dear dear friend..i can´t help calling you friend because your letter sounds so much like me quite a few years ago..i don´t think your desperation and sadness is just about the incident with your poor mom. you write, "i am so sick of this never-ending tyranny".. Hannelore, can you breathe..be happy and light hearted (which you definitely are judging by your mails) and alittle crazy in your marriage? Can you listen to the music you want to? Do you feel free? Can you be YOU? Do you know who YOU is? Read your own mail again, dearest.. do you hear what you are saying? Really hear it?

You ask what would i do? i left my husband after 34yrs of marriage and we lost a child together, Hannelore. We had 5 kids together. I spent 15 yrs trying to make it work..trying to survive..making myself the culprit..the guilty one. i am not saying that i don´t have my share in what happened..but i couldn´t go on killing myself..not in the end. we had our good times, even during the last 15yrs. our love and life went up and down..but i was smothering myself. at 53, i decided that i just didn´t have all that much time left of life. and what i had left, i had to live another way..BREATHING FREELY and CALMLY. i couldn´t live feeling guilty anymore because i couldn´t live up to my husband´s expectations and rules. and i didn´t want to. his rules were so different from mine. i found that i don´t have that many rules after all these years of living. life is an adventure which should be experienced, loved and laughed in. it´s not a valley of tears and alot of "musts" as my husband loved to say. Does any of this ring a bell in your heart? If not, then i am way off base..which i can be not knowing you at all..and even if i did know you, i could be totally wrong. But you wrote, "i feel tyranized" and it just struck a cord in my heart. and i had to write to you.

i am not advocating divorce. it´s a very tough road to go. and not the one to be recommended. unless you are dying inside. i left my husband in the summer of 2000. and i had to work my way up again from my own "black hole".. but now i can say that it was worth it. i lost 40pounds in 3 months, if you can believe it. ok, i needed it..but i have put it all back on since then. i am now living with a swedish sambo and my youngest son,17. my sambo is only 34yrs old. but as a good friend said, "i understand your thinking. you don´t want to replicate what you had before..you are doing something new, different" or something to that effect. and she´s right. i won´t marry again either. that was with my husband and my children. in sweden the marriage thing isn´t all that important anyway. legally or otherwise. i don´t feel anger or anything towards my husband now. i had to work my way thru all that..but i did. it is sad and tragic that we couldn´t make a go of it all the way to the end. it´s what i planned..dreamed of, if you will. but we grew apart over the years. noone is to blame. there IS no blame. i love him for what he gave me and what we built and lost together. and yes, we lost alot. but i had to go..to save myself. i couldn´t be "tyranized" anymore.

So,Hannelore (i love your name), i wrote this just to give you something to think about. not to advise you in any direction..whatever you do or don´t do..it will work out for the best. life usually does. you are exactly where you should be right now. and your life and your love will show you the way..when you are ready... i sincerely..very sincerely send you my love and write again if you want/need to..

A few questions and thoughts to think about:
1)do you have friends or your own family that react to the way your husband treats you?
2)your spoken and unspoken dreams/plans for your future..are they similiar to those your husband has?
3)do you feel that your husband SEES you and HEARS you and APPRECIATES you?
4)your economy will not be what you have now. Is that ok? is it worth it? can you make it on your own?

Ok, lots of love, hannelore, i mean it!!!!!