[Gareth]

Benjamin,

Hi, you may remember I have posted here a few times about my own journey which started on 10th March 2005 when the sudden realisation of my anxiety and depression hit me. Much of your advice since that time helped me a great deal.

I have been in psychotherapy now for about 16 months and my progress has its ups and downs but I think and hope that I generally take more steps forwards than backwards. I am certainly beginning to see how I got to the point that I did back in March 2005, and sitting here and typing this, that realisation feels good.

I am not actually here today to talk about me though, but about my wife. She has been in therapy for over 7 years now (she's 34) and she goes 3 mornings a week. That's a lot of therapy, I think you'll agree!

Her problems stem from having uncommunicative, deeply selfish parents in an unhappy marriage, who did not create the loving home that she needed as a child, who divorced when she was 13, and a mother whom she didn't see for nearly 10 years as a result.

Therapy has helped her a great deal to come to terms with her feelings of abandonment, who she has become as a result of what happened to her as a child, and to identify the truth of her feelings as they arise, and identify them for what they are and where they come from.

The problem that remains, however, is that my wife still seeks the unconditional, all-encompassing love and protection of a parent, and is crushed and bereft by the fact that she will never have it, and felt that she never had it as a child. She looks for it in her relationships with other people, and when something happens that makes her feel low, she yearns for it, and of course, it can never be there, not in the form that she needs. This feeling dictates much of her emotional life, and she is increasingly despairing of ever getting past it. She doesn't suffer from depression or anxiety as such, she simply wants to get past this crushing feeling of loss and disappointment and loneliness that shadows her.

So I am here to seek any advice you may have on whether you think what is required is to just hang in there with the therapy and wait, or whether there are other techniques out there that perhaps might help. Specifically, I remember from your book your accounts of a retreat that you went to at the height of your own misery, and how it had a cathartic effect on you... I remember clearly the account of the physical contact you felt you had with your mother... Would you have details of how such things could be arranged? Would you even advise it? It instinctively feels to me that my wife needs to mourn for the unconditional love that she never had, and some kind of purging (however painful that might be) is required to get past this moment in her development. But I might be wrong - is she stuck or is she finally moving on? It's impossible for me to tell.

I feel we are reaching a crucial point in both our lives, and both of us really want to move on from negativity and past disappointments. I want to do the best for both of us, I respect your view very much, and any words you can spare will help us on our way I am sure.

Thank you and all the best,

Gareth

[Benjamin Fry]

I'm sorry for the late reply. This post seems to have been missed by the alerts I usually get. I hope everything has gone ok since then.

It sounds like your wife has a very deep wound in the relationship with her mother. I'm sure the father relationship also needs a lot of work, but what you are describing sounds like a very poorly attached infant who longs and longs for something that he or she never gets. That can be very early trauma and thus very hard to shift.

Therapy should continue, but perhaps she can get creative with the issue as well. One thought that comes to mind is to help with children who are abandoned by their mothers. This would be very painful for her, but if she can give something to the kids, her own wounded child will internalise something of that gift. Over time she might see a shift and it could really help the kids too. If she is in therapy three times a week then she should have enough support to engage with this safely. Perhaps there is some organisation that you can find for her to volunteer for. Or you could even consider a week abroad on one of the many orphanages that always need help.

Obviously without her in this conversation this is very speculative, but please let me know how you get on.

[Gareth]

Hi Benjamin,

Since I last posted, my relationship with my wife has broken down, it seems irretrievably. Tomorrow I leave our home, I have a new job and am about to begin a new life on my own. We have agreed on the split together, mutually, having had a miserable year of drifting apart and losing a lot of what we once were together.

When you described my wife as "a very poorly attached infant who longs and longs for something that he or she never gets", that was so very painfully accurate. Within our own relationship, she has always expressed deep disappointment in me. The most common theme being her telling me that I don't "support her well enough". Believe me I have dedicated superhuman amounts of time, emotional effort, and love to helping my wife to work through her emotional problems - I have supported her as well as I know how. But I am not her mother. I can no longer be told how disappointing my care and support is, and be made to feel like a failure for not being able to give my wife the feeling of security that she needed as a child and never received. If I could go back in time and change what happened to her, I would dearly love to.

