Dear Miss U,
I have been having a tough time going through the distance. I love my boyfriend with all my heart, and I want nothing to come between us, but that is very difficult with my parents.
My parents are very strict, I can’t make any decisions in my life, and when I try to make a decision, I am usually yelled at and hit. Making me more and more depressed. The worst that has ever happened is that I have been choked by my own father by a decision I tried to make. Me and my loved one talk on Skype, it’s the one of the only ways we can talk, and when I try to make a decision, my parents won’t allow me to talk to him for a week or more.
I go to a therapist every 3 weeks because I have suicidal thoughts and injure myself. This happens whenever I can’t talk to my loved one. He helps me get rid of these thoughts, and whenever we talk to each other, they just seem to go away. My therapist told me I have depression and what she calls, “separation anxiety.” Whenever I can’t speak with my loved one, I feel lost, cry, and keep to myself, just thinking and thinking about those horrible thoughts.
I just don’t know what I should do if I can’t talk to him. I am too afraid to confront my parents, because I don’t know what they will do if I try to tell them how I feel. My parents are driving me and my loved one even farther away from each other. I don’t want him to go away, that’s the very last thing I want to happen. Please help me, I don’t know what to do.
Crystal
Dear Crystal,
Your parent’s treatment of you is not ok, and I am deeply sorry you have to suffer through it. I am heartened by the fact you aren’t far off being a legal adult at which point you can move out and never look back. I strongly advise you to save as much money as you can – get a job if you haven’t already. Any job. No job can possibly be worse than continuing to live in that household – and to put research into what community resources will be available to help you get on your feet. Different areas will have different charities and government support, but there will be something. Be educated and prepared. Do what you have to do to stay safe right now, don’t provoke them, and then get the hell out of there as soon as you can.
That aside, it’s great you are talking to someone, and you should probably run anything I say by your therapist because they know you and your situation better than I do.
I have to be honest here, relying on your love for your mental health is a terrible idea. Too much can go wrong with that. As much as possible, try to work towards being whole and stable so that you can come to your relationships from a place of want rather than need. It won’t happen overnight, but it will hugely benefit not only you but your relationship with your love as well.
In the meantime if you can’t talk to him, write to him. Keep a journal letter (a book full of letters or diary entries) and talk to him there. It might be worthwhile both of you learning some kind of code so that in the off chance your parents find the book, they couldn’t easily read it. You can post this book to him using a little of the money from the job I spoke of in paragraph one.
It’s unlikely he’ll write back to address specific letters within the book as time will have passed, but he could instead share his life with you so that you don’t miss too much when your parents don’t let you talk, and he can include things to help cheer you up so you can re-read his old letters on bad days.
I want you to know that your parents can’t stop him loving you and they can’t stop you loving him. They can be a thorn in your side for a couple more years, but beyond that they are powerless.
Hold on for one more day.
Dear Miss U,
I hope you can help me. I recently started a new relationship and its long distance. We try to see each other every weekend (we are 4 hours apart), well mostly, I drive to see him and he’s only visited twice. We weren’t friends before we started dating, but we knew of each other and he pursued me for longer than we’ve been together.
Unfortunately, I’m starting to notice things about him that I didn’t know before we became a couple. He only has female friends, and at first I was ok with this fact. However, when he’s hanging out with them while we are apart, I find myself becoming angry. I’ve started to actively look for things about those girls and bring them down. If you knew me, you would know that this isn’t me, and yet every time he mentions hanging out with “Sarah” or “Katie,” I become envious because they get to spend time with him, when I don’t.
What should I do, how can I overcome this newfound anger toward women that my boyfriend calls friends? For the record, I’ve tried talking to him about it, I’ve attempted to set limits, and I developed a criteria (not girls you’re attracted to, every flirted with, etc), but it makes me feel crazy and it leads to more fights than love.
Any advice you can give is welcomed,
Traveling Hearts
Dear Traveling Hearts,
Trying to put restrictions on friendships that existed well before your relationship was even conceived is always a terrible idea. If he’s the kind of guy worth dating – if he is at all loyal – he is going to stand by his friends and protect those bonds, even from you.
When you start feeling jealous ask yourself: “would I feel this way if Katie had a penis?” Because if your only reason for being jealous is that his friends have vaginas that’s really kind of daft. You aren’t attracted to every man you meet, are you? Do you see every man as a potential bed-buddy? Probably not. So why then do you feel threatened based on the gender of his friends?
Insert a man’s name into his sentences. If “I’m going for a drink with Mark after work” doesn’t bother you then “I’m going for a drink with Sarah after work” shouldn’t either.
With that said, you should feel like a priority. If he’s always making time for his near-proximity friends and not you, then you need to address that. Make time for dates. Time to talk deeply and have fun together. Remember too that he is dating you. He chose you. Not them. You. That means something; don’t discount it!
