Dear Airene:

This is my understanding based on your threads:

You are heavily invested in “the helper/ giver.. peacemaker” role beginning in your family of origin where you “helped keep divisiveness among other family members low” and throughout your life. You wrote that this role helped you “feel better about myself and everything going on around me knowing I was easing some of the tension”.

For a long time, you held on to a belief in helping people “without regard to what the other person can do for us or give us or if the person is worthy of it… because it is the ‘right’ thing to do”.

You need to act based on the motivation of love, not anger: “There have been many times where I struggled with resentment and anger, but ultimately did something because of the love I feel.. maybe not for the person benefiting from my actions, but because of love for my kids, or someone related to that person, or even for my own well-being. It’s as if I need to find a reason I am doing something and be at peace with that reason”.

In April this year you shared about Sue, the mother of your daughter’s roommate. I suggested asserting yourself with her regarding her white lie. You answered: “I do not want to alienate Sue by calling her out of her lie, but do not want to be taken advantage of”. You are calculated, you think of the consequences of what you do on the people you care about, in this case, your daughter.

In much the same way you were calculated in your marriage, staying with your husband because you believed that if you divorced him, he wouldn’t have supported his children. You thought about the consequence of a divorce on the well being of your four children.

You repeatedly think about the consequences of your actions on the well being of others, including your son: “I have talked openly and honestly with my son about developing friendships (without going overboard because I don’t want him to think there’s something wrong with him)”

Back to your family of origin, you learned to accept what-is because things could be worse. You learned to point out to yourself and appreciate any positive things in a bad situation and in a person: “I grew up with a mom who was an alcoholic. There were definitely things I would have changed, but I also like to think that things could have been worse. I have also come to accept what is, is. I also recognize my mother’s strengths and shortcomings”.

Same in the context of your family-of-choice, and regarding your husband, you point out the positive things in the situation and in your husband and you think how things could be worse: “he supported our family financially through some things that some dads might up and quit.”

You repeatedly see things from others’ point of view in an empathetic way. Regarding your husband: “However, I also recognize that his road has not been easy either”. Regarding the mothers of your daughters’ friends: “it is the moms who are very willing to accept invitations, but don’t reciprocate (probably because like me, they are exhausted)”.

And now, my thoughts this very morning: considering who you are and how you operated throughout your life, I trust your evaluation of who your husband is, and I trust that you did the best job possible communicating with him and bringing out the best in him. And so, I figure, he really is who you say he is, aggressive toward you (in a passive way), requiring you to keep your mouth shut, if you want him to around.

Now that your four children are adults living outside the home you and it is only you and him in the house, why live a life that is not “a good way to live out the rest of my life”, why continue to keep your mouth shut, why “being married to a tree” and so forth?

You wrote earlier in the year, “I need to find a reason I am doing something and be at peace with that reason”- what is the reason for you living with him?

You care about doing “the ‘right’ thing to do”- how is living with him the right thing to do?

anita