Stop Making Bad Relationships Work by Hiding From Truth

normally when we talk about gaslighting we're talking about the way an abuser twists your sense of reality and tries to make unacceptable situations acceptable to you like they're no big deal or they're not even happening okay and they're trying to make you feel like the problem is you you're causing problems by even questioning what's happening you are the problem it's your perception it's your failings it's the fact that you want something better than what you're getting now when someone does this to you it can be a form of emotional abuse but you know who also can do this to you sometimes you have you ever realized that you were gaslighting yourself why do people do that i'm going to talk about that in this video and i got a letter from a guy i'll call steve and he writes all right dear anna i recently came across your videos that really seem to jump off the screen in terms of relatability to the challenges my wife sharon has endured throughout her life she has cbtsd and how it affects our marriage today my name is steve and i have changed everybody's names here and my wife sharon and i have been together for almost nine years married for seven we have two beautiful and loving special needs children who both have autism they are five and two my wife has a fairly high level job in health care and i've been the family stay-at-home parent since our first child was born more than five years ago overall my wife and i agree that we have a strong marriage partnership that operates well and we feel that we have 75 to 80 percent of the pie but the last 20 to 25 percent of our marriage pie has usually been missing from our goal of a hundred percent meaning we both want a more loving connection and emotional and physical intimacy vulnerability acceptance desire and admiration for each other my wife has been aware for many years that she regularly has feelings of anxiety and depression she's usually taking one or multiple variations of medication some have helped better than others currently prozac and wellbutrin at times in the past she has also self-medicated abusing alcohol about a year ago while we were seeing a therapist together my wife was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder aka cptsd my wife feels strongly that the diagnosis stems from her childhood family environment predominantly her mother and later on in a toxic and abusive relationship with her significant other when she was between the ages of 15 and 27 for some time now multiple professionals and myself have communicated to sharon about concern of her self-esteem and loving and respecting herself first before anything else hmm that sounds like a euphemism this point has appeared to sink in to sharon and she's searching for the tools and skills to find love and acceptance from within first i love my wife and children dearly and will do absolutely anything for us to be together healthy and happy i know none of us is perfect but i clearly messed up on a few key opportunities in our marriage to love and connect with my wife when she really needed it from me i also need to improve my listening skills and find more mindfulness and calmness to my natural dominating personality that can be a force at times my only hope is that she will still want and love me the way i know i love her i know both of us must have want positivity determination and support from one another to find the missing and vital elements in our marriage but currently my wife is telling me and showing signs of avoidance uncertainty and pulling away through her emotional walls being up and feeling the need to run away we are seeing help via professional counseling books videos medication and prioritizing more quality time it's terrifying to me that it feels like she's searching for forgiveness and courage to open her heart to me the way we deserve each other some key points of our many deep conversations lately have been encouraging while making some positive breakthroughs but during these same conversations i'm being told some very devastating statements too she says she loves me but doesn't feel in love sharon doesn't believe that one person can fulfill all the needs a person has in a relationship doubting monogamous relationships and having the desire to explore and research the practice of polyamory or open marriage last week she said the idea of me having relations with another woman doesn't bother her i have communicated to her several times i believe to my soul that monogamy is the only type of marriage i can ever foresee finding happiness in and i cannot imagine setting any other example to our children now or anytime in the future i personally have zero doubt that if she opened her heart to me and we focused our efforts together within the marriage and building the love and intimacy each other desires in our relationship that we can absolutely feel love fulfillment and happiness in a monogamous relationship i'm trying hard to stay positive and mindful but keeping the negative thoughts and feelings at bay some days can be a challenge i'm trying very hard to show and communicate to my wife how much i love her but in these challenging times it feels as though there is a fine line between trying too hard and not enough a few days ago toward the end of our date day quality time she told me she cannot figure out why she is so anxious around me and holds the resentment she feels towards me i feel this wall is holding us back from healing and moving forward forgiveness past trauma effects even though we are spending more quality time together seeking professional help books etc my wife is telling me she knows she is emotionally unavailable and i know i'm feeling emotionally neglected lonely and inadequate it's so difficult and heart-wrenching because we both want to feel emotionally connected supported romance admired i