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 was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anorexia nervosa purging type a few years ago. Both of these issues had pretty much consumed my life during the years leading up to that diagnosis and have continued to be impairing ever since. I started cutting myself two years ago (it has become more frequent this past year), and I’ve had several panic attacks in the past several months. Fortunately, my overwhelming desire to commit suicide has subsided, although I still think of suicide and my death in general fairly often. In addition to my own issues, I have watched my mom slip into a state of psychosis during the past two years, triggered by the death of her father. She has become so depressed, delusional, and violent that my parents separated and sometimes I don’t even feel safe staying in the house with her—a few weeks ago my dad and I had to stop her from going through with a suicide attempt. The police were called, and I had to hold her arms down while she was clearly in a psychotic rage. At one point, she tried to stab my hand to make me let go. She was taken to a mental health facility where she stayed for a week, and now she’s furious at us for making her go there and hasn’t been much better since then. I feel like I never get anywhere with therapists because they just prescribe medicines that make me feel numb to any emotions or focus on my eating disorder so much that I never get to work through these other issues. I feel like my life is unraveling and it’s gotten so bad that, honestly, I don’t feel like I even want to fix it. My goal in telling you this is to figure out a way to help my mom and how to get through school while I’m dealing with this.

It may seem strange to hear this, for someone who suffers as much as you do from depression, anorexia, and the burdens of taking care of a very sick mother, but I think you’re doing an amazing job.

Yes, you’re chin-deep in shit, but you haven’t drowned, and that’s a remarkable accomplishment.

Your depression hasn’t made you hate people or blame them, and your anorexia hasn’t caused you to pretend you’re not sick, so you must have a solid hold on reality. There you are, with all your pain, finding the love to help your mother and the energy to go on with your studies. You’ve got good values and a big soul.

So you feel hopeless because treatment hasn’t done you much good, or, I should say, hasn’t done your symptoms much good. It sucks, but that’s the way it usually is when symptoms are as severe as yours. That doesn’t mean they won’t get better by themselves, or that a better treatment won’t come along. It does mean that, at least for the time being, you’re stuck with heavy-duty pain.

That’s not important, however, or at least not nearly as important as what you’re doing with that pain, which is, as I said, amazing, and there’s treatment that can help you distinguish between you and your symptoms. Any good cognitive treatment will help, whether it comes from a cognitive therapist, a good coach, or a friend with a positive attitude. One treatment that is aimed specifically at helping people with this much pain keep a positive attitude is Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, or DBT.

The inventor of this treatment, Marsha Linehan [link: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html], suffered similar symptoms and, like you, managed to stay focused on the value of helping people and improving her own skills. She wound up inventing a kind of treatment that helps others do what she did for herself, and, like you, she found that helping others was a great way to keep her own demons in check.

It’s normal for you to feel that your life is unraveling, but trust me, it isn’t; your pain is a mess, but you’re doing a good job of bearing it and doing good things with it.

You are not your pain; you’re dealing with a lot of shit, but you are anything but. You’re the person who’s managing it while leading a good and meaningful life, and that’s not someone you should give up on.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel like a hopeless, deteriorating mess, but I love my mother and care about my education and I’m doing good things about both. I may not be able to stop my symptoms or save my mother, but life sucks and that’s not a personal failure. I haven’t let my symptoms stop me, however, and that’s why I’m doing well, even if my pain and my mother are doing badly.”

I have a great life and there’s nothing I care about more than my family, so I became really worried when, out of nowhere, I started to have horrible thoughts about murdering my children. I’m too ashamed to tell my husband. I’m not an angry person, and I love my kids and get along well with them, and I’ve never needed a shrink, but the thoughts keep me up at night. If there’s the slightest chance I could hurt my kids, I’ve got to do something about it, but I don’t know what to do. Please help.

Before you get crazy about having crazy, murderous thoughts, check out the risk factors for crazy murders. It’s not hard to do. What you’ll find out is that crazy murderers don’t just have intrusive murderous thoughts; they’re crazy as well.

By that, I mean they’re very detached, or they have strange ideas about their kids that they actually believe in, or they’re hearing voices, or going through extreme mood swings.

Ask yourself whether you fit the picture of people who really run amok. While I don’t know you, of course, my guess is that you don’t fit the picture at all, which means you run the same finite-but-small risk as your average Joe.

Trouble is, everyone who has intrusive, horrible thoughts without other symptoms of craziness is nevertheless terrified of losing control, so reassuring yourself is hard to do. What you want, of course, is total reassurance that the horrible thoughts will go away and that you’ll never, ever lose control; as you say, if there’s the slightest chance that you might hurt your family, you feel obliged to take definitive action. Unfortunately, you can’t. No one controls such thoughts, and trying to control them will just add to your helplessness.

