I’m in a very loving and healthy relationship with a divorced father of a 5-year-old. I feel we are deeply in love and we plan to marry, however, when he has his son I feel like nothing more than an outsider. Although he is very fond of me, I can’t help but be overcome with jealousy at the attention my boyfriend gives him and I distance myself in order to hide my feelings. I end up feeling isolated and alone which ends with tears if he asks me what’s wrong. I’ve tried to separate my feelings from reality, because his son deserves his attention and time. I see him light up when his kid’s around, but it’s hard for me to understand their relationship since my own father is a deadbeat and I’ve been dealing with abandonment issues my entire life. I don’t want him to feel guilty because he’s such a great dad and misses his kid and I don’t want his son to feel that I’m indifferent to him and ignore him, but I can’t help but feel like the jealous older sister. My goal is to remove myself from these emotions and learn to appreciate our unique family blend.

Don’t feel guilty for your thoughts or feelings, particularly when your actions don’t reflect those feelings. You can feel wrong as long as you do right.

And you must be doing a good job with managing your bad feelings, because, regardless of how jealous or bummed you feel when you behold your fiancé’s warm father-son relationship, you’ve done a great job of keeping them to yourself. You’ve succeeded in protecting your most important relationships from the negativity.

One definition of professionalism is behaving in a benevolent, job-oriented way without letting negative feelings show or interfere. You’re obviously a pro, particularly since you’re doing it while managing a shitload of pain.

You’re entitled to ask yourself whether you can put up with the painful feelings, and keep yourself under pretty good control, once you’re married. A better way to put that question is, are the advantages of the relationship worth it, assuming that your control is good enough. My guess is that it is, and it is.

There’s also the possibility that, after enough time goes by, your painful feelings will ease up, particularly if you and your fiance’s son have a chance to hang out and develop your own relationship, creating your own unique bond so you have nothing to be jealous of.

What you don’t want to happen is to let your disgust at your negative feelings destroy your confidence or make you feel guilty. If you feel you’ve got to purge yourself of those ugly feelings, or confess them, you’ll make them worse.

Forget the exorcism then; you’ve got a demon, but disowning her entirely will only increase her power to terrorize you. You came by her honestly, you’ve done a good job of stopping her from running your life, and accepting her will let you re-affirm your solid self-control.

If your fiancé asks why you sometimes seem unhappy, tell him a positive version of the truth; that, because of your background, you sometimes feel painfully needy, plus he’s much nicer than anyone you knew growing up. You’re also confident that the feeling will pass because you love them both so much.

As you settle into your new life and new family, the feelings will settle as well.

STATEMENT:
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, which is to say hollow and mean, but I keep this problem to myself and, as a result, I’ve got a great fiancé. I expect to feel needier in some ways as we get closer, but it’s worth it, and I think we’ll be OK.”

I’ve got an evil father-in-law who is always ready to say something nasty about me, and my wife never really supports me. Right after I set up a rule or schedule for our family, my father-in-law will go out of his way to defy it, and then ask my wife to bring our daughter over for a visit. Instead of standing with me and telling her father that he has to respect our rules and that I’m a part of the package, she goes over there by herself and acts as if nothing happened. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust my wife again and, if that’s the case, I don’t see how we can stay married. My goal is to do my best to get her to see what her father is doing.

It’s infuriating, when you’re trying to manage a family, to have someone sabotage your arrangements and make you look like a dictator instead of a parent and husband. Still, it happens, and it’s hard to stop, even when your partner is in total agreement with your every move.

On the other hand, many of your not-so-distant, not-so-wealthy ancestors may have had to live together in close quarters and couldn’t escape. As a result, they probably checked out their in-laws very carefully before deciding to marry, because they knew, once things got started, they were stuck.

If you can bear the humiliation for a minute, stop and consider what’s best for you. Put aside your fury at your wishy-washy wife and meddling father-in-law and ask yourself whether she’s a good partner in other ways—as mother, manager of time and money, and loyal companion (in every non-paternal relationship).

No, this is not an attempt to change your feelings for her; it’s to get you to think about whether getting rid of the feeling of betrayal will be worth the loss of her partnership and the impact of divorce on your daughter, which will push her into your father-in-law’s arms. Your feelings are about betrayal, but if you let them run loose, you may expose yourself to a much greater betrayal with more dire consequences.

If, feelings aside, you believe you’ll have a better life and stronger influence on your daughter by avoiding divorce, then ask yourself whether you can learn to live with anger and bitter mistrust while keeping your feelings to yourself. It’s possible (see case above), but admittedly difficult. If you decide to go that route, seek coaching and a good support group.

If you can’t imagine living with those feelings within a marriage, then you can’t, but don’t expect divorce to provide you with rapid relief. On the other hand, if you stay married, you’ll probably have many opportunities to run the family circus, just not all the time and not with your wife’s full cooperation/compliance.

Your goal, if you choose the trial of living with your Judas wife, won’t be to regain a feeling of marital comfort and trust, but to learn how to live without those feelings, knowing that, on some rational level, the value of your wife’s strengths as a partner outweighs the pain that your father-in-law has stirred up. If you want to remain a full-time parent and husband, you don’t have a choice.

STATEMENT:
“I’ll never feel that I can fully control my household or trust my wife until my father-in-law is dead. Nevertheless, she and I are a good team and my ability to keep our daughter from over-bonding with her grandpa is better if I’m around full-time rather than during visitation only, so I’ll try to stay married and set quiet limits on an intrusion I can’t always control.

I wish my boyfriend wasn’t so critical about the money I spend on clothes. Couples therapy helped me understand that growing up poor left him with deep insecurity about money (he still doesn’t make much compared to me, though he’s a hard worker). What therapy hasn’t done, however, is stop him from giving me a hard time about every sweater I buy, even though I’ve got good savings, no debt, and a total willingness to carry more than my share of expenses. If we get married, I’m sure his criticism will get worse and I don’t think I can stand it. My goal is to get him to back off, so we can have a life together.

The potentially bad side of couples’ therapy, as readers of this blog know, is that it can encourage a person’s tendency to take unlimited responsibility for getting through to their spouse. Like food, booze, or anything you enjoy, communication should be enjoyed in moderation.

After all, you’re supposed get a break from that responsibility once you’re sure you’ve done the right thing, but couples’ therapy can make you into a share-aholic who can never rest until togetherness has been restored.

