Dear Tania:

A set of books, bags, phone that you wanted the most, food that you like- these are nice gifts. You wrote earlier: “he also almost never give me surprise.. only one I can remember… when I graduated, he gave me a necklace”, so I thought the necklace was the only gift he ever gave you. But he gave you other gifts (books, bags, phone..).

You wrote that you feel happy for a few days after he givers you a gift, but “after that I feel like I forgot.. the feeling not lasting forever”- no good feeling (or bad feeling) lasts forever. It is the nature of a feeling that it is temporary. In addition to this, deep inside, because of your childhood experience, you are sad-  you were a sad, lonely child, and that same childhood feeling keeps coming up for you, as an adult. Am I correct?

It is similar to this: imagine a child growing up with little attention from her parents, sad and lonely. She then grows up and becomes a famous international super star, with millions of people cheering for her, and it feels wonderful to be cheered by millions, and yet, from time to time, the same old feeling of childhood, sad and lonely, comes up. (If you look at the history of celebrities, this is what happened to quite a few).

His caring to give you advice or a hug when you are in a bad mood is loving, as well as helping you with the dishes and cleaning the bathroom- these are acts of service.

You looked at his phone and you found a chat he had with a (different) woman work colleague regarding your wedding photo that he posted, she said: “poor tania”. You asked me what it means- I don’t know the entire context of her comment. Here is an example of what it could be: there is a spot on your wedding dress and she asked him about it, and he said that you got that spot when you hugged your niece who had chocolate in her hands. His colleague then said: “poor Tania”, for having your wedding dress spotted with chocolate.

Back to my point earlier in this post to you: did we talk about your childhood experience and how it connects to the feelings that keep coming back to you in your marriage (feeling lonely, unattended to, unloved,  feeling that he likes someone else better than he likes you/ feeling jealous, suspicious, etc.)?

anita

Dear Tania/ Nia:

(Do you prefer that I go back to call you Nia?) Please take your time reading the following post, read it part by part, over time, before you respond.

You shared earlier that your parents divorced when you were a very young child. As a young child, you lived with your father who died when you were 17. Last you saw your mother before he died was when you were 3. Next you saw your mother was after he died, when you were 18.

Your father hated your mother, and told you that he hated her.

This is what I think happened: you did not have a mother living with you, your father hated your mother, and you desperately needed your father (the only parent there) to love you. Being loyal to your father, you showed him that you hated your mother too, that the two of you were together in his hate of your mother: “I was so angry..(to)  hear anyone called ‘mother’, I’ll react like I don’t care, I don’t want to hear or sing a song about mother, but deep in my heart, I wanna have mother love”.

Here is the big problem in your childhood, as I see it: you wanted more than anything to be in the same team as your father: you and him together against your mother. You were loyal to him, but how did he reward you for your loyalty?

– he told you that your face reminded him of your mother: “my face just the same with my mom that he hate the most.. I thought that he didn’t like me because my face just the same with my mom that he hate the most (he ever told me that thing when he was angry)”.

He betrayed your loyalty by pushing you away from him, away from the team you wanted to be in (you + your father), and he placed you in the team with the woman he hated  (you + your mother).

When he was angry at you he said other very hurtful words to you, words that caused you pain: “sometimes I got pain from my dad’s words when he angry”- he betrayed his little girl’s loyalty and trust, and caused a lot of pain in this little girl.

You wrote to me: “Yes you are correct.. feeling lonely, unattended to, unloved.. jealous suspicious.. is what I feel my entire life.. even with my dad”- this is how a child feels when left by her mother and betrayed by her angry father.

You remember: “when I was in elementary school, and my father give compliment to my friend… I become really jealous.. I feel my father like her more than me”- your jealousy was born early: you were paying attention to how your father treated other girls your age, and every time he smiled, or said a kind word to her- your hurt returned to your heart deep and intense.

