Dear Dan,

As for me not being there to help in challenging times that is incorrect. I was always there to help her and I did, I did a lot to help with anything and she knew that. She even said that she felt like she was using me as I was always willing to help.

I apologize for assuming that you weren’t there to help. I assumed it because you said you went to your mother’s place when the “house got smaller and smaller” and when your wife needed some space. I thought that at those times your wife was very busy with her children and other tasks, and you felt like she cannot give you the attention you needed, so you got out of her way, not to disturb her. Even if the latter is true – that you felt a little neglected at times – I now realize that this doesn’t mean you didn’t help your wife in the household or otherwise (providing a generous settlement is a great example of that!). I am sorry for making that assumption.

When we got back together for a few weeks but then she said she needed space I asked her why. She told me that she needed to gather herself a bit as I think the feelings my have started becoming a bit too intense for her. I said that’s fine and she said it was hard to tell me that because I am always there to help and that I’m always nice.

She needed space because she needed to gather herself. Those are her words. Your interpretation is that “the feelings may have started becoming a bit too intense for her.” But you don’t know that for sure. I think she is conflicted and that’s why she needs to “gather herself”. She needs to decide what she wants. On one hand, she appreciates your help and generosity and the fact that you are always nice. But on the other, there is something bothering her, and I don’t think it’s just that her children have an issue with you.

I will dare to say that she too has an issue with you, and it could be because you never asked her those deeper things, and maybe she felt like you didn’t care? It’s again an assumption on my part, but if there was no communication between you, and the distance was growing, it’s very likely that there was some resentment on her part. She actually showed it by behaving strangely around Christmas and then giving you the cold shoulder in January…

I guess I should say through when we were being intimate with one another it was good. We had very good chemistry in that regard.

It could be that when you spend some time apart, she feels the spark again. But when you are too close together, and she feels burdened by a lot of things, and on top of that you behave emotionally needy (a little bit like a child of hers), that spark is gone.

You say:

I also feel closest with her through physical touch. At some point that wasn’t being reciprocated. I’m not just talking about sex but just any kind of physical affection.

I can imagine that if the emotional distance between you grew ever larger, then no wonder she didn’t feel like being physically close either. I’d say emotional intimacy is a precondition for physical intimacy.

Dear Dan,

I haven’t noticed it before, but now that anita brought it up, I also feel that you don’t really know what was your wife feeling and thinking when she asked for separation. You don’t understand why it happened and are only guessing, because it seems you didn’t really have an honest and open communication with her.

You say that you had a good relationship with her son, until something happened, but you don’t know what. You asked your wife and she told you her son was going “through some stuff” but didn’t tell you what that stuff was. You didn’t ask further because you didn’t want to”pry”.

Actually, it wouldn’t have been prying because it was directly related to you, and he is your stepson. Prying would have been if you wanted to know intimate details about a neighbor, but not if you are worried about your stepson pulling away from you for no apparent reason. I think you deserved an honest conversation with your wife, but it never happened.

Also, you say that you don’t know why you slept on the couch and not in your stepson’s room. BTW I thought that you started sleeping on the couch only when your wife’s mother moved in. I thought that in Sept 2021, when you wife complained about your snoring, you moved to your stepson’s room and that you basically swapped places with him. But it seems this isn’t what happened?

I think it would be important to answer this question (if not here on the forum, at least to yourself): Why indeed did you sleep on the couch and not on the bed, in your stepson’s room, which was free at that time? Was it because his room was “off limits” and you wouldn’t be welcome there? Or it was you who didn’t want to intrude? Or no one offered you to sleep there? Please try to answer this question as honestly as you can, because it may reveal a few things about the dynamic between you and your wife, and about your place in this blended family.

Dear Dan,

You are very welcome. You say you didn’t show any frustration, however she probably sensed it. You say:

When her mom started living with us I was unhappy but I put up with it and didn’t really voice my feelings and she probably sensed that as well.

I am sure she sensed that you were displeased with the situation, because people who are in the care-taker role are very attuned to other people’s needs… so she felt it and probably felt guilty that she wasn’t giving you enough…

Actually she said one time that she thought I was jealous of her son. This is farthest from the truth but I guess she was being pulled in all different directions.

Perhaps you resented that e.g. her son gets to sleep in her bed, while you ended up on the couch? And she interpreted your resentment as jealousy? If I may ask – what were the sleeping arrangements before covid, when her children were staying one week at a time at your place? Did her son sleep in her bed then too, while you slept separately? Or it only started happening during covid?

Sleeping with her 10-year old son on a regular basis, and separately from you – her husband – does tell a lot about her. I think it tells about her guilt and, as you discussed with Helcat, about her inability to set boundaries with her children.  She felt guilty for setting those boundaries, and she also probably felt guilty for not giving you what you expected from her. And so she found the solution in separation, which is very unfortunate for both of you. But you cannot do much about it, apart from working on your side of the problem.

And I’ve learned a lot about myself since the separation. I’ve learned that I have attachment trauma stemming from things in the past. I’ve learned that I’m an anxious pre occupied style of attachment. I’ve learned those things and understand now what could have been different.