Discussions that could be settled in hours are instead plumbed for weeks, accomplishing nothing positive (unless you’re the therapist, who’s putting every hour of your bullshit towards his/her mortgage).

In other words, if you give proper attention and respect to your partner’s objections, continue to believe you’ve done the right thing, and offer a respectful response, you shouldn’t have to talk about the issue any more, even if he remains unhappy and angry about it. It’s unfortunate that his childhood was poor. You can still buy shoes.

If you feel obliged to keep on explaining and defending yourself because of his feelings, you’re making yourself responsible for something over which you have no control. Of course, you wish he could feel better about your spending decisions, but if you make yourself responsible for changing his mind or doing whatever else is necessary to ease his unhappiness, you’ve downgraded the importance of your own moral compass, and that’s dangerous. It’s not good for either one of you, and it could ruin your relationship.

You’ve already decided that your fashion budget isn’t a sin. You’ve given the higher priorities their due, including saving for the future, doing your share with your partner, and, I assume, giving to charity. If you’ve passed your own ethics test, you shouldn’t have to feel guilty about enjoying your money; as you’ve suspected, facing regular budgetary non-acceptance from a spouse isn’t good for a marriage.

So forget about his feelings about your money and your feelings about his feelings. Let him know you believe your budget is morally justified, and you don’t want to hear about it. You aren’t expecting his feelings to change; you don’t want to be punished by them or hear about them anymore.

For both of your sakes, you hope he can shut up, regardless of how he feels. You’ve given up on the hope that he can feel great about your money; but, if he can keep his feelings to himself, you may have a good working partnership. You’ll know what the future holds by observing how he acts, and then you can reward yourself for doing the right thing with some new boots.

STATEMENT:
“My guilty pleasures feel a lot guiltier when I see them reflected in my boyfriend’s low-budget eyes, but our relationship won’t work if I have to apologize for good, responsible spending habits. I don’t want our partnership controlled by his feelings (particularly since I don’t think he has control over them himself). I’ll stand by what I believe, and let him know that his feelings are his responsibility to manage.”

People see me as successful because I’m a well-regarded doctor who makes a good income for doing interesting work, but I’ve really lost interest in it myself and feel like I’m going through the motions. To my mind, I’ve become like Richard Corey in the poem, who kills himself because of the gap between how he feels and the way people respect his appearance. I’m not doing a bad job, but I feel like a failure because, in spite of all the hard work and good income, I just don’t care, and every day I go to work and have to pretend that I do. My goal is to figure out where I went wrong.

Your letter is a good example of how dangerous depression can be when negative thinking burrows into your system of beliefs. Indeed, your words are the very weapons your depression is using against you. They’ve already beaten you into thinking you’re a failure, so stop them before they do any more harm.

If you judged yourself objectively, you would see a man doing good work and helping people. You wouldn’t hold him responsible for feeling happy; after all, life routinely destroys the happiness of good people who are well insured. Depression is just one of the many, many totally uncontrollable ways that life can do that. You would never be so cruel as to suggest that a suffering, unlucky friend was therefore leading a meaningless life.

Take inventory if you like, but as long as you’re making a living, taking care of yourself, providing good service, and helping people, you’ve got lots to be proud of. Nothing has changed except your feelings, and they can be ignored.

Once you pay more attention to your values than your feelings, you’re ready to protect yourself from insidious allegations of failure. The only thing that has failed is the happiness carburetor in your brain.

While we can’t (and wouldn’t) assure you that medication or any other kind of therapy will restore your happiness—it might, but it might not, because treatment is uncertain and no one controls happiness—my message is that your happiness is unimportant, at least in comparison to your pride. You have a right to respect yourself. Defend your self-respect, and your unhappiness is just another source of pain. It’s bad, but it isn’t you.

Once you see your unhappiness as nothing other than a form of pain, rather than personal failure, you’ll deal with it more effectively. You won’t give up on the good activities and people you formerly liked because they now leave you cold. You’ll let others know that you continue to care about them even if you don’t feel particularly caring at the moment, and that you appreciate their interest and concern. You’ll spend less time alone reading poetry, and eventually, you won’t notice the pain as much.

STATEMENT:
“It drives me crazy the way everyone sees me as the picture of success when I feel like a total loser, but I know I’m not a loser and feeling this way is just part of the pain of depression. I won’t buy the idea that I feel this way because I’ve made mistakes or bad decisions. I’ll respect myself for doing a good job and putting on a professional smile when I really feel like shit.”

I think my girlfriend is basically committed to me (after 4 years of our having a steady relationship, despite living in different cities). After much backing-and-filling and hemming-and-hawing, she introduced me to her 3 kids and her ex. The problem, I think, is that her ex-husband is an evil drama-monster who bludgeoned her with tantrums, legal threats, and ultimatums until she would do anything to appease him. It makes her a total wuss with the kids and interferes with her availability for our relationship. That makes me push her sometimes, which makes her jump like she’s been scalded and trapped between two powerful, demanding masters. I don’t think she’s into dominant men any more (at least, I don’t see myself as one), but my goal is to help her resist her evil ex without making her feel she’s doing it to appease me.

No matter how nice your girlfriend is, if she’s over-reactive to an evil ex, you can find yourself getting irritated, worried, and sometimes outraged. You’re sorry she has trouble setting limits with the guy, but you sure don’t want him to control your life.

If she doesn’t learn how to manage him and the feelings he stirs up in her, however, that’s what will happen, and your relationship will be riddled with the drama you’re both trying to avoid (and also become very crowded).

That doesn’t mean, of course, that she loves him more than you; he just has the power to make her more frightened or guilty than you do, because he isn’t as “nice”, and she doesn’t know what to do with those feelings other than appease him.

Of course, that may tempt you to fight back by showing her that you’re just as good at making her feel bad, which would turn you into a chair-slinger in someone else’s soap opera (as well as something of a jerk), and it’s clear you’re not letting that happen. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a relationship with him if you want a relationship with her.

Your best weapon is the same one we use as shrinks (and the one you seem to be using now); coach her to see a better, though not comfortable, alternative, urging her to use a lawyer to figure out when she can say “no” and what to say to her ex and kids if they attack her for being mean or unreasonable. Support her in doing what she believes is right and what will work out better, rather than in doing what will make you happy or her less stressed. Odds are, if an action is right and reasonable, it’s guaranteed to make her ex pounce.

