At least for my cats.

After I drove my SIL and my nephew to the bus station last night, my cats took over my room again. They regained their kingdom. But before my SIL left the apartment, Kimchi was already warming up to her because my crafty SIL bought salmon cat treats–the real salmon, not the dry food one–to woo them. So when they were leaving, Kimchi was just watching them from her perch on the stairs instead of cowering inside the room or on top landing of the stairs. My SIL brought her hand to Kimchi for her to smell. She didn’t flinch nor turn away.

Which was good since my SIL, my bro, and my nephews would be frequent visitors to my tiny house when we transfer there. Because I can cook. 😂

They finished all my kimchi in my chiller. They love all things spicy.

I had back-to-back-to-back calls today and the last one was a webinar for undergrad students. I was up until 1 am doing the Powerpoint presentation for that and I was still at it until right before the webinar started. Doing that was exhausting; my brain just got fried. All 115 students (they were supposed to be 135 but some joined the webinar later) had access to privileged communication (in the legal sense, i.e. confidential) that’s why they couldn’t do screen cap/photos of my presentation or even do audio recordings because there are things that I said that could be used against me, especially criticisms of other media entities (of what should not be done based on universal media ethics).

Meanwhile, I had been emailing people for our trip to Singapore. Making reservations to Blue Ginger for the team dinner. My APAC boss wanted a restaurant near CBD instead of having seafood at some restaurant on the East Coast. I also need to order lunch for me, my APAC boss, and my manager because it will be a working lunch for us 😥. *sigh*

I have yet to finish setting up interviews for next week.

While I was reflecting on what I wrote last night, I remember asking myself during my lowest point if the men in my life learned this kind of behavior towards women from their own fathers, seeing how they treated their partners when my exes were growing up? It’s possible, just the way I learned this co-dependent behavior from my mom—the self-sacrificing kind of love without any regard for my own person.

“Codependent people need external sources (things or other people) to give them feelings of self-worth. Often, following destructive parental relationships, an abusive past and/or self-destructive partners, codependents learn to react to others, worry about others and depend on others to help them feel useful or alive. They put other people’s needs, wants and experiences above their own.”

Kathy Berman, quoting Daniel Ploskin on Medium.com

I am trying to understand and study all these because I see now how this is being passed down to my daughters. They have an emotionally absent father and now that we have separated, the more they feel neglected/unloved by him. Even though they understand that I am better off without their dad, the basic need of their id and ego to be validated and loved by the parent of the opposite sex is left unfulfilled, thus, leaving them with a feeling of unworthiness. Even if the superego understands, the lower levels of consciousness don’t.

It doesn’t help that they witnessed another relationship of mine that followed the same pattern.

Some time ago, they started declaring that they like girls better and that they won’t marry ever. I sat down with them and told them that I’m cool with them being lesbians if that is really their orientation. But if this is just their way of protecting themselves from being hurt by boys, as they have seen from my experience, then that is not cool. I told them that girls can be mean to their girlfriends as well, just like in any hetero relationships. Sometimes they can be worse because they know that their partners have a limited pool to choose from so they would stick to the relationship even if it was already sour, as I’ve seen from my friends’ experiences, I told them.

Now my daughters have stopped doing that because deep down I know they like certain boys from school or their review school because they don’t stop talking about them. Bukambibig baga. Plus they had been declaring their undying love for some male anime characters, so I know they really don’t like girls in the romantic sense.

It was just some kind of trauma response, from what they saw while growing up.

So now I have to untangle that and kind of fix that so they won’t end up chasing narcissists and go around begging for love and validation.

As for the men I’ve been involved with, they may always end up unsatisfied with current and future relationships if they keep on dragging their partners through their noses.

I’m just glad that it’s no longer me.