Dear Laura,

there are so many examples of beautiful women being cheated on. One that gained worldwide attention is when in 1995, a famous actor cheated on his famous and amazingly beautiful girlfriend, with a prostitute. In a most recent gossip, another famous actor has just abandoned his very attractive girlfriend because she’s turned 25.

I tend to agree with the second poster here (Ade), who said that men (and women) cheat mostly because they feel some of their emotional needs aren’t met. It doesn’t necessarily mean that their partner isn’t fulfilling those needs, but that the person who is cheating has emotional scars which lead them to seek excitement, validation, appreciation etc outside the committed relationship.

Have you yourself experienced being cheated on? If you have, I am very sorry. You are welcome to share some more, if you feel like it.

Dear W,

You are very welcome. You’ve said some very important things, which suggest that you have been hurt in relationships, and you are afraid not to be hurt again:

The loneliest times in my life are when I am in a relationship

My last relationship was about 17 years ago about 20 years ago a very important relationship that meant a lot to me ended.

In my life I don’t want to feel loss anymore

Since you feel most lonely while in a relationship, no wonder you’re hesitating to enter one.

Very often, our romantic relationships are the mirror of the relationship we had as children with our parents or care-takers. We might feel very similar emotions, e.g. that of feeling lonely, that we felt while growing up. If you felt lonely while growing up, it is very likely that you would feel similarly as an adult – because the wound of feeling lonely and not being given enough care and attention is still in you.

You would like your partner to be “just yours” (I don’t feel like she would just be mine). This is how we feel as children: we want our mother (or care-taker) to be just ours. If she isn’t present, or she is present but absent-minded, or giving attention to someone or something else – we feel angry and hurt.

The fact that your girlfriend has a social life outside of spending time with you, made you very upset. I am not saying you should be happy if she is someone who goes to bars frequently and gets drunk often (does she?). But it seems that a bigger problem here is your fear of having to “share” her with other people – that she is spending time and giving attention to people other than you. Which would be a reaction to a childhood wound.

Does this sound like a plausible explanation to you?

Dear aVoid,

I feel so lost and alone. I don’t know where to start. It’s like some supernatural power such as a dark cloud is hanging about my head.

I know the feeling. I first started feeling it consciously in my teenage years. It continued into my adolescence and beyond – the cloud was always there. No matter how perfect the outer circumstances where, even when I was loved and cared for by my then boyfriend, I could never be happy because of that cloud.

Later I’ve realized that the cloud – which was the relentless, ever-present sadness – wasn’t above my head, but it was deep within me, in my heart, in my soul. I was sad because I felt unloved. And not only unloved, but unlovable. There was an emptiness, a longing in my heart, which no amount of outer love and care could fill (and no amount of food either – I was suffering from an eating disorder).

This happens if we haven’t received enough love, care and appreciation as children. I certainly haven’t, I was criticized a lot and was never good enough for my mother. She wasn’t absent like your mother was, but her presence was toxic. My father was much more benign, but allowed my mother to spill her toxicity on me. He didn’t protect me.

You worry that “the monsters I’ve been fighting my whole life are who I’ve now become“.

I can relate, because I believed I was a freak. A monster. I thought I was a freak because of my addiction, but much later I’ve realized that I believed I was a freak because my mother told me so. Because she only saw bad in me, she never praised me but only scolded me. That’s how I became a freak, a pathetic loser undeserving of love – in my own eyes.

Our childhood defines us. It shapes how we see ourselves later in life.

You had a very rough childhood, aVoid, with very little love and care. And the image you’ve adopted about yourself is that of a loser, a monster, a nobody. But that image is false. It’s the reaction to the lack of love and the abuse that you’ve experienced. Because the child always blames themselves if they are treated poorly.  The child never blames the parents.

But all I want is to be a man. Is to have control over my life. I want to stop this. I want to quit smoking. I want to quit porn. I want to get out of the video games and come back to reality. But how?

First, understand that there is a child part in you – called the inner child. He is an innocent little boy, who believes that he is unworthy of love. The pain of this self-image, of this false belief, is so strong that you need to numb it with alcohol, porn, video games, and any other addiction. All of your addictions served one purpose: to numb this unbearable pain.