Continue to offer her your positive perspective; she’s a good woman who has done her job as a mother and can do a better job by learning to say no. In doing so, her best therapist is her lawyer (used not for venting feelings, but for information about standards and consequences).

If she can’t make progress with that approach, then the package is what it is, and you’ll need to take it or leave it. What seems to be happening, however, is that she’s getting tougher, in part because you know how to keep a lid on your negative feelings while giving good advice. Her ex puts a burden on your life, but he doesn’t control it, and he doesn’t have to ruin the life you and your girlfriend share.

STATEMENT:
“My girlfriend’s wussiness about her ex drives me crazy, but I know she’s a good, responsible person who’s come a long way in learning how to take a stand. It’s been frustrating, and often feels like work, but I’ve done a good job managing my anger, she’s doing better at managing her fear, and we both continue to feel the relationship is worth it.”

My ex-husband has the divorce court judge in his pocket and it’s driving me crazy. Regardless of our divorce agreement, he takes me back to court every year for additional money for our daughter’s residential treatment (she has as addiction problems), and the judge buys his story in spite of its being full of lies and bullshit. He says I have money I don’t have—I can no longer afford a lawyer. He wants me to pay for a fancy, private facility that won’t take our insurance when there’s a good one in our insurance company’s network. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I want my daughter to get treatment as much as my husband does, but what I really want is for that judge to know how wrong he is to think I’m a skinflint and allow my ex to torture me year after year.

Unless you grew up with parents who were always fair and unbiased, you know there’s a real danger in expecting justice. The more justified you are in feeling screwed by the judge/parent, the bigger the danger.

Yes, you’d hope that expressions of injured innocence would get him/her to reconsider and, in a fair world, that’s what would happen. In this world, however, expressing negative feelings about a judge’s judgment usually makes the judge feel attacked and insecure, particularly if you’re angry and right. Not only does justice does not ensue, your hole gets deeper, as does your injury, anger, and tendency to make more trouble for yourself.

If your ex-husband is an Asshole (readers of this blog understand that I use this term diagnostically, and not pejoratively), he truly believes he’s a righteous defender of the weak, so it’s not hard to see why a judge who doesn’t know him would be taken in. If you then attack him, you’ll look like the angry girl your ex says you are.

So put the same lid on venting outrage as you do on alcohol; stay sober, and stay quiet. Remember, keeping negative feelings inside is not nearly as bad as letting them out in front of the wrong audience.

Now that you’re ready to eat your shit sandwich—cry if you must, but please don’t bring it up again—you’re ready to say something positive about your own plan for your daughter. Namely, that you want her to get help as much as your ex does, but you expect her to need help for a long time and you’re trying to save money now, because she’ll need it later. That’s why you’re trying to save on legal bills and don’t want to pay for the best intervention program when the difference between best and good is not worth it.

Don’t get distracted by the judge’s willingness to believe you’re a bad, stingy parent and don’t defend yourself by attacking his judgment or the unfairness of being dragged back into court. Stay on message: talk about your concern for your daughter and your belief in the advantages of your plan.

Given time and no attacks from you, the judge will probably catch on to your Asshole husband’s bullshit, particularly if you stick to your agenda and don’t push his buttons. You might not get perfect justice, but you’ll get a good feeling of pride for having expressed yourself as a caring mother, without getting screwed by him and your old negative feelings.

STATEMENT:
“It’s horrible to feel I can be dragged back into court at any time, to be judged by someone who believes I’m an asshole no matter what I say or do, but that’s life. I know I’m ready to do right by my daughter and that I’ve got a good plan. Beyond that, I don’t control.”

My ex-wife became the victim from hell after our divorce, which she and the kids blamed on my messing around with another woman. The truth is, I’d been eager to get divorced for the past 10 years, particularly because my ex was so good at messing up and then acting like a victim. I didn’t have that or any affair until I had almost put the divorce in motion and the youngest was about ready for college, and my not-mistress has subsequently become my wife. I felt guilty, however, and the kids see me as guilty, so they punish me with silence, or worse, extend an invitation to have a talk so they can hit me with a blast of endless recrimination before returning to silence again. Needless to say, explaining doesn’t help—their anger is endless—so when they call me up, I wonder what to say. My goal is to help them with their pain and restore a normal relationship.

Most good people feel guilty about leaving a marriage, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Guilt the emotion, as opposed to guilt the legal state, is never necessarily caused by bad behavior.

You feel guilty because those you love are hurt and disappointed, and happen to blame you. Given the fact that one of the most important reasons that people marry—perhaps the most important—is to have someone to blame, guilt is an unavoidable part of both marriage and divorce that should never, ever be considered proof of criminality.

As natural as your guilt is, it’s dangerous to let it guide you when you’re managing seriously angry kids (or adults, especially when they’re acting like kids). It’s like showing fear to a tiger, or blood to a vampire, or low-hanging comedic fruit to Ricky Gervais. They’ll just keep coming.

Your first job is not to respond to the kids before you’ve decided for yourself whether you’re guilty, and what for. Begin by listing your standards, which should probably include trying hard to make marriage work, giving priority to the needs of the kids, and behaving well in a difficult situation.

They should probably not include being happy or keeping your family happy, because life is often unavoidably unhappy, and looking for marriage to make you happy, though nice when it does happen, is ridiculous.

The question is how dysfunctional your wife’s behavior was and how badly it affected your partnership, as well as your mood and behavior. My guess, from what you say, is that you tried hard, put great importance on raising the kids, but found yourself hating your marriage. If you believe that’s reasonable grounds for divorce (if you were judging a friend), then it’s time to stop apologizing. If not, then figure out what you did wrong (excluding everything that you didn’t control), apologize, and then don’t apologize anymore.

Once you’ve prepared your statement (see sample below), you’re ready to draw the line on receiving punishment you don’t deserve. You and the kids deserve a better relationship, and from your point of view, their anger is the main obstacle. You hope they can stop it, and the first step is allowing yourself to stop feeling perpetually guilty for doing what you believe was necessary.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I failed my first marriage since I’m the one who was unhappy and broke it up, and my kids blame me. After thinking it through, I see my responsibility as limited. If this response doesn’t satisfy the kids, I’m sorry, but I’ve heard their views and accepted their feelings and it’s no good for negative conversations to continue indefinitely. I love them and believe we can have a positive relationship, if and when they’re ready.”