Your goal then isn’t total reassurance or freedom from fear, but reasonable self-control and an ability to go ahead with your life in spite of fear. Assess the real risk you pose to your family and take steps to protect them if you think it’s necessary. Having done that (and realizing that your family is better off with you just the way you are, crazy thoughts and all), learn to bear your fear and go about your business, which isn’t easy to do.

If you want to tell your family about your symptoms, that’s the story you’d tell. You’ve got these crazy thoughts, but you’ve checked on the internet, and probably seen a shrink, and discovered you’re at no particular risk of doing harm, you’re just at risk of suffering from creepy thoughts. Reassure them that you have no intention of letting the crazy thoughts interfere with your normal activities and that, if you thought you were dangerous, you’d do whatever’s necessary to protect them.

As with the woman above, you are not your symptoms; a good mom can have crazy thoughts, and a great mom can carry on despite them.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve got crazy thoughts and might lose my mind but the truth is that I’ve checked out my symptoms and the part of my mind I’m losing is pretty small and insubstantial (although the process is scary and painful). Whether or not I can make my symptoms go away, I’m competent to manage them, keep everyone safe, and go on with my life, and that’s all I need to do.”

Please Note: Our next post will be a week from today. Happy holidays, everyone! As always, we look forward to hearing from you if/when they aren’t.

I’m having a hard time since the death of my father. I was expecting the grief to be rough, but I thought I’d reached the acceptance stage and was starting to feel better. Then I noticed that my two sisters were able to talk and share memories much more easily with one another than they could with me, and suddenly I felt more alone than ever before. My wife is supportive, but I don’t want her to feel I don’t love her by telling her I feel alone. My goal is to get over this grief.

You probably were starting to recover from losing your father, but that’s when you experienced another loss—a broken connection with the people who should be the most understanding.

When you grieve the loss of parents with your siblings, a major source of comfort is knowing that, whatever your differences, you’re the only ones who remember the world of your family home and share the experience of growing up there. With that missing, you’ve got a double source of grief.

Pain always causes vicious circles, so the biggest danger here is that your feeling of isolation will cause you to withdraw, which will confirm your isolation. Your job with grief then is to fight to keep your perspective, rather than letting pain shape it for you.

Currently, your perspective is that there were good, meaningful times growing up with your father and sisters, and there were memories worth sharing and preserving. Instead of letting hurt stop you, figure out what you want to say, interrupt your sisters, and see if they can respond. After all, you’re the only guy who remembers that time and they need you as much as you need them.

If they can’t listen, talk to your wife, and if your wife’s not available, a pet’s always a good captive audience. You have eulogies to compose for yourself about your father’s contributions and values and what you wish to carry on, and delivering them to anyone or thing willing to listen will do you a lot of good. Of course, you’re the most important listener but there are others who would benefit from hearing your words.

You can’t shorten the grief or change your sibling relationships. What you can do, however, is respect the strength it takes to live with pain and not let it push you to the sidelines or shade your memories of your dad. With all the loss in your life, you should never lose your right to grieve.

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could share memories with my sisters, but that’s not the measure of how well I’m dealing with grief or of how much I took away from my relationship with my father. I’ll continue to treasure my memories and look for ways to share them, and not expect the grief to go away until it does.”

After my mother died, there were an amazing number of people who came to her funeral and told wonderful stories about their friendships and how much they loved her. It made me feel bad, however, because she and I never really got along. We loved one another, but we really didn’t understand one another, and now we never will. The more I saw the closeness other people had with her, the more I wondered what was wrong with me. I miss her, but what I feel most sad about is never being able to have a good relationship and not being able to mourn her as well or as much as her friends do.

Don’t assume that you could have or should have improved your relationship with your mother without first looking at the evidence. After all, you know that many close relationships can’t be improved because whatever is bad about them comes from character rather than things you can change. They are what they are, or they were what they were.

If your relationship with your mother was sub-par because you didn’t try hard enough, then yes, you’ve learned a sad lesson about not waiting until it’s too late. For most people, however, the problem isn’t a lack of trying or an overdose of waiting; it’s blaming themselves for a lack of good results after lots of trying and still assuming they could have done better if they’d tried harder.

Don’t assume that, because other people didn’t have your problem with your mother, you shouldn’t have had it either. You’ll probably find evidence that you tried hard and that many, if not all, of the reasons for your distance were not under her control or yours.

Like the person above, you have a double grief. You miss the mother you had and you also grieve the mother you could never have. It’s a grief you can’t share, because others, especially those who really connected with your mother, don’t understand.

Don’t feel bad then about not feeling bad the way they do. Your grief for her, like your relationship, is what it is. Instead of examining what was wrong, try to remember what worked. Hopefully, in spite of her disappointment with you, she did you some good and tried to be a good mother, and, hopefully, in spite of your frustration with her, you kept your life on track and spared her your anger. These are major accomplishments that need to be celebrated, particularly since they lead more often to tooth-grinding than to pleasure.