If you understand that this little boy needs love and appreciation, you can provide it to him. You can provide what you have never received from your parents. Once the little boy receives what he is longing for, the pain will diminish and you won’t have to numb it with addictions. It will all sort it self out, slowly but surely.

I do believe that therapy is very important, but I’d suggest you find someone who knows how to work the inner child and complex trauma (complex PTSD).

There is a way out, aVoid. You can make it, same as I did. You are not a terrible person. You are only wounded. Wounded people don’t need to be judged, they need compassion, so they can heal. Compassion is the first step…

Let me know how this sounds to you…

Dear Anonymouscat,

You said on another thread (“Emotional blackmail by Indian father against love marriage”) that you are in a similar situation like the original poster there. Here on your thread you said: “her parents won’t approve and she never gives me a timeline on when she willing to come over to me.”

Does it mean that her parents are against your relationship due to religious/cultural reasons, and they will never approve of it, no matter what? If so, and if she tends to abide by her parents’ will, then I am afraid you don’t have much prospects to be with her.

However, if there is a chance that their parents would change their mind, or that she would become more willing to stand up for herself and go against their will – then it makes sense to try and deepen the relationship. In that case, I think the first sensible step would be for you to visit her – not to expect her to visit you, because the latter will be much more difficult. If you visit her, you’ll both have the chance to see if you are compatible and decide on further steps.

Basically she would be giving up everything her family/frds to come be with me. Am I being selfish ?

If you expect her to visit you or to even move to your country without ever having met in person, and with her parents objecting – that would be asking too much of her and putting her in a very difficult situation. So yes, that might be selfish. But if you travel to visit her (provided she agrees to it), you put the pressure off of her, and are doing what you can to take the relationship to the next level. That in my eyes would be the best next step, if it’s feasible to you.

Dear lk09,

How have you been? I hope you are fine, taking good care of yourself…

I keep thinking about you and your situation… trying to understand better. In my last post I was surprised that you weren’t hurt or angry, and that you’re feeling “normal” after what he did to you. But in the meanwhile I’ve realized that it could be because you have already experienced this kind of behavior from him, so it wasn’t such a shock for you.

In fact your second breakup, in April 2021, was very similar to this one – it happened after you’ve spent a week together in relative bliss. But soon thereafter he proclaimed that he still can’t make up his mind about marriage. This was similar, only you spent an entire month together, and he was initially very eager, professing his love for you – perhaps even more eager than last year.

But since he had already betrayed you in a similar way before, I can imagine that you don’t feel so much anger this time. Rather, what you might be feeling is perhaps a mix of resignation, disappointment but also acceptance. Finally facing and accepting the reality that you need to let go of the dream that some day he will be yours. Maybe this is the feeling of “normal” that you were talking about? Accepting and making peace with reality, although it hurts. And that’s why you are crying at night…

If I am sensing this correctly (and please correct me if I am wrong), what hurts you the most is exactly this acceptance of reality, of harsh and sad truth, that you won’t have a future with him. In all fairness, it’s actually for the best that you don’t marry him and suffer greatly being married to such an unstable and confused person. But for you, it’s the loss of a dream.

You say you feel at peace, and I believe you, but this “peace”, it seems to me, has elements of defeat and resignation in it, of accepting a less than optimal future for yourself. Because you’re now saying things like “I don’t think I should be choosing partners anymore. I don’t think I choose people well.” (July 20, 2022). 

But I don’t want you to accept a less than optimal future, a future where you settle for someone that your parents chose for you, a future where you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t choose a good partner for yourself. No! I care about you and I want the best possible future for you, in which you will choose someone you truly love and he loves you back! Someone who won’t be withholding his love from you, who won’t hesitate, who won’t be changing his mind all the time, whom you won’t have to chase for morsels of his love and attention. Someone who will give you his love freely, because he knows what mature, healthy love is.

Or, in your own words, someone who would “crave for me to hug him after a day of hard work, someone who would want to kiss me subtly good night…”

I want you to find such a person and not settle for someone who is not the choice of your heart.

