Dear Cynthia, I am in a committed relationship with my partner of 5 years, 3 of which we have lived together. My partner has suffered from severe depression for years and was pretty bad off when we first met. There were times when sticking by her side was really difficult when her tendency was to push me away. I loved her and I stayed with her through thick and thin. Today, with medication and regular therapy, she seems to be doing really well. Of course the things that she used to tell me have now turned into "secrets" that she tells everyone except for me. So perhaps her depression is not better, she just stopped telling me about it. Somewhere along the way, the lines of communication broke down. She recently lied to me about someone she met while away on a busines trip. When I asked about this girl, she outright lied to me about talking to her at all. I found out by our phone records that she talks to this person at least three times a day and its been going on for the past three months. Her lies have snowballed and it's caused me to be this snooping, jealous, miserable person and I can't stand it. This isn't the first time that she's lied to me. I'm at a loss. I do not pretend to be the "perfect partner" but I don't lie and I don't cheat. I've always said "if we get to the point that you are that unhappy, please just leave me". She swears that nothing happened with this girl but I have to be honest, I don't believe her after all the lies she's told! We tried to see her therapist together and I felt like she took her side while she sat there and blamed me for making her have to lie to me. She said I wouldn't have understood and even if she told the truth, that I would have accused her of lying anyway. I don't know how to recover and go on in this relationship. She says she loves me and her life would mean nothing without me. I don't know what to do.
Well, from what you say, it sounds like your partner is having a love affair, lying to you, and not sharing her intimate, private thoughts and feelings with you. It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to stay in a relationship under those circumstances, but you are still there and wondering what to do. This must mean there's more to the story than I know so far. Let me brainstorm to see if we can figure out what information is missing.
Are you more in love with her than you ever have been with anyone and can imagine ever being again, or is there something else that makes it worth it to you to put up with her behaviors? Are you afraid to be without her? Are you attracted to women who are not really available emotionally? Is being with someone who lies, cheats and keeps secrets familiar to you in terms of past relationships or your parents' relationship, or your relationship as a child with your parents? Are you attracted to the excitement of not knowing what's going to happen and using detective skills to try to figure it out? Do you think all you deserve is to be with someone who lies, cheats and keeps secrets? Are you irrationally jealous or paranoid enough that you could be wrong about her having an affair and lying? Where your parents jealous or paranoid? Was your relationship based on her being ill with depression and your being her caretaker, and without that the relationship doesn't work?
Tell me if any of these questions resonate with you at all, or trigger any ideas for you about what else is going on in this situation. It sounds incredibly painful for you, regardless of what else is involved!
Warmly,
Cynthia
Myturn
Guest
Aug 04, 2006
4:29 PM
Dear Cynthia, Thank you for your reply. I found a strange comfort in hearing someone say that it sounds like she’s cheating because that is truly what is in my heart. I cannot prove that my partner cheated on me but what I can prove is that she lied over and over again. I cannot say that I’m here because I love my partner more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I feel so detached from her now and it hurts just to be around her. I don’t consider myself “irrationally jealous” however I must admit that I do have a jealous side to me, more so than I’d like. I was married several years ago and my husband would lie to me about where he was and come home at all hours of the morning with no explanation other than he was out. After dealing with that for over a year, I finally couldn’t deal with what it was doing to me and I left him. I suspected that he was cheating but could never prove it until I left him and my worst fears were confirmed by people close to me. I believe that I will carry that pain and the fear of going through that again with me forever. My past is not a secret to my partner, she knows my fears and the pain I’ve been through. When I feel insecure, I ask her questions and her responses are short and vague which in turn, prompts more questions and I’m accused of “interrogating” her. This has been an ongoing battle in our relationship. We met online 5 years ago and through hours and hours of conversations, I learned a lot about her and her past. I guess I never truly understood how bad of a place she was in and my immediate reaction was to want to help. We went through two years of breaking up and making up, she was in and out of