Dear John,

I haven’t been on the forums when you’ve originally shared your story, but I got to read most of it now. I am so sorry that it got to this, and that you couldn’t move on from the unhappy marriage.

As others have told you before, you’ve got an excellent insight and rationally, cognitively you understood everything. But it seems that on the emotional level, you got stuck and the fear of leaving was too big. It would cause paralysis and you’d always return to your wife.

The emotional level is related to our childhood, and I believe that the paralyzing fear that you felt (and are probably still feeling) belongs to the child in you. The child in us feels helpless to move, unable to act on its behalf. Not the adult.

That’s why I believe that working with the inner child could unlock the secret and finally give you a push in the right direction, i.e. towards freedom. You said you’ve worked with a CBT therapist. This might not be enough, since CBT remains on the cognitive level, while you need to go deeper. You need to access the emotional level and maybe even the pre-verbal level. So if you’re still considering therapy, I’d suggest working with a therapist specialized in Complex PTSD, i.e. in childhood trauma.

I know you said nothing was wrong with your childhood, but as others have said, it’s very unlikely that an emotionally healthy person would put up with the abuse for so long. We’re often not even aware of the way we were deprived in our childhood and how our essential needs were not met. If there was no physical abuse, we don’t necessarily see how we were harmed. There is also a thing called emotional neglect, so even if we weren’t abused, we might have been emotionally neglected and our needs not met.

So I encourage you not to give up, because I am sure there is a way out, if you really want it. You’re not doomed – you only need to find the proper therapy, which will address deeper levels too.