Dear Dan,

I know what I need to do I just can’t get started and would rather drown my pain.

I hear you, and I know exactly what you’re talking about… I used to sabotage myself with binge eating, for many many years. The pain was just so big. I believed I was unlovable and unworthy – and that’s the pain I was trying to soothe. In vain, of course.

Only much later have I come across the concept of the inner child. And realized that the child within each of us is so lovable and worthy, but he/she had been told, or had been treated by others in a way that he concluded that he is unlovable, that he is a freak, a nobody, that there is something terribly wrong with him.

The child concludes that he is bad, even if he had done nothing wrong but was in fact a victim of abuse. In fact, the child believes that they deserved the abuse, and if they would only change and become “perfect” and “good”, that’s when the abuse would stop and their parents would finally love them.

I’ve realized that there was a precious little girl inside of me, who was so heavily criticized and put down, who was never good enough for her mother, whose achievements were taken for granted and her even the slightest mistakes punished… I’ve realized that that girl needs my love and compassion, not my condemnation and judgement. She was a victim, not a villain. She needs my protection, but above all, my compassion.

Dan, I know you’re hurting, and I am pretty sure that a lot of that pain is your inner child hurting… because he feels rejected and unloved, and probably unlovable too. But he is not unlovable – he is so precious and lovable! He’s been through a lot and he hasn’t deserved the abuse he went through. He needs your help, he needs your compassion, he needs you to take him into his arms and soothe him.

That too is one important aspect of self-parenting: self-soothing.

It’s good that you are in therapy. If you want to talk about anything at all, I am here…

Dear Sadlyconfused,

Please allow me to retell parts of what you’ve shared and what I’ve gleaned from your posts. This helps me get a clearer picture.

You’ve shared that your father treated your mother like dirt. His cruelty and criticism towards/of you amped up when your mother died and couldn’t protect you from it. You were pretty young when your mother died, around 16-17 years old. When you were around 20 yrs old, you met your now husband, and 5 years later you two got married.

In order to deal with your father’s misogyny, criticism and cruelty, you became a massive people pleaser. You lost yourself and became what other people expected of you. As you are now trying to heal from your childhood trauma, you are asking yourself: “Who actually am I? What do I stand for?”

People naturally assumed that my easy-going, people pleasing habit was my core personality, rather than the trauma response that it really was.

I would imagine that as a people pleaser, you weren’t actually easy-going, but that you pretended that you were happy to accommodate them and do whatever they asked of you, even if it went against your wishes. So you might have worn a mask of “kindness”, saying things like “sure, no problem, I’ll do it”, but underneath you felt miserable and probably resentful too?

If I am counting right, you started taking anti-depressants about 14 years ago (one year into your relationship with your husband), and you have been taking them for 12 years. In the last couple of years you have been weening off anti-depressants. This has caused problems in your marriage, since you couldn’t feel anything for anyone, including your husband. You also had heightened anxiety. You now can feel again and the communication with your husband has improved in the last 3-4 months.

You haven’t told your husband that you were weening off anti-depressants, which you now see as a big mistake because it would have explained your poor behavior. Does your husband now know that you’re no longer taking anti-depressants? Does he support you in that decision?

You still cry when thinking about your mother, even if she died 20 years ago. This tells me that the wound is still raw. I think it’s because a part of you (the child and teenager that you were) still feels helpless and horrified at the thought of living without your mother’s protection, alone with your father, in an environment full of hatred and cruelty. A part of you is still stuck in the past, and this is probably the part that needs healing the most.

It’s great that in the last couple of years, you are learning about trauma and getting better at self-care. And that you’ve made more progress in those 2 years than in the 12 years of being on anti-depressants. Are you attending therapy? Because I would assume that if one wants to ween off anti-depressants, one would need therapy to support that process…

You said that once you started weening off, you’ve experienced loss of emotions – you couldn’t feel anything for anyone. Maybe this was a protective mechanism – to cut off all emotions, so they wouldn’t overwhelm you?

Since you’ve started this thread due to an issue with your husband, I am wondering about the dynamic between the two of you. From what you’ve shared so far, he is a decent man who has behaved “out of character” recently. You are thinking that it was because he had a crush on some girl online, since you weren’t emotionally available. May I ask – is he in general a good husband? Does he respect you? How was your relationship while you were on anti-depressants? Please answer only if you feel comfortable talking about it.

Dear Katrine,

I am glad you are feeling better, now that you have a clear plan for how to go about it. I like your plan: apologize, appreciate his efforts, express your feelings. And yes, keep it simple and non-defensive.

I’m trying to not take a potentiale rejection personally cause sometimes it’s not just about liking someone it could be a whole lot of other reasons.

Yes, there is such a possibility that he likes you but he still for some reason rejects you – a reason that has nothing to do with you. And you are completely right: if something like that happens, don’t take it personally, don’t take it to mean that you are not good enough. In fact, you can tell yourself: “I am lovable, even if he says no.” Or “I am worthy, even if he says no”. You can repeat such positive affirmations beforehand, to boost your self-confidence and feel more at ease when you talk to him.

And as anita said, I also think you will feel good about yourself for trying it and expressing yourself, rather than hiding and withdrawing. I am rooting for you!

Dear Dan,

Even though you aren’t responding, maybe you are reading this, and I hope you don’t mind if I continue developing my understanding of you and your situation… I would like to backtrack a little and correct what I said in my previous post. In my previous post I was musing that your needs might not be primarily emotional, but rather that it’s the need for physical closeness and intimacy, as well as spending a lot of time with your wife alone, having her full attention.

Now I am thinking that those too are emotional needs, because having our partner’s undivided attention, their positive, loving and caring attention – meets a huge emotional need. We feel loved, seen, validated, appreciated….