Celebrate the strength it takes to make the best of a bad relationship. Hopefully, some of that strength was hers, as well as yours.

STATEMENT:
“I often felt like a failure because I didn’t feel as positively about my mother as other people did, but I’ve come to accept that those feelings are not under my control and to respect what I’ve done with them. My job, now that she’s dead, is to do more of the same.”

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.”

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.”

Please Note: The next new post will be 11/28, after American Thanksgiving.

My husband and I get along better since I left with our daughter to start a new job in a nearby town, and he is usually polite when he comes for his weekend visits (he sleeps on the couch). He’s a devoted father, but sometimes, when he’s in a bad mood, he gets as nasty as ever and calls me a loser and a wimp who can’t keep things clean or make much money, and I’m back with the old feeling of not being able to do anything right. I suppose I should shut the fuck up, because anything I say just sets him off and gets our daughter upset. My goal is to keep my feelings to myself and keep the peace.

It’s hard to tell nasty criticism from the valid kind if you already tend to get down on yourself for not getting much done. Then again, it’s hard to get much done when you have a kid and an ex-husband who’s always criticizing you.

What you seem to be taking issue with is how unfair your ex’s judgments are, as if you’re agreeing with him that you’re a loser, but you wish he’d be less harsh. The real problem, however, is that, without carefully applying your own standards, you’re allowing yourself to take his judgments seriously in the first place.

If you’re afraid of his reaction to your disagreement, you could say that staying quiet is a way of keeping the peace, and that peacemakers are blessed. It doesn’t seem blessed, however, to absorb nastiness indefinitely unless you can explain to yourself and your daughter why it’s necessary.

Otherwise, it actually make you a wimp, and it encourages him to be a bully, and while you can’t get double divorced, you can shut his criticism down without absorbing it.

After all, you’re no longer stuck with him and with doing nothing. You’re working during the weekdays and being a single parent, so you may be tired and have little to show for it at the end of the week. Still, you’re independent and accomplishing difficult and important goals, and you’d be foolish not to respect yourself, regardless of what your inner voice, or your husband, has to say about it.

Without getting mad, you can tell your ex-husband that you’re satisfied with how you run your life and don’t want his comments; if he insists on sharing, you insist on his leaving. It’s not hard to do if you believe you have a right (and he doesn’t), and it’s easier to feel you have a right if you’ve thought it through and don’t get into a fight.

You may never feel great about what you’re doing, given that you’re poor, tired, and have a critical ex who gives you a regular earful. Look objectively at the good things you’re doing, however, and you can stand up to those self-critical feelings and challenge anyone who echoes them. It’s time to recognize who the real loser is in this scenario.

STATEMENT:
“I may never feel like a winner, but I’m doing two tough and worthwhile jobs in working and raising a child, and I now have the right and opportunity to veto negative topics my husband would like to share. I will let him know that, if he escalates, he goes.”

I get enough done when I have a full-time job to go to—I’m motivated, show up on time, and keep up with my work—but since I’ve been unemployed I can’t seem to keep moving. I get up late, scan the internet, play some games, and go back to bed. It’s depressing, and the more depressed I get, the less I do. I’m turning into a total loser. How do I kick myself into action?

Lots of people need structure to keep moving; at school, you’ve got bells, attendance, and homework. At work you got a time-clock and a boss who will notice if you no-show or don’t get your work done. As such, structure’s basically a fancy word for having other people force good habits upon you so you don’t have to worry about them yourself.

When people don’t have structure, they have trouble getting things done. Some people, of course, are very good at staying energetic and knocking off their priorities in a disciplined way. And then there’s the rest of us.

Of course, when people don’t get much done they see themselves as lazy; with all that time on one’s hands, there doesn’t seem to be an excuse for accomplishing nothing. It’s the same tone we use to chide ourselves for making a careless mistake or eating too much pie. The negative criticism usually makes escape more attractive/leads to yet more pie.

If you’re ashamed of your low productivity, you may hide it by diverting energy into appearing busy and inventing a cover-up to explain what you haven’t done. The less you do, the more it becomes a secret. When the secret comes out, you’re more likely to be chided for laziness, the more you’ll want to hide again.

Don’t sink into that rut. Instead, treat your problem as important and respectable, and become your own boss or principal. Wage a campaign to be structured, whether you like it or not, to the degree to which you can get your employee/self to go along with you.

Start with a job description that keeps you busy and attends to priorities, i.e., what work you need to accomplish everyday until real work comes along. It should have enough time for hygiene, exercise, work, and friends. Not perfect, but good enough.

Look for help wherever you can get it. You may need help in putting together a schedule, or appreciate a call or a visit from a friend to watch you do something you said you’d do but wouldn’t do if there wasn’t somebody watching.

