Dear Chantel:

Having read your previous threads of April 2017, September 2018, February 2019 and August 2019, I don’t know  if today, the day after your most recent thread, if you are still broken up with this man or back into the relationship.

First a summary of what you shared in your threads:

The two of you (you and Anthony as you called him) live in a very small town. You dated one of his friends before the beginning of your relationship with Anthony, about the summer of 2015. The two of you have been in a four years exclusive, secret relationship, spending a lot of time together. He never introduced you to his family and friends and saw to it that the two of you were not seen in public in your small town. He preferred to see you in your home when your twin boys were not home, and he wined and dined you outside of town and spent a whole lot of his free time with you. You referred to him as “a great guy and would treat a woman like gold”, and his treatment of you “the first time in my life I was being treated right”.

As far as you know he hasn’t been with any other woman while in the relationship with you, and he told you that he has had options to date other women but chose not to because he is not an unfaithful man. The relationship had many ups and downs, at some point on, “more downs than ups”.

You wrote that “he is a very closed off guy.. doesn’t open up to me about his feelings”. He told you that he has been in “one real relationship that ended after four years”, and that he “had dated here and there after that but nothing serious”. These are the reasons he gave you for keeping the relationship secret: “he didn’t like dating anyone other people knew… he wanted kids one day (and your tubes are tied since you were 21)… he wants out of life .. something (you can’t) give him… we don’t get along as well as we should… the amount  of money it would cost to have a child with me, money that could be “put to something like a house” (if you untied your tubes), and he told you that he doesn’t want your boys to be around him because “it’s not fair to them .. we don’t even know what is going to happen to us”.

February 2019, about three and a half years into this relationship, you wrote: “I have never met his family, they know nothing about me”. When his father died, you considered showing him support by showing up to the funeral as “a stranger sitting in the back”.

About yourself, you shared that you are a petite woman, “always been disgusted with my body”, for being thin and not curvy, and “struggled with other emotional issues and depression”. You have been on anti depressants which caused you to gain 30 pounds, “which I LOVED”, but also raided your cholesterol and triglycerides to unhealthy levels. So you got off those. You wrote that you “can not afford to seek professional help, that you “stuff (your) face all the time and don’t gain a pound”, and that you figure you will always be a petite woman, so you better learn to be okay with it.

Second, my input:

1. I agree with what you wrote yourself as to his stated reasons to keeping the relationship a secret:  “I feel like it is just one excuse after another”.

2. You can count on him to continue to keep the relationship a secret, if you get back together with him. His persistence and tenacity of doing so for four years is a testimony that he most likely continue to do so. (Imagine a chance of 0.5% of something happening- possible, but not something you can count on, nor should you invest in it).

3. He must have been grateful to you for helping him to keep  it a secret. Not every woman would have been willing to do that. He told you that he had options to date other women and he didn’t. It could be because other women are not likely to agree to a secret relationship. (I think that his interest in a secret relationship is not specific to you).

4. Your anxiety and depression have kept you from breaking up with him and remaining broken up. It feels badly to be with him, but it has felt worse to be without him. Nothing motivates us more than the need to feel better. So there you are, doing what you believe is the right thing to do, breaking up with him, but it feels so bad, that you are intensely motivated to get back with him.

5. He does like your petite frame, no doubt about that. Petite is a dream for many, many women and the preference of many men, which makes me wonder if you are aware of the fact that indeed, many men would be interested in you, that he is not the only one.

-if you’d like, let me know what you think about my summary and input so far and we can take it from there.

anita