August 10, 2008
by Rod Smith
Reader response to questions is usually helpful. In the spirit of trusting readers to know what is helpful and appropriate, apart from my suggesting the correspondent remain defined about who he is and to be patient and kind, I am going to trust I’ll get many responses to this plea which will be publishable over the next few days:
“I am at my wits end. My wife is going through menopause and has become quite maniacal in her behaviour towards others. She has developed a violent temper that leads her to respond with terrifying rage to anything and everyone. Everyone is wrong, stupid and incompetent. She is at war with her family, her neighbours, her transient friends, our pets and me. The advice she gets reinforces her view that she is right and everyone else is wrong. She threatens to divorce me because I am not the person she expects me to be. She seems incapable of any sort of reflection or introspection that might help her see that her reactions are extreme. She will probably do something stupid and dangerous. I want to help but all my efforts are spurned with abuse and contempt. Should I step back, walk away and let things take their course, and hope this will all pass?”
Posted in Communication, Difficult Relationships, Voice |
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August 7, 2008
by Rod Smith
“Please, wake up and smell the coffee before you get burned. Your present relationship is based on cheating and delusion all round and it can only end in hurt. The man is a cheat: cheating on his wife and family, he’s cheating you out of weekends, holidays, and other more fulfilling interests and relationships as you hang around “in case” he calls. He’s also cheating himself. Divorce, broken homes and devastated kids who’ve gone off the rails when mom and dad split, don’t make for much happiness.
“Furthermore, the forbidden fruit tastes so sweet now in its early bloom has a nasty habit of leaving a very bitter after-taste when the relationship crashes. Most married men don’t leave home for the ‘other woman.’ Come on – is this what you want out of life? I hope that you’ll realise that you don’t deserve to be fitted in when he can sneak away from family commitments.
“You are in my thoughts and, though we’ll never meet, I’ll be praying that you find a good, solid, lasting, fulfilling relationship with a man you prizes you for your lovely self and has no other hidden agendas in his life.” (Shortened)
Posted in Affairs |
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August 6, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I feel compelled to respond to your letter from the ‘other woman’ in a relationship with a married man.
“My husband conducted a two-year extra-marital affair after many years of marriage. We survived the shocking discovery of my husband’s infidelity, but trust and respect, once broken, are difficult things to re-build. Understanding why a husband strays from a happy and long-standing marriage is totally impossible.
“Why did your reader end the three previous relationships that ‘were headed nowhere’? She says that there was no talk of marriage yet reveals total disrespect for marriage by her actions. Why is she now conducting an illicit affair expecting nothing? Perhaps she needs to carefully consider her apparent fear of long-term commitment and the motives of both parties.
“She needs to consider the damage that she and the married man are doing, not only to themselves but to his wife and family. She selfishly asserts that he is attentive and good to her, yet tacitly accepts that he is a cheat who, by his liaison with her, desecrates what should be the most important relationship in his life. My advice to your reader is to get out of this affair now, before hearts are broken by discovery and disclosure, and seek the counseling that she obviously needs.”
Posted in Voice |
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August 5, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I am in a three-year relationship and my daughter (14) lives with us. My friend tells me he is tired of commuting from my house to work. He wants me to move to his lake home and put my daughter in school there, which would lessen his commute by 20 minutes. My daughter grew up where we live now and her dad lives close by. She does not know anyone there and moving would also cause a problem in seeing her dad. My friend finds fault with all my solutions. The move would mean my giving up my house and (before that) I want a commitment, like a ring. My friend does not want to get married. He tells me he loves me but marriage is out of the question. I am heartsick. I don’t understand how he says he cares and wants to spend the rest of his life with me but bails when marriage is mentioned. Things are falling apart. What do I do?” (Letter shortened)
Stand firm! Do what is in the best interests of your family. I’d suggest your friend move to his lake house and share weekends at your house. It seems he wants the benefits of being a spouse and co-parent without a legal contract or the responsibility entailed.
Posted in Children, Communication, Voice |
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August 5, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I am the ‘other woman’ in a relationship. The sad thing is I have been single for the better part of nine years. I have had three serious relationships with eligible single men. These relationships lasted anywhere from a year to two years. I ended all of them because the relationships were headed nowhere. There were no talks of marriage and these men were going about their lives making decisions that let me know I was not even being considered in the future as a part of their lives.
“I have been seeing a married man for the last three months. This man has treated me better than the three relationships (single men) put together. It may be true that the relationship has no future, but because he is married I don’t expect anything. It may be true he is so attentive and good to me because he is married, but at least he recognizes he should do something to compensate.
“I guess my point is I have tried dating single men and I don’t get the same response. It is painful on weekends when he goes home. It is painful when holidays roll around and I’m alone. It is painful but the pain is temporary also.”