It’s good that you are aware of your anxious attachment style. People with anxious attachment style (this was my attachment style too!) are attracted to motherly types i.e. care-takers, so it’s probably a part of the reason why you were so attracted to your wife. She was probably a dream-come-true for you, or rather, for the needy child in you. Because the child wants to feel safe and protected, it wants to feel cared for and nurtured, it wants to feel No1 to his care-taker…

I remember my needy child wanted to feel No1 for my then-boyfriend (now husband), and I was hurt if he had to attend to other people and if I wasn’t his center of attention at all times. I am not saying you are the same, but this is typical for anxious attachment.

If you want to grow out of this neediness, you would need to work on becoming the care-taker for your own inner child. Strengthening the adult part in you, who can become the care-taker for your wounded inner child. It’s called self-parenting or re-parenting. Best if you could do it in therapy, if that is available to you.

I would be glad to talk to you more about anxious attachment and how to heal it, or anything else you might be interested in.

Dear Tricia,

I am sorry you were betrayed like that by your long-term boyfriend. You say you don’t understand why it happened and he won’t talk to you. What I find curious is that he (supposedly) booked a trip with his friends for his birthday to travel to Spain, and you weren’t disturbed by it. I mean, if my boyfriend would rather travel abroad with his friends for his birthday than with me, this would disturb me and would make me question how much he actually cares about me. For you, it wasn’t a big deal. (That was no big deal at all. I just adjusted my trip to see him when he got back.)

Perhaps you didn’t ask much from him because you didn’t value yourself enough? You said he was kind and loving up until May, but maybe you didn’t really see his selfishness or lack of care for you because it was normal for you to always adapt to him and not ask much for yourself?

This is just a theory, I am not claiming I know what happened between the two of you. But you say you want to understand, and for that, I think it would make sense to dig a little deeper and take a look at the dynamic between the two. Because it might turn out that he wasn’t as kind and loving as you thought him to be? I think that understanding what happened could also help you face him (and stay strong) when you meet him next month.

Dear Neera,

You are very welcome, I am glad it helped you.

I did see my mom as a victim growing up. And the more I learned about domestic violence in school, the more I wanted to free her, but I did not know how. So I tried to be the partner for her that she needed, trying to be perfect and eventually it did wear me out.

If there was violence in your family and your father was hurting your mother, your mother was indeed a victim. But the question is whether she needed to stay victim or she could have done something to help herself.

You say that you learned about domestic violence at school, and tried to help her and free her. What kind of advice did you give her? Did you tell her to talk to someone and seek help, or to even divorce your father?

I am asking because it could be that she had options to help herself, but she chose to stay in a dysfunctional marriage, and made you and your sister collateral victims of sorts, exposing you to domestic violence and horrible fights between her and your father?

It’s no wonder that you did everything to please her and not to upset her, because you didn’t want to add to her burden of being the victim. It seems to me that you were there to meet her needs, instead of vice versa. When the time came for you to go to university, she emotionally manipulated you – again, using her “victimhood” – to stay by her side. This tells me that she mostly cared about herself and her needs, not about you.

You said that your parents’ fights have subsided since then, and that your father is actually on your mother’s side when the two of you have an argument:

The fights are now much less between the two of them but now it has gravitated towards my mom and I have major disagreements and arguments.

my dad is always on my moms side

How did this change in the dynamic between your parents come about? Is it maybe because your father is now weaker and perhaps sickly, and he depends on your mother to care for him? So he isn’t so aggressive any more, but became more tame?

In any case, it seems that your mother still sees herself as the victim, but now mostly your victim, not of your father’s? She doesn’t want to accept any responsibility for any wrong-doings, and this is a typical attitude of a person stuck in the victim mentality. My mother is also like that – she would never in a million years admit that she did anything wrong in the way she raised me. Ever. She has always been and always will be the victim. Full stop.

Instead of facing herself and acknowledging her shortcomings, it’s easier for your mother to shift the blame on you (or your father, in the past). Unfortunately I know this mindset very well… and yes, unfortunately this also means that honest conversation with your mother won’t be possible. Because she wants to remain the victim and she wants to keep blaming others.

My mother has gone through a lot in her marriage and even in childhood. And this is something I do greatly empathize with her on.

I also have empathy for my mother, since she was treated poorly as a child (her mother was even stricter and more judgmental than my mother was with me). However, at the end of the day, she is an adult and has the option to heal those wounds and not perpetuate the generational trauma. But she chooses not to. I can see that everything she does is a result of her childhood wounds, nevertheless those wounds (that she refuses to address) stand in the way of us having a close, heartfelt relationship.

I know it’s hard for you because I am sure you want to be close to your mother, like I wanted to be close to mine. But it’s not possible…. It took me many years to finally see that, and to accept it. Nowadays I love my mother from afar, and the less we talk, the better it is. Because she would start accusing me and blaming me at the first chance she has. So I keep my distance to protect myself. Our relationship is very superficial and we don’t see each other often, since I live in another country. But that’s how it has to be, and I accepted it.

