And

so when did that start to change? When were you able to start talking about your feelings in a vulnerable way and to whom? Well,

i started seeing a therapist probably within a month after that relationship ended. In that that person taught me that if some one is open to and available for that kind of communication, that it is possible to sit and look at some one in the face and talk to them about your tegest, most painful feelings.

N i met my partner probably while i was still going through this therape i was 34 years old, and i wasio, never

had a relationship with some one that i trust, so now i have one.

I'm only laughing because it this sounds ridiculous to me. Given

everything that you are describing, it would be practically shocking if you were able to trust somen i

think it's ridiculous. It seems to me

always

intellectually understood what trust was, but i never had an experience of it. I'm

i'm saying that, zoe, because it sounds a little bit like you'd eternalized some of what you were getting as a child, in which your feelings were being dismissed and invalidated, that you're still doing that to yourself. I'm just pointing that out because when you grow up with so much blanket invalidation, it's difficult not to internalize some of it. Nd then it seeps out sometimes, and you find yourself saying something, admitting to a feeling that is so natural given the circumstancebut looking at it and going like, all, but that's silly. And it's very much not silly. Do you notice that you do that, that you might still be invalidating your feelings? I i

do that certainly, from time to time. I would say that i make a choice to perhaps not connect to that pain in

some moments.

What

guy is talking about is partly being able to acknowledge the pain, but the other part is what he was saying about self compassion. When you're talking about your experiences and you judge yourself, like, it took me this long before i could do this. Well, of course, because of what you experienced. And that's what happened in your family. You'd say, i'm feeling this, and they would say, we'll know you're not. That's not your experience, or that shouldn't be your experience. You kind of do that to yourself absolute and it sounds like when you went to therapy, it was the first time that you were able to sit with some one and not have them dismiss or discount what your experience was. And i think it's not a coincidence that you met this person right as you started going to therapy. And here was this person who was able to be with you in a way that i think you longed for for a very long time. And so tell us a little bit about that relationship. Yes,

it's been seven years since we met. My relationship with him started out in a sort of beautiful way,

in a way that i had never seen a relationship happend, and

that was very meaningful for

me. I wasn't able to see the therapist continuously, and so at some point i

had to say, this has been an incredibly powerful time for me, but i can't see you any longer, those for financial reasons.

So i stoppd seeing her so no situations would arise in my relationship with mark, that may be happy, and

i would do whatever form

of communicating i i could that i thought would sort

of pave the way for open

and honest dialogue. Oftentimes, my communication tactics didn't work, and we ended up not

communicating clearly about things that made me unhappy in the relationship. Is

there, son, that you and mark haven't gone to therapy? A financial reason? Ye. You know, the first thing that came to mind when you were saying that your brother went to therapy for about ten years, starting in his twenties, was this issue of finances. I wondered if there was some envy that you had of his ability to go and work through some of the stuff from childhood in a way that maybe you didn't have access to.

Yes, i

was worried about money in having children.