I strongly urge you to look into the symptoms of codependency and first tend to yourself, not him. Here’s one list: http://psychcentral.com/lib/symptoms-of-codependency/00011992

Caretaking. Another effect of poor boundaries is that if someone else has a problem, you want to help them to the point that you give up yourself. It’s natural to feel empathy and sympathy for someone, but codependents start putting other people ahead of themselves. In fact, they need to help and might feel rejected if another person doesn’t want help. Moreover, they keep trying to help and fix the other person, even when that person clearly isn’t taking their advice.

Your relationship with this person is a romantic one, not a patient-therapist one. I know that it’s a horrible feeling to see others suffer, but as long as you do not take care of yourself first, you’ll do more harm than good by attempting to solve his problems for him.

Hello Deedge!

I read your post and wasn’t sure what to say. Left to do other things, thought about other things, and then all of a sudden, for some odd reason, these thoughts came to me. You say that you’re not sure what to say to another person in the same situation, as you’ve become blind to the possible solutions. What if we were to change the object from work and photography to a person, to a relationship? What if someone said that they could only be happy if they were with someone, and for some reason they kept failing at relationships? Do you think they were destined to be unhappy forever? Rhetorical questions, you don’t have to respond 🙂

You give a lot of power to external events, people, even objects, and subsequently become a victim with no power over their own destiny. I don’t know much about karma and I’m not that certain about laws of attraction, but I have noticed in my own life, that the more attached I am to something, the more likely it is that I will lose it at some point. Or perhaps I constantly lose other things as well, but I don’t notice them. In things that do not matter that much to me, I seem to be really lucky in life. Things happen with ease. I don’t know why it works that way, but I have learned not to be so attached to things and events, and to not give away my power. I am an autonomous being amongst other autonomous beings.

Currently, I see joy as something that’s spontaneous. It is my response to a thought or experience. Or sometimes I just allow it to come to me, even if I were to be in the most mundane setting. Just by focusing on all my senses and how great it is to be able to feel and experience things vividly. But if you were to force joy to stay with you permanently or expected a particular thing to constantly give you joy? Kind of like holding a butterfly in your hand so tightly that it would die.

You can decide to enjoy your living immediately, if you want to. There’s no need to wait for the perfect setting, the perfect job, the perfect relationship. You have the ability to feel joy and to feel that you are alive. You don’t have to look at your camera and think “I wish you would work, so that I could finally enjoy life and be happy”. Life unfolds all the time, and there is beauty in all kinds of situations, if you wish to see it. There is beauty even in pain and sadness; human life can be so vivid and fragile in the same time. I know we are so used to numbing ourselves, because there is so much of everything happening, that it can be overwhelming. I guess that’s why it feels so good to really be present and open all the senses and experience life as it happens.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by The Ruminant.

Hi Dez (@hakom)

Sorry, I have had a rather busy week, and I haven’t had a chance to get into the right mindset to participate in this forum.

I’m not sure if it a good idea that I would speak on behalf of your husband, even if I feel like I might be similar in some sense. I personally appreciate transparency, but unfortunately, it’s not always that simple. For example, would it be a good idea to tell him that you have looked into his e-mails? That would be transparency, but at what cost? I honestly do not know.

Honestly communicating your needs is always a good thing. “I need to feel safe in order to attempt opening up, and I don’t feel safe when I feel that there is a threat to our marriage” for example. OK, that was a lot of “feels”, but the threat isn’t an actual fact, but a feeling. It doesn’t make it any less valid. Intimacy requires trust; trust in yourself and in your partner. I do think that you need to build trust towards yourself, and one good way to do that is to be as authentic as you can. It really does build your self-esteem and that helps in trusting others as well, since you know that you can always fall on your feet. Don’t let your fear to take over and rule your life.

I’m sorry, I’m probably still not in the right kind of mindset to express myself more thoroughly.