know i want to feel these feelings only from my wife but in her mind she is having a hard time letting her subconscious feelings her heart want emotional connection from me i'm seeking clarity advice help and encouragement any thoughts or feedback you can offer would be greatly appreciated thank you okay this one's going to be hard so buckle up with your seat belt steve thank you for writing this is so lovable and honest of you and what an amazing person you are working as hard as you are to try to save the day here but i made this video about gaslighting oneself because i think that's what you're doing i think you're gaslighting yourself i think that there are some plain truths right in front of your nose and you are going to these extraordinary efforts to rationalize and justify and the first thing i picked up on when i was reading your letter is you were saying how much you liked my videos and said the relatability to the challenges that your wife has endured throughout her life it was so amazing if she said that okay she relates to it but i see this thing steve where you have projected your whole self and your emotions like into her and to where you're like if she could just let herself love me everything would be okay and i think that's a really um tough place to be and that's the least tough least of the tough places you are i think um you guys have two small kids that's a really hard thing for a couple two and five right but both kids have autism you don't write much about that and maybe it's one thing now and you're the stay-at-home parent and you're caring for these two small kids two and five so you can like pick them up and control them and i don't know how severe their autism is but that is you know you have been given an assignment in this life that is enormous and i would speculate because your wife is making a lot of noises about destabilizing the marriage in a way that it couldn't last right i'm going to talk about her in a minute but i would just speculate that you're operating from a existential fear here that if she runs away what are you gonna do what are you gonna do so you characterize the marriage that you both feel you've said this a lot we both feel this we both feel that but what you're saying you both feel is very misaligned with a lot of the stuff you're quoting your wife is saying and it seems like you've been able to compartmentalize a lot of the destructive stuff she's saying which is she's not in love with you she wants to start sleeping with other people she wouldn't care if you did she wants to run away uh these are pretty destructive so when you say that you both want the more loving connection what i'm hearing is that she's not wanting that she's not wanting that she's not into it right now but i i i'm gonna take your word for it that you guys are both trying and trying but she's not feeling it and that there's like a quarter of the marriage pie that's missing and that's where the love and connection is and that's a really important piece of the pie as we all know okay so then you say my wife's been aware for many years that she regularly has feelings of anxiety and depression okay she's usually taking one or more now here's again you've got so much detail about her i don't even see you in this steve like who are you what's going on with you but you've got a lot of detail on her almost like you're talking about a child who it would be your job to sort of manage all this here's what medications they're taking here's what they're feeling and then um this this really jumped out at me and you know people listening you can chime in if you want but when you say at times in the past she's also self-medicated by abusing alcohol so i just want to say that all abuse of substances is self-medication and as a person who's had a huge amount of alcoholism and drug addiction in my family of origin and people i've loved i would just say that when people say self-medicating it always sounds to me like hey somebody who has not made contact with any sort of recovery program or maybe just a really fancy one where people get to stay in denial about what it is like it's all self-medication that doesn't make it different from everyday alcoholism so abuse of alcohol and drugs is abuse of alcohol and drugs so that was sort of a red flag to me that you had a lot of denial going on about what's going on and maybe she does too and then also what you're talking about and i'm just sort of going on an intuition here um i am hearing a lot of this sort of runaway vibe runaway escape addict vibe and perhaps it's a projection based on people i've known but the pattern that you're describing here just sounds like that to me and to be honest with you steve i feel like this is something you need to be prepared for um so let's go a little deeper into what she's specifically saying you will do absolutely anything and you are you're doing absolutely anything to hold everybody together and that makes sense with these two little kids like it would be amazing if the family could stay together all right that would be really good for raising two autistic kids specifically for raising any kids it's good for the family to stay together but because they're autistic i don't really see how one of you could do it by yourself you know earn a living and care for the kids so um i clearly messed up you say on a few key opportunities in our marriage to love and connect with my wife when she really needed it from me so you don't explain that so i don't really know what that means but if i base it on everything else you've said here i'm going to guess that you're making up ways that you can take responsibility for her emotional unavailability but that you're not actually responsible i have a feeling you're not responsible for her emotional and availability i think it's i think it's her but i don't know you haven't told me all the details