As an adult and in your marriage you keep re-living your unhappy childhood; it is what happens when children suffer a lot in childhood, with no help then or since: they keep re-living the same emotional experience of childhood as adults. Let’s look at this re-living of your childhood experience:

In Feb 24, in your original post in this thread, you wrote regarding your husband: “Recently, I knew that he chatted with another girl whom he likes before. I mean, my husband has feeling for her 10 years ago”- just like as a child, you were really jealous of the girl whom your father gave a compliment to, thinking he liked her more—>as an adult,  you were jealous of the woman your husband worked with,  because gave  her a compliment, or showed her some positive attention.

On that day, you wrote: “This all feels hurt… really hurt… I don’t know what can I do now.. I just feel hopeless and feel that I’m not worth it anymore.. I can’t trust anyone to tell about this… I don’t have any spirit to live”- this is how you felt as a child, this was your emotional experience as a child, and you keep re-living the same emotional experience.

You wrote, back in February: “I’ve been through darkest time before, when my father passed away and I lived alone. Even that time I also don’t have spirit to love, but I still have hope for my future”- you hoped that in the future a man will love you, and only you.

But still, as a teenager, when you liked a boy, you convinced yourself that he doesn’t care about you, and you do the same with your husband as a married woman: “it’s also a habit from I was a teenager, when I like someone else, I always convincing myself that he is not care or thought about me… I already realize that I also do this with my husband.. I worry, still struggle.. how to forget that he care for another woman more than me? I worried that he compare me to her”.

You have been aware of some of the things I stated here early on, from the day you started your thread (“sometimes I thought ‘is this maybe my traumatic about my parents?”, Feb 24), but your awareness is not enough (there is more for you to become aware of), and often you get confused: you don’t know if you are re-living your childhood emotional experience or your husband really does like another woman more than he likes you.

You can’t really trust your husband because you were betrayed by your father, and you did not yet heal from that betrayal, plus you don’t really know if your husband is worthy of trust.

Without healing, even if your husband was as close to a perfectly loyal husband as possible, you would still get  hurt and confused when, for example, the two of you would be watching a movie, a pretty actress is playing in the movie, you watch your husband’s face watching the actress, and you think to yourself: he likes her more, he is thinking how pretty she is. He wishes he was married to her, etc. etc.

In the example I just gave, the husband did nothing wrong, but you would still be re-living your childhood experience.

Best for you would be if you attended quality psychotherapy. I don’t see how you can heal without quality professional help.

Maybe it will help a bit here, in the context of your thread, if you share more about your childhood, the hurtful  words your father said, how he betrayed you, etc. (?)- not for the purpose of feeling badly, but for the purpose of increasing your awareness through our communication.

anita

Dear Tania:

Yes, I do think that you need professional help, just like I needed and received professional help. I was much older than you when I finally had my first quality psychotherapy. That was the beginning of my healing process. If you have quality therapy earlier in life, it will be better for you.

When we are terribly hurt as children, by a parent, or by both parents, and we live our childhood hurt day after day after day, night after night, months and years- the hurt sets in, it’s there, and we get  to keep feeling it for as long as we are alive- unless we heal, unless we are engaged in the healing process .

“I still love my dad.. In days before he passed away, he hug me so tight and said that he love me so much and always want to be with me forever. And that’s what I remember in this whole years without him”-

– that tight hug that he gave you could not and did not erase the words he told you earlier, that you have your mother’s face and her style, a face and style that he hated, a face and style that was not wrong, not your fault, not your choosing!

You felt “lonely even my dad always besides me.. I don’t know why”- if he was the loving father all along, the way he was when he gave you that tight hug, then you  would have never felt lonely when he was besides you. And you wouldn’t be feeling lonely as a married woman, when your husband is besides you.

