Dear Ramona:

You shared in your recent post that you became pregnant while dating him and living with your parents. He lived with his parents at the time. He told you that “he can’t promise that he will move in with (you) or even continue this relationship”.

You moved out of your parents’ and told him to let you know when he makes up his mind. After a few months he partially made up his mind: he decided to move in with you, but angrily: “It was not easy living with him from the beginning, even during my pregnancy… treated me so horribly and blames me”.

After your first child was born, you suffered from postpartum depression, and he “was not supportive at all”, talking badly about you with his family and friends. Depressed after giving birth, troubled by his behavior and the many arguments with him, you asked him to leave.

He left for a couple of weeks and came back “to try and make things work”, but he was still angry, “angry from day One of moving in”, telling you from the beginning of living with you that “he is cursed” for ending up with you, that you are not his ideal woman, and he kept saying these things throughout the years.

You told him many times that “he is free to go and find his ideal woman”, but he stayed with his not-ideal woman year after year, having a second child.

Your beliefs about a lot of things, including your beliefs about raising children, have been very different from his/ his family’s. You wanted your children to “be in a healthy environment and free to choose what they believe, they should follow their own hearts and intuition. We don’t own them, they are not our property, They are human beings with feelings”.

Having this recent information, I went back to your previous posts and read them again because I want to understand you, him and the situation better:

In your very first post/ paragraph, you wrote: “We have been together for about 18 years, and many times I have to wonder if this guy really loves me“.  Having all the information I have at this point, I was thinking this very morning, as I read the italicized: how can an intelligent woman, Ramona (and you are clearly intelligent), still wonder if he really loves her…  after all his mistreatments and abuses year after year, from the very beginning of living with him???

I then thought: it must be that Ramona experienced his love for her because that love was/ is really there. If there was no love in this man’s heart for Ramona, she wouldn’t be considering that he may really love her after all.

Next, I went looking for this love in what you shared, looking for what happened to that love. Here are a few places where I found his love for you (and for his children):

1. “We wanted to get married, however I got pregnant before that can happen”- he wanted to marry you 18 years ago, even though you did not share his religion, and even though you were not virgin. He wanted you in his life.

2. “He is a good father to the kids and provides for us”.

3. “I was asked to .. convert. I refused.. He and his family didn’t like that. He wasn’t sure if he will remain in the relationship. I told him it was up to him. I found a place to live.. One day he decided to move in”- he decided to move in with you even though (a) his family didn’t like you being in his life (b) you didn’t pressure him and you told him that it was “up to him”.

4. “I have told him many times that he is free to go and find his ideal woman”- you didn’t give any indication that he looked for another woman (?) He chose to stay with you even though his parents disapproved of you, and even though you gave him the freedom to look for another woman.

5. “He decided to get help for the anger issue, he learned that he has ocd. He took meds and tried techniques etc… he changed a lot over the last three years. We had many wonderful moments”- he tried to get better for you, he worked hard at it, and the results: his love broke through his anger many times, giving you “many wonderful moments” of love.

Next, I went looking for what happened to his love for you much of the time, ever since the beginning:

1. “The kids were not comfortable sleeping over at this family’s place.. My kids would say crying and pleading ‘Mom, please don’t send us there, we don’t like it there”- when your husband was a kid, he didn’t like it there either. The family that makes your kids so afraid to spend time with, is the same family that he was afraid of. He told you that he is cursed for being with you- no, I believe that he was cursed to be born into his family.

He had a very bad experience growing up with his parents. I imagine that one of his parents, or both criticized him a lot for small mistakes he made, yelled at him; that his feelings did not matter to them, that they compared him unfavorably to others, that they said negative about him, and that they blamed him…. Fast forward, he’s been doing all these things to you:

* “If I was cleaning and broke a lamp my mistake, I get yelled at”- his parents yelled at him when he broke something, and when he made a mistake.

* “my feelings didn’t matter”- his feelings didn’t matter to his parents.

* He told you: “my cousin, my aunt etc.. are not like you, they do things like so, and so”- his parents compared him unfavorably to his siblings, or cousins, and/ or peers at school, etc.

* “If his family or friends say anything negative about me.. he would come home and blame me for it.. it’s my fault they feel a certain way”-when his parents said negative things about him, he blamed himself. Fast forward, when his parents/ others say negative things about you, he blames himself and he blames you.

* “He would even get angry at the kids for just being kids.. like knocking something over in a store”- his parents got angry at him for just being a kid, for knocking something accidently.

* “I thought he would be more concerned that I was in an accident.. Instead, blamed me, even though it was not my fault. No love or support”- there was no love or support in his home of origin, with his family- when he had an accident, or got hurt somehow for no fault of his own- his parents blamed him and were angry at him.

My conclusion at this point: there was some progress in the last three years, but he is still stuck in his childhood experience, he still cares too much about his parents/ family disapproving of him and he can’t be okay with a woman that they disapprove of. He doesn’t know what I suspect to be the truth: that no matter what woman he was with, be it a woman who was a virgin when he married her, a woman of the same religion- his parents/ family would still disapprove of her.. and of him.

Because he is still in contact with his family, still trying to please them, still waiting for them to approve of him somehow— there is no way that he will become a loving husband to you, or a better father to his children (when he gets angry at them for “just being kids”- he is not a good father).

I don’t think that you can have as much power over him as his parents do because they were in his life when he was a child, and therefore had a lot of power over him.. and they still do. Likely, he is looking for others in his family to approve of him, older siblings perhaps.

Unless he wants to attend quality psychotherapy, and unless he is willing to change (or terminate) his relationships with his problematic family members- I don’t see any other reasonable solution than you separating from this man and staying separated, living the rest of your life away from him, for the sake of your mental health and your children’s.

anita

Dear Ramona:

I will read your recent post and reply in about 10 hours from now.

anita