* Good to see you here, Juanita!

Dear Arran:

You know the Beatles’s song: “All you need is love”? I think it is true. This is obviously what you did not have: LOVE. And as a child you desperately needed it. You didn’t get it. So you grew up impoverished. Not connected, not to your parents, not to others, an outside… and you still are, walking at the edge of the room watching others having fun (your original post).

You hold on to perfection because (?) deep inside, you believe IF you were perfect than you would have been loved, as a child.

And having gotten poor grades in school, and succeeding presently far less than perfection, you feel hopeless, too far from perfection= too far from love.

The connection between perfection and love was made in your brain when you were a child and the connection is there. Your wife may still love you (?) Your kids I have no doubt- they do love you, but you cannot let their love inside you because for you- due to the early connection- you are not loved until perfect.

Being so far from perfect, you feel hopeless and think about death as a place to rest from the painful lack of love in your experience. You know you can never be perfect…

What is love? It is NOT perfection. It is not material success. It is when you realize you were born lovable and didn’t have to do or achieve anything to EARN it.

Look at your children, do they need to earn your love?

A good psychotherapy can help you gradually undo the neural connections in your brain between love and perfection and make new connections between love and you just BEING. (A human BEING, not a human doer). A good enough psychotherapist will help you through this.

Reality is, truth is, you were born lovable. And you are lovable. You don’t have to do anything. Once you KNOW this truth, your mental health will be good and you will feel peace and LIFE in you and … well, this is the way.

What do you think?
anita

Dear Arran:

I think that you are trying to be a perfect husband on your own, that is by yourself, without your wife. To be a GOOD ENOUGH husband you have to be part of a team with her. You are too used to being alone, from childhood on, on the outside looking in. TO be a good enough husband… go inside, go to where your wife is, hold her hands and say: I am so alone and have been so alone for such a long time. I didn’t consider that I can be together with you, that I don’t have to be alone. We can work together to have a good marriage, and together to be good parents. I need your help. I can’t do it alone.

The way it is, you are alone and she is alone. It will make the difference between night and day if you reach out to her, let her know you need her, that she is needed.

You are trying to be a perfect father from the outside, as well. You need to come “inside” to where your kids are, bend down so you look into their eyes, look at your child. If he seems sad, tell him: You look sad, and keep your eyes on his. You feel his sadness and your face express your own sadness. This mirrors to your child that he is feeling sad. You invite him to tell you what he feels and you listen. You come out of yourself, of worrying about your performance.

To be good husband, a good father, you don’t PERFORM, you INTERACT. You enter their world and allow them to enter your world.

You have been used to being alone all your life…as a child. You don’t really know any other way on an ongoing basis. Time to know another way.

What do you think? If you don’t know how to start talking to your wife, you might want to share this very thread with her. Hey, she can write to me… You know her, be one of a team of two with her.

anita

Arran,

I think you should know you’re not alone, even in your feeling of being alone.

I have treatment-resistant depression, and I also am never happy, or really even content. I struggle with physical pain from a neck issue that will eventually require surgery to “resolve,” but the surgery probably won’t be an option until I’m in my 40s or 50s. I’m currently in my late 20s, and have a beautiful, wonderful wife and daughter, and another baby on the way. My family is wonderful, and I know they’re wonderful, but… I still am not happy or content.

It’s exhausting to need everything around you to be perfect, because it’s a never-ending battle. My parents both loved me as a child, and I know that in my adult head, but my mother began getting very sick with bipolar disorder when I was about 6, and my father worked as a professor, but never received tenure, so was always working endless hours for minimal pay. I didn’t go without anything I needed, but I also don’t feel like my childhood was comforting… I was alone, as it sounds like you were.

I haven’t found the answer yet, and have had similar experiences (lackluster) with therapists, so am indifferent about the idea of seeking one out. I think Anita has an excellent point. If your wife is anything like mine (and it sounds like she is, superficially, at least)… she will understand that you’re struggling, and that is where some of her stress comes from, is a feeling of helplessness, being unable to make you happy, because nothing makes you happy. I find some solace in prayer, which can be to God, or if you don’t hold such beliefs, can be to the Universe. Either way, something more powerful than you is out there to listen whenever you need to talk.

My 6 year old daughter just came over, and gave me the biggest hug, and told me she loved me, and looked at me with her beautiful brown eyes… Those types of times, I can just barely feel the positive aura that comes from the love that she and her mother have for me, and show me daily. It nearly brings me to tears, because with their love comes all of this guilt that comes from knowing I’m unhappy, and feeling like I shouldn’t be that way, and that I’m somehow robbing them of the happier version of me, which I pray and hope exists… I’ve spent far too long in this despair, and I just hope that I stumble across the answer.

I hope knowing that you’re not alone in your feeling of loneliness and hopelessness is itself a boost to your feelings.

Blessings,
Tim