You Have Spoiled Your Gifts

I am sure that you have told your beloved in any number of ways how different and special your love for him is. You seem quite articulate to me, and I am sure that you have used your verbal skills to convey your feelings. If I am right, your words are like water off a duck's back in that they have no impact on him. He apparently needs to remain glued to his view of the situation: you have been wanton, while he is wanting as a lover.

What you need to understand is that you cannot solve this problem for him. He must engage in his own process of self inquiry in order to find out why he needs to be so critical of you as well as himself. If you study what he is doing, you will note that no one comes out unharmed: you were too loose and he certainly can't measure up (no pun intended) with your past lovers.

I have the picture of a man who was criticized as a child by one or both of his parents. He wouldn't be trashing himself unless he was taught to do so during his formative years. The tragic result of this type of upbringing is manifold. One of the most obvious negative effects is that he has learned to put himself down, which he does each time he compares himself with your previous lovers. Each time he engages in this process, his self-esteem lowers another notch, and this keeps him stuck in this loop.

If he felt better about himself, he wouldn't need to compare himself to anyone. When he needs a vacation from all this self-assault, his criticalness extends to you. While on vacation from putting himself down, he blames you for your sordid past. What he does to you is nothing more than what he does to himself. When the boom swings in your direction, he is merely giving himself a temporary respite.

The point of my above comments is that you are not going to be able to influence him. He is going to need to see a therapist who will help him to recognize that the critical voices inside himself are really not his own. The voices that he hears should be distinguished from the voices that psychotic people hear, which aren't real. The voices that I speak of are the real voices of his parents. All of us internalize, or take inside ourselves, our parents' thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and so on. Our parents' voices become part of our own inner dialogue, and after a while these voices become so mingled with our own that we don't even realize where we stop and our parents begin.

The technical term for such voices is 'toxic introjects. ' The only way to exorcise these introjects is to identify who is really speaking when a critical thought comes up. For example, when he puts himself down, he would need to say to himself, 'Who talked to me like that when I was young? Mom? Dad?' Little by little, this process teaches a person how to distinguish himself from the parent in his head, and slowly but surely the mean parent subsides.

He is going to need to find a skilled modern analyst to help him do this work. If he wants, he can consult with me by phone in order to be set on the right track. The main point that you need to receive from my letter is that the work is his not yours.

As for you, I hope that you can succeed in keeping his judgments off of your own psyche. I have serious doubts as to whether or not you can pull this off, which leads me to my next point. You may want to examine why you are staying with someone who puts you down. Are you, yourself, used to being criticized and does he keep you right at home? Do you, yourself, feel guilty over your past and does his criticism of you supplying you with the blows you think that you deserve?

This is a complicated situation. Rather than trying to fix him, try to understand what you gain, consciously and unconsciously, by having a boyfriend who keeps putting you in your place.