“I didn’t realize that I need professional help to do psychotherapy.. and actually I’m not familiar with psychology things”-

– it is not easy to find quality psychotherapy. If you need advice in regard to choosing a therapist, or if you want my input on any psychology thing, let me know, and I will be glad to share with you all that I know.

anita

Dear Tania:

After I read your most recent post I read again your posts from the beginning of your thread (Feb 24) and paid attention to your husband (I’ll call him “H”, for Husband), trying to learn who he is, from what you shared. This post will be longer than most. It is not all necessarily exact, but it is my best understanding of H, you, and your situation:

You’ve been in a relationship with H for about 7 years, and married to him for about a year. You are pregnant for about 2-3 months. H is not a romantic type of guy (“no romantic dinner, no formally anniversary celebration, no surprise gifts.. He said to me that he can’t be romantic”).

He is very logical, and does not like to talk about feelings (“I can’t really talk with him heart to heart.. he doesn’t  like to talk about such as express feeling, he just measure anything using logic”). More than not liking to talk about feelings, he gets angry when you pressure him to talk about feelings. One time you tried to make a deal with him, that you will be less possessive of him if he talks with you about feelings, but he reacted angrily (“I said that I want to change not too possessive, but he should chat with me more intimate. Then after that, he become angry.. he feels that he already did intimate chat”).

In a marriage, he likes his wife to be in the background while he does what he likes to do, which is playing computer games/ being at the computer (“When he is at home, he always do anything that he love- like ignore me, most of the time he waste by playing his game”). He does not have an interest in talking with you about .. feelings, or anything much. I believe that no matter who his wife was, that’s the way he would be. He is this way not because you are boring, but because he does not want to end up talking about feelings and any deep subjects that he doesn’t care about.

He is not romantic because it is too difficult for him and he doesn’t want to be romantic. He does not want to be anything that he is not (“He treat me just the way he  is, completely no mask, nothing he covered up from me”).

Before getting married, he was more attentive to you and more patient with you when you expressed your worries/ jealously, but after marriage he is less attentive, less patient (“he let the situation still not good and just say ‘just hurry sleep, I’m tired”), and when he kisses you, he doesn’t kiss you passionately like he used to before marriage.

As a married man, H flirted lightly with a work colleague of his. When he traveled, he asked her if she wants him to give her a gift of chocolate, mentioning it was on discount. He also told her (as a joke, perhaps) that if she wants a bag as a gift, she will have to give him money for it. A romantic guy wouldn’t have mentioned that the chocolate was on discount or joke that if she wants a more expensive gift, she would need to give  him the money for it. He is not a romantic guy, not with you, not with anyone.

You’ve been very worried and obsessing about him and the work colleague. But in March he was working from home because of the pandemic, and by June, after a couple  of months of him working from home, you felt better because you were not worried about him flirting at the work place. You felt calmer, knowing he was at home (“I feel grateful… doing my hobbies, focusing love myself etc.. I feel less jealous.. maybe because .. my husband always at home all the time for this several months”).

Still in June, your worries were not gone and they came up again: you looked at his phone, worried he was interacting with a woman, or the like, and he got angry. In August, in your most recent post, you shared that he watches pornography online (“he made a new social media to follow sexual women”).

Other than that short amount when he worked at home, when your attention was away from him for a while, otherwise, your attention is on him (“My attention just for him.. attention to get his attention.. my mood is depended on him.. I tried to go back to my old hobbies, I felt bored, and I can leave them all offhand when he come to me… I still always look at him and all of my thought just for him.. he is the number one of my priority”). Your mood often is depressed, withdrawn (“my heart always feeling blue and I didnt have any spirit to do anything… what is the real meaning of being alive.. it’s just work, get money, sometimes do some charity, hang out with friends, etc… all is boring.. ‘Feeling lonely, unattended to, unloved.. feeling jealous, suspicious’.. is what I feel for my entire life.. even with my dad”.

In summary: ever since you were a child, because your mother left you when you were about 4 and proceeded to have a new family, without you, and because your father was at times angry at you, for not doing chores.. or worse, for reminding him of your mother whom he hated… all that made you a very sad, very angry at your mother, a very withdrawn child who  used to look up at the sky, lost and empty. This is what I referred to earlier as your childhood emotional experience, an experience which continues to this very day.

