Dear jlo5:

Keep noticing your children. See how affected your fiancé (are you planning on getting married..?) by his parents- parents have a huge affect on children’s lives way into adulthood, as you see.

And as a mother, your first responsibility is the welfare of your children.

In regard to your fiancé, you wrote in your original post: ” It feels like he just wants more and more from me, nothing is good enough”- he is likely suffering still from his cold, cold mother and although you are very warm toward him, unlike his mother, placing him in the center of your life, nothing you do is good enough for him because he is STILL suffering from his mother’s coldness. That pain still circulates in his brain, the hurt and fear of being unloved and alone as a child.

And so, unless he addresses that old hurt and fear, it will keep clouding his evaluation of the present. He can’t … feel your warmth because he is still feeling the coldness of his childhood.

It is too painful for him to be aware of this but keeping his past away from his awareness does not seal it off- the past leaks into his present again and again and yet again.

anita