You said something very important:

I think I wanted more attention than I was getting. Much of my happiness came from her which isn’t healthy. I would try to please her while neglecting my own needs.

My interpretation of “Much of my happiness came from her” is that you couldn’t feel happy on your own, when she wasn’t around, or when she wasn’t paying enough attention to you. You needed her to give you a  lot of attention, to spend time with you, to touch you, in order to feel happy, and even to feel good about yourself. Would you say that’s true?

If so – if you needed her to feel good about yourself, and if her lack of attention caused you to feel unloved and unworthy – that would signal a childhood wound. And it would also explain why you now feel devastated and why you cannot move on, although you are telling yourself you should.

You asked about self-parenting. If what I wrote above is mostly correct, then indeed you would need to get in touch with your wounded inner child and help him heal. There is a way out, and it doesn’t have to be as painful as it is for you at the moment.

I wish you healing! And I would be glad to keep talking to you, if you choose so.

Dear Dan,

I loved anita’s explanation of what parenting and self-parenting is. Self-parenting really is feeding ourselves – giving ourselves nurturance – both physically and emotionally.

You said you were somewhat needy in the relationship, but you couldn’t pinpoint what your needs were. This is what you said about your neediness:

When I say needs I can’t really pinpoint what exactly.

About my neediness. I think I wanted more attention than I was getting. Much of my happiness came from her which isn’t healthy. I would try to please her while neglecting my own needs.

As for my needs. Again it’s hard for me to say exactly what. I would often want to go on a mini vacation as we really didn’t have a honeymoon and she wouldn’t want to go. 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.

You also said that a couple of months after the separation, you reunited for a while and were meeting in her house when the children were at their dad’s. It was very important for you to spend time alone with her, having physical intimacy (which was great – you said you had great sexual chemistry), enjoying a glass of wine (“we both enjoyed our drinks on the weekends together”), and simply spending a cozy time together.

This “idyll” lasted for about a month, and then she asked for some space again, and you gave her space. Your meetups haven’t resumed after that, since her daughter refused to go to her dad’s place for the weekends, and then her mother moved in again in June.

Based on everything you have written, I am thinking that perhaps your neediness is not so much emotional neediness. Maybe you don’t need a “mother”, as I have assumed earlier. But rather, I am thinking that maybe you need a companion who doesn’t have so many responsibilities with children and other people in her life, but can spend a lot of pleasurable time with you, going to trips, concerts, mini vacations etc. You need someone who is free (and care-free enough) to spend a lot of pleasurable time with you, and not burdened by all those responsibilities.

Things were great before covid, when she had the children for a week, and then she had a week off, when she was free to spend time with you. But covid ruined that and you found yourself in quite a different situation. And it got worse and worse, since her responsibilities grew – because for some reason the children didn’t want to go back to spending half of the time with their father any longer. Her mother also moved in and out, and then her father too.

And so she became a full-time mom and care-taker, burdened by all those responsibilities. Perhaps she even took on too many responsibilities and wasn’t setting proper boundaries, so it was worse than it should have been. Nevertheless, in this new situation, she felt she couldn’t give you what you need (she said “what you deserve”). Perhaps what she feels you need and deserve is a much less burdened wife who can spend a lot of pleasurable time with you, and give you much more attention than she presently can?

I am not saying that you are wrong for wanting a less burdened and more available wife and companion. It’s just that she at the moment cannot be it. Partially due to her life situation, partially maybe because she cannot set boundaries with her family, and so she becomes mother and care-taker exclusively, without any fun time for herself.

What do you think?

Dear Sadlyconfused,

I am not completely sure but still, there is something about this situation that doesn’t sit well with me. I mean, it’s okay if he finds a woman attractive, you can’t blame him for that. But it’s less okay that he expressed it to her, even if “everyone in the community talks like that about one another”. Why would members of a gaming community need to talk to each other in a flirty, sexualized way?

He was adamant that he had done nothing wrong, that they’re all friends on there and that it just sounds bad out of context.

Well, is he talking like that with his female colleagues at work? Or with his female friends? Are there sexual undertones in his interaction with women? There are many places (work places included) where it is the case, but when I worked at such a place, I felt very uncomfortable.

I think part of the deeper pain though is that I thought he might be remorseful about the fact I’m upset by it, but instead I feel like he disregarded my feelings and couldn’t understand why it hurt me. I thought it might be an opportunity to get some mutually agreed upon boundaries in place when it comes to online interactions with the opposite sex, but he just flat out said that there was nothing wrong with his behaviour.

I also see it as problematic. Claiming that making flirty/sexual comments to women is completely fine and that you shouldn’t be upset about it – well I don’t agree with it. Because such behavior is disrespectful, first and foremost to you, but also to those women who feel uncomfortable being at the receiving end of such sexual remarks.

In any case, I understand why you are upset about his lack of insight and sensitivity about this topic.

Dear Katrine,

I feel soo relieved that i can trust myself and my gut instinct. We just said hi to each other and he smiled so i feel a bit better.

Aaw that’s so sweet! I am glad that you’re feeling at least a little better!

Yes i would have said yes to him. Because earlier this year i had my first intimate experience with a man it was scary and I took a couple of weeks for my mind and body to relax in it. But it only happened because i went through with it even though i was terrifiying and foreign to me.

I am glad you would have said yes to the man you like and who likes you too! You say you had your first intimate experience earlier this year with a man who said he liked you (although you didn’t believe it at the time), and so you kind of made yourself to do it, even though it was scary, terrifying and foreign to you. May I ask – did you like that man? It’s okay if you didn’t, I am just asking because there might be something I’d like to add. But please feel free not to answer the question, if you find it intrusive.