Dear risha:

I will summarize your story as you shared it here first, and then I will offer you my thoughts:

You are now 39, your ex boyfriend is 33. You’ve been in a relationship with him for seven years (32-39). His parents disapproved of the relationship early on when they found out that you are older than him. His mother called you one day and told you to end the relationship with her son. You told your boyfriend about the call but he didn’t want to end the relationship, threatening to hurt himself if you ended it. And so, the relationship continued in secret.

But there were “arguments on a regular basis” between the two of you. Your family suggested that you meet other men they had in mind for you, but you refused their proposals because you loved your then boyfriend. Your mother then called his mother and told her that he is bothering you. Next, his mother and father, aware that the relationship was still ongoing, pressured him to end it. His father called you and threatened you “to stop all connections with him”, with his son, that is.

Next, during the past few months, your boyfriend told you “to find someone else and marry” so that he too will get married, to someone else.

Finally you told him, “let’s forget others and get married”!  He then suggested to you that if he married you, his mother who is “too sensitive” may get sick or die, and then he will not be able to live himself.

When you told him that his parents are selfish and treat you badly, and expressed your anger at them,  he told you that “no mater what they (his parents) say and do I need to keep my mouth shut”.

During the relationship you repeatedly “hurt him by blocking him and ignoring his calls and messages”, but “no matter what I do”, you wrote, “he tries to somehow reach me”. April this year you blocked him again and once again, “he was terrified and he cried and told he went through a lot and suffered a lot coz I blocked him”.

Yesterday he messaged you that he is going to marry a particular woman who works in his office, He told you that he was chatting with her since April and that “both his parents and her parents have approved”.

You asked: “how did he change so fast? How can he forget me and he has been chatting with her behind my back.. even after his parents disagreed he was still faithful to me and he never left me but after he met this girl how can he decide to move so quickly.. I don’t know if am to blame me or blame him… I feel blaming myself too and I felt he’s taken revenge from me for ignoring him”.

Now my input: there was no way this relationship could have ended in marriage. His parents were against it and he wouldn’t have married you against his mother’s wishes. He was clearly emotionally attached to you and continued the relationship with you but you were equally attached to him as well.

When you blocked him and stopped answering his messages, you did so not because you wanted to end the relationship, but because you wanted to cause him to marry you. You tried to manipulate him this way, to cause him to suffer and so, to motivate him to marry you.

Again, my point is that he wouldn’t have married you no matter what you did, not as long as his parents, particularly his mother, was against the marriage. Your manipulative blocking/ ignoring him didn’t help or hurt your goal of marrying him.

It looks like he was aware that you needed him as much as he needed you, that you were attached to him as strongly as he was attached to you, and maybe he was a bit less attached to you than you were to him, eventually, so he wanted you to marry someone else, so that he won’t feel guilty about marrying someone else himself.

What do you think/ feel at this point?

anita