On a positive note, it’s great that you have a very loving relationship with your partner. You seem to be able to talk openly and honestly about everything (unlike with your mother!), he is supportive and has lots of understanding for you. That’s very important!

I am realizing that as unfortunate as it is, for me to have a healthy relationship with my mom, the conversations must be minimal, and my responses must also be minimal. I cannot express myself or explain myself because there is no point.

Yes, that’s exactly the same experience that I had, and the same conclusion I’ve come to…

I suppose the best way for me to heal is therapy because the more I try for her to see what she did was wrong, and how what she is doing now is still wrong, the more strain it puts in our relationship. … I need to find a way to vent out my anger that is away from my childhood environment, and hopefully that can bring me to peace with reality.

Yes, I think therapy would be very helpful. Besides processing anger at your mother, I think it’s also important that you give love and compassion to yourself, to tell yourself (and your inner child) that you are lovable and precious and that you aren’t to blame for your mother’s unhappiness. Shower yourself with love, compassion and validation – to compensate for what you haven’t received as a child!

Dear Emma,

I don’t want to minimize your husband’s suffering in any way, but it occurred to me that his extreme sensitivity and reactivity to certain scenes on TV is a little bit like having allergy to certain foods. When someone is allergic, they have an extreme negative reaction to things that other people have no reaction to whatsoever. In fact, other people can even like those same foods that the person suffering from allergy is terrified of.

If the husband is allergic to certain foods, is the wife a bad person for partaking in those foods sometimes, when she is alone, and when there is no way that he could be harmed? Mind you, she isn’t forcing him to eat those foods, she isn’t secretly putting those foods into his meals. Neither is she telling him that he is too sensitive and too weak for not wanting to eat those foods. She isn’t harming him in any way. Is she a bad person for that? Should she give up those foods completely, so that her husband wouldn’t feel betrayed?

You say:

He is alone. Everybody around him behaves how they want and he has to deal with the consequences of it while they just get on with their lives.

I guess everybody around him behaves as if he didn’t have food allergy. They treat him as an ordinary person, not someone who is super sensitive. Maybe they don’t even know that he is suffering so much in everyday situations?

He was always different to other children (he is highly sensitive and empathetic) and things affected him in a deep and violent way. He found it easier to avoid others as he got older, as they tended to affect him in a negative way.

I can imagine that he suffered a lot as a child, e.g. at school, because children can be cruel. And if he was super sensitive, it would have affected him a lot. But his withdrawal from people continued into adulthood too. And it’s probably not because everybody was nasty to him, but because he was extremely sensitive (“allergic”), and so everyday interactions with people (comments, jokes etc) affected him negatively.

I am sorry for his suffering, and I understand where he is coming from – but the problem is that he is coming from his wounded and traumatized self. As such, he wants to live in a world where everyone adapts to his condition, instead of trying to heal the condition. And he wants you, first and foremost, to adapt to his condition, to not partake of the foods he is allergic to, and to defend him before anyone who isn’t aware of his condition and might say something “insensitive” or “offensive”.

In short, I think he wants you to defend him from the nasty, insensitive and violent world – as he perceives it.

I want him to be happy and to be able to live his life in the way he wants.

Well, I think the above is what he wants. Are you sure that you want it too?

Dear zaredkhan,

I am sorry that you had bad luck with your computer, which took away 7 days out of your time to prepare for the exam. Also, that you hurt your leg. Have you had it checked with a doctor, btw? If it’s swollen and you cannot step on it, it could be sprained ankle – you better get an X-ray for that.

It seems you are ambitious and want to perform well in your studies, but you feel there are forces against you that are preventing you. And that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never succeed.

I understand your frustration but, if we look at it objectively, the mishaps you had to face in the last month are not a proof that you are “destined to fail” (I’ve been destined for much less. I’ve been destined to not succeed.). They are just temporary problems, which you’ll recover from (but do check your leg and get proper treatment if necessary!) Even if you fail this one exam because you didn’t have enough time to prepare, you can pass it next time, which I assume is in a few months from now?

What I am saying is that in reality, these mishaps aren’t so huge as to come up with such dramatic conclusions, such as that you’ll never make it in life. However, what could be the reason for such pessimistic thinking is that you adopted a false belief about yourself, e.g. “I’ll never succeed”, “I am destined to fail”, based on the experiences you had so far in life, starting from your childhood. You said:

I had lots of unlucky moments in the past, but I don’t remember much of them very easily, I just remember them vaguely.

And also:

my father had to torture me just at that time, wasted my 3-4 days of productivity and slowed down my focus.

Perhaps you have a demanding father, who makes your life harder, not easier? Also, if you had lots of “unlucky moments” in your childhood, and no one to help you and protect you, you would have started believing that you have bad luck and are destined to fail, because there were these outside forces (be it poor treatment by family members, or adverse outside events) all lined up against you, and you feeling helpless? And so now, when you encounter an obstacle, you start feeling helpless and desperate, even if it’s something you can easily resolve?