and then he's gone until 5 o'clock in the morning. I'll call him to make sure everything's fine, but I get no answer. Then he'll decide to call me when he's in front of the door waiting for me to open it.

I did something wrong by looking through his phone and saw different text messages from different women.

When he is home we're constantly arguing over little petty things around the house. I'm starting to feel worthless! It's not like he has a junky home to come to. I know that he loves me and the kids. He does a lot for us and he has a lot of good qualities as far as taking care of the home.... financially!

He just likes to go to his family for every little thing that goes wrong in our relationship and now his family (meaning his brother) doesn't like me. He told his brother that I set him up to have a baby which wasn't true. It may have looked that way, because I was pregnant and had a miscarriage, never told my boyfriend and he got me pregnant again.

So I made it seem like I was always pregnant because I knew if I told him, then he would have told me to get an abortion. I didn't want to put my body through that because I had just had a miscarriage. His brother says I bitch too much about nothing, when the only thing I have complained about was him not coming home at night. He has his family thinking the worst about me. This is a guy that I truly love and plan to marry one day. I just don't think that my love for him is stronger than his for me. There's nothing wrong with me looks wise or mind wise because even tho I've been through the struggles of learning on my own I have grown up to be a very intelligent women. I feel so angry because I feel like I put so much into everything and pray a lot, but my prayers seem like they don't get answered and things fail.




Response from Dr. DeFoore

Hello Tanikia, and thanks for your story. It is good that you want some help with this. You are a smart person, and you know it should be better than it is.

Your parents neglected you and favored your brother, as you pointed out. This set up a pattern in your subconscious mind that makes your current relationship feel familiar and normal. You are basically doing the same thing to yourself that was done to you when you were growing up. You are favoring the male (your partner) over the female (you). While this may feel familiar, it is not healthy, and it will lead to more and more neglect and abuse.

I don't think you have ever been treated with true love and respect, and that's why you're willing to put up with the way your current partner is treating you. No matter how good he may be, the patterns you are describing are unacceptable in a healthy relationship. No one can be happy or have a decent life if their partner is staying out until 5 AM and not saying where they are or answering their phone.

I strongly encourage you to consider that you deserve better than what you're getting in this relationship. In your own words, it is making you feel worthless. In a health relationship, you will feel better about yourself, not worse. Try the journaling processes on this page to deal with your past trauma, and to get more in touch with your feelings. Then use these imagery processes for emotional healing to go back to all of those childhood situations in which you were neglected, and offer love and care yourself in those memories.

You can do this, Tanikia. You are worthy of respect and love, and when you accept nothing less than that, that is what you will get.

Believe in yourself, and never give up on you.

My very best to you,

Dr. DeFoore