No matter who your husband was, that childhood emotional experience would have continued. A perfectly behaved husband would have meant, at best, that sometimes you would feel better, like in March-June, but the same-old, same-old empty feeling would have come back to you.

I am disappointed too that your husband watches pornography- I didn’t know this until today. I am disgusted by pornography and if it was my choice, the whole pornography industry will disappear from the world. Unfortunately it is a very successful industry because it has millions and millions of clients willing to invest money in it.

Let me know what you think about my post so far, and I will write to you more after I get your response. Please try to write to me as clearly as you can. After you finish your next post, edit it so to make it more clear.

anita

Dear Tania;

1. About him “watching porn regularly”- I don’t like that habit and you don’t like it either (“make me really bad”). I don’t know if you talked to him about it. I think that you will need to talk with him about it sometime in the future, get his thoughts. Let me know what he says.

I agree with you: “besides his bad habit, he still loves me and takes care of me”. Remember you shared with me that you wore lingerie so to get him to be more attracted to you, and he didn’t like it, he wanted you back to normal? This means that in his mind, you are his wife, and the women in the porn movies are entertainment. You are in one group (the one and only wife), and the images of the women in the porn movies are in another group (many images, not real people).

2.   About love languages:  “His type of love language is giving service and gifts.. help me wash the dishes, wash clothes.. cut fruit for me”, etc., but not romance and “talk about heart things”-

– learn to be satisfied with his love language, learn to appreciate it, to take it in.. because that’s all you have. If you focus on what you don’t have (romance, talking about feelings)- then you will always be miserable.

3. About your Emptiness (“Feeling lonely, unattended to, unloved.. jealous, suspicious”):

You wrote, “for him he loves me enough. And he will get angry if he knows that sometimes I feel lonely and need more love.. he feels I am never grateful for anything he gave me.. I just feel empty inside and maybe it’s because my past situation of my life”-

– your Emptiness is about your childhood, that’s when the Emptiness happened. H did not cause your emptiness. H can not fill it in. No one can. You will have to live with the Emptiness and no longer hope that H can fill it in. This means that you take personal responsibility for your Emptiness, no longer giving H that responsibility.

“in his logic, he thinks I always feel less. He thinks he gives me anything, his time, his attention. But he sees me like I feel it’s a small thing and want more”-

– H is correct: No matter what he says, no matter what he does, it will never be enough to fill in the Emptiness. Even if he was romantic, even if he talked about heart things all day long- he can never fill your Emptiness. At best he can make you feel good for a short time, but the Emptiness will be back too soon after, and you will be asking for more romance, more.. more.. and nothing will ever be enough.

This Emptiness is what I referred before as your childhood emotional experience, and I suggested that the slow, gradual healing from that experience can begin for you in quality psychotherapy. H is unable to heal you. I am unable to heal you. Only in a professional setting with a qualified professional, can healing begin.

4. About being in the background: “I think he likes me to be in the background while he does anything.. sometimes talking with me about what’s he seen and what’s attract his attention”-

– I am like him much of the time: I am introverted in real life, meaning I don’t like to interact with people on and on and on. It is too difficult for me, it makes me tired and bored. I feel comfortable with people doing their thing while I am doing my thing, and talk at times, but not often. People that need my attention a lot, talking to me a lot- that makes me tired. I don’t like it. I can’t change this about myself, and I figure H can’t change that about himself either.

5. About your focus being on him (“My attention is still on him. Really much”)-

– when you fully understand that it is impossible for H (or any man, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how romantic etc.), to fill in your Emptiness, you will no longer focus on him, waiting and waiting and watching every move he makes, all in the hope of him filling in that Emptiness.

No longer seeing H as your savior, you will be able to focus on other things (your healing, I hope), and in some time from now,  on your own baby.

anita