Dear andreacimon:

I definitely support you in exiting your marriage as soon as possible. I very much hope you do not bring a child into this marriage- it will be very unfair to the child. In regard to your relationship your boyfriend, did I understand correctly: is he still married and has a young child with his wife, or more children?

anita

Dear andreacimon:

What a complicated situation! When I read about you being married and having a boyfriend who is also married with a young son, the first thing that comes to my mind is: this is wrong! In regard to having a boyfriend who is married with young son alone, in regard to this fact alone, I am thinking: andreacimon should end this relationship because it is probably harmful to that young son and any other children he may have, the innocent parties here. I bet you thought about it too. It is tough for me to think of this relationship with the boyfriend as just a relationship because of him being married with child. How do you reconcile this? I mean, how do you think of him as boyfriend only, if you do… can you help me understand? You see, my judgment that it is wrong is still there in my mind but I am also curious to understand how YOU view it so to get to know you better. If I get to know you better in this context, this forum, I am hoping I will learn more and that I may be able to be of some help to you. Looking forward to your response, hoping there will be one. To encourage such I am stating here that I will not try to… somehow hurt you because of the wrongness I am indicating here. I will be respectful to you regardless.

anita

Dear andreacimon:

I suppose your boyfriend’s wife doesn’t know about his relaionship with you? His son doesn’t know. Is it that your boyfriend/ her husband keeps his marriage and his relatioonship with you so separate in his mind that the two do not contradict each other, in his mind? And you do the same: keep his marriage separate from your relationship with him, that is you are okay that he is physically intimate with her- it doesn’t matter to you… or is it starting to matter to you?

I wonder about him and you keepting the two separate. I understand that your marriage is bad, but his marriage is … good AND his relationship with you is good? Can you tell me more about the separation in your mind and in his mind the best you know…?

This is not easy for me to understand, not without even more information. Looking forward to your reply.

anita

Deasar andreacimon:

Thank you for your thoughts. I have a better understanding this morning as I read your last post. I went back to your original post to try and understand your question or what help you need. This is what I understand: you are in a bad relationship, marriage, 37, no children. You are considering divorce. There is some pressure on you to have a child in this marriage. He is in an arranged-kind of marriage (a marriage he is never likely to consider leaving).

First, I feel the need to congratulate you, to say Good Job to you regarding NOT bringing a child or children into a bad marriage. Whatever your reasons for that, I believe it is the right choice for the child/ren (in potential). My hat is off to you for not bringing a child or children into a situation where they are likely to suffer.

Second, I highly recommend that you indeed divorce your husband. I don’t see the benefit of staying married to him. And as I wrote before, I like it that you didn’t bring children to a bad marriage and would like it to stay that way.

Third, you need more emotional support from your boyfriend, you wrote. You need more emotional support to get through the divorce you are seriously considering or even planning. Is that correct? Are you afraid (I will not be surprised) of going through the divorce? Soical pressures? What will people say? Are these the concerns? What are your concerns about getting a divorce?

You need more emotional support from your boyfriend and that causes extra stress on the relationship with him. You are worried that this extra stress, you being more needy, and maybe demanding of him, you are afraid you will lose your relationship with him, is that correct?

I see, as I review what i already wrote to you that I have two questions that I need to know so that I can tell if I am on the right path of understanding your situation: are you more fearful lately because you are considering and planning your own divorce? If so, what scares you? Second question is: am I correct in the above paragraph regarding your bf?

anita

Dear andreacimon:

You are welcome. So, you are saying that you do not need emotional support so to go through the divorce but so to deal with the loneliness resulting from the divorce? Strange, i thought your marriage did not provide you positive companionship. So, there was some companionship there and that is why you are already feeling lonely?

My goodness, you see how many things I need to figure out, there is so much to know. I re-read the beginning of your original post. Your boyfriend before your husband, then your husband. You and your husband drifted apart and it was then you got together with the married boyfriend. Your emotional connection with the latter is very strong, you write.

I wonder why the ex bf was suspicious of you? If there was any valid reason for it. I wonder about the quality of the relationship with that ex bf… As you can read, dear andreacimon, I have more questions. This is not usually the case, that I am so clueless at this point of a correspondence, unable to come up with any insight.