If you ask friends to help out, they’ll appreciate the chance to be helpful and will respect your struggle to bring your inner sludge under control. You’ll find lots of them have the same problem, so you can create a structure for each other until you’re back in a cubicle without so much cursed free time.

STATEMENT:
“I feel lazy and incompetent when I realize I can’t get much done when no one is watching but I realize that good people are often unable to control bad habits, so I’m determined to bear the shame and take advantage of every trick I can to get where I need to go.”

I was sexually abused quite a bit by my dad (and am de-repressing memories right now, fun-fun). I am realizing that I am very fearful of the people I love, and avoid them. Honestly, if I didn’t need to bond to keep from going insane, I would never have a close relationship, because anyone I care about enough can destroy me. But I’m in a lot of pain from loneliness as it is.

Many people believe there are tons of benefits to confronting your past, namely that it will teach you something that will bring catharsis to your present. The common notion being that if you can figure out what went wrong then you can avoid being victimized again.

The problem here is that reviving memories of sexual abuse by your dad will also bring back the old feelings of helplessness and having no choice, which, of course, is the opposite of your situation as an adult, so the lessons are the opposite of useful to your life now.

You’re not examining the past to drown yourself in feelings of helplessness, but to assure yourself that you can protect yourself from abuse.

Also, as an adult, your love for your dad may leave you with a dangerous sense of comfort and familiarity with low-boundary, exploitative sleazebags. In other words, your dad may have given you a tendency to be drawn to people who aren’t trustworthy, and who are worth being fearful of. I’m sure there are people in your life who aren’t scumbags, but your history makes you especially vulnerable to them.

It’s hardly surprising then that your world, as you see it as an adult, will seem full of both loneliness and dangerous people who can’t be trusted. Don’t criticize yourself then for being fearful of relationships or lonely; fear is a good protector, until you get strong enough to protect yourself.

So, as you examine your past, a therapist’s support for your pain and trauma may not be enough to counterbalance an ingrained conviction of helplessness. You may need an additional shield against that conviction before awakening the sleeping dragon of your memories.

One way to get stronger is to approach your past with less feeling and more thought. Develop specific standards for screening potential friends and lovers and use them to override any instincts to get together with, or over-involved with, the wrong people. In other words, if you want to remember your father’s worst traits, look for those traits in people before you decide whether or not they’re worthy of your friendship. Once you convince yourself that you’re a reasonably good self-protector, you can approach your memories with less fear of being swept away.

Find a therapist who’s a good relationship coach, or a therapy group whose members have some wisdom with difficult or exploitative relationships. Don’t force yourself to re-experience memories of abuse until you know how you’d manage it as an adult.

Don’t assume, because you’re fearful of the ones you love, that you’re bad at relationships or that they’ll turn out badly. You’re right, relationships are potentially dangerous, but your awareness of that fact and willingness to get some coaching and training can protect you and eventually help you find friends and lovers who deserve your trust.

Learning from/dealing with the past can be helpful, but beware of the risks, particularly if you (and a therapist) focus exclusively on painful emotions for which you still haven’t developed defenses.

If you want to look back, don’t lose sight of your present ability to spot and avoid guys like dear old dad; then you can learn from and use your memories, instead of being haunted by them.

STATEMENT:
“Because of the past, I may never feel secure about relationships. Once I learn how to detect abuse and avoid abusers, however, I can find friends I can trust, even if my fears remain.”

My friends can’t stand my girlfriend because they say she steals from me to feed her habit, but we’ve been together for 3 years and I can’t help feeling she’s the best friend I have. It’s true, she has a drug habit that she can’t control, and money sometimes disappears from my wallet, but it’s an illness and it’s no good to blame her for it. It doesn’t change the fact that we love one another. Aside from her habit, I know I can trust her. I truly believe our love is a positive factor in helping keep her habit from getting worse. My goal is to help her, of course, while getting my friends to see that she’s a real person, not a drug addict.

Relationships can always be dangerous if you focus too much on the other person’s feelings, or your own, without stopping to think about your other priorities in life. She might make you feel like a hero, feel like you’re a healing saint, feel guilty if you can’t do what she asks, etc. If you focus on that instead of whether or not this relationship is ruining your life, you’re doing it wrong. The more sweet, sensitive and generous your temperament, the worse your peril.

The opposite of caring too much for someone isn’t, of course, to be selfish; it’s to be responsible for your other goals, the ones that arise from your values, interests, and other obligations, including your job to take good care of yourself. You need money for your own education or rainy day fund or, simply, survival during hard times. You deserve to be loved for more than your ability to give.

Go back to basics and think about your own standards for a good relationship, as if you were advising a friend. Yes, you’d say, you need love and good chemistry, but you also need someone who can cover your back, take care of things when you’re disabled, help you on your way, and work well with you in a crisis. You’d have to agree that, without those standards, you’ll team up with someone who can suck you dry and undermine your stability in a very unstable world.

