Dear Neil: My husband and I were married at a very young age—he was 21 and I was 19. We’ve now been married 25 years and have successfully raised a loving family. We are currently empty nesters in our mid-forties. In the past 2 years our jobs have changed and we both are working from […]
Dear Neil: I am 40 years old and in a relationship with a man that makes me feel inadequate. He complains about what I cook, talks through shows that I like and never seems to be happy. He is 41, has 4 kids by 3 different women, he lives with me, his car is in […]
Dear Neil: My wife, as a child, was invalidated a lot and was made to chronically feel inadequate and not good enough. As an adult, she is verbally abusive and critical of me, and I have withdrawn from her. It has gotten to the point where I just don’t want to be around her, for […]
How do you say goodbye to a dream? More specifically, how do you say goodbye to a person who you once viewed as your dream—your dream romantic partner, spouse, lover or soul mate? If you are having trouble letting go of your attachment to an ex-romantic partner, somebody who you once may have loved dearly […]
Dear Neil: I was a full-time parent for 20 years while my husband traveled extensively, and the last 5 years of our 30 years together was all about crisis management because my husband was diagnosed with Leukemia. He fully recovered, but I was all used up, and felt very spent. So I initiated the divorce. […]
Dear Neil: I am very much in love with this man who lost his wife to suicide 5 years ago. We have had a long distance relationship the past 2 years (he lives in Libya, I live in Malta). He has finally started talking about his guilt feelings relating to his wife’s death. His moods […]
Dear Neil: Over the past two years, my lady has increasingly gotten on my nerves, and it has made me question whether I want to continue in the relationship with her. In a nutshell, she keeps her apartment cluttered and in great disarray, she talks way too loud (people stare at us in a restaurant) […]
Dear Neil: Everything seems to point to the fact that my 30 year marriage is dead and I should leave my husband. But I keep thinking that something will happen and everything will change. About 10 years ago, he received a sizable inheritance, and from then on things started to change. He became secretive, controlling […]
What is a successful life? How do you know if your life is successful? What criteria defines success to you? Yes, I know. Many people first think about whether they have enough money. It’s hard to feel terribly successful if you’re afraid of losing your house, not able to pay your bills, not able to […]
We all want to do our best. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Well, yes and no. It’s healthy for all of us to do our best because we can feel pride in our skills, our knowledge, our competence and our mastery. But it’s not so good to be a perfectionist, because then we are […]