I am a 31 year old female and my fiance is 37 years old,we have been together just shy of 4 years now. We love each other very much and have had our share of problems that we have been able to work through, until now. We do not live together for various reasons, I attend college in my town 100 miles away, and he has to work for his company while they are working on getting his green card. Our plan was to get married after I finished college in eight months and hopefully his green card would be done. We are opposites in personality, I am very verbal and he is a very closed person. Neither of us have ever been married, nor do we have any children. He is from the Netherlands and has been in the US for over five years now. He brings his mother to the US every year to visit him the first time was for six months and it was a complete disaster for him. He came to see me every saturday, not wanting to be parted from me for that length of time, but his mother reacted terribly to his visits and he was miserable with every visit. She seems to be very threatened that he has a girlfriend, according to him she feels I am going to be a threat to her future in some way. Needless to say she and I have never met. The second year she came for four months, I told him instead of trying to come and see me, that he should enjoy his visit with her and come back to see me after she left. I was studying and doing my clinical rotation so for me it was fine. I missed him terribly, but this arrangement seemed to work out well in the two years that followed. This year was to be the same arrangement, only this time she was coming in the middle of my summer vacation from college, I was not pleased at hearing this and he had not bothered to tell me he and his mother had already arranged for her arrival in the beginning of July. I was upset naturally, butI eventually accepted this, what choice did I have. Everything was fine, we went on our summer trip and she came the following week. He called me on the phone each night and we talked as we usually do, but last month things began to change. He stopped calling nightly, and I was lucky if he called me 2-3 times a week, when I asked him if there was something wrong his excuse was that he was tired and had gone to bed rather than call me. Then three weeks ago I tried calling him, I didn't hear a word from him for three days for he would not return my messages and would turn off his answering machine when I called and I knew he was home early in the morning. I finally got a response when he wrote me a E-mail that basically told me he loved me, but that for reasons he could not explain to either me or himself that he couldn't see me again. He said he was listening to his nature and he knew he would end up hurting me in the end. I was shocked and hurt, and more than a little angry that he would be doing this now when his mother was expected to return this month. We had been parted for three months and now he has a problem coming back to me. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he wouldn't, so we have been corresponding by e-mail. He has written me several letters, none of which gave any reason why he would want to break up other than it was not my fault, that he still loved me and always would, and that he could not explain to me what he himself could not understand. He keeps telling me that it is not over, yet he says he doesn't know if he will be coming back to see me or talk to me again. He has completely shut me off from his life and will not end our relationship for he wants to keep writing me, and does nearly everyday. So I need a little advice here. I am completely confuse and can not think what I should do. My mind says to leave him and don't look back, but my heart tells me to love him and try and figure out a way to get him back and find out what is at the heart of all this. My intuition tells me that his mother has had a hand in all this, for we have never met, I can tell through things that he has told me that she is very skilled in manipulating him. I am crushed emotionally, and I don't know how to fight for him. I don't even know why he has left me, or even if he has left. I love him and don't want to lose him. I am so confused and would appreciate any advice that could be sent my way.<P>Thanks<P>Kym

Hi Kym!<BR>I probably can't offer you any advice, but if its any consolation, my boyfriend and I are going through something similar (just without the mother).<BR>We are communicating through emails, and he doesn't want to see me. He says he's trying to work things out, but feels shut down emotionally. Obviously this is extremely painful and confusing for me - I know we have problems, I just don't understand why he doesn't want to open up and talk about it...<P>Like you Kym, I have often thought of ending it, just for my own sanity, but I just can't. I know he loves me, and of course I love him, and I just can't walk away until I know for sure, it's over...<P>It is a terrible position to be in, I know...<BR>I am trying to get on with my life, leaning on my friends for support.. but it is hard.<P>I hope you figure out what to do! Good luck.<BR>

Thanks AmandaMary,<P>I see we are both in the same boat. I appreciate your reply and it sounds like our boyfriends are very much alike in their aspects of dealing with situations, or is this case, not having to deal with this situation. It's hard to fight a wall of silence, and it is even cruel. It would be so much easier if they said I am ending it with you, I can't explain why, but I need to work things out for my self and when I do, I will talk to you then. It would at least give me closure, and a place to move on from. This hanging on not knowing is driving me crazy, and his timing is not the greatest. I love him, but I won't give him the easy out either. If he wants to leave me then he is going to have to decide that. He brought us down this path, he will just have to finish it. Thanks for your reply, it means a lot to know I am not alone, and there is someone else who can understand the pain and frustration I am feeling. I hope it all works out for you.<P>Kym

