Dear Diletta:

A summary of what you shared, with quotes: you have been with your husband since you were 19 and he was 29. You are now 50. The two of you had economic difficulties in the past, “but now we are ok.. both have a good job, a small house… no problem… from an economic point of view now we are ok”. But your husband “always worries about our future, he says that soon we will no longer be able to look after ourselves and always look for solutions”. Every few days he starts again with this concern, and when he does that, you “feel sad and .. have to struggle to recover my serenity.. I also get infected by these concerns”.

You wrote about yourself, “I am a very emotional person and I react irrationally”. You suffered from several episodes of depression in the past, but you are “quite well”, presently and your only desire is “to live peacefully and in my spare time to cultivate the passions I have always had: painting and possibly traveling”. You have been questioning, “Should I worry more about the future? Am I irresponsible?”, asking “if I’m wrong to try to live without worrying about the future”?

Quotes and my input this morning:

“he is really a good person, kind and caring…. always ready to protect me in his embrace at the same time suffocating and affectionate”-

His anxiety (when there is no present economical problem to solve and after he already considered and put into practice all possible financial management ideas) is not about protecting you and it is not motivated by goodness, kindness and caring. He is motivated by sickness, aka anxiety, in this case, not by anything good or healthy.

Anxiety, the ongoing, repeating fear when there is no action that can be done, is a disease, it hurts us, it never helps us. People are more likely to get sick and get into accidents because of being anxious.

You wrote: “Surely I too have to learn to define strong boundaries and not to be influenced by his anxieties”- it is impossible to not be influenced by the anxieties of people  you live with.

To solve a problem you need to accurately define the problem. Then ask yourself, is there any way at all to solve the problem?

The problem is his anxiety. The solution: he needs to contain it so to stop infecting you with it (“I also get infected by these concerns”). He needs to attend some kind of counseling or therapy to lessen his anxiety, which will include exercise and taking good care of his health, so that he knows he is doing all that is possible to have a safer future.

If he refuses to attend such counseling, if he refuses to see that anxiety is his problem, that he should not infect you with it any more than he already has, if he insists on … well, infecting you with it, then you will need to live separately from him, so that you can have the peace that you need and deserve.

anita