Dear SereneWolf,

I wish I could tell you I am feeling better, but I am not unfortunately… I’ll let you know if there’s some progress finally…

Yes I know but his mother is good natured and nice with me. So I’ll try to present this matter clear and calmly as possible. Because another thing I noticed is that I think she’s the main decision maker, her husband is naïve and he’s mostly saying yes to her. It’s actually funny to see them talking sometimes

Okay… if you share about your own childhood and your own experience, that might have some weight and she might consider it. Also, you can say that nowadays children spend too much time on the internet, and it’s not good for their health, so actually nowadays parents should encourage their children to go play outside and not try to keep them indoors.

This occurred to me because I’ve recently seen a cartoon about old and new trends. One of the illustrations shows the Old trend: mother pulling her son back to the house because he’s been playing too much outside, and New trend: mother pulling her son out of the house, while he is glued to his smart phone 🙂

No. Not really. Because I even told her about my hypothyroidism, and she took it well. And in past there was times when even if I have a headache, she’d get really worried.

But as far as I can remember I didn’t tried to regulate her moods.

Well, if in the past she got worried about you for even as little as headache – that’s a lot of worrying. Remember, what matters is what happened in your childhood – that’s the imprint you’re living with – even if now she’s not worrying that much. What did you do when she’d get worried about your headache, do you remember?

I mean which mother doesn’t worry about her kids? So it’s obvious that she is worried sometimes and yeah in the past I tried to hide things from my mother because I was scared that she’d be worried because I was still just a high school boy going in wilds…

Sure, that amount of worry is understandable, and since you were doing some really wild stuff, it’s sort of obvious why you didn’t want to tell her… But you also mentioned that she was worried when you wanted to learn how to swim, in a swimming pool with an instructor (if I remember well?). That’s a bit of an excessive worry, in my opinion. How old were you then?

So I was thinking about emotional enmeshment, which I suggested as a possibility last time, but based on everything we’ve talked about so far, and how you behave in relationships, I don’t think this is the case with you after all.

Because like in relationship I care too much and even if they’re little careless about their health or things that affect them or make them worry it makes me worry 3x times more and I can’t focus on my things.

You’ve talked about this before – that you get “overprotective” i.e. controlling when you try telling your girlfriend that she should eat healthier, or have better sleeping habits. From what I’ve understood, you don’t just tell her “you should get more sleep, staying late is bad for your health”, and then sort of let it go, but you turn into this drill sergeant who is pushing her to eat healthier, sleep healthier, etc. That’s the same drill sergeant who sometimes turns on you (in the form of the inner critic), and sometimes on the people close to you (in the form of the outer critic).

So it seems to me that the “care” you show towards your partner has this overlay of criticism. And so you turn into this overprotective, critical father, who is watching his “daughter’s” every step, trying to “improve” her. You get so focused on her and her problems, that it consumes you completely and you can’t focus on your own life.

I think this type of dynamic is not emotional enmeshment, but more like that you’re focusing too much on her and her “wellbeing” (but in a bad sense, like an overbearing parent), and then you’re frustrated when she doesn’t want to take your advice. This then is frustrating to you and you rather give up, i.e. leave the relationship.

What do you think? Does this sound plausible?

Oh and kind of a funny thing happened on valentine’s day. One of my friend’s doctor proposed me… It was really bold move for her.

Yes, it was! But you know you don’t need to accept her marriage proposal, right? 🙂

But to be honest I’m not putting up any high expectations. Go on a date, get to know her a little bit and then maybe something…

Exactly! No rush… If she wants to rush things, please know that you have the right to say No. Even if she doesn’t like that…