Dear Flavia:

I apologize, I forgot to return to your thread yesterday until hours after turning off the computer. I would like you to know that I didn’t  forget because  your story wasn’t interesting or important. I will do my best for this to not happen again.

I want  to retell your story in my own words, with quotes from you. It helps me process information when I do that:

Your mother was about 23 when she gave birth to you and she died from a brain tumor when she was 31, you were 8. You have three siblings, two brothers and a sister, the youngest at the time of her death is a brother, 1.5 years old at the time. After  her death, you became like his second mother.

Your father became very depressed and  moved into your grandmother’s house with his four children. Two years later, when you were 10, he re-married Lucia, and moved to a new home. Lucia played only with your youngest brother but not with the older three children. You “tried to please her, to show affection to  her” but she  was strict, very critical (giving you a task, inspecting it, and always finding one or more flaws, pointing those out to you), and she hit you at times.

At 12 you realized that when your father (who  worked a lot) did something for you, like help you with your homework, she took him away from you, asking him to do something for her. She kept criticizing you and maybe increased her criticism of you over time. You spent more time at your grandfather’s house so to escape Lucia, and at 18, your father told you to move to your grandfather’s permanently because he was tired  of Lucia’s  criticisms of you.

At your wedding, almost 30 years ago, Lucia sat in the last row while your father sat in the first with other relatives. Your father died seven years ago and at that time Lucia told you that “she knew she was very hard- cruel even- to all of us”, and you told her that “all was forgiven”. The year after she began showing symptoms of dementia and currently a conversation with her is impossible.

As an adult, you earned a doctorate degree, worked hard in private schools  and currently and for some time you work as a professor at a university. Throughout your marriage you helped with house expenses, have been a good housewife and you have been a mother to your kids, and yet, your husband criticized you (telling you that you were “stupid, fat … don’t know how to dress up”, disqualified your opinions and then completely ignored you, as if you weren’t there, when in others’ company), and you thought of yourself as “a defective product”. There were “harsh arguments” with him for 4 years before you found out that he was fooling around with another woman. You divorced him following his confession of being in love with the other woman, last year.

Your current problem is that even though you don’t have “anyone telling me how inadequate I am”, you tell that to yourself and “demand perfection of myself”. You blame yourself for staying in the marriage too long.

My input: It is Lucia’s voice still criticizing you. Your inner critic is Lucia’s mental representative. When you wrote that regarding your childhood with Lucia: “I remember crying a lot because I could do nothing- when  she hit my brothers”. There really was nothing you can do when she hit your siblings, yourself, when she criticized you, there was nothing you were able to do. Your father wasn’t there, worked a lot, and when he was there, he didn’t stop Lucia, he let her do what she did. With no help from an adult at the home, you were indeed powerless.

When you married, you married a man who did the same as Lucia. You had the power to leave him, but you didn’t really know that you had that power, you were too habituated in the  powerless situation of your childhood.

“One day, my daughter asked me ‘Mom, why don’t you divorce him?’ And I answered at that time that I didn’t have the  necessary strength”- you were used to live in a situation without personal power, so you stayed. It is similar to this scenario I read about: if a baby elephant is kept tied with a rope, not big or strong enough to tear that rope, he tries,  fails and accepts it. Then when it is an adult,  easily capable of tearing the rope, it doesn’t try. He/she is too used to not having the strength when it young, weak and small.

Same here, as the adult that you were, you were too used to not having the strength, being powerless for too long, so you weren’t aware that you did have the strength to  tear that marriage rope and move away.

I hope you stop blaming yourself for staying too long in that marriage. It is understandable that  you did. How would you know you had the strength?

Imagine yourself as that child, criticized by Lucia, not being protected by your father, what were you to do. A child cannot imagine fighting an adult much bigger and more capable and winning. So the child gives up and gives in.

I hope to read your thoughts and feelings about my input and otherwise.

anita