Perhaps I can give some objective observations that will paint a clearer picture. I am not in your situation however there is something drastically missing that is vital to your relationship. The foundation of your union is to be that you have both chosen each other over everyone else. I understand that's hismother and she's lives so far away and she loves him yada yada yada. Bottom line this man needs to be able to freely, ofhis own will, decide to choose YOU to spend the rest of his life with. It's even biblical, a man will leave his mother and his father and cleave to one another. He's an adult and if his mother does not nderstand that her job as caretaker is over then HE needs to help her understand that she has a new role in his life. Life is about change.<BR>Look at him this way, this is the most important and most basic decision of your relationship and he cannot make it clear cut. He doesn't want to hurt you or hurt mom so he sees it as hurting himself, he'll let you get o with your life and let his mother be happy and secure while he is miserable. This sets the stage for future decisions, if you two are ever to get together and need to make decisions which will he make, the easy one? even if it's not right or will you guys constantly recross this bridge between he and his mother, which will kill you. I have always beleived that the man is a leader of the home and if he can't make a difficult decision, then where is he leading me? Will i always have to make it for him, are we constantly goin gto go through this traumatic dramatic type of incidence while he allows outside influences to make his life he!!.<BR>Think hard and long not about your feelings but somewhat objectively about the picture that has already been painted. The things we see now are the same things we argur over in our marriages and the very same things we blame for the divorce. You cannot wait this out by yourself, this needs to be a joint effort between the two of you for your lives together. If he won't participate........<P>I hope This helps even if it hurts, though that was not my intent.

Trlyloved<P>I understand clearly what you are saying and agree with you. He knows very clearly that he has to make a decision between building a life with his wife, or staying alone with his mother. For him the decision is extremely difficult for he feels he owes his mother so much, which he does, and there is a huge element of guilt and I think fear. he is nearly 37 and when he talks about her he seems to revert to being 6 again. There is a long history there that I can not compete with, nor should I have too. She can be extremely harsh with him I think, to the point of being down right cruel from some of the things he has told me, and in the end I feel he does not want to deal with her or her ill temper. I also think in some aspects he likes being cared for and treated like a kid, for him it gives him a sense of comfort and love. He told me he has made promises to take care of her when the time comes, and that is just fine with me, I would expect nothing less. But I feel that for her I am a threat to her security and that I am obstical to her future wellbeing. I can understand his conflict very clearly and am willing to compromise on the fact. But it seems he is trying to make the decision on his own, he tells me he does not want to spend his life alone, that he wants a future with me, and then this happens. I understand that these issues will carry through into our marriage and may ultimately destroy our marriage if we survive our relationship in it's present condition. But how can I combat his guilt for him? That is something he must work out on his own. I have never been faced with this problem before. How does a woman fight for a man against his mother? How can he bare to tell the woman he loves that she is always in his mind, in his heart, and destroy her in the same breath? He can't give me a valid reason for not wanting to speak with me or even make the decision to finally end it tells me he does not really want to leave, he just can't see any other way around it and he refuses to consider the consequences of placing his mother in her proper place in his life. So I agree with you, he has made himself miserable, made his mother happy, and I get what's left, which is indecision and confusion. I thank you for your advice and it is definately food for deep thought. I hope we are both strong enough to work this out, it would be such a waste to let something so special as what we have shared with each other die because we were not strong enough to fight to keep it alive. Again thanks so much for the advice.<P>Kym

Kym,<P>I am very sorry to hear you are in such an emotionally painful situation and have this great loss to deal with. I have some advice, which may not be easy to take, in fact it may be the hardest thing you could do, but definitely the fastest and best way out of your dilemma.<P>I would recommend listening to your mind, believe your fiance when he says that he knows he will hurt you and therefore must leave you, and consider yourself left. He is not a man yet--he is a weak boy being controlled by his mother, or by other unknown forces, but nevertheless if he is being swayed from the outside then he is weak. A weak person will never do the strong thing--break up and let you move on--he will let you know that you can have no expectations of him whatsoever, bluntly inform you that he will let you down and not be there for you, yet selfishly not let you go to heal--he will continue to contact you and take what you will give, whether it be emails or dinners or companionship or more, until he is healed himself. If you complain, he will tell you that he told you that it was over, he told you that you could expect nothing of him, and it is therefore your fault if you're hurt. Unfortunately, at that point it would be true. <P>So, my advice is to give him what he's asked for--out of the relationship. He doesn't get you in any form or manner at that point. For that he has to be back in the relationship. You can give yourself closure that way. And take control of your life again. It's a win-win for you--if he comes back fully, and you agree to take him back, then you're happy. If he doesn't, then you have not wasted any more of your life with someone who won't commit to you for whatever reason. <P>I know it sounds so simple, but is so hard. I was in a similar situation myself, and it took me seven years to do what I've suggested (sounds like a long time, but I rationalized it at the time, and it got harder to let go of the dream as time went on, and to admit that I had been such a sucker.) I told him that if he loved me, not to contact me unless and until things were different. My boyfriend never came back, in fact I never heard from him again.<P>The good news is that three years later, when I was older than you are now, I met the man of my dreams and two years after that we were married! I am so glad now that I stopped settling for the crumbs that my emotionally insecure and weak b.f. was handing out to me. In fact, I was happier by myself knowing that I took control of my life than I was when I was waiting for my b.f. to act.<P>I wish you the best of luck.

Masked 1<P>You are absolutely right. I realize that as much as it hurts. I have written him just that. If he can discard my love so easily, then I will not be around worry or not if he finds what he is searching for. No, it is time to put things into perspective and get on with my life, though a part of me will always love hime. He is the past and it is the future I must look too for my happiness.<BR>Thanks for the advise.<P>Kym<BR>