the hospital and battling with her sexuality. I lost someone I loved dearly, about 16 years ago to suicide and perhaps this was my 2nd chance to get it right. I wanted to love her more than she had ever been loved before. I fought for her and lost and after two years of fighting I decided it was time to start seeing other people, she pushed me away. I started dating someone and tried to maintain our relationship while at the same time receiving phone messages, text messages and e-mails saying that she loved me and missed me. Needless to say, I came back. In the past three years, things have changed so much. We have been in a 100% committed relationship, her depression had gotten better and our relationship has grown. We have always had a difficult time communicating when things go wrong. I talk things to death and she would rather just sweep things under the carpet. Which brings us to her business trip… She went away for a week on business about 3 months ago. I knew she met a number of people down there and I would occasionally ask her if she had heard from any of them. I never suspected anything. Her answers, as usual, were vague. She said she had talked to a few of them once or twice. Early in July, I had looked at her cell phone for a number and saw several phone calls and text messages from one of the women she met down there. I didn’t let on that I had seen the calls but asked her again and she said no, that she hadn’t talked to any of them. I started checking her phone and everyday after that, all of her call logs and text messages were deleted. After a week went by of seeing that, I confronted her again and that’s when things blew up. She had been lying about her contact with this woman and I asked her why. She said it was because she knew that I would right away assume that something had happened between them, I disagreed. After telling me that they had just been in touch recently, I looked back at our phone records and she had been calling her about three times a day since she had been home (3 months). Again, when I called her on it, she blamed me and said that if I trusted her, than she wouldn’t have had to lie to me. Things are a mess right now and I don’t know what to do. Thanks for listening.
Well, if I were in your shoes, I'd get some separation (stay with a friend or something) and start couples counseling with my partner and a therapist who had had extensive training and experience in couples counseling. I might also check out some CODA meetings (co-dependents anonymous), to get support for taking care of myself, and to let my partner face her own natural consequences without my rescuing her from them. Personally, I wouldn't want to spend my time and energy and heart trying to feret out the truth while my partner was being vague and lying. It would be a bottom line for me to be in a relationship to know what my partner was thinking and feeling and be told the truth.
But that's me; not everyone feels as I do, so you have to decide for yourself whether you want to continue living the way you are, get some help from a couples counselor and/or CODA, or find another solution.
So what do you think?
Warmly,
Cynthia
Last Edited by Cynthia on Aug 06, 2006 8:43 AM
Myturn
Guest
Aug 07, 2006
5:27 AM
Dear Cynthia, I tried to be as honest as I could about my past and my feelings my reactions, in hopes that I could find out my own flaws in this. I am by no means the innocent bystander here. I can tell you that my reactions to my partners “lack of sharing” are often hurtful and accusing. I know I carry a huge amount of pain with me from my past and it’s easy to fall back in to being an insecure, jealous person that I know I don’t want to be. I often wonder if it’s my own insecurities that shaped where our relationship is today. She seems to think so. I feel like I’m reacting to what she’s done and she says she’s reacting to what I’ve done.
I feel like walking away sometimes because it feels like there’s no way around this but then I get to thinking, what if it is me? Will I just ruin my next relationship too? We have decided to try counseling with someone other than her regular therapist. Her therapist said that she can’t see us as a couple and also see my partner on her own. She’s been going to her for years, she tells her everything. I have to admit that it was my partners idea to go to counseling, she said we won’t get through this without it. I’ve agreed to go.
In your last reply, you said: “I might also check out some CODA meetings (co-dependents anonymous), to get support for taking care of myself, and to let my partner face her own natural consequences without my rescuing her from them.”
Can you possibly expand on this. I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here. Thank you Cynthia!
I took a leap of intuition in recommending CODA, hoping if you went, you'd either feel such a sense of being in the right place, or no connection, and then you'd know whether or not they can be helpful. My guess was that you might have a need to be needed. That you might feel less insecure with someone who needs some caretaking, because their need for you would give you some insurance against their leaving. This phenomenon can be changed through the help of CODA.