The main thing wrong with my marriage is that we lost the incredible love and closeness we had for the first few years, and a major reason is that my husband keeps his distance. No, I don’t think he’s having affairs, and we still get along very well as partners and parents, but he says he just hasn’t felt comfortable with me since I went through a depressed, nasty period, so he avoids kissing and sex. I’ve told him I can’t go on like this, but I’m not going to beg for sex if he’s not going to give it to me. I don’t mention it most of the time, but it hurts. My goal is to figure out how to get the old love back or decide whether the current situation is good enough for me to want to stay married.

The trouble with mixing sex and love in a marriage is that sexual withholding feels like a loss of love, and a loss of love causes deep pain, which causes sexual withholding, and around it goes, flushed down the marital toilet.

If you think sex might bridge the gulf between you, then don’t request it as evidence of his love, or as satisfaction of your needs. To do so is to make the issue more wrought, personal and emotionally explosive. Of course you have those feelings, but expressing them won’t clear them up—it will make them worse.

Instead, propose sex as an activity that might reduce the distance between you by having a positive effect on your emotions. Now that your nasty period is over, you’re confident it will be a good experience, and, if repeated, it might build trust, as well as reducing an issue between you. As long as you don’t emotionalize sex in terms of love and intimacy, you reduce the risk of failure. Market it as nerve tonic, not as proof of his dedication or your personal worth.

If he doesn’t respond, then you know you haven’t scared him away; he’s simply stuck. You haven’t let your hurt feelings make you passive; you’ve done what you can, and your actions haven’t added to your pain by expressing it.

I assume you’ve apologized for the past (see above) to the extent that you could have controlled your nasty behavior, so it’s time to stop apologizing. Propose a better way forward and see if your husband can join you. Having sex, if he can do it, is a way of putting negative feelings to one side. The love issue will have to wait.

STATEMENT:
“The lack of a sex life leaves me feeling guilty, sad, and punished, as well as horny and needy, but I know I’ve been a good partner for a long time and don’t deserve punishment. I believe it would help my husband, and our relationship, if he could put a lid on his anxieties and just do it. It’s his job to try. What he does with it will tell me whether he can.”

I have always had a problem with keeping friendships because of moving too much, anxiety, and some other reasons. Almost every friend that has come into my life seems to be very needy and I tend to become anti-social when this happens. My current best friend has showed many signs of being very clingy and a bit controlling; she buys me things when she knows I am busy just so she can hang out with me, she calls me frequently even though she knows I dislike talking on the phone, she is demanding and apologetic at the same time. I am confused on what to do because she is always there for me and I can’t always be there for her. Lately, I have been having so much negative feelings about her that I don’t want to work on the relationship and this is exactly my problem—I lose people because I let my feelings get in the way. Maybe I am not finding the right people to hang out with? I mean we have so much in common, but that might be the problem because we both have severe anxiety and what we hate about life seems to be all we talk about, so it’s just negative energy most of the time. I will admit I am selfish and should be more thankful that I have someone that understands me and is there for me, but I guess I am too unhappy in my life and unhappy with myself to be appreciative of the goodness in others. It’s something I would like to work on, but I don’t even know where to begin.

Whatever draws people into relationships– neediness, sex, an encyclopedic knowledge of “Law & Order”—it isn’t necessarily good for you. When you’re operating on instinct, you stop thinking.

It sounds like you’ve got a good idea of what’s good for you, and it’s a friendship that discourages whining and encourages breathing room and independence. Nevertheless, you give in to the pull of your instinctive need for needy, whiny friends.

Once you give in, you’re stuck. You like the close attention and some of the intimacy, but you also don’t like the high demands and expectations, so you want to pull away. That leaves you guilty, lonely, and more in need of a needy friend. The shitty friendship cycle remains unbroken.

Instead, get a grip and start to choose friends who are more independent and less fun to complain with. Don’t expect the getting-acquainted process to feel as natural and easy as it usually does, because if it feels too comfortable, you’re probably making the same mistake.

At the same time, discourage your current needy friends from expecting long windy complaint-fests. Keep the conversation positive, don’t share negative feelings, and stick to a schedule. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that needy friends get less sticky when you give them firm boundaries.

Don’t let guilt make you passive or discouraged. It may be impossible to change your relationship preferences, but you can have better relationships if you’re clear about what you want, force yourself to make better choices, and get the kind of friend you really need, not a needy friend.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m a selfish friend who never gives as much as I get and resents the needs of others, but I believe I can do better if I find friends who are less needy. It’s time for me to find such friends, discourage needy behavior in others, and avoid indulging in it myself.”

My closest friend and I usually tell each other everything, and she always seeks my advice before doing something rash and probably dumb (she’s really ADD), and give it to her straight (within reason, and/or as tactfully as possible). The problem is that, when she wants to go forward with a decision she knows is risky (at best, really dumb at worst), I become the bad guy who won’t admit that I really don’t want her to be happy, even though, in reality, I just want what’s best for her. When she got together with her now-husband, I told her the situation was tricky (long-distance, financially rough, etc.), and when she stuck with it and complained to me about the whole thing, it was hard to be totally supportive. After a while, she took my worries about the nature of the relationship as me lying, actually hating her husband, plotting against her happiness, etc. So she didn’t tell me she was eloping hundreds of miles away until the last minute, and when I couldn’t make the arrangements with 10 minutes notice, she thought it was another lie, not a logistical nightmare. When I found out that I was the only person not told she was pregnant, that was the last straw; she said she wanted to talk about it, but her lying to me was so hurtful, unfair, and hypocritical that I didn’t see the point in trying to change her mind anymore, and it’s been months since we’ve talked. My goal is to do the right thing, and while I don’t want to hurt my friend and I miss her, my gut tells me it’s best to just let her live her life and protect myself from being hurt again, since she treats me like an enemy, anyway.

Whenever you find yourself giving a close friend constant coaching about her life, watch out. Intimate advice-giving makes a relationship feel very close and, at times, it may do some good; but you’re playing with fire or, more accurately, all the feelings your friend has towards her parents and everyone else who has given her advice and criticism over the years.

Given that she’s often impulsive (or so you’re implying), she’s probably received more than her share of disapproving advice and is touchy and defensive as hell. She doesn’t think you’re a liar—she thinks you’re her mom.

True, we shrinks give coaching and advice all day every day, but it works best when we keep it brief and business-like and don’t need friendship from the person we’re advising. When we start to care too much, we sound like parents and stir up the same damn hornets’ nest of negative feelings in those we advise.