Dear lovely Dez,

Let us for a moment put aside the other possibly developing connection and focus on you. I really wish telepathy was real so that I could show you what I see and feel and wouldn’t have to type it all into rational sentences 🙂 There’s a lot I want to say.

“I feel like what I really need is space and time to reconnect with myself, to get my joy and inspiration flowing again, to find my center, before I can meet my husband in a really good space. Like I need to take care of a deep inner healing and not sure if my husband has the patience to hold my hand through it.”

I agree, that you need to take care of a deep inner healing, we all do, but it also seems as if you are only seeing worth in a being that is already strong and healed when connecting with other people. I don’t think that’s the case. If you would go to your husband and say “I feel scared and confused, but I want to open up to you, to be vulnerable with you. Could you please help me?” then isn’t that also creating a deep connection and intimacy? Healing each other can also be extremely intimate, and chances are that he needs healing and nurturing as well.

I think you are somehow not seeing your own capabilities and power in all of this. As if you only could have two states of being: either being defensive and appear strong, or showing your vulnerability and being completely weak in that moment. Are you afraid that if you open up, you’ll feel so raw that all kinds of scary feelings come to the surface and it not only overwhelms you, but your husband as well, and you end up becoming defensive again? What if you talk about this fear honestly and rationally before you try it?

Also, your husband is not your only source of love. You have children, who look at you with admiration and do not judge you. You are free to open your heart when you are with them and allow the love run freely back and forth. You can also love yourself. I personally had the most profound spiritual experience when I was in a support meeting and we were talking about not allowing love in. I was listening to another woman talking about it and I realized that it was I who did not let love in and that the problem was not that I wasn’t loved. The love was there, I just didn’t allow myself to have any. So in that moment I decided to change that and try. I decided that I would let my guard down and let the love in. I sat in my chair and focused on my heart and focused feeling compassion towards myself, like I would towards some other person. I also said quietly in my mind something like “please love me”. I felt this huge surge of energy flowing in. I wish I could say that it felt great, but I was so scared and felt quite nauseous 🙂 But I was determined, and just forced my muscles to relax instead of being tight, as they always were, as I was shielding myself. That love has not left my heart, and it changed everything for me. The point of my story is that we are the gatekeepers to our core and what nurturing gets through and what doesn’t. If we block love and care, then we’ll slowly wither and become even more desperate for someone to love us, to see us. But how can they love us or see us if we keep blocking the entry? A romantic relationship is not the only way to get nurturing love and a deep connection.

Now, it sounds like your willingness to be open-minded is clashing with your heart. You don’t have to accept any kind of extramarital relationships, regardless of their nature. I personally don’t think that there is any value in forcefully pushing oneself to accommodate a relationship pattern that is not suitable for you. That said, it would be better if you could think about such things only after you are in a place where you feel safe and secure regardless of other people. Where your source of love and safety lies within you, and is not attached to other people or events. That’s when it’s easier to judge whether something is appropriate or not. When I said that I like it that you are able to look at the situation with such calmness, I didn’t mean that you should just disband your own needs and feelings to accommodate the needs of your husband. I just meant that it is scary for the other person as well, if someone attacks who they are out of fear. For example, I like to be friendly with all kinds of people. It is in my nature. I am curious about people. If I was in a relationship where the man felt threatened by me being friendly with other men and he would try to solve the situation by trying to force me into changing my whole being or shaming me because of who I am, just because he would be scared, then that would be terrible. However, if he would tell me openly that it scares him when I am friendly with other men, and it concerns him what might happen, but would allow me to make the decision of what to do about it, it would be completely different. And if my loved one would be scared, then I would do anything in my power to make him feel that he was safe and loved in our relationship. The difference is not only in either being forceful or not, but also in showing one’s vulnerability. Being open, instead of being defensive. I think that it’s quite universal, that people react favorably to another one being open and vulnerable, and they react with defensiveness to other people’s defensiveness.

