Dear Airene:

You are welcome.

Before I read your recent post, I re-read my own post to you from yesterday. In the first paragraph I wrote that you are heavily invested in the “helper/ giver… peacemaker” role (your words, in quotes), and I quoted what you wrote about how this role makes you feel: “I feel better about myself and everything going on around me knowing I was easing some of the tension”.

This means that without tension in the home, you don’t have the role that makes you feel better about yourself. After this thought,  I read your recent post, and it reads like you do intend to keep the tension and your role by keeping the marriage going.

That role, I am thinking, is something very important to you, important to your sense of well being, something that carried you through a difficult home when you were a child and throughout life. To suggest to you that you separate from him and live alone in a calm home is taking away that role from you, and you will be alone. I don’t think you’d like either one, role gone or alone. What do you think?

anita