so i'll defer to you on that one you say i also need to improve my listening skills and find more mindfulness and calmness to my natural dominating personality that can be a force sometimes well you know me too that's that's my personality too i have to improve my listening skills and be more calm i have a natural dominating personality i just get all excited about stuff i'll do all the talking isn't this a great job for me i get to like talk to you for a really long time but that's what i'm like but that doesn't make me a bad spouse you know and all spouses have personalities so your personality is your personality um my only hope you say is that she will still want and love me the way i know i love her so when you say it's your only hope like i actually kind of believe you i think it's come to like completely dominate your mind it's become like you know your single-minded focus is to try to save the marriage right now um i mean it sounds like it's very much on the rocks right now more than you're kind of saying here so you say i know both of us must have want positivity determination and support from one another to find the missing and vital elements of our marriage um i guess it's i don't know this sounds like something you're constructing to be like hey if we just get more positive if we just go for it if we just do it the feeling will be there but i think that feeling of being in love and that feeling of attraction i mean having little kids definitely can stress a marriage having two autistic kids just like ratchet that up a number of notches right it can stress a marriage and really kind of put the kibosh on the romantic and sexual side of a marriage and that's just that's just life you know and it eventually passes but what you kind of need is the willingness actually to be there to be with that person and so when somebody's saying oh i want to start sleeping with other people she's currently telling you and showing signs of avoidance uncertainty pulling away through her emotional walls being up and feeling the need to run away oh good lord with two little kids right and being the breadwinner of the family that's terrifying that is just terrifying we are seeing help through professional counseling books videos medication prioritizing more quality time you're doing it you're doing everything people can do and then you say it's terrifying to me and i was kind of confused by what you said after that that it feels like she's searching for forgiveness why because she's done something wrong well we'll talk about that and courage to open her heart to me she's got a secret i think you're implying but i'm not sure what you're saying there some key points of our many deep conversations lately have been encouraging while making some positive breakthroughs but during these same conversations i'm being told some very devastating statements too she says she loves me but doesn't feel in love okay that's very bad okay sharon doesn't believe that one person can fulfill all the needs that each person has in a relationship doubting monogamous relationships and having the desire to explore and research the practice of polyamory or open marriage now i know you're going to get like a thousand comments on this and i'm going to ask everybody to be gentle but i would just say it's almost obvious that she's already having a sexual relationship with somebody outside the marriage i don't think that people bring it up if they think that they're going to get around it like it's already happening and and that's why this feels so bad that's my guess maybe she hasn't yet but this is her intention and just in my experience people who have that intention and are saying i'm not in love and you're doing everything you're trying so hard to hold it together i just think that's where it's going i think that's where it's going she doesn't want to be here and there are a number of people who watch this channel who say polyamory polyamory and you know if anybody out there actually makes it work okay fine you know i'm all for people like just have your life be happy for yourself but i will tell you like i live in northern california it's a relatively common thing here maybe compared to other places and never in my life have i met a couple who's happy with it i've met a lot of couples who say they're happy with it but there's just a whole bunch of crap and i'm just that's what i found and i know a whole bunch of polyamory advocates are going to go that's not true that's not true so i just go fine granted but in this relationship that you're writing about steve you're like i can no way no way all right so one thing i want to suggest to you is that you quit messing around and say no i'm not okay with that have a boundary and i'll tell you more about that in a minute trying to talk yourself into actually having control over this and it being okay and it's there's some wording you use here you say i personally have zero doubt if she opened her heart to me and we focused our efforts together within the marriage and building the love and intimacy each other desires in our relationship that we can absolutely feel love fulfillment and happiness in a monogamous relationship okay so here's where i think you're getting very enmeshed and dangerously uh you know kind of lost in her reality some might say codependent okay you have zero doubt that if she opened her heart so you know what i just want to say she did open her heart she opened her heart and she told you something that probably was very hard to tell you and it's that she is not into that she's not in love with you and she wants to have sex with other people she opened her heart and so this i i think that's the gaslighting of yourself there she's laid it right out on the table so we'll give her that right that's what she wants this is a terrible time in your life as a family for her to take off for