Dear miranan:

Welcome back! I read your posts in your 2015 threads so to get the best understanding I can in answering this thread.

You wrote three years ago: “the human connection is the most important thing in life. Something I value the most.. I don’t really have strong connections in my life”.

If the quoted is still your experience, is it possible that after you returned the dog to the breeder, that lack of connection was more noticeable, that the dog provided a distraction from the lack of connection, for you? That is, you still don’t like having a dog but the emptiness at the home was less noticeable when the dog was around?

If I understand correctly, you feel that if you get the dog back, you will have a better connection with your son, that the dog will bring the two of you closer. If this is your thinking, it doesn’t read to me that having the dog will get you and your son closer. I think what is likely to happen is that once again, you will re-experience doing for others and not getting anything in return.

I think that exploring the things I brought up here can help with your decision. Looking forward to reading your thoughts/ feelings.

anita

Dear miranam,

Just a thought that I had when reading your post. Your son was also keen on taking the dog back. More than the dog what if the feeling that he too wanted was the closeness that the two of you felt, the bonding that you missed with him. Maybe a shared activity less exhausting than taking care of the dog could give you ways to bond with him.

Take care.

Dear miranam:

I re-read all your posts from 2015, again, so to try to understand better. You wrote yesterday: “In my relationship with my older son, my husband and my younger son the common denominator is me”- not completely accurate, the common denominator is you and your husband. Your husband has been in your life for much of your relationship with your older son and for all of your relationship with your younger son. Your husband plays a big part in your relationships with the two. I will explain:

From having read your posts attentively and repeatedly, including your interactions with the members who replied to you, I learned that you are very intelligent, insightful, introspective, deep, sensitive, attentive, responsible, not selfish, and very honest. Your honesty is unusual, I am impressed at your level of honesty.

Most often both parties to a relationship are responsible for its failure or success. In your relationship, because of what I mentioned about you in the paragraph right above, and his lack of these features, I see his responsibility for the trouble in the marriage to be about 95%, if not more.

Your husband is unlike you. He is significantly lacking these features: being introspective, deep, sensitive, attentive, responsible, and honest. In comparison to you, his lack is severe. The gap is huge.

Like you wrote in 2015, “he is very selfish, even if he comes across as not being so. All that matters for him is to feel good”. He values himself feeling good. On the other hand, you value human connection above all things (“the human connection is the most important thing in life. Something I value the most”, 2015 and “Close family ties is my fundamental value”,  yesterday).

This is a big difference in values between the two of you. Being very selfish and self centered, his emotions matter to him, but “My emotions never matters”, 2015. And then he has been “somehow covertly abusive. Passive-aggressive…being mean and aggressive with me for 3 years”.

You did all that you could possibly do, communicated to him clearly and often “in a very-very nice way, suggested counseling, but no change in him. “No matter how much I tried to be there for him, to do things for him, talk to him, he was mean and frustrated to me again”.

He wants you and life to be “Nice and easy- this is how he wants the life to be, especially when it comes to me. It has always been like that”.

Like you wrote, “problems don’t get resolved”, you have to keep problems to yourself, live in a marriage with “no way to establish adult communication”, hear about his feelings but not be heard, basically participate in a strange nice-and-easy, happily-ever-after marriage life that exists somewhat only for him and not at all for you.

And then when you understandable express a dissatisfaction with that happily-ever-after scenario that is not your experience, you are pointed out by him as the “bad guy” (to yourself and to your y0unger son, if I understand correctly), which may be the reason the bond between you and your younger son is not strong.

You wrote yesterday, “Close family ties is my fundamental value”. Reality is that what you do experience is a close physical proximity to your husband and son, the appearance of “close family ties”, but not really close family ties.

You wrote: “if we are not getting what we want and it makes us unhappy, we should probably try to not want it. I wish I knew how..” – if it wasn’t for you being in pain for so many years and still, just the other day, “(Did I mention how low and hopeless towards life in general do I feel?)”, it would have been possible to not want your marriage to be different. Thing is, when we feel pain we naturally and automatically want the pain to stop.

I posted all this to you in case you do want to communicate further with me on the matter, so to find a solution, not only to the dog problem (not a good idea for your well being as well for the well-being of the relationship between you and your son, I believe), but to this marriage, based on your values and on reality.

anita

Dear miranam,

Sad to read about your statement that something inside feels dead.

Reading your response above and communication that you have had it looks as if moving away from your husband seems the best possible solution. But caring for your son’s interests and the manageability of the situation is possibly preventing you from doing that.

I hope that you are soon able to come to some sort of peace with yourself. In the meantime, keep looking for what you enjoy outside of this relationship, at other dimensions of life, explore any of your interests that have previously brought out your courage, strength and clarity.

Take care.

Dear miranam:

I had a couple of thoughts yesterday after posting to you, about what you wrote in your recent post: “I think I settled and living this way is manageable. But it is truth that something inside feel dead and I have not myself anymore for longest time”-

I know the feeling of not being alive, and I know it from experiencing it like you, “for longest time”.

I experienced it in childhood, and onward because my mother didn’t see me, there was no one that saw me. She did see me as a thing to feed, a thing to put clothes on, to buy school supplies for, but she didn’t see me. She didn’t see a person who feels. She didn’t see a person with thoughts, opinions. She didn’t value me beyond the most superficial, something that is there to talk to (not to listen to), to express to (not to wonder what is that I have to express). I remember an uncle that once asked me questions, as if I mattered, how invigorating and strange that felt, how … alive that felt.

As the social animals that we are throughout our lives, we need people, and we need people to see us. When we are not seen, beyond the very superficial, we can not feel alive. We need to be seen so to feel alive.

anita