Love is a drug and it can addict and ruin your life and other relationships in a way that puts meth to shame. That’s why, rather than getting into a discussion of how wonderful it feels, you’d urge your friend to think about what he wants a relationship for and how it will help him do what matters.

Forget about what your friends think and put aside your desire to help your girlfriend; instead, focus on what you want to make of your own life and trying to be a good person in a crazy world. Remember who you are and then see where this relationship fits. You’re not a saint, you’re a boyfriend, and if you want to do what’s best for both of you, you won’t even be that much longer.

STATEMENT:
“I love my girlfriend and want to save her from drug addiction and I don’t mind her faults, but what comes first are my own standards for being a strong and self-reliant person that are not dependent on any one person’s love or approval.”

My wife suffers from non-medication responsive depression (we’ve done ECT’s, every med in the book, and she has a psychiatrist). She’s bitter and short to family; she goes off on the kids and then can turn around and be nice. I do all the work around the house, get the kids to activities, etc., and I’m wearing out. She comes home from work and just logs on her lap top and sits in front of the TV while I get dinner and clean up. She shows no affection towards me and I feel like a servant. When I complain or push her, she talks about killing herself and putting herself out of our misery (she’s been hospitalized several times) or just hurting herself (sometimes she cuts on her arms and legs). I’m getting to the point where I don’t like her anymore. She just seems to have given up. Nothing interests her, nothing tastes good…she gets no enjoyment from anything. What can I do? She’s in her forties, now, but she struggled with depression in her twenties and this current bout has been going on for 5 years. Her doctor and therapist are really committed to her, but it seems like she doesn’t care, like she enjoys being miserable. Sometimes I feel like I’m spiraling down with her, but I’m not going to give up. If I just stand by, she seems to just sink lower, but I can’t leave, because she’s said that the kids and I are the only reason she’s still alive.

If you’re like most married people, you become dependent on your spouse for a positive response, no matter how independent you are as an individual. You married her because you respect her opinion and take pleasure in her approval. You make her happy, everyone feels good. You see the problem here.

So it’s normal to feel bitterly disappointed and deflated when depression turns her into a grouchy, nasty, unappreciative, unaffectionate black hole who threatens suicide if you criticize her and never does her share.

It’s not just the lack of approval from her that’s bothering you, it’s the overabundance of disapproval, of you and everything else.

Unfortunately, the bitterness you feel in response to your unmet needs adds to her self-hate, creating a vicious circle of negative emotion that demoralizes everyone. Controlling that bitterness is the one thing you can do to improve what is an otherwise impossible situation.

First, pretend that she’s had a stroke that zapped the part of her personality that was warm, active, and responsive; your loss isn’t personal or preventable, and your needs are no longer plausible. Acknowledging these difficult truths now prepares you to assess, without hurt or a sense of failure, whether your family is better off with the two of you together or apart.

There are positive aspects to your marriage, like the fact that she contributes financially, and that, by staying alive, she helps the kids, and hopefully she does some parenting from time to time. She’s showing courage, whether she knows it or not. Maybe the advantages of staying together outweigh the many disadvantages you’ve listed above.

Whatever you decide is best, present it to her positively; tell her you know she’s trying and there’s probably love and affection in there somewhere, if the depression would only lighten up. Remember the person she was and talk to that person as if she’s still there but, like Sleeping Beauty, can’t wake up.

If you feel separation is for the best, let her know that you value and support her role with the kids and that what you are separating from is not her, but her illness. And if she threatens suicide, tell her that her threats are a factor in the separation.

When depression takes over your personality, it makes you do bad things, like putting your life in other people’s hands. If she could control that side of herself, she might improve her parenting and your partnership, even if her depression does not improve. Recommend DBT, a kind of therapy I often recommend, that helps people who feel terrible protect themselves from acting terribly.

Decide what’s for the best, don’t be a victim, and ignore blackmail. You may be a victim of her illness, but you’re also the man in charge who’s doing a wonderful job of soldiering on. If you do what’s best for you and your kids, then it doesn’t matter what she says now; the healthy part of her approves, even if it can’t be heard.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m taking it from all sides and that all the love and nurturing I give my sick wife comes back as shit. I know, however, that her response is not her, but her illness. I have assumed a huge load as a single parent who must now go on alone without the love and support of a partner. I will make hard choices that she may see very negatively, as she sees everything. I will hold fast to my own vision of what’s best for the family.”

I’m writing because my husband wants me to. He thinks there’s something wrong with me, but I like being a little manic, so I haven’t taken my mood-stabilizer medication in 10 years. It’s true, I talk fast, I can’t hold a job, I’m irritable, and he’s had to put me in the hospital a couple times. On the other hand, I don’t hurt anyone and I like the way I feel, most of the time, except for one thing: he wants me to be the way I used to be and he’s always unhappy with me. I hate sleeping in the same bed, but he’ll give me a hard time if I move to another room. My goal is to get him off my back, so I agreed to write.