Jealousy is probably generally a result of not getting normal developmental needs met as a child. We all have more or less the same needs, and when they are met, we develop to the next stage emotionally. When they aren't, there's a hole in our development that affects how we think, feel and behave for the rest of our lives, unless we can finally get that need met later. Actually, we have to do more than get the need met, when it doesn't happen until later. We have to get the need met (consistently over time) and build the neurons in our brains from the part of us that experienced not getting our needs met (a part of our brains stuck at 3 yrs old, or 5, or 10...) to the part of our brains that experienced our needs getting met as an adult. When that happens, we feel, think and act as we would have all along, if we'd gotten our needs met as a child.
Using jealousy as the outcome of what happened to you, let me brainstorm examples of what could have happened when you were a child.
Your parents might have favored your brother or sister, or their drugs or alcohol, or their addiction to anything, or each other or themselves, or anything else over you and your needs. Your needs for love, attention, being seen, being admired, being valued, physical affection, conversation, emotional and physical care, protection, play, guidance, education about how to handle your feelings and other people, and almost any other needs we all have as a child (yes, all of the above are absolutely necessary for normal development that leads to happy, functional adulthood) were neglected or ridiculed.
Another possibility is that your parents were very jealous, and/or untrustworthy, and by word or by action, taught you not to trust anyone's loyalty. In that case, you didn't get your need for education about who and when to trust and who and when not to trust, and how to thrive regardless of what those around you choose to do.
These are just a couple of examples, does anything ring a bell?
Last Edited by Cynthia on Aug 07, 2006 6:42 PM
Myturn
Guest
Aug 08, 2006
5:13 AM
Dear Cynthia, My parents divorced when I was 7. I remember them fighting a lot before they split up. There is a lot about my early childhood that I don't remember. My mother has been married 6 times, twice was to my father. They remarried and then split up again. My mother had some rough relationships, I believe she needed to be needed. She never put us in harms way, we were always her first priority. I have two older siblings, one of which was a brother who had special needs (Cerebral Palsy). He didn't live at home with us but came home on a regular basis for visits. He was everything to all of us, he was very special. Not only was my mothers attention on him when he was there, but so was mine. I never left his side, we were inseperable. I honestly don't recall ever feeling "left out" as a child.
My mother and I are very close, she’s always been there for all of us. My father on the other hand is distant, unemotional and doesn’t have a whole lot of contact with us. He remarried many years ago and his wife is hateful. With her help, he has managed to alienate both myself and my sister. We talk to him about once a month, if that, and it’s a chore to pick up the phone. He rarely will initiate the call. His wife has been the cause of many battles. I’ve tried to ignore my feelings for her and keep in contact with my father because I do love him. I resent the fact that he hardly ever calls me but that’s the way he’s always been and God knows I can’t change that now.
Thank you again, I feel like we keep getting deeper and deeper. This is so much easier than talking to someone face to face. I feel like I’m taking advantage of your kindness though, like I should be paying for this. I’m thankful that I found your website, I wish I lived in your area. In addition to couples counseling, do you think I should see someone on my own? Is it best to see someone other than the person we are seeing together? Thanks again.
I'm so glad I could get you started in the direction of understanding what goes on inside you, so you can work toward resolving old emotional pain and be happier in your relationships. It does seem that there are no simple answers to what you are working on, and I do wish we could continue to follow the threads that go deeper still. Individual therapy is certainly a good idea in addition to couples work, and definitely with someone besides your couples counselor. Understanding and resolving your own emotional wounds will improve your ability to love the way you want in relationships.
Let me know if I can do anything more to help you, and please feel free to check in and let us know how you are doing.
Warmly,
Cynthia
Last Edited by Cynthia on Aug 08, 2006 6:14 AM
