“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.

“Forgive yourself for the mistake you made when you were so young then ‘turn the page.’ The first step in faith is the hardest.” Cheryl, (Durban)

“Why would she EVER want to waste her wonderful husband’s time and distress him by telling him about a jelly fish of a man who does not respect any woman he comes across?” Fiona, Durban

“Her past is not letting her keep him happy. She can’t make or keep anyone else happy. Should she tell her husband? Absolutely! Hard to believe it wasn’t discussed when getting serious about each other.” (Anonymous)

“Let the past stay in the past. She needs to forgive herself and try to get the lesson from the experience. There is no point in burdening this “wonderful person” she is married to, other than to have something to hook her insecurities onto.” (Anne, North Carolina, USA)

“This matter, in my opinion should have been dealt with in the courtship stage, but unfortunately it was not.” (Cliff, Estonia)

“She will never trust him, and he will never understand her present insecure behaviour, until she tells him about her past. It’s an invisible elephant in the room. It’s a risk she needs to take so her past is no longer allowed to define her present.” (Jenny, UK)

“When I was 18 I met man (30) through a dating site. We were both sexually inclined, myself more so because I was exploring. He told me that he had ‘marital discord’ and was separated from his wife. He also had a daughter whom he loved. We got emotionally involved and decided to meet. We met for two days and were intimate. He left saying he would be by my side but wouldn’t marry me. I decided I would never marry anyone if it were not he. We’d used to talk on the phone. After a couple of months his wife and daughter came back. He asked me to be careful when I phoned him. I became more and more insecure. He never understood it. He always called ours a ‘platonic relationship’ and my behavior immature and stopped taking my phone calls altogether. Now I’m 29 and married to a wonderful person but my past haunts me. I’ve started doubting my husband when I know he never hides anything. He doesn’t know anything about my past and I cannot tell him. I love my husband very much but my past is not letting me keep him happy. What do I do?”

Does she reveal her past or not? Readers please help.