Dear Bella:

You are welcome, it is my pleasure to communicate with you.

You shared that your parents divorced when you were 2. From 2-8, you lived with your mother who partied a lot. You then lived with your father for 3 years (he became an alcoholic at some point), and then for 6 years, you lived with your grandmother. At 19, you married a man who had anger and sexual orientation/ pornography problems. You had your first child at 21, and remained married for 16 years, four kids together. At about 35 years old, you divorced after he turned his anger toward your kids. It was a nasty, devastating divorce. (Currently, he sees only your youngest two children every other weekend, “and that’s pretty much it”).

At about 38, you entered a relationship with your current live- in boyfriend/ fiancé, now two years into the relationship. He suffers from anxiety, PTSD, and bipolar disorder. He has 4 kids, and spends time with only one of them. He has trouble holding down a job. You labeled the relationship with him, a “Toxic relationship” (the title of your thread), a relationship that “is not only not good for my kids but it’s unhealthy all the way around”. The two of you “can still have really, really good days and nights”, but there’s otherwise a lot of turmoil, and recently he threatened to move out of your home several times.

He expressed that “he has failed every relationship he’s been (in)”, that he needs help and that he is willing to start therapy. Your first individual session with a therapist is today, probably over by the time you read this.

You posted about the relationship in other forums and was advised to end the relationship, but you feel that you “cannot end things with him”. When the two of you had a break before, you felt “depressed, always ill, found life even more challenging”, and you hated yourself more. About the idea of breaking up with him, you wrote: “I know we are not in a healthy relationship but I will suffer from the pain and depression if we split up almost worse than what I’m dealing with now”.

My thoughts today: you rejected advice given you on other forums, to end this relationship, because you suffered a lot before, when on a break from him, and you don’t want to suffer that way again if there is another break, or a breakup.

When you grew up with your mother (your first attachment figure) who was into partying, and so, neglecting you emotionally- it made a huge impact on you.

No one else during your childhood gave you the attention and care that you desperately needed. It is that same neglected and scared child who is now, at about 40,  still scared of being alone, without her current attachment figure, who is a very troubled man.

How did therapy go?

anita