Her disappointment in me, and in all relationships in her life, stem from the fact that she is seeking the unconditional love of a mother. This has meant that our own relationship has ended up in stasis and cannot move on to seriously considering having a family of our own. When there are emotional problems to deal with, we clash because she is expecting the ìfixî that a parent can give a child. A marriage cannot be based on such need, such misplaced and confused feelings - as this need is just going to eat away at both of us and never be fulfilled. Resentment is in danger of creeping up.

You wrote in your book about how the subconscious seeks experiences that will release trapped traumatic feelings. And that this applied to relationships, and perhaps the relationships which help us to work through our trauma are not the ones that will be the most romantically successful. Since reading those words I have wondered if that applies to me and my wife. We have even wondered aloud whether we are in a "therapy" relationship. There have been so many aspects that have seemed unhealthy, but in a way, perhaps those aspects were healthy from a long term healing perspective.

You may remember also that I had a breakdown 2 years ago, which stemmed from own experience of living with a suicidal mother throughout my teens. The first year was about surviving, the second year about rebuilding, and I am at a place now where I feel I wonít ever have to go back to that desperate place again. I have more personal strength, more ability to look inwards and gain solace from myself. I have a long way to go though, and I am terrified about being on my own (Iíve been in ìseriousî relationships with women for the past 12 years, with my wife for 9 of thoseÖ) But also my breakdown definitely played a huge part in getting to this point in our relationship. My fear at the start of my breakdown that our relationship wouldnít be strong enough to survive it, and I would end up losing everything, seems to be coming true.

Particularly in the first year of my illness it manifested itself in me becoming very dependent, very clingy, and a little pathetic to be honest ñ regressing I suppose, asking for care. I was making unreasonable and inappropriate demands on my wife and I believe that she lost respect for me and withdrew from me. I in turn experienced the pain of asking for unconditional support and love and not getting it.

Perhaps this is the pain that I had to go through to be able to move on from my past. Perhaps the pain of my wife and I splitting up is also an emotional experience that I need to go through in order to release pain from the past. Perhaps I will come out of this strong and ready for a happier life. I really donít know.

The problem is that I love my wife. I love her very, very much ñ if I didnít this would be a very easy decision. She is a wonderful, bright, successful, attractive, caring woman. I am in deep, terrible pain as I am walking out on my wife and on the home we have built and the life we have shared. But over the past six months I have become very afraid that our long term happiness is very much in jeopardy. I donít know how much longer to wait for each of us to find stability and to translate that into our relationship, and I wonder if perhaps too much water has gone under the bridge, and the only way for us to break the cycle and find a truly adult, happy, non-dependant kind of relationship, is to move on and be with different people, taking with us everything we have learnt and starting from a basis of positivity rather than from one of pain and need.

The key difference that I have noted over the past year between my wife and I, is that I feel strongly that I want to foster good relationships with my family. My wife, conversely, is uncomfortable with all family-based events, both her own family, and mine. She cannot accept the love and welcome that my family have always given her, and she is uptight and almost aggressively defensive at family events. The very concept of ìfamilyî seems too painful and difficult for her. Family is becoming more and more important to me, and I also fear that I will never be able to share this with my wife. This also has implications for us having a family of our own ñ I fear for how it would be, whether it would be a healing experience for my wife, or something that could turn into an emotional nightmare for her.

I started my journey on this site over two years ago, and it feels good to come back here and write and communicate further. Your words have always been helpful to me, so any thoughts from your experiences would be very welcome indeed at this horrible and painful time.

I think that my anxiety at the moment could be summed up as followsÖ Have our problems from our childhoods defeated a relationship that could have been a lifelong, happy one, or did we seek each other out in order to develop emotionally, and what we can offer each other has now run its natural course, and it is right to move on?

Thanks,

Gareth

[Benjamin Fry]

Honestly it seems to me that you understand your situation very well. It is just painful to realise it. That in itself though is a very hard won step forward.

To answer your final question: the latter, respect and compassion, and yes, after all you deserve some happiness!