Imagine, for a moment, removing the “tell each other everything” part of your relationship with your friend and then ask yourself whether the friendship might still be worthwhile. Yes, it would be less satisfying for both of you, but, if she really likes complaining about her life, she should get a dog (that’s my answer for almost everything). If you really like giving advice, become a shrink. Or a manicurist.

When the stinging goes down a bit, firm up your boundaries and see if your relationship becomes more positive. Say whatever honestly positive things you can possibly say about her husband, marriage, and pregnancy. Discount your months of withdrawal in a way that blames no one and signals no danger of confrontations—just wish her well.

Perhaps your performance will salvage the love and good times you’ve shared over the years. If not, you’ll hurt, but you’ll know you did the right thing, and that’s the truth.

STATEMENT:
“I feel unbelievably hurt by my friend’s shutting me out after we’ve been closer than sisters for many years, but I think she did it because we were too close, and not because she wished to hurt me, and there may be a way to build a better relationship. I’ll try to ignore the hurt, build on what was good, and see if a better kind of intimacy can develop.”

I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.

How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.

If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.

On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch.

You didn’t mention kids or finances, so I assume you’re kid-less, and, despite being an artist and musician, miraculously not broke. If that’s true, then what do you need this guy for? If you haven’t grown to depend on him after four years of living together, and you’re not eager to have a family, then it’s hard to see him as a better off with you since you don’t really sound better off with him.

Be careful not to get paralyzed by guilt. You can’t control your feelings about him, and what you’re going to do next isn’t about failing or lacking, it’s about evaluating how well the two of you match up and deciding whether that match suits your goals. So add up what life would be without him (the effect on your time, bank account, plans, etc.). You sound as if you’ve done this, but sometimes, feeling guilty can prevent you from doing routine accounting.

If, as you suggest, you can do better without him, don’t feel defensive about letting him go. You both made a good effort to make it work, and you have many good things to say about his character and can be sure he’ll do well with someone else. You’ve just seen many big differences in your interests and activities and have gained a healthy respect for their importance in making a relationship work. Neither of you were stupid to try this relationship, but, despite being a good idea, it was a near miss you can both learn from. You’re doing the right thing for both of you by moving on.

If the pain of breaking up is more his than yours, that’s not as important as the other stuff you evaluated. As a matter of fact, you suspect he may well have an easier time finding his next match than you will.

If this experience has taught you about your needs and you respect what you’ve learned, you’ll become better at screening out your dates and ensuring that you don’t compromise your independence again unless you encounter a more compatible candidate.

If you aren’t happy with someone who’s “perfect” for you, then they probably aren’t. And if you don’t need a someone, period, give them the chance to find someone new (or spend more quality time with the TV).

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could like my boyfriend better and I don’t want to hurt him, but I think I’m better off without him and vice versa. I won’t let fears about negative feelings stop me from doing what’s necessary and remembering that break-ups are part of the learning process.”

Now that I’m 35 and looking around for a wife, I can’t help feeling that I destroyed my future by not marrying my college sweetheart. She’s a terrific person and we had a great relationship, but I wasn’t ready to settle down back then. So I dumped her, she found someone else, and now she’s happily married with kids and I’m a successfully executive who can’t find anyone to compare with her. The women I meet always have something wrong with them and I think my mistake has doomed me to die single and alone.

The biggest danger you face is not dying single, but dying defeated. Well, the biggest danger you face after death itself.

Some good people are single because they aren’t lucky about finding a mate—their lives are too complicated or, for various good reasons, they don’t meet someone who’s both available and on their wavelength—but that doesn’t mean they’re sad, lonely failures. They’re simply dealing with a mixed bag of luck, like everyone else.

As Christ might have said, if he hadn’t been so busy telling parables, what’s important is not whether you find riches or happiness, it’s how you deal with it when you can’t find riches and happiness. And, despite dying penniless, single and alone, he seems to have done alright for himself.

In addition, your negative attitude may be damaging your mate-search technique. While your college relationship taught you that you have a good capacity for friendship and partnership, it’s the timing that was wrong; your personal equipment—the size of your heart, and size is everything—has proven itself. So instead of feeling sad and defeated when you think of your old flame, be proud of your relationship and determined not to give up your independence unless you find someone just as good.

Assess the efficiency of your mate-search. Like any kind of search, it needs to be done efficiently or you’ll wear yourself out and then, see above, feel tired and defeated. That’s often a sign that you’re spending too much time on unsuitable candidates and losing your focus. Ask yourself whether guilt, horniness, or sentimentality are causing you to prolong pseudo-friendships that drain energy, reduce availability, and leave you yearning for solitude. If so, get a coach and learn how to do a good, tight search and a rapid, polite exit.

You can’t make yourself lucky, but you can be sure that there’s nothing wrong with your ability to be a good partner. If you’ve also given yourself the benefit of a good mate-search, you also know you’ve done your best. You may be sad about being single, but it’s not personal and it’s not failure. It’s just life, which, as always, is preferable to the alternative, no matter what your relationship status is when you enter it.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t avoid feeling that I fell off the deck of the love-boat after having been given a choice cabin for two, but I’ve made reasonable choices, I’m a good candidate, and I know what I’m looking for, so I will pursue my search with patience, I will not doubt myself, and I will never give up. “

So I’m a 20-something girl who has been faced with a couple big problems in a short period of time, the first being that I am in my last semester of nursing school and I failed. This has been a very long hard stressful experience, and being faced with failure is devastating. I have to wait till September to try to get back into the program and that’s my last chance, so I’m having a hard time accepting that my very laid-out plan for my life is now in jeopardy. Also I am being faced with health issues, with myself and with my family, and finally, I have been in a mind-fuck of a relationship for three years with a person that shows me five different faces. I know all the ways he’s done me wrong but I cannot walk away because I have yet to conquer him, even tough I’m trying to accept the fact I cannot change him and need to stop being a doormat. In summary, I have obvious control issues, over-analyze everything, have anger that is uncontrollable if I don’t get what I want, and really need help to fix it.

Priorities are like dominos, and if you put the wrong one first, you lose your goals one by one. So, while this may look like a chaotic clusterfuck of issues, you probably already know that it’s actually a chain reaction caused by putting school behind this five-faced jerk.

After all, the main source of your strength is your desire to get stronger, pick up skills, and make a living, while the main source of weakness is, as usual for most people, your need for something/someone you can’t have.