Posted in Difficult Relationships |
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August 3, 2008
by Rod Smith
“My brother-in-law orders my sister around as if she’s his servant. He talks down to her. He demands his own way and he tells her she’s useless. My sister never complains but I can see it hurts her. Once or twice she’s started to open up to me about the way things are in her marriage but she usually clams up as if she’s being disloyal or something. Should I say anything to him? He is very nice in public but I have seen how he is in private.”
I’d suggest you continue to give your sister opportunities to talk with you. If you approach your brother-in-law directly, about his relationship with your sister, it is unlikely you will receive a listening ear. Difficult men do not like to be exposed. Your approach could serve as a catalyst for your sister to go even more deeply into her shell.
Be your sister’s friend. Be a listening ear. Ask your sister if her marriage is what she’d hoped it would be. Ask her what she intends to do to get the kind of marriage she wanted. Your love and support will be helpful. Addressing him will be taking on something that is hers and hers alone to address.
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July 30, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I have been in a 5-year very toxic relationship with a married man. Every time I have tried to end it he goes to the extreme to make sure I don’t. He has told friends and customers about his affair with me and that he is in love with me. I have even considered moving out of town to get away from him. He is very controlling and has even threatened to kill himself if I leave him. Please help.”
Every threat of suicide must be taken very seriously. As the “other woman,” even if you were a mental health professional specializing in suicide prevention, you would be unqualified to sustain his life. Get out of the man’s way so he can get the help he needs!
He doesn’t love you. Love doesn’t threaten, control, or manipulate.
I trust you see you are “killing yourself” by staying. I’d suggest you move, that you do cut all ties, and that you do find your freedom at all cost. You cannot be a lifeline for any man, let alone one who demonstrates no respect for his family or for you.
Suicide, by very definition, is self-inflicted, and therefore his killing himself, which would indeed be very sad, would not be your responsibility, or your fault.
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July 30, 2008
by Rod Smith
Letters consistently pour in from men and women in unhealthy relationships. I think often of how much pain could be avoided if people were simply willing to see the warning signs before marriage, before children, before hearts harden, and before bitterness sets in. Here are some, of course not all, of the early warning signs that a relationship will sour short of a miracle. Although cumbersome, I have used “he/she” on each occasion for neither gender appears to be guiltless when it comes to distorting intimate relationships:
He/she does not respect his/her parents.
He/she lies about “little” things.
He/she is in debt at a young age.
He/she sees people as expendable (uses, then “dumps” people).
He/she gets angry very quickly with waiters or servers of any kind.
He/she feels entitled to respect he/she has not earned.
He/she is financially, morally, and sexually unfaithful, and appears unconcerned about the importance of personal integrity in his/her life.
He/she opens your mail, snoops in your business, and thinks you should have no secrets between you.
He/she speaks for you and tells you how you “should” feel, think and speak.
He/she tells you that you are stupid and that he/she knows you better than you know yourself.
He/she believes most other people are idiots and often says so.
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July 29, 2008
by Rod Smith
“I love my husband and I am happy to some degree but he has become so insecure and very doubtful of me. He checks my emails; he checks my phone, my clothing, my iPod, and everything. It is killing our marriage because I don’t know how long I am going to be able to hold on. Everything started with an emotional affair I had, that was only a fantasy on my side. Nothing happened between us, and I regret and wish it never had happened. Now my life is hell. Is there hope or I am just holding onto a dream? Is he ever going to get over it? I am a good wife, a good mother, and a good successful woman, but now all that seems to be crumbling apart. Please help.”
There is always hope. Even the most toxic of relationships can survive if people are willing to seek appropriate help. I assure you that nothing you have done (fantasy or not) triggered your husband’s jealous behavior. You are not sufficiently powerful to elicit the behavior you have described. Don’t let him put this on you. I am not sure you are “holding onto a dream” – it sounds much more like a nightmare to me!
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July 27, 2008
by Rod Smith
In my series entitled “A is for Autonomy,” I have already published A, B and C. Here is D, perhaps the most challenging of all:
“D” is for Differentiation of Self, a concept named by a pioneer in the discipline of Family Therapy, Murray Bowen. The concept is much easier to define than it is to put into practice. Without being too dramatic, it really is a matter of “differentiate or die”– at least on the inside!
Self-differentiation is your capacity to get the best out of your internal battle to be both autonomous and intimate, while achieving your personal and career goals — all at the same time. In other words, can you walk the tight-rope of being fully yourself, while being fully open with, and committed to your family, while also doing all you can to achieve your goals?
Less differentiated (reactive or fused) persons (there are degrees here!) are many. We have all heard about the man who went to the top of his career – at the cost of his marriage and his relationship with his children. Stories are plentiful of the woman who lost herself within her marriage, or became so much a mother that she forgot she and her children were separate people!
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