He Has an Incurable STD and a Terrible Fear of Marriage

My first reaction to your letter was a question, 'Why do you feel that a man with an incurable STD and a fear of marriage is the man of your dreams?' Your letter basically asks me how you can convince him to marry you; and if you can you can pull this miracle off, you want to know how you can contort yourself into accepting a sexless marriage. Again, my question is why are you so smitten with someone who offers you less than crumbs?

You are mad about someone who can't give you the two things you want the most, and rather than focusing on trying to fix him, you need to find out why such a person appeals to you. If you've been reading my column for a while, you know that we humans choose lovers and spouses who recreate the emotional climate that we experienced in childhood (called the repetition compulsion). We recreate the familiar relationships from childhood partly because we are creatures of habit and familiar pain is preferable to the unknown; and partly because we hope to relive our histories and create a happy ending this time around.

The first step in the re-creation process is choosing a lover or spouse who emotionally resembles the parent who let you down. When we fall for someone who represents our parent, we are driven by the following fantasy: if I can get my lover or spouse to love me the way my parent never did, then my childhood wound will feel magically healed. Unfortunately, since the lovers we choose are like our parents, we have little to no chance of getting any more or better treatment from them than we did from our parents. But, since the wound is so deep and the craving to heal is so strong, we become like a dog with a bone. We won't give up trying to get what we want and needed since childhood. We try to be good, all giving, all forgiving, we beg, plead, and nag and do whatever we can think of to try to wrestle the love (or whatever else we craved as kids) out of our lovers.

If you read your letter to me, you will see that you are in the stage of trying to get blood from the stone. You are desperately asking me how we can change your guy, and make him marry you and give you sex. As you can see, you are trying to fix him so that he will finally give you the love you have craved your entire life. If you can get him to marry you and have sex with you, you will feel as though you managed to get your parent to come around and love you.

What you don't see is that this man you are hooked on is as incapable of giving to you as was your parent. He is damaged and terrified of becoming close. Closeness is downright deadly, as his own experience has shown him, and he avoids any act that would intensify the closeness including marriage and sex. You need to see that you are locked in a futile struggle to change a man who doesn't want to change and therefore won't.

You must accept that you are never going to experience a happy ending to the wounds you suffered as a child through your relationship with this man. If you want to be caught in a self-defeating and self-destructive struggle, then you will stay with him and keep on trying to 'fix' him. Your choice is clear: accept him as he is or move on.