Fortunately, you’re smart enough to recognize your effort to change your boyfriend is a compulsion that you just can’t stop, and you have the willpower and determination in your character to take on and pursue difficult goals.

Unfortunately, you’ve focused this strength on changing your boyfriend, thus throwing said smarts and willpower down the shitter.

In addition, you expect to control your school performance and your relationship without bowing to the fact that you don’t have the time or energy for everything, but your school performance won’t improve unless you have more time for it, and your boyfriend, well, we covered that.

Besides, you can’t “conquer” someone; even actual conquerors like Napoleon don’t die happy (or even with their genitals intact).

When you give yourself a reasonable assignment, your control demon helps you do a great job. If you don’t put a limit on your self-assignment, your demon will eat you alive. It’s a tough reality to accept, but if you can—not just admit that you can’t change your boyfriend, but find the strength to stop trying—you can give yourself an assignment you can do, and do well.

You’ll probably do better in school if you stop blaming and scaring yourself, because that can’t do wonders for your ability to focus. Instead, don’t be ashamed to look for help, either from a nice, positive tutor or a study group, and prepare a new study plan that helps you with your weaknesses.

No problem, you’ll have the time, because there’s no reason to continue wasting it with your boyfriend. This is probably not the answer that you want, but it’s the only acceptable one since succeeding in school means more to you (and is more tenable) than putting up with quintface.

Inside, it may feel like a defeat to let him go, but once you do, all the other, better goals in your life will have room to grow. You just need to stay vigilant about your priorities, because it’s amazing how easily a compulsive person can make them all fall down again.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like a total, helpless loser, but my priority is to put my energy into getting ahead, and not into relationships that don’t work. I can’t conquer my boyfriend, but my compulsion can’t conquer me. I’ve learned a valuable, painful lesson that can help me move forward if I stop criticizing myself and start doing what I need to do.”

I had a terrific boyfriend, whom my parents loved, but I just couldn’t see us staying together all our lives, and my feelings for him weren’t as positive as what I see my parents’ having for one another (they have a wonderful marriage). So I left him and broke his heart, and now I’m dating someone I feel closer to, because I think he understands me better. We’re going very slowly, however, because I’m afraid of making the same mistake, and I want to see if I still feel the same way about him in another year. He’s getting impatient, and I wonder if you think I’m right to go slow.

I suppose the traditional reason for going slow in a relationship is to see how you really feel about someone as time goes by. Still, that won’t do you much good if you happen to really love him a lot, and he’s a useless jerk.

Yes, it would be nice if you could find someone you love as much as your mom and dad love one another; but many good partnerships are not totally lovey-dovey, and good partners are hard to find. Begin then with the important stuff and consider perfect harmony as the icing on the cake, rather than the filling.

So, instead of hooking yourself up to a love-meter and graphing your progress as time goes by, tthink about the basic qualities you’re looking for. Again, priorities are key, but if a relationship is your main goal, then looking for the right things in a relationship is what you need to be mindful of.

The important stuff that makes a prospective partner eligible for consideration, as you know, begins with a solid character, reliability, common values, and mutual acceptance. He’s got to be able to do his share and share your mission, without your having to change or persuade him. Otherwise, it’s a no-go.

Yes, positive chemistry is necessary, but it can also be dangerous; the guy who connects with you most is not necessarily a solid character, and often the exact opposite. So take your eyes off the love meter long enough to do your due diligence.

If your guy checks out as a good prospect, but the emotional fit is not quite as perfect as your parents’, think carefully about how many good guys you’ve run across and how much mileage you have left on your dating tires before deciding whether he’s worth the compromise.

Don’t wait for the love-meter to make your decision for you while you pick mental daisy petals to see whether you love him or love him not. Add up the reasons you trust him to be good company in hard times, and prepare for a possible compromise.

Yes, you may cry a tear for the loss of romantic dreams; but you’ll have far fewer tears in the future, when the stakes are much higher. As we always say, if you want unconditional love, get a pet. If you want a partner, get your priorities straight.

STATEMENT:
“I don’t want to break another guy’s heart because I don’t love him enough, but t won’t let my worries stop me from checking out his basic strengths and deciding whether we have the makings of a good partnership. When it’s time to decide, I’ll use my wisdom and experience rather than measuring my love against my parents’ romance.”

My brother is really an upbeat, cheerful, friendly guy, but he turns into a viper whenever someone tells him what to do, even when it’s sure to get him into lots of trouble, and afterwards he’s convinced he’s been calm and diplomatic. When he and his wife got divorced, he was so argumentative with the judge that he lost custody of his kid. When his boss asked him to do something stupid, my brother fired off emails to Human Resources declaring he was being unfairly attacked. The funny thing is, he doesn’t mind when I tell him he’s being stupid, and the next time something happens he’s sure he’s done better; but he hasn’t. He’s not nearly as difficult as he seems to be, so my goal is to keep him out of trouble.

God bless the antagonists, for they know not what bile they speak.

Whenever someone is particularly quick to resist being pushed, we assume there’s an emotional reason for his actions, and that understanding why will help him to control himself, or help us shut him up and make him more tolerable.

Truth is, we often can’t explain or control oppositional behavior, which suggests there’s a basic force of nature driving some people to be reflexively, unthinkingly oppositional.

It’s actually on the spectrum of Asshole ™ behavior, but, since it lacks the malice required to actually fulfill the Asshole criteria, it remains a general pain in the ass, especially for those people, like you, who are close to him.

Maybe the Oppositional Instinct springs from a genetic trait that spurs creativity or guarantees that not everyone will follow the leader of the human herd, thus guaranteeing that some will survive if the herd leader is fatally wrong. The Bible’s Abraham certainly wasn’t a get-along kind of guy, Steve Jobs wasn’t a people person, and no shrink with a blog fxckfeelings.com is eager to go with the professional flow. Most of the time, however, instant opposition doesn’t win friends among authority, co-workers, family, and/or most mammals.

Since their actions are often infuriating, we think oppositional people must be furious, but in reality, they’re often just doing their thing, taking courage from the fact that everyone else is getting mad and is therefore the irrational party. You can’t try to change your brother then, or teach him how to protect himself.

Short of averting your eyes, you can help other people who care about him—the victims of his accidental provocation—most of whom will hate and love him in equal measure. Friends will feel he wasted their help and ignored their advice, family will blame him for endangering their security, and they’ll all speculate about the impact of the things they could have or should have said or actually did say.

