Dear Anita,

I can understand that you forgot to respond as you had it in mind that I would get back to you.  Exactly the same thing happened to me recently, I was waiting to hear from a friend, until my concern lead me to re-read what I had written and realised that she was waiting to hear from me!

I too will respond firstly regarding your uncomfortable reactions to empathy and emotional language, to say that I am glad to be (albeit inadvertently!) helping you become more aware of how you feel around gestures and language with emotional or empathic content.

Regarding the situation with my husband, I am not exactly sure what “twilight zone” means to you and don’t want to interpret a wrong meaning into your words.  What I can say is that I am sad and disappointed to read “if Part 1 are not your lies,”  Regardless of the subject matter, it feels hurtful to me to read that you are even considering that anything I said to you could have been lies.  I have tried to be very clear and open in our communications, also trying to care for your feelings and needs as is appropriate to a friendship.  I therefore do not understand why you are so quick to assume I could be lying?

I can understand that you are not able to piece together a coherent picture of my present situation from the few pieces of information you have, but I feel your response seems to reflect a pre-determined and rather black or white viewpoint, instead of asking for more information first.  I know you usually do that with other people and I am missing that here.

I do not feel I am suffering from any confusion at present.  What made me feel confused in the last years is that my husband was a very good man who became a very angry man.  My relationship with my husband had many good years but there were some years where he acted as described above.  When we first met, it seemed like the rest of the world (in the area we lived) had it in for us and we were surrounded by envious and aggressive “friends” and family.  He went through some extremely distressing situations without ever wavering for several years before changing and becoming an angry stranger with many bad attitudes.  The things his own family did to him are beyond belief.  They were bent of forcing him to drop me because I am of a different nationality and religion, and the lengths they went to caused his eventual bankruptcy, losing everything he had worked towards for twenty years.  Banning him from the family was just the tip of the iceberg.

There were no relationship problems between us during those years, but as the clan continued to destroy everything they could of his life, business, family ties, friends, etc, plus some other dreadful things happened which caused him deep despair, it just got too much for him and this is when he became depressed and started to be irresponsible and dishonest towards me.  I didn’t know until some years later, but the therapist he saw for several years was an angry misogynist who encouraged my husband to be angry towards women, revengeful and blaming instead of re-discovering his own power.

Everywhere in our lives back then there were always so many horrible things happening, with everything that could go wrong always going wrong.

Well, so it’s up to you if you wish to continue viewing me as confused and misguided.  I have tried to give you a little more insight into the past occurrences leading to my husband’s change of personality.  In the last few years I tried to forget how lovely he was in the early years because it was so painful to have lost him, and everyone always treated me like my husband must have been just altogether “bad” and that I failed to see it before, so people also made me feel like I was stupid for still loving him.  I was still in this confusion when I first started posting.

Regarding recent lies, I discovered that he was not lying regarding the outstanding figure but referring to how much was left to receive, and how much of this he would still have left after paying his debts.  I assumed at the time that he was lying but never asked him to explain.

I am experiencing my husband now consistently behaving in positive and constructive ways in daily situations and I believe he has recovered from being an angry person.  I sincerely hope so.

Juanita