Long-married wife struggles with self-esteem
Dear Holding On: As a newly married man, your husband was showing you who he was. He may love you deeply, but his relatively narrow sexual preferences are quite obvious.
Your shame over his rejections means that you have spent the last quarter century justifying someone else's superficial and unkind assessment of you.
This armchair psychologist wants to look you in the eye and remind you that no one else has the right to define you!
At this point, your goal should be to find ways to reframe your reactive emotions and find a way to fairly assess this relationship. Do you want to stay with him?
I hope a day will come when you can stop pinning your personal self-esteem to your husband's narrow metric, and quite honestly love yourself for everything that you are, and exactly as you are. When you do, you will come into your own power, and the balance in your marriage will shift. Individual counseling would be very useful for you.
Dear Amy: My husband's cousin "Jonathan" is extremely well off. Jon and his wife invite us to many of their parties for their four children, and we attend every single one, bringing a gift each time.
Recently we attended a baby shower for their fourth child, bringing an expensive gift and a blanket I had knit for them. We never got a thank you.
We bought our house last year and invited family and friends over to celebrate. Jon and his wife said they would attend with their four children but did not show up.
We saw on social media that the two of them went out to a nice dinner that same night. We were hurt.
Today my mother hosted a beautiful baby shower for our first child.
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