If you brought them together in a support group (or did individual sessions), they’d discover that everything had been said, more than once, and it did no good. It’s sad, but, on the other hand, no one failed.

While you and those who related can help each other deal with the pain (in your ass), sadly, you can’t stop him from being an ass in the future.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling that I could save my brother from his worst problems if only I could get him to shut up, but I know better. The best I can do is appreciate his better qualities and accept the fact that it’s probably more painful to watch him than be him, since he’s always doing what he knows is the right thing to do.”

My father is the kind of guy who would always complain about my mother (his ex-wife) to my face, even when I was little, but, if I objected, he would get mad at me for being ungrateful and unsympathetic. He still does it now that I’m an adult, and there’s got to be a better way to deal with him then just avoiding him so I don’t have to hear it. My goal is to set limits on him that will stick.

While you may be in a unique position to know that your father has good reason to be hurting, you also know, from experience, that airing grievances repeatedly is a good definition of whining. It may provide your father with temporary relief, but it also binds him to his role of victim/husband in a relationship that’s long over.

The fact that he attacks you for not being sympathetic is the icing on the cake, as far as proving the unhealthy nature of his kind of venting; he widens his victimhood by sucking his near and dear into the role of villain. OK, I know he can’t help it but still, it’s not good for you to have this kind of conversation.

You’re right to want to stop it, and telling him how unhealthy his father-son venting is is a start, but you need stronger weapons than reasoning with him about his violating a parental boundary. In order to prepare, ask yourself what you’d do if he ignored your wishes and crossed that line, and be ready for when it happens.

List the reasons that you believe it isn’t good to listen, even though he believes, in his heart, that this makes you a hard-hearted kid. You know your listening does no good, brings out nothing good in him, and has you walking on eggshells. You also know that you won’t get him to understand this point of view.

Ironically, once you believe in your own values, over and above whatever your father tells you, you’re an adult, not a kid. It’s as an adult that you tell him it’s not a good subject to get into and you don’t’ want to talk about it. Knowing that he’ll object, and refusing to explain, is what an adult does.

So what’s important is not what you tell him, but what you tell yourself. If you believe that what you’re doing is best for everyone, then your silence speaks louder than words, and distance won’t be necessary.

STATEMENT:
“I’ve always felt trapped by my father’s complaints and confessions, particularly because he jumps on me if I don’t listen, and I can’t help but feel guilty. I’ve thought through the consequences of his actions, however, and my sense of what’s right is stronger than the guilt reflex he can always make me feel. As long as I stick with what I know is right, I’ll never be trapped.”

I trust that my sister will be a fair executrix for my father’s will, but I often feel out of the communication loop because she’s closer to my other sister, and I’m often the last to know about her decisions. When I’ve shared my feelings about this in the past, she’s just gotten testy. Recently, I wondered why his will had not put in a special bequest for my daughter, because he’d once expressed that intention, so I asked my sister whether she could get hold of an earlier will and see whether the bequest had been there before and then taken out. She blew up at me about how I didn’t trust her, and couldn’t see why it was such a big deal. My goal is to get her to see that my request was legitimate and to keep me informed.

Nothing has more potential to damage a family dynamic—not a long car trip, adultery, a coming out here or there—like a dispute over a will.

If somebody feels screwed, cheated, or in any way shortchanged, blood ties will get bloody.

Luckily, you trust your sister, so that eliminates the most common source of conflict. Unfortunately, you’re now creating conflict in an extremely fragile situation where it doesn’t need to exist.

When it comes to wills, you have broader goals than getting inside the loop or having your feelings understood. For one thing, you can’t get inside the loop; it’s an old loop, and if you’re not inside by now, just trying to get into it will turn it into a noose.

For another, you haven’t stopped to ask yourself whether there’s any point in being inside the loop. If your sisters are closer with one another than with you, then so be it. Even if you don’t have a loop of your own, theirs doesn’t seem so inviting.

Ultimately, it’s more important for you to consider what your goals should be at the time of your father’s death. It’s natural for the pain of his loss, or impending loss, to make both you and your sisters testy. Given how the situation is an emotional landmine, choose your priorities carefully.

Unless you’re mercenary, which I assume you’re not, a few dollars doesn’t matter. And, however much you were deprived of love by one family member or another, your bigger interest now is in keeping things peaceful. If you need love, get a dog, and if you’re still desperate for that loop, take up crochet. If you want to keep your life free from sib-wars that will enrich lawyers and therapists and cause years of pain, however, your goal is to keep the peace (and keep your mouth shut) while helping your sister settle the estate.

Accept the fact that your father’s death may leave you with feelings of emptiness and perhaps resentment at decisions that should have been made differently. Death forces acceptance, or else, and acceptance is necessary if you’re going to pick up the mantle of leadership and help your family survive this trial intact.

STATEMENT:
“In addition to mourning my father, I can’t get over the feeling that I’ve been unfairly pushed aside in my family. I’m confident, however, that I haven’t deserved such treatment and my job, therefore, is not to react to family feelings, but to take pride in my own identity and make the best of a transition that passes leadership and responsibility to me and my sisters.”

I love my husband and he’s a great father, but I can’t stand the way he wants to mess with our house. It’s an architectural masterpiece that got left to me by my parents, along with their collection of old American antiques, and I want to pass them on intact to the next generation. My husband doesn’t have the same reverence for the place that I do, and wants to put in some of his own furniture and repaint rooms that really don’t need it. I want him to be comfortable but I’m not going to get rid of beautiful antiques or waste money on repainting rooms that were recently painted. My goal is to get him to understand how I feel about the place and to back off of unreasonable demands.

It’s hard to accommodate two loves, your home and your family, without someone taking it personally. It’s like a strange love triangle between you, your husband, and interior design.

So long before you get to talk about specific compromises, your husband is going to resent playing second fiddle to a sofa and you’re going to feel he doesn’t care enough about you to support your love of architecture and your family’s traditions.

Try to fight those feelings by presenting the problem less personally. Sure, it’s normal to feel under-loved and misunderstood, but that discussion will go nowhere, as you already know, and communication on that theme is a bad idea.

Instead, ask your husband for a list of specific changes that would allow him to feel at home. If you can’t stand listening to his ideas, and are too likely to blurt out your opposition, then ask a decorator to serve as your intermediary/mediator. As any decorator would tell you, their real job is often family therapy.