I hope you’ll get something out of all of that 🙂 Just, don’t be so hard on yourself and don’t compare your soul to the soul of another person. How your soul dances might be different to the other woman’s, but it is not any less enticing. Besides, you are his wife and the mother of his children. Your soul is the one he wants to see and be intimate with.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by The Ruminant.

Hello Inky,

I don’t think I would know what I would do in your situation. It’s impossible to fully understand the underlying dynamic. But I could offer thoughts based on my own life and what I’ve witnessed in other people’s lives.

I have daddy issues, mommy issues and all kinds of issues 🙂 My parents were/are emotionally immature. My father was an alcoholic and absent in his own world or angry, and my mother has been more like a friend than a mother to me. She doesn’t know how to hug or be nurturing. I realized that all this is extra painful when I think that a parent should be the mature one, nurturing the child and being there. But then sometimes I think that they’re still just flawed people like the rest of us, who also had a tough time with their own parents. Only at my father’s funeral did I find out a lot of the heartache that he had to go through as a child, and compared to his own father, he actually did a better job at being a parent than his own father did. Of course, that’s not going to change things for me, but it is easier to understand why he was the way he was. He never told me, or tried to excuse his own behavior. He was proud and tough, yet very weak and vulnerable.

I’m not a parent, so I don’t know if and how that would change a person, but somehow I am thinking that not everyone will miraculously change from being unable to grasp the concept of love into someone who would have infinite amount of love in them. We have been sold the idea of a nurturing mother and a strong father, and compared to that image, how many regular people can actually live up to the expectation?

Regarding money and fame, I have seen how it complicates lives. I have friends who have grown up rich and are clearly quite lost and emotionally crippled. It changes a person when you are trying to create authentic connections with others and what you get in return is fake ones, just because you happened to be born into a family of wealth. On top of that, people who seemingly have a lot aren’t allowed to complain or show their suffering. They have things most people want, so there’s not going to be any empathy for the regular human suffering. They have to learn how to bottle things up and not show their feelings. If they do show their feelings, there’s the danger of either being ridiculed (“you have everything and you’re still not happy, you should be ashamed of yourself”) or being taken advantage of. Also, men who have rich and powerful fathers and are wealthy not due to their own actions seem to have some of their own issues with manhood. They couldn’t create their own lives and their own wealth. They were given a path and an obligation to be something great without actually having the incentive to go forth and be great. I have one male friend who handles his father’s business, and it is clear that the father is still dominating everything and not allowing his son to do things freely, yet still expects him to do great things. He also has been given money, but it’s still tied to his father, so it’s not really his. It’s not something he earned and made for himself. His being is that of a man who’s been castrated, so I wouldn’t expect him to step up and be a man when expected.

People also seem to not understand that being present is one of the greatest gifts one could give to a child. I think many people think that providing material wealth would be enough. My mother still says to me that nobody has been as loved as I was, yet I really don’t see it that way. Our definition of love is different. So it is possible that a person could think of themselves as being a great parent, doing what they are doing, and still not meet the needs of the child.

I guess my point is that even parents are just people. Personally, I find it really liberating to see my parents as regular human beings with their own issues. If I compare them to the ideal of what we think a mother and a father represents, I immediately become bitter and resentful. Why didn’t they give me what I needed? They should’ve known. Yet clearly, they didn’t, and any discussion about it is just too much to handle. So, I guess it’s better to accept that it is what it is, and take the more compassionate route. If I’m aware of what I need, then I can do that for myself now. Spending more time waiting for mom to turn around and hug me is only going to prolong the pain for no good reason.

Sorry for blabbing on about myself and other people and not about your situation, but it was the only way I could express my thoughts on the subject. I guess it’s such a personal subject, that it’s difficult to talk about it without thinking about my own life. I can understand the pain of a parent not being present, but to harbor hope that they’ll fix it some day is just feeding the flames of the pain.

