Dear Michael:

You read like a very intelligent, reasonable and loving man and seems to me that this woman will be fortunate if she chose to have a life with you as her partner.

Seems to me that The Problem is not that bleeding/ miscarriage; that The Problem is her relationship with her mother and the power that her mother has on her thinking, feeling and choosing.

She is in her mid twenties living with her mother and step father. The one and only strong parental relationship she has is with her mother, “an overwhelmingly strong” relationship, your words.

When her brother committed suicide you were “the first person to give her comfort”, not her mother. Why?

“I know she had an argument one night with her mother after we returned.. apparently mum had told her that she had to get her life together and that she was a mess”.

What if this is the voice that keeps playing in your now ex girlfriend’s brain, what if it kept playing in her brain all along and it was louder than the her voice when she told you all the good things about the relationship with you.

“Mum apologized the next day, seemed to be an outburst”- you know the apology in no way takes back the words said, that her daughter is a mess.

“Seemed to be an outburst”- how often does her mother have outbursts against her daughter…?

Perhaps her ex, the abusive man she started seeing again, perhaps his abuse is not as bad as the abuse she has been receiving from her mother for many years. Maybe his mistreatment of her is a comfort of sorts for her because  it is a bit of an improvement over her experience at home, with her mother.

She told you that “part of her thinking was that he already had a family ready to go, and in a burst of emotion she thought it made her task of forging a ‘real’ life that much easier”- she wanted a life that was easier than her life with her mother, so you see, this man’s mistreatment of her is an improvement.

You were too much of an improvement, more than she was comfortable experiencing, too good to be true. He presents to her,  in her mind, a small but believable improvement.

“I cannot lose faith in her as a human being”- I understand. But have faith in the power an abusive mother has  over her daughter, at any age. A mother is everything for a little girl, a mother is formed into her daughter’s brain during those Formative Years of childhood.

anita