If you like, make a list of what is most important for you to preserve, and then sit down when you’re not feeling too tired or stressed and take a look at your husband’s ideas. Don’t think of them as demands or impositions or threats to the family legacy, just ideas. And while you’re at it, cost out the alternative of living separately. Some people can afford such arrangements, and the exercise gives you a concrete Plan B instead of an unthinkable insult.

Or you can pass your priorities, together with your husband’s, to the designated decorator/family therapist and charge him/her with the job of preparing compromises that might allow both of you to feel at home. At least, if that doesn’t work, you would both hate the decorator.

Remember, people can love one another very much and still not find a way to be at home with one another. In retrospect, that would become a key criteria for you in any future partner search, as it should be for everyone. One reason you move in together is to find out whether you can both feel at home in the same (historic) house.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling my love for my husband threatens my tie to the old family home, but I’ll try to keep my fears and needs in check, and my mouth closed, while I try to find a compromise. Then I’ll know I’ve done my best.”

I thought I’d always be able to trust my wife, even though I’ve never been able to trust anyone else before. I’m just like that, always nervous and suspicious, even when people are reasonably nice. My wife is an unusually nice and nurturing person, but when I found out she was doing some compulsive shopping and she lied about it, I flipped out and I can’t recover. The more she tries to reassure me, the more I don’t trust her. She’s just about had it with me and I want to recover our old intimacy before our marriage breaks up.

It’s really remarkable that you assume that your wife isn’t necessarily bad, just because she’s triggered your suspicions. It’s also remarkable that she’s the first person you’ve trusted, but why focus on the negative.

Most people who suffer from severe suspicion are pretty sure that it’s the other person’s bad actions that have caused a loss of trust, but you aren’t falling for that trap.

You’re open to the idea that your wife isn’t that bad, even though her actions have shattered your peace of mind. But you’re also a little too accepting that one white lie and the sadness that lie has caused you can lead to your divorce.

It’s a bummer, but this sounds less like therapy-inducing “trust issues” and more like a severe case of “the honeymoon is over.” In other words, if you expect to get back that old trusting feeling, given the demon of suspicion that has always haunted you, you’re probably wrong.

Plus, trying to get it back will just make both of you feel more angry and responsible for the pain you’re in. False hope is more dangerous for your marriage than your wife’s covert shopping habits.

Rely instead on your good common sense and do a fact-based investigation of your wife’s trustworthiness as a partner; don’t listen to your feelings before you collect, and review, the facts. Begin by defining the crimes that you consider deal-breakers, like compulsive shopping that empties your accounts or major drug use or lying about other close relationships. Imagine advising a friend about the kinds of bad spousal behavior that can turn marriage into a dangerous, depression-inducing burden without hope of redemption.

Then weigh your wife’s behavior against these standards. If her shopping doesn’t represent a major drain and her lying doesn’t apply to most difficult topics, then it may not represent a major threat. From what you say, that’s a possibility, but it’s for you to decide.

If it’s true that she’s not so bad, however, then you’ve got a tough job ahead of you that will actually increase your pain, not make it better, but thems the breaks. If you decide your marriage is worth hanging on to, then you’ve got to stop breaking it up while seeking a relief you’re never going to feel.

Once you stifle your paranoia and decide this is your problem to manage, you open new doors for yourself. You can talk to a therapist about ways of thinking positively despite your mistrust, and you may also find that your mistrust gets better if you don’t stimulate it by expressing it. If nothing else works, you may find that medication can help.

It may initially make you feel helpless and hopeless to allow suspicion to reenter a relationship you thought would be a safe haven. In the long run, however, tolerating a certain amount of suspicion may save your marriage and allow a deeper sense of trust to develop. Sure, you’ll always worry about her shopping sprees, but you may also take comfort in the fact that she tolerates your faults and that your partnership is good for both of you. Trust your own standards, rather than your feelings, and divorce may not be so inevitable after all.

STATEMENT:
“I’m profoundly disappointed to discover that my marriage is no longer a refuge from the suspicions that have always tortured me, but I won’t let them control what I do with it. If I decide that my marriage is solid enough, I will find ways to keep my suspicion from making my decisions for me, even if I can’t get rid of them. If I let them control me in the past, I’d have never gotten married. Now I need to take the fight to the next level.”

I’ve broken up with my boyfriend many times over the 5 years we’ve dated, but after I made it clear to him, for the umpteenth time, that he had to start including me in his inner family circle, he turned around and told me not to drop by on Thanksgiving because he needed to spend time with his kids, which made me explosive. It’s not just that he excludes me from his inner family circle; he’s always backing out of plans, which is why we still live separately and I never know whether we’ll spend time together next weekend. Now that I’ve cooled off, I find it hard to really end things with him when we’ve been together so long and know one another so well. I feel like we should be able to work things out, but maybe we keep breaking up for a reason.

You’re obviously attached to your boyfriend and haven’t been able to give him up, even when you knew the relationship wasn’t working for you. Maybe you love him too much or you’re too needy, which are also two reasons that you should flee from this unhealthy relationship in the first place.

In any case, you’ve told him what you want, again and again, and there’s been no progress. The problem isn’t that you’ve failed to get through to him; it’s that reality has failed to get through to you.

The sad fact is that there’s usually no way to change the distance between you and the person you love. It’s like the distance between molecules; you can push it back and forth, but there’s something basic about it, on average, that you can’t change, even with a megaton of talk, therapy, or whatever.

If you can bring yourself to accept the idea that he, and the relationship, are not going to change, and decide that this relationship will never give you enough of what you want, then you have to find the strength to move on.

Remember that you’re right to look for someone who includes you in his intimate family gatherings and with whom you can make reliable weekend plans. Until you find that person and check out his credentials, however, you must become strong enough to keep your heart to yourself. Hang out with friends and family, develop social hobbies, and build up your independence muscles so you aren’t forced to lean on people who aren’t sturdy. Build your strength while remaining wary of your instincts.

Don’t assume there’s someone out there for you, because there often isn’t, and the false assumption that there is will confirm your belief that you’re doing something wrong every time you don’t connect, and that will lead you back to connecting too much. There may be someone out there for you, or not, but your job is to conduct a good search, not compromise your heart or try to force the wrong guy to do the right thing.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling very connected to my boyfriend, but I know he can’t meet my needs and I can’t change him. If I want a chance at a better partnership, I must move on and become independent enough to resist going back or falling into some new and equally painful compromise. I know what’s good for me and I can’t afford to accept less.”