As noted above, when you’re married, you can’t help depending on your spouse’s approval, in some deep, hard-wired way, which means that, if you never seem to get it, you become a permanent rebel who cares too much to leave but feels better every time you do the opposite of what he wants. In the process, you lose track of your own priorities.

On the other hand, you know your priorities about your hypomanic mood. Keeping it natural and un-medicated is more important to you than holding a job, staying out of hospitals, and keeping your husband happy. That’s where you stand.

The problem is, you wish your husband would get used to the new (10-year-old) you, but that’s not going to happen. There’s no point in talking about whether he should accept you, just like there’s no point in talking about whether you should damp down your hypomania. He can’t help where he stands and neither can you.

So instead of writing to someone who’s supposed to persuade you to take your medication, face the sad fall-out from your decision. Don’t blame yourself; just ask whether the marriage is worth it, because clearly, your old marriage and the mania can’t co-exist.

On the one side, you’ve shared a lot of years together and your standard of living is probably better with him than without him, given that you’re on disability. On the other hand, there’s the mutual non-acceptance, which is hard for both of you to live with.

Whatever you decide, stop whining. You’re not to blame for a bad decision, and you aren’t a victim of bipolar disease, so don’t make yourself a victim of your husband’s non-acceptance.

If you want to continue to live with him, have the balls to stand by your decision. Tell him you’re sticking with the temperament you’ve got, you still want to live with him, you won’t talk to shrinks, and you’ll sleep where you sleep. If he wants to throw you out when he realizes, after 10 years, that you aren’t going to change, so be it. You don’t blame yourself for choosing to live with your hypomanic mood, and you don’t blame him if he wants to leave his life with you behind.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve ruined my marriage by deciding to do what’s right for me, but the decision has been costly in so many ways that I know I didn’t do it lightly or to spite my husband, so I respect my decision. Now I need to ignore feelings of guilt or wishes that he could accept me the way I am and instead accept him the way he is. Whatever I decide to do about our marriage, I’ll do what I think is best for us and never be a victim.”

I need to face the fact that I have trouble getting close to people. I recently had a close relationship with a guy I was crazy about, but I often get depressed and, when it happens, I get quiet, and he couldn’t stand it. I’m good at functioning when I’m depressed, it’s never stopped me from getting my work done, and I push myself to hang out with friends, but I can’t help the fact that I don’t have much to say and that I don’t really feel like laughing. I kept telling him it wasn’t personal, but he didn’t really believe me. My goal is to figure out how I can find a partner if I can’t really interact very well.

The biggest negative thought you can have when you break up with someone is to believe it’s because there’s something wrong with you, either because your boyfriend said it or because that’s what your brain is telling you.

Nobody says, “it isn’t you, it’s me,” and means it, so you shouldn’t, either.

Remember, it’s deep human nature to blame ourselves for crap that happens, be it a failed relationship or a failed baseball season. It’s your job, however, as your one and only chief protector, to put this assumption to a logical test.

You can blame yourself for making a bad choice, but not if there weren’t any clues that badness was happening; you have to look closely for the red flags that might have given you warning, like evidence that he was needy or had broken up prior relationships when the feedback tapered off. If none of that was obvious, then neither was your error in judgment.

If this is a type of guy you choose over and over again, however, then you’ve got a bad habit that needs fixing and you should see a shrink/coach with that purpose in mind. On the other hand, as seems the case here, if you didn’t have the experience or data to warn you, then you’ve had a valuable/miserable learning experience.

You took a course in the college of hard knocks where tuition is paid in pain. That said, you should give yourself a good grade.

So before assuming you’re no good at relationships, name your standards. I’m sure you know lots of good relationships where one partner or the other gets withdrawn at times, and unless you’re an unusually outgoing person living an unusually lucky life, it’s only a matter of time before you or your significant other gets hit with an illness, loss or trauma that causes a shutdown. The test of a good relationship isn’t its connectedness (or, at least, not connectedness alone), but its ability to tolerate periods of unavoidable disconnectedness that life will inevitably bring.

You might also blame yourself if your depression made you do negative things, like drinking or turning into a blob. Even then, you wouldn’t have good reason to blame yourself unless you could have done better, and sometimes depression leaves you no choice. In any case, you’re successful at keeping yourself going when you’re depressed, and that deserves credit, not blame.

What you’re left with is the sad realization that, from now on, you must choose boyfriends who aren’t too needy or overly sensitive to your mood. Unfortunately, they might not understand you as well as a needy, moody guy would, particularly if they’ve never been depressed.