this but it sounds like you know she's hoping she can do this with your blessings and stay together because i'm sure the kids caring for the kids is a huge concern but if it's not okay with you i don't see any scenario where you can do it and so i'll talk to you in a minute about you know alternatives that you can you know how you can keep raising your kids despite all despite not being able to tolerate this and i totally understand i wouldn't be able to tolerate it either so you say you have zero i personally have zero doubt that's just such strong words for like complete doubt you actually she has opened her heart and she isn't happy it's you i think you're speaking for yourself i have zero doubt that if i open my heart and focus my efforts i could be happy in a monogamous relationship that's what you're saying but she's saying not okay and you say i'm trying hard to stay positive and mindful all right and that's also gaslighting yourself this this is not positive um and mindful would be good and mindful would mean accepting that this is kind of catastrophic to your marriage all right this is not something to stay positive about and you might be from a school of thought where you feel like if you just keep like thinking positively you can make this go good i think there is some hope that she would sort of like get through this and come back and you guys can continue to have a stable marriage but i don't think you can make that happen by being mr nice guy all right there's a book called no more mr nice guy by robert glover i think it's great it's a very powerful and shockingly direct book for men who are codependent with women and who don't stand up for themselves and who end up being emotionally abused in some cases and who don't get the love that they want this book is written for some variety but definitely it would be appropriate for you and i read it at the suggestion of someone in my life and i just thought it was terrific and i would wholeheartedly agree that what's attractive in a man is his personal integrity his boundaries his willingness to stand up for himself and not taking you know just not taking that's not attractive and in fact in male female dynamics it's pretty common that sort of letting yourself be emotionally abused like that kills sexual attraction so i'm just going to say there that's one area that i could suggest you might want to explore real quick is your codependence and check out that book and see if it speaks to you and if it does you could possibly change the energy in your relationship very quickly but this is serious you know and i i can tell you for myself one of the things that's attractive about my husband to me is that he has boundaries you know he just there's there's almost never a situation where i i could get away with walking all over him i would always have to talk to him as an equal and and respect him and take no for an answer when the answer is no when and so yeah i really encourage you to take a look at that okay i'm trying hard to stay positive and mindful so i'm going to encourage you to get negative and mindful mindful and honest and you're saying but keeping negative thoughts and feelings at base someday can be a challenge don't even try let them come um now i know you mentioned very lightly here that i think you had some trauma as a kid i'm not sure but you may want to check out my daily practice it's really good for coping with like floods of negative feelings and i don't really see any way around some pain here i don't see a no pain way through this there's going to be an adjustment and it's going to be hard but when you get free of this desire to try to control your reality and your wife and your feelings and how you think and all that when you ha when you really let go of that control and you allow the chips to fall where they naturally need to fall i think you can have a lot more peace inside and one way or another it will become possible for you to find love the main thing for you right now is these kids right i divorced my kid's dad when they were one and four not not an easy time and we had we ended up it was very really really hard at first but we ended up working out an incredibly positive way of doing that that i think um ended up being okay for the kids the kids we've ended up creating a very good environment for raising kids i think optimally you want parents together but that was no longer an option with him and me it just you know without going into it it was not an option so when that's the situation always the first consideration is to do the best you can by the kids which means peace harmony um keeping them shielded from the drama right so you say i'm trying very hard to show and communicate how much you love her but in these challenging times it feels as though there is a fine line between trying too hard and not enough and um and i don't think it's a fine line at all i think you're trying too hard that's my opinion you asked so it sounds like you're trying way too hard and what it ends up being is kind of a irrational and controlling effort to make things turn out the way you want you said a a few days ago toward the end of some quality time together she said she can't figure out why she's so anxious around you and holds the resentment she feels and you say i feel this wall is holding us back from healing and moving forward so again like the wall she's the wall the wall is not something outside of her it's not what she is holding you back from healing and moving forward because she doesn't want to move forward that's what she's telling you she does not want to so she can't figure out why she's anxious and feels resentful and you know yeah well that's i i think every married person has felt anxious around their partner and resentful towards them so that part's normal it's the part where she wants to sleep with other people and it isn't in love