But! And here comes a big BUT – you need to let go of the idea that Dandan is “The One” for you and wait for him until he makes up his mind (possibly forever). And second, even more important, you need to change something about the way you do relationships. And that is: you need to stop tolerating your partner’s negligence, ambivalence and lack of respect for you.

Maybe you have already realized it yourself, but I want to say it out loud anyway, because so far it was lacking in your relationships: You need to set boundaries of what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t, and how you would like to be treated, so that your partner cannot say or do hurtful things without any consequences.

For example, Dandan told you he got hooked on porn during covid, but he wasn’t really willing to do anything to stop it. Similarly with his drinking habit – he didn’t want to stop. You tolerated it and had understanding for him, instead of saying “I don’t want to be with someone suffering from addictions, which are ruining our relationship, while he refuses to do anything to stop it. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t care about me enough to seek help for his addictions. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t care that he is hurting me with his addictions.”

Or even in smaller things, like keeping in touch every day, you tolerated that he would go silent for multiple days. Last time it happened, you timidly pinged him, asking “don’t you miss me?” And he said, no I don’t. He said there was nothing going on, that’s why he wasn’t texting you. You accepted that too – you accepted his negligence, coldness and lack of care for you, instead of saying something like “Please, I would like to hear from you every day. Can we agree to chat every evening, unless something important comes up and either of us cannot make it?” Or something along those lines.

Dear lk09, please don’t think that I am judging you – that’s the last thing I’d want. I only want to help you see (if you haven’t seen it already) that this pattern of tolerance and endurance isn’t good for the relationship.

But I also know it wasn’t easy for you to be assertive, because of the history of bullying at the hands of your sister. We’ve talked about it already and can talk about it more, if you’d like… But what probably happened is that every time you expressed your preference or boundary around your sister, there was a retaliation. She attacked you and you needed to buckle down because your parents protected her, not you. And so you could never express your needs, desires and preferences freely. Everything had to be subordinate to her will. I think this is the pattern you carried over into your romantic relationships too…

As a result, you stayed for too long in relationships where you and your needs weren’t respected. Come to think of it, neither your sister nor Dandan respected your needs, so they were similar in that sense. But the way they went about it was different.

Anyway, to sum up this loong post: if you want a healthy relationship, you need to be assertive. That includes expressing your needs and desires, your preferences, and your boundaries. You don’t need to tolerate and endure things that hurt you.

And one more thing, dear lk09: don’t lose faith in finding love, in your ability to find a good and loving partner for yourself. You can do it, trust me. You only need more assertiveness. And assertiveness can be learned – maybe with the help of therapy or coaching, but it’s definitely not out of your reach!

If you wish to talk, I am here… <3

Dear Candice88,

I agree with anita that supporting Putin is quite an extreme position. Supporting the total ban of abortion is in my view also an extremist position. And the first thing that pops in my mind regarding extremist views is that people who hold them lack compassion for others (and on some level for themselves too). If T is like that, it could be a big problem, and as anita said, could have a profound impact the way he raises a family. I wonder if you’ve noticed instances in which he is lacking compassion and is very unforgiving towards people?

If the idea of living with him causes you “anguish and heart ache”,  as you said, don’t agree to it by any means. You can even tell him that his political/ideological views are extreme in your opinion, and that they don’t match your values. See how reacts to that…

At the same time, don’t rush to contact M, because I think you are idealizing those first few months of your relationship and forgetting the reality of what it was like to live with him. (I’ve read our previous communication and his behavior was quite appalling).

T is not the only man in the world who will be head over heels for you. He is simply the first relationship after the debacle with S and M. I think that since then you’ve learned a lot and have become stronger. So don’t settle for T just because you are afraid there won’t be anyone else.

Dear lk09,

You haven’t responded to my last post, so I don’t know if you’ve read it and how you feel about it. And whether you agree that Dandan was actually hurting you with his behavior and that you have been tolerating it for a long while. I have read our previous communication and this is what you said about him last year in June:

I don’t consider him as someone who hurt me so I bear no negative feelings for him.

