Dear Buddhajackson

Five years ago, Dec 30, 2014, you were 17, planning to attend college in 8 months (Sept 2015), and you shared in your first thread that you lived with your father, mother, and sisters. Regarding your father, you wrote: “Things always have to be done his way, or he throws a tantrum.. He is often in a bad moo.. he will take it out on us at times”. You wrote that your mother “tries so hard to make him happy”, cooks and cleans and even cleared the garage so to please him, in addition to work in the family business and home schooling her children, but he hardly shows any appreciation for all her work and efforts, and when they argued, he made that clear to her, that “he doesn’t think she does anything”. Sometimes they argued over money, and your father told your mother that he was going to die young, and that “it was going to be her fault that he would die young because of the stress she puts him through”.

You wrote: “I can’t help but feel angry and heartbroken witnessing this struggle between them”, that you have insomnia, that you are “stressed out almost all the time”, feeling uncomfortable to be in your father’s presence, especially being “stuck at home pretty much 24/7” because you didn’t have a car, upset about how he treats your mother. You also shared that your father is a hard worker and a  good provider, that he gives you and your sisters “loads of business advice.. and is very encouraging when it comes to our dreams. He believes we can do anything we put our minds to and does his best to make us believe he same”.

In your Jan 27, 2015 thread, you shared that you just found out that your brother cheated on his girlfriend, that you feel badly for her, “thinking about how much she must be feeling”. You were shocked that your brother did that, “I thought he was way more mature than that”, but you felt  empathy for him too, “he’s very insecure… I’m afraid of making him feel any worse than he probably already does about hurting his ex”.

Exactly four years after your above post, you posted again yesterday, Jan 26, 2019: now 22, you are in a 1.5 years relationship with a woman, your fiancé. You shared that your girlfriend’s mother has “little outbursts”, heard you tell her daughter repeatedly that you love her, and commented that “she wants to vomit”, having heard it. She heard you kiss her daughter and she shouted “stop  making out”, she saw a hickey on her daughter’s neck and screamed at her daughter, calling her a wh**. At another time, she called her daughter lazy. You shared that her daughter, your girlfriend, pulls away rom you “even when her parents aren’t around because she’s afraid her mom will suddenly walk in”, that your girlfriend “suffers from depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, and that you suffer from “anxiety in social situations”.

“I wanted to hear others’ thoughts”, you wrote. I will be glad to offer you my thoughts, but first I need to know:

-are you living with your girlfriend, away from her parents and yours?

-how often do you and your girlfriend visit her parents’ home, and for about how long is each visit?

-is there a wedding planned or is the engagement open-ended, as in: sometime in the future, a year, a few years from now, we’ll get married?

anita