Dear Tineoidea,

I’d like to revisit this fact that you’d treated him like a child:

although there were many times where I did sort of have to treat him like a child due to his behavior. This is one of the complaints that my ex voiced when it comes to my “poor treatment” of him, that I treat him like a child.

In general, when we treat someone like a child, we feel superior to them and we feel it’s our right to lecture them, tell them what to do, how to behave etc. You might have been very much invested in keeping him “on the right track” and saving him from himself, and in doing that you might have been patronizing him and treating him like a child. Would you say this is what happened?

She actively involved my mother in those empty “plans and promises” she made, which made her compromise her health, time and happiness for a long time, working towards that ultimate goal which was never going to happen.

I don’t really understand what kind of promise she gave to your mother, which would require your mother to compromise her health and happiness? Was your mother required to take up extra work, so that the “ultimate goal” would come to fruition?