Dear Kate:

Here is a possibility: when he took off the wedding ring, he was really taking off the symbol of his imprisonment into a certain role that his mother put him in. By taking the wedding ring off and separating from you, he is symbolically separating from his (dead) mother and exiting the role she put him in.

He wants freedom from that role, from her. Even though he is not a child or a teenager, he became who he is through the interactions that happened then. We can’t …erase the past because connections in the brain where made then and we can’t disconnect those by an act of will.

If he does believe that it is nothing that you did wrong, and it is true, then he is closer to the real issue: his mother and himself.

If this possibility… is a possibility in your understanding and you see a point in further exploring it here, you can share more about his relationship and interactions with his mother.

anita