Dear Elle:

You are welcome.

I hope Sege will answer your note to him. I would like to try and help you with your confusion: what happened is that he had a lot of distress from his childhood (and ongoing) relationship with his mother. When he fell asleep and woke up to seeing you on the phone, his distress was activated, so he wanted you to never be on the phone when he is present. When he saw you picking on your fingernail while he talked to you, his distress was activated, so he didn’t want you picking on your fingernail ever again. Similar to the wooden spoons, he saw one and his distress was activated, so he doesn’t allow wooden spoons in his kitchen or any kitchen.

It would not have been a healthy way for you to live, if you were to live with him, trying to not do the  multitude of things that activated his pre-existing distress, an ever growing list of those things. Living like that is nothing of a fairy tale living. The flowers, the gestures couldn’t possibly make up for that type of constricted living.

anita