Dear Helena:

“I think I just wanted her to be happy and she was so happy when I was performing well”- but she was very unhappy otherwise, wasn’t she: “she always had a lot on her shoulders.. job, difficult marriage, difficult son”.

It is not that she punished you when you got a poor grade, it is just that.. you didn’t want “to add on to her stress”.

A child wants nothing more intensely than to see her mother happy. If the mother is happy, the child can rest. But if the mother is anxious, stressed, worried, the child cannot rest. She .. has to make mother happy somehow.

“so I tried to be not be a problematic child, which I think I succeeded at, even as a teenager”- your brother had the “problematic child”/ “difficult son” role in the family, you took (as siblings often do) the opposite family role, the problem free child/ the easy child, a mother-pleaser-

– your mother was kind to you, a kind woman overall I imagine, kind even to your husband who threw her out of your home at one point. I understand. Thing is you adopted a family role which has been put into practice with this man you married. You are the easy wife, one who doesn’t demand, doesn’t ask, accepts everything.

Why this role with him and not at work and not with other men in your past, at least not to this extent of submission- maybe, just maybe he is as unhappy as your mother, even though he is social and extroverted with people?

I don’t know, I am guessing/ asking you.

anita