with you that is the elephant in the room here so you say even though you're doing all these good things of the time together the professional help books your wife is telling you she knows she's emotionally available and you know you're feeling emotionally neglected lonely and inadequate and it's difficult and heart-wrenching you say because we both and you put all caps because we both want to feel emotionally connected supported romance admired again i'm not hearing that from her um maybe she wishes it were so but it's not given what you know about yourself how important monogamy monogamy is to you that it's unthinkable to do anything else and that's i mean that's common that's how i feel certainly that's common her wanting to sleep with other people is a bad way to connect with you and she knows certainly that it would it would ruin her relationship with you so she's frightened and you're frightened and i feel for you guys you would ask clarity advice help and encouragement so i've started on that clarity about what i think is going on advice to read that book to back off if my advice to you also since you've asked is i think that it would be time to do some practical research on how as a divorced couple that you guys would co-parent your kids i would imagine it's a super full-time job and someone's going to be needing to earn the money and if you were a man or a woman and you are the non-earning partner staying at home i would say it's time to do some serious research about what you would do to work at least part-time and support yourself if a split happened because of her problems with depression anxiety running away the fact that she was in an abusive relationship before many people were that doesn't that's not like damning to somebody she came from a family where her mother caused her to get cptsd then between the ages of 15 and 27 she was in an abusive relationship and when you gave me your ages you know there wasn't it sounds like there wasn't much time at all between when she got out of the abusive relationship and got with you and she just sounds like somebody who doesn't have very much healing yet and now she married some nice guy she had two kids the two kids are special needs so i can certainly understand if she feels really scared about this she knows she's got a lot of responsibility maybe she's feeling trapped and hopefully she'll come through and find a way to hang in there with her life and take responsibility and raise the kids well at the very least and i would love it if she could stay with you because that's what you really want so for you steve saying no do not agree to the polyamory she if she decides to do that that's her decision but it's not okay with you you've said that so clearly you cannot see any scenario where that would be okay with you um check out the book no more mr nice guy i'll go ahead and put a link to it down in amazon i don't have any kind of an agreement i'd love to have robert glover on my show sometime and talk about this i think it's a really important book and it connects a lot to problems that happen for people who are traumatized as kids um and i think it could be life-changing for a lot of people i realized when i read the book that some of the men i've known in my life that they read it i recognized some of the things that they said and did and i was just like yeah good for them good for them i appreciate it i appreciate it so that's some healing and another thing you might want to try and you know you haven't said she's an actual alcoholic but al-anon al-anon is a 12-step program for families of alcoholics and one of the like core ideas of it is you learn to get your focus off the other person and onto yourself and that's my main suggestion to you steve is get that focus back on yourself how are you feeling what are you what is what are your instincts what is your body telling you about what's going on you know what are you able to relax and be at peace enough to let go of the effort to try to control perception and reality and control the outcome of the relationship because trust me you can be loved and you will be loved and you don't have to like force that to happen people will love you voluntarily you can be loved for being yourself and i think it's really cool that you're making an effort to work on this thing where you you know you're kind of too dominant or you know things that bother her about you it's always good to you know to be self-aware and to work on being a good listener those are just perfectly good things but i want you to stop blaming yourself sometimes this is the hand of cards that we get dealt and it's really hard to get from the middle of it to the part where you're free from it that is a bumpy road but it's a good road and one way or another for you to have peace for you to be able to relax and know that you'll be loved and that you're safe and that your kids are safe and you'll be able to parent them and have a livelihood and a safe place to live all of those things are things that you can begin to focus on when you bring that focus back to yourself for anybody watching if you think that you've been affected by complex ptsd there's a quiz you can take down below where i list 20 signs that you may be affected and you know steve i think it might be also you i don't know i think sometimes living with somebody who traumatizes you can lead to cptsd the fact that you gaslight yourself is a little bit of a clue that something's going on and if you like this topic and you want to learn more about how to have a successful relationship with somebody who has cptsd i've got a video lined up for you right here and i will see you very soon [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 64,673

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Id: tR-2qaEO2Ts

Length: 30min 2sec (1802 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021