Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr Margarita Holmes.
Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in 3 continents, he has been training with Dr Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.
Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.
Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer,
I’ve been living with my boyfriend for more than a year now. He is 6 years younger than me. I am 30 while he is 24. He is quite good-looking, so many girls, even boys, notice him. I started to feel these insecurities that caused a big dilemma in our relationship.
I don’t allow him to go out with friends. I always attempt to hack his Facebook account because he has a rule from the very beginning not touch each other’s social media accounts as he wanted to leave some privacy for both us.
Sometimes I get a chance to check his phone and FB but I don’t see anything strange.
I know he is not doing anything that will hurt me but I am afraid of the fact that he might do it eventually if he gets a chance. He told me everything how much of a playboy he was when he was single and even when he was in a relationship. His past is eating at my clear mind and giving malicious meaning to all his actions towards other girls.
He always says that I should trust him because he is tired of defending himself. He reassures me that he is faithful and loyal. I asked him to stop talking to some of his female friends because I’m not comfortable with them talking to him.
When I get mad at him, I walk out and show to other people that I am mad at him, normally the reason why I get mad is when I think that he is doing something behind my back. When I get mad, I tend to hurt him physically and verbally. When I get mad, I threaten him that I will kill myself. When I get mad, I always accuse him and ask him to leave the house. It’s just that I can’t control my emotions when my other side is convincing me his love is not genuine, but I know he really loves me.
I know my actions aren’t appropriate but I really don’t know how to change my attitude and my treatment towards my boyfriend. I am afraid, one day he will realize that I am too much and he’ll decide to leave me.
He always tells me to change my attitude but I don’t know how.
Too much paranoia and insecurities are causing my unacceptable actions.
Please help me.
Regards,
Cora
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Dear Cora,
Thank you for your message.
At the start of your relationship with your boyfriend (let’s call him Art), he regaled you with stories from his past, which featured him as a playboy with a fondness for infidelity. He then insisted on keeping his social media accounts secret from you, supposedly in order to leave you both some privacy.
Now, no matter what sterling qualities Art may possess – and interestingly you fail to mention any, except that he is good-looking – his track record and desire for secrecy should be huge red flags for anyone considering a relationship with him.
This is not to say that he cannot change for the right woman, merely to say that he does not seem at this moment to be in the right frame of mind to do so (his comparative youth may be relevant here).
You are not the first, and will not be the last, woman to believe that obstacles like these can be overcome. The tactics you chose were to bolster your mutual love by hacking into his accounts, forbidding him to see his friends and acting up generally whenever you thought he was transgressing the limitations you imposed on him. You have ranted and raved, threatened to throw him out, threatened to kill yourself, but it seems life then just goes back to the way it was beforehand.
So just how well has this worked for you? He has not changed while you remain as insecure as ever. As to the suggestion that you may be paranoid, a man who parades his past infidelities and cloaks his social media activities in secret can scarcely be surprised if his girlfriend is not suspicious. A typical defense in these situations is to accuse the suspicious party of paranoia, thus shifting attention away from the possibility of betrayal and on to the mindset of the accuser.
Given Art’s clear unwillingness to change his ways, it seems that he is simply not as invested in this relationship as someone in love with you ought to be. Your choice therefore is clear: stay and enjoy more of the same heartache or get rid of him and face a brighter future.
All the best,
JAF Baer
Dear Cora:
No matter how manipulatively Art has behaved, as Mr Baer suggests, you and only you are ultimately responsible for your own behavior, and your behavior is not pretty. It is not pretty in and of itself. A grown woman who thinks that forbidding anyone to talk to anyone else can ever work is, most probably, deluded. Neither is it pretty to him and, as your letter suggests and saddest of all, most of all to yourself.
It can change, but at the moment, I feel it cannot change sufficiently for his respect (and far more importantly, for your ownself-respect) to return. Not without seismic behavior change on your part. And the most important part of this change is that you willingly take it on NOT to get him back but because, first and foremost, for yourself.
And the ironic thing about it is that you have to change because you want to and not just because doing so will make your relationship more stable (which is just more of the same).
In other words, why are you still a couple? Why would a good looking man who used to be attracted to other women (putting the most positive spin that he no longer is as much since he is in love with you) and is obviously attractive to other women, stay with someone who so unreasonably spies on and restricts his social life and claws at him and makes empty threats when she doesn’t get his way?
I suspect he gets something when you behave as crazily as you do, that it probably confirms the view he has of himself. An example of this view might be: “I am so attractive that women go crazy when they cannot have me all to themselves.”
Whatever it is – and that too is not very pretty – you are responding to the subtext he has provided and it is making you crazy (and thus behaving crazily).
This is not the appropriate column to discuss this at length (unless, perhaps, if you write us again) so I encourage you to look at this hypothesis more deeply. If not anything else, it will help separate your needs from his. It will also help you individuate from whatever your view is of how a woman in love will behave…and these, I feel, are the first steps in truly changing…not for him or for your love…but for yourself.
All the best,
MG Holmes
Need advice from our Two Pronged duo? Email twopronged@rappler.com with subject heading TWO PRONGED.Unfortunately the volume of correspondence precludes a personal response.
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