Hello Joe,

There is a problem in the notion that another person would complete you and that they would fill a void within: they can never continuously fill it exactly the way you need it to be filled. There is no perfect fit like that, that could be sustained. So, eventually you would run into a situation where you’re no longer content for what ever reason, and need to look for the fix again from elsewhere.

Also, if you are looking for a woman to make you whole, does that mean that what you are offering to her is half a man? Wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to offer her a complete man to begin with? 😉

There’s a little bit of idealization of love in your story. The idea of the perfect partner, the idealization of what it was like now that you don’t have it anymore, buying a ring and planning to travel far to make her yours… This kind of mindset will always leave things just outside of your reach. In your mind the perfect something exist, so the actual reality that is in front of you isn’t as appealing. But perfect the way you imagine it does not exist, so you’ll forever be seeking it.

Fortunately, it is possible to reverse this mindset, and realize that you already have everything that you could possibly need within you. Then it’s just about sharing that with someone else. You can look at meditation practices as a spiritual thing, or you can look at them as practical actions taken to allow your brain to grow so that you could have these realizations. To be able to be emotionally mature and to love like a grown man.

You should also love yourself in a humble way. To accept yourself as you are and accept that you are loved. To let love into your heart and let it grow. You said that you have unconditional love towards the girl who is now gone. I understand that we can have different kinds of descriptions for different things. My idea of unconditional love is that you are so full of love and compassion yourself that it will flow towards other beings, without care of who is in the receiving end. It’s not specific to one particular person, because if it was, it wouldn’t be unconditional anymore. It would have the condition that the person you love is the person you think that they are. If they would be someone else, the love would stop.

It would be great if you could cultivate your mind-heart connection in a way that you could have that love in your heart regardless of who you are with, and to understand rationally how to use it. Instead of great drama and soul mates and love greater than life, you could find such joy and perfection(!) in the most mundane things in your own life and in the life that you are sharing with another person. I’m not the right person to discuss about how to cultivate interpersonal relationships, as I’m still personally struggling with that one, but you should start with yourself anyway.

There are couple of books I’d recommend to you.

One is Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson: http://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Brain-Practical-Neuroscience-Happiness/dp/1572246952

The other is How to Be an Adult in Relationships by David Richo: http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Adult-Relationships-Mindful-ebook/dp/B00HZ374KY

Other than that, I’m not going to tell you what I think you should do. I hope that you can start a journey of personal growth. When you learn how to be yourself, your whole self, you’ll know in your heart and in your mind what you should do.

Dear Turtletiger,

I’m sorry you’re feeling so lost. It is, however, a feeling, a mental state, and those never last forever. You have left behind a comfortable nest and went out into the big world. What if you look at it as an adventure? Things happen and we get hurt during our journeys, but it doesn’t have to mean that your whole identity changes. Your identity and purpose and your whole being is still with you. It is you. You are focusing on the environment and perhaps mistaking it for who you are?

I can understand that being tired and in pain makes it so much more difficult to focus and be strong. Those are the times when summoning any energy to deal with things in a calm and rational way feels impossible. I understand that. You need nurturing. You can also nurture yourself by taking things slowly, if you can, and choosing to talk to yourself in a kind manner, instead of focusing on how scary it is to be so far away from home. Give yourself a break from the fear now and again.

I would like to gently plant a seed of thought as well. The way you describe yourself and your situation suggests that your identity has been attached to your surroundings even before you moved. So when the surroundings change, you face an identity crisis. Perhaps there is a reason that you are finding yourself in this situation? You are not your job, your friends, your house, your fiance or the potential of being a wife and a mother. You have a personality and a mind, a heart and a soul, which are all unique. You won’t find out the secrets of those by interrogating yourself and forcing yourself to reveal who you are, but you need to pay attention and listen. You can choose how you spend your energy, and instead of worrying about external things, you could perhaps spend that energy on nurturing your being. See what comes out. How will you light up as a person? What does the heart and soul of a Turtletiger look like when it lights up and bursts into joy?

Don’t be so hard on yourself.