Now, you also said that his recent behavior didn’t hurt you because you are used to it (I am so used to his behaviour now that I don’t feel hurt). The things you weren’t hurt about are: him going back to being distant and unresponsive as soon as he left your place, after 1 month of intense love affair and him asking you to marry him. Him telling you he wasn’t missing you while he was away. Him telling you that he is unsure about you again because you are too emotionally demanding and all over him, kissing him and hugging him, and having sex too eagerly. And him telling you that he was making out with some girl at a party.

The only thing that hurt you – that you admitted that hurt you – is that he told you he wasn’t attracted to you. That’s what “broke your heart.” But even about that, you said you don’t feel sad, you feel normal (I don’t feel sad about it as well. I feel normal.)

I must say it’s not normal to not feel hurt by his behavior, to not feel angry, to not feel terribly upset, to the point of not wanting to have anything to do with this person any more. That would be a normal human reaction to being treated like you were treated.

The only reason that you would take it so calmly and peacefully is that your natural, spontaneous anger is suppressed. And I have an idea why this might be: because of your sister and the dynamic between the two of you while growing up.

This is what you said about your sister last April:

My sister … never let me do anything I liked, When I used to dance-she would make fun of my dancing, English was my second language and so I had difficulty in the beginning so it was a laughing topic if I would write she would make fun of that, how I walk, what I wear, how I tie my hair, and yet complained that I always had the best of stuff, got more pocket money, anything that I used to have- she would take it anyhow but wearing it repeatedly and not washing it till I stopped asking for it. And it was all fun and games to her till I would talk back or ask for stuff. As a kid, she used to hit me for even taking her pencil while doing my homework if I lost mine. I have to remind you here that I am 5 years younger and so, I was already getting hand-me-downs and the stationary used to be with her so that it is SAFE. it was so safe that I never got to touch any of it till I was in 9th grade and she left for college.

My sister had come to visit me when I was in college 2nd year, I had asked my mum to not let her stay at my hostel but mum was like she is only staying there for a day, she had a train the next day. She had an argument with me because I was searching for something while she was speaking to me. Then she tried paying me for her stay, Which she did by throwing the money in my face, I lost my temper, I took the money and thrust it in her palms. She got angry seeing me reacting back so in front of my hostel girls, she kicked me first and then while I was on the floor thrashed me on my head 2-3 times then went inside my room. I was humiliated but I got up and went inside as well. She had a train in 2 hours and the railway station was a little far so I fixed my hair and Wiped my tears. Took her luggage and said come I will drop you off at the station, you might get lost on your own. She was like obviously this is your duty. I dropped her off, sent her off with food and magazines for the way. And came back. Not just that night but for the next few days, everyone kept talking about the incident and looked at me with pity as if I was an injured animal. And this is just one example.

Your sister was a terrible bully, and you had to take her bullying and terrorizing without saying a word. You had to, not because you wanted to, but because 1) she was bigger and would hit you, and more importantly 2) she had the protection and blessing of your family, so she could do whatever she wanted and you needed to tolerate it without protesting:

Everyone used to get angry with me if I lost my temper whenever she provoked because according to them, it is her nature and you have to be the understanding one and not fight. And like a fool, I believed that yes it was my fault that our fights occurred because I lost my temper.

Your family would get angry with you if you tried to defend yourself from her bullying. So you learned that there is no point in getting angry, or showing that you are angry. It’s better to just take the abuse without saying anything.

Even after she hit you while she was visiting you in college, and trashed your head while you were lying on the floor – you proceeded to behave politely with her and took her to the train station. She never apologized, she expected nothing less than silence and obedience from you (She was like obviously this is your duty.)

The next few days, everyone kept talking about the incident – because indeed it was something outrageous and disturbing. And everyone was pitying you because indeed, you deserved sympathy and empathy, faced with such bullying and humiliation. But you, you took it peacefully, calmly, gracefully, you carried her luggage and gave her food and magazines for the journey. You were the second year of college and you’ve obviously learned to suppress your anger by then, and it seems you were quite good at it. And this pattern continued, as it seems to me, into your romantic relationships too….

