My son (19) and his girlfriend (18) want to live together in our home. He has a fulltime job but little money. She is a full time student. My wife and I do not agree with this plan and have tuned a blind eye to them regularly being together overnight in our home. If we tell them they cannot live together then he will move away and we will never see them. My wife and I feel trapped. What should we do?

I’d suggest feeling trapped is a feeling you have had long before your son brought home a girlfriend. It’s time to stand up to your son and the ploys you have all allowed to operate in the past.

Try to help your son and his girlfriend (talk with both at the same time) to appreciate the deeper matters. They apparently want an adult intimate relationship without the wallet to sustain it or the desire to commit and make it legal. They want what they can neither emotionally or financially afford. These are the matters worth discussing.

It’s not so much about what is occurring in your home, as distressing as it may be for you. Rather, it’s about whether your son and his girlfriend are sufficiently mature handle the kind of relationship they say they want.

The decision to fully live can arise out of a serious illness, a dramatic event, a close encounter with ones mortality. While it was not readily observable to me then, it has become clear to me in retrospect. In 1997 (July 1st) I had a massive heart attack followed by stent surgery. I actually died briefly during the surgery and, after what I can only recall as time when I felt enveloped in love and warmth and beauty, I came round with the thumping of the surgeon on my chest and all the drama of revival.

Over the years, perhaps as a result of my strong opinions, many men and women have asked me how it is that I am apparently unfazed by the opinions of others. Well, at 55, having suffered one very dramatic and close call with death I can say this: I care a whole lot about what my family and my children think of me, but I do give very little care to what the world at large thinks. I decided a long time ago that that was really none of my business.

Of course I want to be liked, enjoyed, embraced, accepted, but I am unlikely to shift my thinking and my views based on the need or the desire to be popular. Being loved by my children is very important to me. Being embraced by friends and readers is a bonus, but changing who I am for the simple desire to be liked is indeed a wild goose chase.

Deciding to fully live, even if having to decide anything seems overwhelming, must come if you want emotional and psychological wellness. This means, among other things, seizing opportunities. It means living with an attitude of forgiveness. It’s deciding that the worst that has ever occurred to us is only given greater or less power by the response we choose to have to whatever has been our awful fate. Living fully exorcises passivity. It gets you into the game of your own life. It’s deciding to decide how things will turn out for you rather than leaving matters to fate or to the whims of others.

I am constantly aware of the readers who are experts in the behavior of a controlling spouse – and yet, who have become so pre-occupied with the behaviour of the spouse that he or she fails to see how his or her own behavior (often passive behaviour) allows the pathological-other so much power, rendering the reader a victim, a victim who is apparently willing to yield his or her future to an incompetent other.

I say it is time to engage, it is time to call the shots in your own life, it is time to fully live, to be fully responsible for yourself rather than place your life into the hands of one who can barely care for him or herself, let alone also care for you.

The past three weeks my wife has become overly friendly with a family down the street who have reached out to her. My wife is a woman who has to be busy helping others. Anyway, I am a little afraid of the way the man treats her. He seems very interested in her and she “shines” when he talks to her. Do you think I should put a stop to this?

It seems you are interested in playing a very heavy hand when greater investment and involvement from you would be more in order. Reaching out as neighbors, finding each other as helpers is not the issue (most places could do with more of this). Become part of the circle before you consider it with suspicion.

1. The needs, wants, whims of the children are routinely placed ahead of those of the adults.
2. Every adult conversation ultimately ends up being about the children and the conversations often become conflicted.
3. The whereabouts of the children determines what the adults may and may not talk about. Conversations content is monitored by what the children may or may not overhear.
4. The whereabouts of the children determines the activities of the adults – well-established adult plans be altered in a flash depending upon what does or does not occur with the children.
5. One parent feels as if the home, adult careers, adult choices of how to spend free time are choreographed around the expanding demands of self-obsessed or entitled children.
6. At least some close friends have become distant or have moved their friendship to the periphery of your life because you appeared to have become consumed by your children and the needs of your children.
7. You cannot remember very much about your life before you had children.

“My son (31) insists that his ‘terrible childhood’ has resulted in his many failures. His father and I have bailed him out several times with large amounts of money which he never talks of repaying, and, to cap it all, he says it is nothing compared to what we ‘owe’ him for the trauma of his early years. Granted, we were not perfect parents, but are we expected to put up with this?”

The child (currently residing in a man’s body) will never become a man while he blames others for his condition. While mommy and daddy are waiting in the wings to deliver him from all hardships, mommy and daddy are restricting his growth into a fulfilling adulthood.

I’d suggest you immediately sever all cash flow in your son’s direction no matter how urgent his need or how serious the consequences. I’d suggest you offer no more apologies or guilt money – and that you talk about what he owes you and about how be plans to pay his debts.

Every person deserves free passage – to be unhindered in daily life. To be free of bullying of all kinds, free of abusive behaviors, free of controlling behaviors, free of intimidation, manipulation, and domination – to live as victim to none.

If this is not your experience, it is time to muster the courage to do something about it. It is time to speak up.

Begin small: choose a few selected and trusted friends and tell them the truth. Ask them to listen without offering you advice, without attempting to rewrite or to reframe your experience. Essential to finding freedom, to finding your voice, to gaining the self-respect required to escape the destructive web that comes with toxic relationships is the willingness to articulate your experience and name it as accurately as possible.

Once named – the trap is easier to identify and an escape plan is easier to devise. While there is no one-plan-fits-all to rise above unhealthy patterns in relationships, silence is never the answer. Speak up. It’s the first step to freedom.