Dear Hector:

If your mother was indeed “beautiful when she was younger” (and seems like she has let your father known that she did him a big favor marrying a man inferior to her), he paid a heavy price for her physical beauty. The heavy price he paid was to receive her generous disapproval and ongoing criticism. Her ongoing disapproval and criticism probably triggered, maintained and/ or aggravated his OCD.

“anything that involves chores he’s so bad at that he frequently asks instructions”- she criticized him so heavily about how he did chores, that he lost confidence in his ability to do them well without her instructions.

He still tries to win her approval: “presents on mother’s day.. doing his own laundry for once, to get my mother’s approval”- I can almost hear your mother saying to him, repeatedly: When will you do your own laundry for once! I am tired of doing your laundry! And when he did his laundry, I imagine her saying: The clothes came out dirty! You can’t do anything right!

* She will not give him her approval, she prefers to keep herself allegedly superior to him.

“It does feel like me and my brother were the fruit of a loveless marriage”- reads to me that you and your brother were the fruit of an emotionally abusive marriage, where your mother has kept your father in a forever seeking approval, never good enough inferior position.

I can understand now why you were so intensely affected by that look of disapproval that she gave you when she caught you playing doctor with the girl- she is very effective and experienced in delivering powerful disapproving messages, via facial expressions, tone of voice, and words.

* If she has been that harmful to your father, whom she met when he was an adult, I can only imagine how harmful she has been to two young boys under her dominant, oppressive dominion.

anita