quote:Originally posted by matilda: if I'm the source of my H's humiliation; if every time he looks at me he feels bad about himself, feels like a failure; if he feels he doesn't deserve me, isn't good enough for me, all the other crap I've written about before, how in the hell can he continue to love ME?
That’s an easy one, Mattie.
You’re not the source of his humiliation. He is. You said it in your post. It’s self-loathing.
You’re trying to make him feel good about himself, and he sees that. Running away from you would do nothing to his self-esteem, and he knows it.
Why does he love you? I read somewhere that we think we can list a bunch of qualities that make us love a person. They’re honest, fun, etc. etc. But, we miss the point. We love someone because they have lovable qualities. These are much more difficult to define.
He’s not looking for your forgiveness, Mattie. You’ve already given him that. He’s looking for some way… Any way… to forgive himself.
It isn’t working for him, but he can’t think of a better way. I like Mick’s analogy (read it on another thread somewhere):
I’ve been boiling this egg for over an hour, and it’s still hard.
Perhaps the only thing you can do to help him is to stop letting him use you to play this head-game he has going on. Have you thought about what I said? Maybe if you just out-and-out tell him that it’s his problem, and he has to deal with it. Tell him you’re not going anywhere while he works it out. That you’ll continue to love him while he works it out. But you’re not going to contribute to his bad feelings.