On the other hand, they won’t get upset when you fall silent, other than to be sorry you’re hurting, and they might not notice unless you tell hem. Ultimately, it’s not you or them that’s to blame, it’s just that some relationships aren’t strong enough to survive bad circumstances. Luckily, you are.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like my depression killed the happiest relationship I’ve ever had, but my experience tells me I can be a good friend, whether I’m depressed or not, and that’s the only standard that matters. So I’ve learned that love requires more than mutual passion and I will never go out again with anyone who requires happy feedback and shows no ability to tolerate pain in the ones they love.”

I’ve become very uncomfortable with a friend who has been very good to me. He’s the one who, when I was depressed, took me to the hospital, even though I didn’t want to go. He was right, I was suicidal and I needed help, but now I feel like he’s so good and reasonable and I’m the idiot-child whose diapers he had to change. I imposed my problems on him when I was totally out of control, so seeing him makes me very uncomfortable and ashamed. How can I get past this feeling of inferiority and embarrassment?

If you’re one of those people who has to learn to live with depression—and you are—one of your most important tasks is to get over your shame. I mean, shame is probably an unavoidable feeling when you’re disabled and have nothing to offer anyone but trouble, or at least that’s the way it feels. Still, you know on a logical level that you can’t be blamed for something you can’t help, and you’d protect anyone else from blame if you knew they had such a problem.

So at some point when you’re thinking clearly, you have a moral obligation to yourself to stand up to the negative thoughts and feel proud of yourself for surviving a very painful time—with a little bit of help, or more, from a friend.

Don’t give power to the side of you that values control at all costs and blames you for losing it. We all have those feelings, but they turn nasty and mean whenever we fail to meet their performance standards. Unfortunately, their standards lie in performance alone, when other values are what are important.

Ask yourself then how you expect other people to behave when they’re super-depressed. You got over your pride and allowed a friend to save you. Give yourself respect, and give that friend the credit he deserves; if he didn’t judge you then, he won’t do it now. Your friend did what a good friend should do and what you would have done for someone else. Don’t let shame deprive you of that friendship or reward his kindness with distance and discomfort.

You can’t help feeling ashamed, but what you can do is give attention to what you and he did with the depression and give respect where it’s due. Don’t apologize or act on your shame; let him know you’re grateful, that he did exactly what you needed him to do, and that you’re proud you survived with his help.

Then talk about other things, be friendly, and give the old friendship chemistry a chance to reassert itself. You went through trauma together, and now you can help each other with the recovery.

STATEMENT:
“Depression always has a way of making me feel humiliated, but it can never really humiliate me as long as I fight it as hard as I can. I will take pride in my survival and in the good friendships I’ve nurtured that have helped me survive.”

When my son was born 30 years ago, I met two other moms and we became friends. Although with partners, we shared the same interests and our kids got along well, and we spent the next years as very good friends doing lots of things together and with the children-one of those friends even married my brother (one son and three years later, they divorced). At the same time, I met a new partner (I was now separated from my son’s father), and we spent the next 27 years having a very on-off relationship. It’s difficult to sum up all those years but I think I can say that I probably cried through most of it! I should have left, I didn’t, he wasn’t committed, I was, I wanted a family life, he didn’t. I’m not perfect and I didn’t always behave well. Five years ago he had a son by another, not partner, woman and when that didn’t work out he and I got together again. Then last year, I invited my friend/ex sister-in-law to lunch with us, and they got together. The shock was immense … and it’s not so much the loss of either but this terrible feeling that I have been used as a sort of dating service by my friend and I just can’t get rid of this feeling of betrayal. It’s now a year on and I haven’t seen them since, and the emotional hurt is a lot less– I have done lots of new things, made new friends, and life is rosier, but I have this constant anxiety that this friend is going to take someone else from me – my sister? my other brother? and, worst of all, I have this strange fear that it will be my son. I would like to be happy for my ex and my friend, but I can’t. I protect myself by staying away but I have this huge sense of loss that I have lost this whole part of my life. I need to let go of this underlying anxiety that I am going to lose someone to her again.

When it comes to kids, we expect parents not to expose them to unnecessary rejections and losses from adults they’ll get attached to, who will then go away. When it comes to how parents protect their own hearts, however, the same standards don’t seem to apply, even though, as your experience shows, they really should.

Yes, I understand, you’ve loved a guy for 27 years, but it was always off-and-on, causing you intermittent heartache and wasting your opportunity for something better. You wouldn’t have needed a shrink, psychic, or your average plumber to predict a sad end to all you invested in him and his family.

That doesn’t mean your love was meaningless or less than real. It was powerful, at least for you. Like a good mother, however, your job is to protect yourself from real attachments that can’t work, and you haven’t done that.

What’s worse, you’ve come to assume that love controls you, as it has, so you’ve become a victim and fear that love will screw you again, and take away someone you care about. You’re afraid, but if you’re more careful about who and how you love in the first place, you will have the control you need, some peace of mind, as well as a lot less heartache.

