Hi Freddie,

yeah this definitely correlates with me never speaking up for myself or asking things I felt I shouldn’t, this has been an issue throughout my life, I go with the flow or comprise myself and my thoughts to please others.

Okay, so it’s a known pattern to you, and you actually repeated it with her too. But the issue of having children with her (and also her money problems) was too big to be overlooked, and you had to speak up. Good for you! You did something good for yourself!

At the same time, I know it hurts because you feel guilty for “letting her down”, and so far you saw it as almost entirely your responsibility. But I hope you can see that you only stopped people-pleasing her – you haven’t done anything unfair or morally objectionable. You haven’t let her down, you actually stopped letting yourself down. As you said, you stopped compromising yourself.

So I hope that at least on the mental level you know that you’re not a bad guy and that you’re not being unfair or unloving. I hope this will help you blame yourself less.

You’d also need to work on it in therapy, because it probably does stem from your childhood. Feeling guilty for asking anything for yourself, for asserting yourself…. do you have siblings who were more demanding and needy than you, while you didn’t ask much for yourself as a child?