If you would like to share more, please do. It is likely that I will get some insight with more information. Feel free to tell me more, tell me about the relationship with the ex bf, more about what you are going to miss about the present marriage (what is the loss that makes you feel lonely about the ending of the marriage?) etc., anything else you think may be relevant. Life gets complicated sometimes and I think there are more layers to your story than need to be shared and examined. I am willing. If you are- do share.

anita

Dear Andreacimon

I’ve been following your conversation with Anita because I felt I could learn a thing or two from her incredible insight….

but I want to ask you this..

what happens if you divorce your husband and your current boyfriend breaks it off with you?..

am sorry for being so cynical
but I’ve been where you are not…depending on people for emotional support,being unable to be truly happy and fulfilled on my own..
I too had a dark past and I went through so much which left me emotionally weak.
I am not saying that you should stop getting emotional support from people..but have you ever thought of another way…trying to be there for yourself instead…trying to lift yourself up instead of looking to someone to do it for you…
I don’t know if I am making sense..i am only 19 but I’ve been through enough to know that the only person we can truly trust and depend on is ourselves…people change,their priorities do too….
once again am sorry if am being negative here….

Dear andreacimon:

I am going back to your original post and quoting sentences from there and on to your last post:

“I missed him (ex bf, before marriage) badly…I felt loved (by current married bf) and a similar connection like I had with my first boyfriend,more like a parental love…I don’t feel loved( by your current husband)…now when I am alone, I miss him (married bf) more…I am dependent on him to take care of me…I am 100% sure he will never leave me till end of my life…But now as m becoming old,m feeling more lonely…We do not make out for the sake of making out,it’s emotional involvement and soul connect. And at times when we are away from intimacy for months,still we are emotionally connected strongly…I badly need emotional support… if he would say that he will stop being physically intimate with me,I won’t get much bothered if he wwill have the same emotional connect with me and take care of me…I need emotional support through out life now. I could sense that I will feel more and more lonely now…I always needed emotional support all the time…I always needed emotional support since childhood. May parents always fought. My dad used to hit my mom all the time…Never saw them going along well…I went to college and entered this relationship with my ex-boyfriend. He was then my mom, dad everything for me. I was blindly in love because I was taken care of about everything by him…I look to myself today and feel that I always traded myself for having that emotional comfort. I don’t know what’s going on. I never thought if I am right or wrong, just carried on because it served my emotional needs…”

Now from the above i am taking out several sentences and putting them together, see what I get: “a similar connection (with married bf) like I had with my first boyfriend,more like a parental love……I always needed emotional support since childhood. May parents always fought…my ex-boyfriend.. was then my mom, dad everything for me.”

This is my analysis: It is obvious that in your childhood you did not have the emotional comfort, the emotional experience of SAFETY that you desperately needed as any child needs. You needed to feel safe as desperately as you needed air to breathe. Your parents fought, your mother was depressed. Neither your father nor your mother attended to you and to your desperate need to feel safe. That need for safety therefore remained as strong throughout your adulthood as it was then.

As you are now getting older, and your marriage is lacking the safety you need and the married bf is not available enough, and your beauty is a subject to inevitable aging, you sense that you are less likely to attract men. Being older, you feel that your dream of safety is disappearing and your desperation is more acute.

That injury you suffered in childhood, that big, gaping wound, that lack of safety, the resulting anxiety, so distressing, is what is responsible for your desperation, for you doing anything it takes to not be alone, to feel the safety you needed then and still do. Right and wrong do not matter to a person as desperate as you.

Unfortunately, there is no way to fix this alone. This kind of relationship-injury (injury formed in relationship with your parents)- cannot be fixed without the right kind of relationship. What relationship can fix this injury? Not likely with any of your parents. Not likely with a child if you were to have one (big mistake). It could be a relationship with a trusted, good-enough psychotherapist. It could be with a very close friend, even a boyfriend, a decent person healthy enough, one with insight and skills he/ she can share with you. In the context of a healing relationship you will share your fears, your needs, your loneliness, get insight into your past and skills on how to regulate your fear of being alone, regulate emotions and learn the message in them. You will be visible, in the context of a healing relationship, not invisible and alone like you were as a child.

In a healing relationship you don’t only find refuge from re-experiencing the distress of a lonely, unsafe childhood where you … weren’t seen and almost did not exist- but there is TALKING and SHARING and insight and practicing skills in the process of healing.

There is only one way for healing as I see it- find that healing relationship. Again, not as a refuge only, not as a break from distress of loneliness and euphoria of temporarily feeling safe, but as a context where healing can happen.

A relationship not as a way to ESCAPE, but as a way to HEAL.

anita