The good news then is that love can’t screw you if you don’t let it. The bad news is that most love won’t work, and you’ve got to leave it alone when you know it won’t, regardless of what your heart says. One thing you’ve learned from your 27-year affair is that life is short, and it’s better to feel some pain now than feel a lot of pain over the course of decades.

First, resolve to stop being a victim. It’s no accident you’ve done better since your friend put an end to your underpowered (it takes two to power) love. Instead of worrying about your next loss, celebrate the fact that you’ve gained new friends and found better relationships.

You’re also more likely than ever before to find relationships that will last, but only if you interrupt the flow of good internal feelings at the beginning of a relationship to ask yourself if there’s any evidence it will actually work.

By the way, it would also help your brother and possibly your friend to ask themselves the same question. If you hang around with people who follow their attractions without giving much thought to consequences or values, you’ll find yourself in the midst of a boiling soap opera, and often be its victim. And the victimhood ends now.

As for that former friends’ tendency to use your friends and family as her dating pool, you’ve finally done what you should have done long ago, when you saw her mistreat your brother, by putting her out of your life. Suck up the sorrow, embrace your ability to do what’s necessary, and don’t let your feelings of powerlessness make you paranoid. You’re in control now, and even if you can’t control her, you can’t let her craziness run your life.

So, in addition to giving yourself better, more compassionate management, stay away from people who regard feelings-management as unacceptable interference with their inalienable right to follow their hearts.

As you’ve learned, following your heart often puts you on a decades-long trail of tears. Protect yourself as you would your son, enjoy your freedom, and keep enjoying it until you find someone reliable enough to enjoy it with you.

STATEMENT:
“I may always be sad about my old lover and scared of losing again, but I learned a lot from that love, I’ve done much better since I gave it up, and I will continue to do better if I remember what I’ve learned and stay away from people whose self-control I can’t trust.”

I promised my wife I’d stop messing around, and I meant it, but last month I did it again and restarted an old fling. I love my wife and the last thing I want is to lose her and the kids’ respect; I’ve got a wonderful family, and I’m not some macho guy who goes cruising to pick up skanks in bars. My problem is that women have always been very attracted to me, I don’t know why, and the sex is very, very satisfying (for both of us), even when we don’t really have much of a relationship. I’m an asshole, and I can’t stop myself. What can I do?

Certain ingredients make love particularly addictive, and one, for guys, is female adulation. They say women loves compliments and being adored, but they rarely ruin their marriages in order to receive them.

Certainly, what addicts you is not your fling-partner as a person, and sex is probably just a part of it. What lights up your pleasure centers and creates needs you can’t control is a mysterious combination of feeling strong, desired, and personally admired.

Whatever feeds your habit, it’s been going on a long time, and understanding its sources in your personality will probably not help. More likely, analyzing your feelings will make you more self-critical and vulnerable to the need for sexual re-inflation.

Unless I’m mistaken, you’ll find the addiction is hard to break, no matter how hard you try, and your first task will be, as they say in AA, to admit your helplessness and accept it as a fact of life. No, that doesn’t mean accepting that it will control your life, simply that it will be a presence in your life that you have to work hard every day to control and that may never be entirely controlled. The first step to avoiding asshole-ish behavior is acknowledging that you’re acting like an asshole in the first place.

Indeed, some people never control it, in spite of overwhelming incentives to do so. The good news, however, is that some good people have sustained meaningful marriages in spite of this behavior. Somehow, their wives felt loved, valued, and secure, despite their husband’s many affairs (and went on to become Secretary of State).

If it’s available, I recommend a 12 step group with other men who know what you’re talking about and who are trying to keep themselves under control. Look for a few attendees with good control who are leaders and sponsors. Unfortunately, there aren’t many guys who have this problem in the way you do, and stigma keeps them from identifying themselves, even to one another, but they are out there.

Even without a 12 step group, however, use 12 step principles. Accepting your helplessness means you shouldn’t promise your wife you’ll stop, because that will likely trap you in lies and shame. Tell her you can’t make promises, but you’ll try, one day (and come hither stare) at a time.

Take strength from your honesty and honest efforts. If you can regain your pride, you can show your wife how much you love her, instead of mollifying her like an angry mother.

Don’t give up. Spend time thinking about the reasons you want to stay faithful, aside from appeasing your wife. Look for any activity, or even a medication, that will allow you to think for a couple more seconds before you act. An antidepressant that has the side effect of reducing sex drive will go a long way towards preventing the act in the first place.

Shame, lying, and mollifying are probably as disruptive to your marriage as the infidelity itself. Work on all fronts and you may be able to improve your marriage and self-esteem, and then you’ll be able to look for some compliments and adoration from within.

STATEMENT:
“My compulsive sexual habits make me feel deceitful and threaten everything I value, but I’ll try to take strength from what I value to invest in my marriage, let my wife know where I stand, and stay focused on improving my self-control.”