Healthy anger is necessary to set boundaries and defend ourselves from abuse. In we lack it, i.e. if it is suppressed, we will tolerate abuse and humiliation much longer than we are supposed to…

Dear lk09,

I apologize for the long silence – I’ve only just returned from holidays and finally have more time to sit down and gather my thoughts 🙂

First, I am happy to hear that you’ve been taking care of yourself well, eating healthy, exercising, cooking healthy meals for yourself, and in general feeling better about yourself. Self-care is a form of self-love, and I am very glad that you’ve been practicing self-love… I am also happy to hear that you have more clarity about what you want in a relationship:

I have no expectations from anyone. Now I know what I need to do. I want a family and a extremely loving partner… Someone who would crave for me to hug him after a day of hard work, someone who would want to kiss me subtly good night…  I want him to be grateful that I am a part of his life. Why? Because I know what sort of a woman I am and what I bring to a relationship. And love and care should be responded with love and care.

I agree. The above are in fact your expectations, and it’s okay to have them. So scratch that first sentence “I have no expectations from anyone” 🙂 Because you should have expectations from a person you share your life with.

Now about your relationship with Dandan:

I meant stable for the current situation that was ever since we mended things. All the things that concerned us, we had made a list and had actively worked on those and we were honest with each other in terms of telling exactly how we felt… Even if there was fear or nervousness. We conveyed that.

It’s good that you were honest with each other and made a list of things you wanted to work on. It means a part of him wanted to make the relationship work. However, he didn’t want to work on his addiction and the causes behind his addiction, which have to do with his childhood. Without that, your relationship didn’t really stand a chance, because he didn’t heal the core emotional wounds which prevent him from having a healthy relationship with you (or anyone else, for that matter).

Worst, he wasn’t even interested in healing it – as you say, he continued to reject seeing a professional. This shows he doesn’t really want to change, even though he claims he does. And you need to realize that without his willingness to seek professional help (which is equivalent to admitting the extent of his problem and his willingness to change), there is nothing you can do to help him, and that talking to him and lending him your ear won’t do any good. I am mentioning this because of the following you said to him:

maybe we can talk about it (not getting back together but we can talk…the only thing that kept pulling me back to you was our immense comfort and friendship so I owe you my ears because of that). Or maybe not. Let the time tell.

You can try to “save” him again, going for another cycle, but if he isn’t willing to seek professional help, you’ll end up disappointed again. Even if you start out not wanting to get back together, sooner or later you’ll want more than friendship, and will end up hurt again. Please take that into consideration if he asks you to start talking to him again. My advice is to stop being his therapist and ask him to find a real one, and in this way show that he really wants to change!

Yes, you two were very close, you were super honest with each other and he was comfortable telling you anything. That’s why you feel “immense comfort and friendship”. But the problem is that in his honesty and his comfort telling you everything, he was also hurting you: he told you hurtful things, such as that he was making out with another girl, that he was watching porn and that he didn’t find you attractive. He also told you he didn’t miss you when he was away from you. Yes, you can value his honesty but you need to protect yourself from getting hurt like that.

You said you got used to such behavior (I am so used to his behaviour now that I don’t feel hurt). And that’s where the problem is, because you SHOULD feel hurt by such behavior! He begged you to marry him and told you you were the love of his life – only to leave you stranded 3 months later, telling you he doesn’t feel attracted to you because you’ve slept with him!

You are used to such behavior – used to getting hurt by him – but you shouldn’t be. You don’t need to expose yourself to hurt, even if it’s by someone who themselves is hurt and wounded. You need to protect yourself from people who hurt you, even though they are wounded and you have great empathy for them.

You have allowed yourself to be hurt in this relationship for a long time. You found excuses for him. You made yourself believe that you are not really hurt, whereas the truth is that you are crying at night, because indeed, his behavior is immensely hurtful. You have been fooling yourself that it doesn’t affect you that much, that you are strong… But you don’t need to be strong and KEEP TAKING THE ABUSE. Strength is about PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM ABUSE, setting boundaries so that you don’t get unnecessarily hurt.

So next time he reaches out, wanting to “talk honestly”, or even wanting to renew the relationship, tell him to go see a therapist first, because that’s what he needs. A therapist won’t be hurt by his confessions, whereas you will. You don’t need to expose yourself to that. He has hurt you enough already. Please be strong and protect yourself from another round of being punched in the face!

There is more I want to say, dear lk09, but I want to send this first. Please let me know what you think…