Hi aehtaryn,

I feel like I’m in a game against two people….I want to try to be smart and turn “the game” against her… But how do I do this? I feel that my self-esteem is so low… I’m going crazy with this situation… What can I do?

You want to turn the game against her? I hope you leave the game instead! This guy’s totally untrustworthy! If he’s contacting other women only one year into this relationship then he’ll continue to do so for many years to come. This is who he is. Are you willing to settle for a guy like this?

I think I counted at least 3 times he’s lied to you. It doesn’t matter how caring he was at the beginning of the relationship or how many times he brought you flowers. How many more lies will it take before you realize that it’s time to move on and find a decent, trustworthy guy? Zero, I hope.

Leave this guy.

B

Dear aetharyn:

First, I will re-write your story with quotes from you, and after that I will offer you my thoughts:

You shared that your parents and his parents knew each other before your 1 year relationship with your boyfriend started. You wrote about your boyfriend’s relationship with his mother: “he has an extremely strong relationship with (her)”. At first and for some time, you got along very well with his mother, and that was “very good for him”.

In the beginning he was “so intense and caring. Often surprised me with flowers”. At one point the two of you lived together during the week, spending the weekends separately at your respective parents’ homes. He told you repeatedly that his relationship with you was new and the longest he ever had, and that although he is “very outgoing person, very friendly with everyone, he is a person who also needs a lot of personal space”.

Last June he was laid off from work and returned to a job he hated. At that time you noticed that he was looking for a girl on social media. During one week, “he was super cold” with you. You told him that “if he didn’t feel well in the relationship… then it was better to follow different paths”. His reaction: “He said no, and that he wanted to be with me and it was all just a phase”.

Things got better, but a month later, you looked and found out that his cell phone activity at work included a  search for sex ads. You confronted him about it, and he “swore he didn’t do it. Probably someone at work accessed his account”. Later on, you found out that he searched on social media for the same girl as earlier.

At the beginning of September, this year, the two of you went on a 2-week vacation, “everything was perfect. Super gentle and caring with me”. Following the vacation, the two of you moved to a new house and he went back to the job he hates. “He continued affectionate but one day when we were intimate, he was super rough with me, as if he doing it with someone else”. On that same day he sent another girl a friend request on Facebook.

Later on, you found out a conversation he had with a girl he met on Tinder, telling her that he really enjoyed meeting her and he “also asked her if she has been doing a lot (sex)”. You confronted him and he, sounding “full of fear”, told you “that someone had hacked his account”. You told him “not to lie”, but “he would say the same thing again”, asking you “not to leave him”, telling you that he loved you very much and that “that girl was nothing”, that you are “the woman in his life (that) he wanted to marry”.

The next day he owned up to that conversation with the other girl, told you that he “felt very ashamed”, and explained that “he has a dark side he didn’t like to talk about”. He told you that “he got used to being alone for a long time.. and (it) was normal to have conversations like that”.

Later on you found out that “he was constantly talking to his mother”, that he told his mother that you were “spying on him and invading his privacy”, and that she kept asking him about your reactions, and “telling him how to act with” you. You noticed a negative change of behavior on his mother’s part toward you, he told her about it, and she told him that her behavior with you was not different from before, and that you were “being paranoid”. You believe that she wants her son/ your boyfriend, to believe that you are unbalanced. She told him not to leave his phone alone and to create distance from you, “Do this, do that”. You believe that “His mother is the problem here… she thinks it’s my fault because I invaded his privacy and she is the one trying to turn his head.. I bet she said ‘it’s not your fault my son, she should had never spy on you’, something like this”.

After all that, you are “still in the relationship because he apologized and asked  for a second chance”. He said that “he is willing to change”, that “This is his ‘dark side’ (he don’t like to talk about) taking over”. You wrote that you want to give him a second chance because he was “so ashamed by everything that happened.. We all make mistakes and I think everyone deserves another change. Am I thinking bad?”

And now, a few of my thoughts at this point, with your quotes:

You wrote about his mother, “She will not get into me, I am stronger than she thinks. It bothers her that he is still with me, so she is playing her little game. I don’t care what she thinks”-

– “She will not get into me”: his mother already got into you, but even more so, she has gotten into her son a long, long time ago. There is no woman more powerful in a boy’s life than his mother, and if a mother is very controlling/ dominating of her son’s life from early on (“Do this, do that”), and still while he is an adult, and for as long as he allows her to be, then she is the most powerful woman in his life forevermore.

– “I am stronger than she thinks”- she is way, way stronger, in her son’s mind and life, than you think.

– “It bothers her that he is still with me, so she is playing her little game”- it is not a little game, it is a big game that you are underestimating. Plus, I don’t know if it bothers her that he is still with you. Maybe she wants him to be with you.

– “I don’t care what she thinks”- even if you didn’t, he cares what she thinks.

His “dark side” of which he is ashamed, looking for sex ads, having rough sex with you that time- that may be his angry side, angry at his mother’s dominion over him.. his rebellion against her power in his life.

If you would like to, let me know what you think, and we can continue to communicate on the matter.

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by .

Dear aetharyn:

You are welcome. “Normally the men’s relationships towards women is based on their relationship with their mother, right?”- when the mother is present in a boy’s life and she is the one who interacts with the boy the most, then yes. And when a boy’s relationship with his mother is significantly sick, that sickness plays out in the man’s relationships with women in his life.

“He knows he has this ‘strange side’ that he’s ashamed of. He says that, when he was alone, he used to think of not ‘normal’ things”- I think he needs serious psychotherapy. He needs to look into that “dark side”/ “strange side”. He can’t have a healthy mind or a healthy relationship when a dark/ strange side is part of who he is.

“You think maybe she wants him to be with me? This is so confusing”- I doubt that she wants him to have a relationship with a woman that is better than his relationship with her. As long as there is trouble in his relationship with you.. she is guaranteed that he remains confused and receptive to her dominion, is my thinking.

“I am giving a new chance to him but if another thing like this happens, I’ll quit”- I think that he needs way more than a new chance with you; he needs serious psychotherapy, so that he can free himself from his mother’s dominion. I don’t think there is anything you can do to free him from her.

anita