Dear Buddi:

I see only one way to possibly make a difference in how your husband treats your son and that is to attend to your husband’s motivation. Your husband, you wrote, is consumed with his/your son being a golfer, you wrote. That is his motivation: I want my son to be a golfer!

Gently send your husband the message that a different kind of training of his son, a gentler training, will get him what he wants, that is, his son being a golfer and getting better and better at it. Somehow, through examples of famous golfers’ or other sport people’s stories online, show him how gentler training works better, and is way more likely to get him, your husband, what he wants: a golfer for a son.

Telling your husband that his training and otherwise treatment of your son is not to your liking is not likely to affect him because he doesn’t care what you think, does he. Telling him that his treatment is not good for your son’s well being is not likely to make a difference because he may care way more for a golfer for a son than anything else.

So attend to your husband’s motivation, to what your husband values, that is more likely to work for the benefit of your son.

Regarding your answer to my question regarding Mike, you wrote that your feeling that he was your soulmate had to do with you never judging him, being “there for him no matter what”, being “there rooted like a tree. I loved him and still do with every fiber in my body”-

Reads to me that your feeling of him as your soul mate has more to do with how you love him than it does with how he loved or loves you. You love him like you wished your whole life that you were loved, don’t you? To be loved unconditionally, no matter what, completely, like a rooted tree.

It is a different kind of love that you experienced at home where you grew up, your parents’ love for you was very conditional: if you had a crush on a guy (a feeling you couldn’t help, as we don’t choose what we feel), that was enough for them to un-love you, to punish you.

I think you value the kind of love you wish you had as a child. For some reason, Mike was the recipient of this kind of love, from you.

What about his lies, I wonder, how does it to love someone so completely knowing they lied to you repeatedly and are in the habit of doing so?

anita

Dear Buddi:

You are welcome.

You feel a strong emotional attachment to Mike. The nature of attachment of any kind is that it is difficult to let go. I need to be away from the computer for about sixteen hours or so. If you would like to share more about your attachment to him, please do.

I was wondering, regarding your guilty feelings you mentioned above, guilty for cheating on your husband- how did you manage to continue to cheat on him for many months (or years?) on and on and on… what did you do with those guilty feelings throughout that long period of  time?

anita

Dear Buddi:

I want to understand you better so I re-read your posts. In your original post you wrote about your parents, when you lived with them: “If they sniffed I had a crush they would ground me for months at home no friends, no going out no talking to anyone outside”- they punished you severely for feeling love for a boy.

Then they chose a man for you to marry.

The man you married “also gets upset but it’s nothing at all compared to what I was used to at home”- it doesn’t mean that you have been okay with his anger. It doesn’t mean that how he expresses his anger is okay. It just means that your parents were more aggressive, more punishing.

And then you met Mike and you fell in love. Finally you had your chance to love a man, a man you chose. And you loved him, being there for him “thru thick and thin”, wanting “nothing more than to be with him”. You let your heart love him all the way.

Unfortunately, he too expressed his anger in ways that hurt you, leaving for months without communicating with you. He lied to you repeatedly as well. He didn’t treat you well. He threatened you with telling your husband about the two of you. He cruelly asked you for advice about him dating another woman who was “so beautiful and so young”.

And when you told your parents and your husband about Mike, so to please him, he was displeased, discounting what you did with “you should have done this a long time ago”, and disappeared from your life once again without another word.

But you still love him, and you asked: “Why would a guy in his 50s do what he did? .. why did he come back after he lied and say things that made me believe he wanted me the same way I wanted him?”

For two years since you responded to Mike. You recently saw his display pic with another woman that that “tore (you) to bits”. You asked: “I have no idea what was less in me?”. You texted him and he responded with blaming you “for everything”.

Next you wrote: “This guy was my soulmate… the man I loved and gave my soul to is with someone else and I am slowly dying from within”.

Later you wrote: “I do not regret loving Mike those feelings are real and nothing like I experienced. But I do not know how to let go of him I want to start somewhere.

And later you wrote: “I want to accept that Love is not meant for me not this life.. I want to be loved the way I loved Mike… I ask myself this all the time what was less in me? Why did he not want me the way I wanted him?”

This is my understanding: you grew up unloved. You were punished, not loved. You were shown aggression, not tenderness. When you felt love for a boy, you were forbidden to see the boy. You were punished, isolated.

You were on one hand unloved, and on the other, you were not allowed to love and be loved by a boy. You also didn’t have the opportunity to develop a loving relationship, to get to know a boy over time.

Next a marriage was arranged for you and it was an opportunity for you to escape your parents. The man was not as aggressive as your father, a relief of sorts, but not good enough- no love there.

Next, you meet Mike. You shared nothing positive or endearing about Mike: he was repeatedly cruel to you, lied to you, threatened you, blamed you again and again.

But because you were so hungry to love, and to be loved, and because you never had the opportunity to love and be loved, never got to know a man through time, to evaluate who a man is, never had that experience of a developing love relationship-

you dived into it blindly, all excited, consumed to finally, finally love and be loved.

It didn’t matter who Mike is, all that mattered to you, understandably, is that finally you had the opportunity, for the first time in your life, to love and be loved by a man.

Mike’s behavior is not about who you are but about who he is. He is not a good potential love partner for any woman.

What happened with Mike is that you loved him, but he did not love you, not capable (no matter the woman). And so, it is possible for you to love again, for the second time in your life (Mike being the first), but to be loved in return by a man(for the first time in your life)- only not him, not Mike. And it reads like it is not your husband either.

anita

Dear Buddi:

You are a strong believer in karma, you wrote. Does it mean that you strongly believe that Mike will suffer for mistreating you in this lifetime?

anita

Dear Buddi:

You feel hurt by his mistreatment of you and naturally you feel angry at him. Feeling angry at him does not make you a horrible person. Or a good person. Just a person.

Regarding the consequences for his actions, this is how I see it: the reason he mistreated you (and unfortunate others in his life) follows him having been mistreated himself. If he had a loving childhood, he wouldn’t have proceeded to mistreat others on a regular, consistent basis as he had.

So the consequences you wish he suffers- they happened already- before he met you. They came before.

anita