Dear Mike:

As to your last line, a good answer for me is simply your honest answer, nothing more, nothing less. You wrote in an earlier post that you do your “best to choose my words wisely, not to mention I try to think how I would feel if I were the one reading them. I have always been cautious of others feelings, at times more than my own.”

If your answer is not cautious, not too concerned with how another will feel reading it, then your answer is a good answer for me.

I am concerned though with your concern that others use what you share against you. It is possible that when I refer to what you share here and you somehow feel threatened by my comments on what you shared, it is possible that you will think that I am using your sharing against you. The moment you believe this is the case, let me know.

Your mother’s death wish was that you keep the family together (your father, brother, you) and at the same time she threatened to disown you posthumously? She threatened to leave you if you married the girlfriend you were with? At the same time she asked you to keep the family together.

I am not a fan of the institution of family myself. I see fault in it again and again. I see how so very often the Family works against the Individual in it.

You are alone now, a family of one, aren’t you? And you do wish you had a family, a person at the least to come home to. I wish you had that too. And going back to my original share with you, it is possible at your age to still make it happen. It is possible to make it happen maybe once you redefine Family, redefine what a partner means to you, what she would need to be.

anita