I am flooded with responses to my column about women who “lose” themselves to being a wife and a mother. Here are some broad suggestions to begin to resolve the issue:

Get a life before you get a relationship. Avoid any relationship where you are asked to compromise long-term goals, skills, and interests in exchange for the relationship.

If you have already “lost” yourself begin to claim your life back in small but meaningful ways: get your own bank account, establish your own passwords on your own email accounts. As an act of LOVE, do anything it takes to establish some independence.

Make a ruthless inventory of your skills, talents, and your interests, all of which have nothing to do with your being a spouse or a parent. This might be very difficult if you have been “lost” (plundered, dominated) for a long time.

Gather a small group of women friends and suggest you meet weekly in order to talk about everything BUT husbands and children. Spend the time listening to what other women want from life (not from husbands or children!). At first the group may experience long periods of silence as women learn that there is indeed a difference between what they want from life and what they want from their spouses or children.

“A few nights ago my teenager and husband got in a shouting match. It was getting very threatening and I stepped in to stop it. They would not back down. My son went to his room and my husband started packing his clothes. My husband told me that he doesn’t love me and wants to move on. The argument had nothing to do with me but it was where we are in our marriage. He has given up and decided that life would be better without me and his child arguing. He really meant it when he said that he doesn’t love me, that he doesn’t need me and wants to move on. I am devastated. I never thought he did not love me. I don’t want my family to know what is going on, they would turn against him and there would be no chance of reconciliation. What should I do?”

The first thing I’d suggest both of you do, while it might be impossible considering the recent event, is that you both assure your son that it is not his behavior that is causing the problems between his parents. Allowing your family to support you at this time is probably a good idea. I’d suggest your family know more than you think they do.

Increase your tolerance for pain (of those whom you love and your own) – this will keep you out of “rescue mode” with those whom you love and decrease your likelihood of engaging in your own unhelpful behaviors.

Focus on being a step-down transformer (rather than a step-up transformer) for the anxiety that surrounds you. Reduce rather than amplify surrounding anxieties.

Develop and eagle eye so you may see your life from afar and from “above.” Look beyond today for the larger context of who you are and what you are called to accomplish.

Listen patiently to others without waiting to speak. You do not have to agree but it is essential that you listen. Perhaps the only tangible evidence of love is that we listen to those whom we say we love.

Forgive before it is asked of you and especially if it is not. This is, of course, about you and not about those who are in need of your forgiveness.

Develop a “long-haul” mentality for your family and other intimate relationships. People are allowed to fail, people are allowed to let you down, other people are as fallible as you are. A long-haul mentality encourages you to stay with it even if things don’t go your way.

“I decided to cheat on my husband. I won’t give excuses. I had always been a very strong woman. I always thought that any woman who left her marriage and split up her family didn’t deserve respect. Well, it happened to me. I met a man fourteen years younger than me. He was shy, sensitive, and handsome. We started text messaging one another late at night and then we eventually started seeing each other. I became obsessed with him. I moved out of my home and split my five children with my husband. This was the beginning of the end. The relationship with this other man lasted on and off for five years. I became a very angry woman. Anyway, during all of this insanity my relationship with my children was almost completely severed and they all began living with their father. Through this my husband maintained love for me and he’s been my friend. I know I love my husband still but I’m not in love with him. How do I re-establish an ‘in love’ feeling with my husband.” (Edited)

Being “in love” and becoming obsessed with someone are poles apart. Perhaps you can live without the “in love” feeling in return for the stability and sanity your saintly spouse offers.

“I suggested my girlfriend and her 4-year-old son move in with me. The second day I knew it was a bad idea. Dirty plates, food, clothes everywhere; disorder, chaos. Sometimes I hate the boy. He manipulates my girlfriend. He is destroying our relationship. We talk about it and she says, ‘He’s just a kid.’ He is ADHD and she won’t use medicine. Every time we go to the cinemas we have to leave in the middle because the boy can’t sit still. In restaurants he is under the table and throws food. The boy NEVER has a punishment and now he punches us. I doubt our future. I don’t want the boy in my life. She rarely bathes him so he smells bad. She makes him to watch television on my bed and I hate to go to my bed and smell her child. I cannot rest in my bedroom. I really love her. My family says that i must leave her. Dating a single mother sucks.”

So, how do you really feel? It seems mother and son need something you are not equipped to offer. Tell the woman your truth with the willingness to act upon it. This environment is not serving anyone of the three of you well.

“I am a clinical psychologist, marital and family therapist with 25 years of experience I have just read your daily column about women who lose themselves (Friday, February 18, 2011). Usually I agree with you write and I advise my clients to read your column. I agree wholeheartedly but the content needs to be extended to men. I see too many men who try too hard to please their partners and in the process lose their own identity, which of course wasn’t too strong in the first place.”

Anky Willemsen, Westville

“My husband and I have been married for several years and have two girls (8 & 4). We are good friends and parents. My husband chooses not to passionately kiss me, I have received pecks for I don’t know how long. At first I was insecure about my breath. Then I took a look at him and realized it was his insecurities with bad teeth problems. I crave his attention and have never had a hickey. For the longest time I thought it was my not being pretty enough. Please help.” (Radically shortened and corrected)

Please read Roberta M. Gilbert’s Extraordinary Relationships. Also, although it probably has nothing to do with the lack of kissing between you and your husband, get your whole family appointments with a dentist.

1. Forgive everyone everything.
2. Write a letter of thanks and affirmation to your spouse and children and send the letters by traditional mail.
3. Give away a few books you have loved to a few people who you love.
4. Call an employee aside, or approach your boss, and express gratitude about something in the organization.
5. Phone a former teacher.
6. Drop in on an elderly friend and sit and chat for a long while.
7. Leave a significant tip for someone who makes your life work a little more efficiently.
8. Drop in on your children at school simply to tell them you love them.
9. Write an affirming note to someone who is now on the periphery of your life but who used to be in your inner-circle.

Women who lose themselves to a lover or a spouse, do so because they did not bring enough SELF into the relationship in the first place. They “soft-pedal,” downplay, or compromise who they are in order to be accepted and loved.

Conversely, a woman, with a healthy sense of self, understands, before she even meets a man, that no man, (marriage, or children) will make her happier than she already is. Such a woman will not “lose herself” in a relationship because she does not invest all of her hopes and dreams in any relationship. Healthy people do not expect relationships to offer what relationships simply do not, and cannot, offer.

If a woman sees a man, (marriage, or children) as a means to be delivered from some unhappy state, or as possessing the key to finding true happiness, she has already sold herself to the illusion that her happiness and fulfillment somehow rests within the hands and the power of others.

Bringing strength, self-awareness, self-assured-ness, personal goals, courage and determination (a developed “sense of self”) to a relationship (in other words, refusing to “soft-pedal”) may indeed scare off a man who has a poor sense of himself, but it will invigorate and attract the kind of man who honors equality, mutuality and respect.