Anita,

There is a lot of truth and wisdom in what you’re saying. I do think in some regards that my ex partner wishes that her mother had done more during her early childhood given that her father wasn’t brilliant, but she also regularly explains how proud she is of her mother as a woman. I think in many ways she’s actually a bit envious; her mother has been through hardship and managed to come out the other side and have a stable life, but I know for 100% certainty that my ex partner does not feel like her life is stable. She sought that stability in me, I guess, and I think now she’s trying to find it in herself. I am becoming much more convinced as time goes by that she’s trying to prove that she can do it on her own. Still, with that considered, I don’t understand why she won’t talk to me. She clearly doesn’t hate me, and at least on some level still has feelings for me, I don’t know whether the lack of communication is just another feature of her self-preservation motivation at the current time.

She definitely finds it hard to feel loved sometimes, as explained by her confessing that she didn’t feel good enough for me on occasion, that she felt like I was doing all the giving and she had nothing to offer. Obviously I don’t believe that’s the case and convinced her of that, for a time at least, but it’s clear her head was working that way at times.

She was always keen for me to spend more time with her family, actually, and so I made that effort when possible. I did explain that the fact that I had my own house and she lived with her mother made me feel a bit apprehensive about us sharing our space with her parents when we had space of our own, which she agreed with. But as I say, she was reasonably interested in me getting to know them more. In fact her step-father had insisted about 7 days prior to the breakup that me and him should go to play some snooker together, which never came about. Her sister had planned a day at the safari involving me, my ex, her sister, and her sister’s partner. There was a genuine effort to integrate everything, but that wasn’t long before she broke off the relationship. I don’t think it brought us any closer together, but I feel like that may have been her intention. Again I’m unsure what, if any, bearing that had on events. I really don’t understand any of it at the present time – I have all of these ideas, and we’re discussing all these possibilities, but it doesn’t really offer any clarity whilst she’s so silent. What do you think is the reason for her silence, given what we’ve discussed?

She would sometimes mention that her ex-partner had a very dominant approach to sex, but never elaborated more than that. She assured me after she told me that she had cheated that it was merely a sexual encounter, that she didn’t have any feelings or emotions involved. It’s strange because when WE spoke about sex it was clear that we were on similar wavelength, both preferring a varied and engaging sexual relationship as opposed to ‘defining’ it by any one characteristic, like for example dominance/submission. There were a couple of issues relating to our sex life, but nothing major – for a period of around 2 weeks I had an abscess on my tailbone, which required surgery and a further two weeks in hospital. So for that 4 weeks, from around the start of June, we were unable to explore each other sexually as much as we normally would. Sorry if that’s all a bit intense, I’m just not sure if it’s relevant. The fact that she even spoke about sex with her ex to me would indicate that, on some level, she was thinking about it, right?

I hope that on her journey of self-discovery she finds that she doesn’t need her mother’s presence in the way that she currently has it, if that makes sense. Not that I wish her a poor relationship with her mother, but I think from chatting to you I’m determining that she idolizes her mother and hasn’t necessarily realized her faults. She depends on her, in a much greater way than say her sisters. I suppose that in some form we’re all guilty of that.

I am thinking at the minute that I may leave it until the end of this month and then send her a kind of ‘self-care/pamper’ hamper, maybe without even revealing that I sent it. I have a poetry book due to be delivered from a poet that I know she loves, I’ll probably include that along with a few things to look after herself with. Do you think this is a good idea? One of my female friends at work suggested it, and I’m considering it to be a good plan.