Forum Replies Created
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Dear Peace,
you’re welcome. It’s good to hear that you value yourself and your own happiness more than other people’s expectations. I am sorry you had such a horrible experience with that divorced man (I guess?), father of two sons, who called you names and threatened you. As a result, you were keen to receive a certain guarantee from your previous boyfriend (also divorced, who still had obligations towards his ex wife and child, and was unwilling to marry you).
You said the toxic boyfriend made you financially broke, the next one had financial issues too (had to pay for the house for his ex wife and child), and your current boyfriend has money problems too. I actually see a pattern there – perhaps these men are attracted to you because you’re independent, have a job, a decent salary – in other words, you can help them financially (and are willing to do so, because you feel sorry for them).
I am not saying these three men are the same, because the first sounds pretty scary, while the other two boyfriends seem more normal. But all of them had financial issues and needed your help, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. What do you think?
Dear patelh,
your situation reminds me of my cousin. Her in-laws never accepted her, were telling she’s not good enough for their son, because she’s a few years older, hasn’t graduated from college, and that she’s messy and doesn’t keep order at home. Well, that may be true, but she’s a good person otherwise and was a good match for her husband. They did well and had 2 beautiful daughters together. The husband was loving in the beginning, but then started to criticize her more and more, falling under the influence of his parents. Eventually he filed for divorce, and they did get a divorce. She was devastated but she’s survived, and probably she’s better off now without the constant criticism and put-downs by her husband and in-laws.
The problem is that he was a weak man, insecure in himself, and didn’t have the guts to confront his parents and defend her. She had low self-esteem issues, and so she tolerated his criticism, and partly thought she deserved it. He was the superior one, she was inferior. She believed it.
I see a lot of similarities with your situation, because as you say, your husband doesn’t respect you and agrees with his parents and family that you’re inferior. It could be that he’s specially rude and impatient with you nowadays because you’re not working and decided not to look for a job at the moment. My cousin’s husband was similar – he didn’t like that she stayed more than one year at home after the birth of their 2nd daughter. He thought she was lazy.
My advice is to separate from your husband because it probably won’t get better. It could in theory, if you move somewhere else, where he’s further away from his family. But it’s not a guarantee because they can still influence him – and he seems very susceptible to their opinion. If he doesn’t respect you, that’s a huge and No1 problem. Another problem is if you don’t respect yourself…. You’d need to work on your self-esteem and decide that you’re good enough, there’s nothing wrong with you, and that you don’t want to tolerate this kind of attitude.
I guess if you’d like to separate, you would need to find a job, so it’s not the best timing for you now. But this situation with your husband isn’t really sustainable and will only make you miserable.
Dear Neverdyed,
By vague language, did you mean that I hadn’t admitted my real feelings towards him?
No, I meant you sometimes use vague language here on the forum. For example, you asked ““Can there be a friendship which I keep in touch with somebody without leading to a formal romantic relationship?” – you asked in general terms, when actually you wanted to ask if you can be friends with this particular man.
Other parts I had trouble understanding are probably due to your language style, and not because you wanted to sound vague on purpose. But anyway, I could understand everything once you’ve clarified it.
As for those questions, I can answer them for sure, but maybe it’s more important for me to feel/experience good again, right?
Yes, but if you know what made you feel good back then (let’s say you felt appreciated and important – just as an example), you then know what it is that you’re missing in your personality. If you miss feeling appreciated and important, you’d need to develop a sense of self-worth. If you miss feeling loved, you’d need to develop love for yourself. And so on… The way you felt in the “good old times” is an indicator of what you want to create for yourself in the present, but not by waiting for another man to give it to you, but by developing it within your own being.
Wishing you a nice weekend too!
Dear Ryan,
although this relationship hasn’t worked out the way you hoped for, I think it’s actually not a bad thing that it happened, because as you say yourself, you could be open and vulnerable, without slipping into the old defense mechanisms. This shows you’ve grown and aren’t the same man who has 2 failed marriages behind him. I say this in response to these words of yours: “there remain the issues that have led me to be twice-divorced, where I have yet to have an intimate, long-term relationship, in my 45-years of life. I certainly have a lot of work to continue to do.”
You don’t necessarily have so much work to do any more, neither you’re the same man you were before. Yes, there are still things to work on but you’re much more aware now and have the help needed. You’ll get there, for sure.
“I also need to work on my self-worth after working much of the past 10-years on my self-esteem.”
Actually, I think self-worth and self-esteem are one and the same, whereas self-confidence is a slightly more superficial thing, in that people may have self-confidence (due to their skills and accomplishments), but deep down, they may still feel unworthy. A typical example is an athlete who’s built his self-confidence around performance and winning. When they have an injury and cannot perform any more, they may become depressed because they based their worth on some outer thing – excellence in sports – and without it, they feel worthless.
The sense of worth is at the core of our being, it’s something that should be there simply because we exist. In childhood, if the message we’ve received from our parents was that they don’t appreciate us that much, they’re not happy to have us, that we aren’t that important to them – that’s how our self-worth gets damaged.
Based on my own experience, I believe that my mother criticizing me damaged my self-confidence, but her expressing that she didn’t want to have me (because she was afraid to have children, she felt incapable of being a mother) was what actually caused my lack of self-worth. When the child feels unwanted, this is how the wound happens. Interestingly, I wasn’t aware of my lack of self-worth until much later in life, I was only aware of my lack of self-confidence.
Anyway, now that you know what to work on, it doesn’t necessarily need to take a long time to heal it. You may start valuing and appreciating yourself already now, not because your outer achievements, but just because you’re valuable and worthy. We all are. This is how the sense of inferiority/superiority gets resolved too. You lose the need to compare yourself with others, you focus on your own life and growth, without looking what others are doing.
I wish you a happy new chapter in life, and keep us posted how you’re doing…
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