I am aware that when it comes to parental alienation all lawyers are not equal. Dealing with parental alienation is a specialty area for them to be effective. I am in southeastern Connecticut and way over my head right now. My attorney also just passed away. Does anyone have any recommendations For a good attorney in this region?
Ok here goes, my writing style is a bit fragmented and I don’t want to run this through ChatGPT, so here goes.
I’m experiencing déjà vu. For back story, i will list what’s relevant without going overboard. I will answer any questions.
Last year i had my first real relationship post divorce. I was married 28 years to a toxic person and I developed some bad habits / reactions as a result of my experience. I’ve been actively fighting those “artifact responses” but I’m a slow learner, no one changes habits or wiring overnight.
The situation as happened before:
I have a friend I’m close with. She is female. We bonded over many things, some never talked about. I met her on hinge. We never met each other or dated. We started single, decided quick that we weren’t a thing, then we coached each other as we met out people.
We met each other 1 year after we started talking. In that first year we went through some serious shit and were there for one another emotionally. We supported each other and we were used to friends being fickle and bailing when times got tough for our entire lives. We are also both neurodivergent so we can actually understand each other, which is rare for our type. If you know you know🤷. We talk text each other almost every day. This was a pattern that we developed getting to know each other and we didn’t want to let that go. We are each others support. Of all hell cuts loose with other people, we will both still be there for the other. This has actually been used in my end twice, and hers once.
So in short, we met electronically, never dated. We never exchanged nudes or went beyond PG rating. At the 1 year mark, we met in person to celebrate the friendship and hi five so to speak. It was everything as marketed to each other. There was no weirdness or any feelings that didn’t belong there. It was straight up ok. All we did was go for a burrito, and eat the burritos at her house.
We decided that we’re weirdos, no one does anything g like this, and it would be super fun to celebrate our friendship by at least meeting every year to do a stupid fun thing in person since we bonded and crossed that barrier. Once per year until one of us is dead lol. Fun premise.
Seeing her house was super interesting because we had sent each other goofy videos of making breakfast or doing yard work and things like that. I got to see the backgrounds of those videos stitched together and in person after a year of that! I consider her my best bro, and if I were to ever get married again I would demand she be my best man lol. Who is close to me is my choice, and she’s kind of like a spirit animal to me.
So here is where it starts. Coming up to the 1 year mark, I had started dating a woman. This woman was a feminist, so although she said she was ok with my best friend being female, I sensed otherwise. The only thing I got out of her that was clear was “I want to be your only place of emotional intimacy, that hurts me worse than cheating”.
What didn’t compute for me at the time was this: if I were emotionally close with my friend Erik (which I am but unreliably (and not often) that goes under the radar and is acceptable. That is a conflict with feminism in my perspective. There is also a red flag where a woman wants me to put all the eggs of my emotional safety in one basket. It felt like my ex wife with the “you don’t need those other people, trust me” thing where a person gets isolated. Once isolation happens control happens, and I’ve been there done that. Isolation >manipulation>thrown out like trash. That’s my experience unfortunately. The third problem is a simple “now you’re telling me who I can be friends with and how close and you’re drawing boundaries on their proximity” which was another flag.
So this unfolded around the 1 year mark. I thought that if I met my friend in person, it was all clean and good, we’re all fine right? That didn’t happen. She continued to be weird about it. The kicker was that her best friend was a man and I accepted that…
So now I’m in another relationship with a different type of person. Not a feminist, easy going, relaxed and in turn makes me relaxed. But I hit this again. It’s coming up on the 2 year mark…I have a GF of 6 plus months who I believe is my person. She says I have the same calming effect on her, and she’s also making effort to communicate better than she used to. She told me that my friendship makes her uneasy…
So now that’s twice with 2 different people, making me the common denominator here.
I’m in the position I was in last year. Obviously I’m doing something wrong. I think that there is nothing wrong with what I’m actually doing, but there’s something wrong with the way I’m presenting it. So ladies please help me. I’ll try to spot my own flaws, please find extras I’m missing 🙏.
I explained my friend to the first relationship and came in hard. I actually have 2 . One I met here on Reddit. I said “they’re not going anywhere”. I don’t know if that was a line in the sand that needed to be drawn or if it was too harsh? From my perspective I was letting it be known that what was done to me before won’t be done to me again, which is true. But maybe they took that phrase as “that’s my main person and if they talk shit on you, too bad for you”? I didn’t mean that. Having support is not the same as making your main person a second. If done right, the support helps the main person. That’s where my mind was.
I explained the relationship to the second woman, and what happened in the first relationship regarding my friend. She agreed with me (at the friend stage) So now comes my current problem. I sensed something off because it happened before. She was more transparent. She told me “in my past, when a man told me he had a good friend who was female, it didn’t end well”. She told me that my friendship makes her nervous.
Now I’m FULL STOP. Now I’m at a place where I have a chance to do something over and do it right, so I don’t want to waste that. Second checking my friendship (it’s the same), and realizing that I must be doing something wrong. I’ll start with the second woman being transparent. I’m in love with this woman.
After full stop and reassess, I can see that she has feelings. Those shouldn’t be dismissed (as I had a way of doing sometimes when things got complicated) furthermore, her feelings are directed to a past experience. That I need to definitely respect. My past experiences have led me to present fears which aren’t valid. I’m not immune from that. This needs to be taken very seriously.
The end of the problem is this :
ME-
I as an autonomous person, a person who has been abused, treated like shit, now has the right to choose his friends, who is close to him. I gained that right through an ugly divorce and many years of isolation and punishment. I’m not doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result. I reserve the right to include in my life, those who understand me and make me be a better person. So Fing what If that’s a girl, stop being sexist and insecure.
HER-
I want to feel like I’m the main person (justified) I want to come first, because I never came first in my last relationships (justified and in my mind she’s first, without cutting off anyone to prove it)
.”your relationship with her makes me nervous because of past experience (justified, I had a whole thing with bisexuality that took too long to conquer so I can relate overcoming / understanding past experiences is very hard)
My only new thought is to take her with me to meet my friend and ask her BF to come too? That’s tricky though. My friend is a private person like I am. I’m not sure if she’s down. I do know that she’s dead nuts in love with the guy and I’m rooting for her, I’m happy for her. This has been a whole process. I think she’s around 10 months into that one? Anyhow I figure that if my current GF sees us interact, she will sense that there’s nothing up, because there’s actually nothing up I think that eyes and body language will confirm that, even though I’m terrible at it lol. Any suggestions would be appreciated here.
The conflict the best I can describe it is:
Her- I’m too old for some dude with a “just a friend” anymore. I want to trust you but I’m past that”
Me- I’m not losing myself to a control succubus again who wants to isolate me by cutting my friends off again. I’m too old and past that”
Somewhere in the middle is our answer. Please help me find it because she is so special to me. I’m afraid of losing this relationship to dumb details like that when we are actually on the same page. We have everything else mostly right 😢. I really really don’t want to screw this up, but as always I don’t want to mute or lose myself.
Although we are a “discouraged” match, I have never felt so in sync with someone when it comes to being not told what I’m capable of or what I can’t do… can any Sagg’s relate to this feeling of wanting to beat the odds? I’m a December Cap man for reference.