Expert: Dana Q - 4/24/2010

Question
i am 60 and the man who was my boyfriend for 2 1/2 months is 58.  we met in a 12 step meeting.  I have 21 months sober and he has been in na for many years but still drinks and uses pot, his drug of choice, occasionally so he doesn't track his clean time.  this is not a practice i approve of and since being with me he apparently had not used or had a drink.
i was a psychiatric social worker for 23 years.  i left my private practice in 2001.  since then i worked intermittently as a substitute assistant teacher for head start and now i'm doing work for the census (easier and much better paid than head start).  my boyfriend calls himself a "therapist-want-a-be" and my former profession was one of the attractions for him.  he sees a psychiatrist once a month for an hour of psychotherapy.  he's the only person i have known well who has used a psychiatrist as a counselor in spite of the fact that most of my close friends are therapy junkies like myself.  it's also an interesting choice on his part because he's broke.  he lives in a quite deteriorated trailer on a friend's property where he can work for rent if he doesn't have enough money.  he's a member of the carpenter's union but has been on unemployment for 2 years. he's also a jazz saxophonist but has never made money as a musician in spite of having genius level talent.
as is often recommended to recovering people he had a period of sexual, ie sex with others, abstinence.  this lasted 9 years and i was his first girl friend in 9 years.  we got together january 31st and he broke up with me 2 days ago.
i left a 30 year marriage last may.  my husband was someone i chose because i was not sexually attracted to him.  at the time i believed i was only attracted to "bastards" and so told myself that this nice man whom i enjoyed as a friend would be a good life partner for me.  but i found him physically repulsive and our love making was an ordeal i endured praying it would end quickly.  of course the lack of chemistry led to other problems as well as our natures were not suited to living together intimately.  
i was in long term therapy to recover from childhood sexual abuse.  the abuse had left me unable to orgasm and indifferent to sex even with the most suited partners.  about 10 years ago using emdr my therapist and i resolved enough of the trauma that i began to feel consciously sexual for the first time since early childhood.  i promptly had an affair that i broke off after 3 months.  prior to my marriage i had had many affairs but nothing lasted more than a month or 2.  only in jr high and high school had i had relationships that lasted 1 to 2 years.  
in spite of advice from my aa sponsors, as soon as i got sober i began to look for a lover.  by this january i'd been sexually involved with 6 men.  i was actually hoping to enter into a long term monogamous relationship with each one of them but none of them wanted that with me.  so i was delighted that this boyfriend very much seemed to want commitment.  we both felt ourselves to be in love.  
from the beginning he had many misgivings and was upset because he is now impotent (which he knows was not a problem for me).  he obtained an rx for viagra but never got any.  the price was a factor.  his insurance might have allowed him to get a partial rx but he never checked this out.  i had offered to help pay but he felt that would further compromise his concept of himself as manly.  
i made the error of telling him in detail about being sexually abused. he had great difficulty believing that i had achieved a substantial recovery.  he thought i waas too accepting of my father though he had basically no reaction to my forgiveness of my mother who was by far the most violent and frightening abuser.  my explanation that i had worked for years on devastation and anger were not convincing to him.  
since the therapeutic breakthrough 10 years ago i have become an enthusiastic sex partner with men i feel attracted to and in the relationship with this man i wanted to have sex frequently.  my training and experience as a psychotherapist tells me that frequent sex is usual during the beginning months of a relationship, yet right in the first weeks he worried we were having too much sex.  and he began to pathologize my sexual enthusiasm as a sick response stemming from my sexual abuse history. i objected to this point of view.  
in the past few weeks his expression of his view began to take on an abusive tone.  though quite well recovered from ptsd, i still have cyclical depressions that are severe and often i become suicidal during these times.  my last depression ended about 2 weeks ago.  i was talking to my boyfriend about my wish to die but being too chicken to carry it out.  "so maybe you could hire a contract killer for me." i said to him, partly serious and partly making a sick joke.  the nearest place such a person would be likely to be found is an impoverished african american area.  i am white and jewish, grew up in seattle, my parents were liberal democrats. my boy friend knows that i have gone out with japanese, chinese, and african americans as well as whites.  he is white and was raised in new orleans as a strict catholic attending all catholic schools through high school.  his mother was from rural mississippi.  i don't know what his parents' political orientation was but he is a non-voter and a follower of ayn rand. after my "killer comment" he "joked", "if i get a black guy to come up here and kill you, you'll just fuck him and decide you want to live."  i found that comment very insulting. some days after that he said approximately "if we break up it will be no problem for you.  you'll just go get some dick." yesterday when we spoke on the phone i said i wanted to give him his birthday present now as i wasn't sure we'd be in touch by may 1st, his actual birthday.  he objected to that saying "well of course we'll still be talking, but i'm not going to want to hear about all the new friends you'll be making."  i rashly took this to mean all the new men i'd be seeing and was furious, responding "that's right that's what you'd expect and you'd expect me to flaunt it in your face too, because..."  wisely he hung up on me.  
we've talked on the phone maybe 5 times since the break up and each time he tells me he loves me.  I too feel myself to be in love with him, but the comments make me leery. the reason he gave for wanting to break up is that he is scared and believes he will be hurtful to me out of his fear.  
i have some other concerns about him. his boundaries with his 3 daughters, all in their 30's, are pretty loose.  he has smoked pot with them frequently and just 9 months ago upset his middle dughter who had just given birth by his focus on getting some marijuana to her older sister rather than focusing on her and her newborn.  
his youngest grows pot for illegal sale.  apparently this does not bother him particularly.  he has expressed no concern for her safety.  he has also sunbathed nude with his grown daughters and their boyfriends.  
two weeks ago he was talking with the middle daughter about watering her garden while she and her husband and kids went away.  he said, "please don't leave any pot around so i won't be tempted."  she said she had no pot to leave around.  later he told me he didn't believe her but figured she would just hide what she had.
his eldest is a borderline personality.  when i was trained the belief was that borderline personalities developed as the result of severe abuse, often sexual abuse.  this daughter and he "groom" each other, plucking out each others' mole hairs, cleaning ears, etc.
he frequently has pin prick pupils, one of the side effects of opiate abuse.  he has said a number of times if i really knew everything about him i wouldn't like him.  i assumed this was his low self esteem talking, but did he mean something concrete like sexually abusing his daughters and/or ongoing opiate use?
thank you for reading all of this.  please let me know whether you think i should attempt to stay with this man.  yours, yaela

Answer
Hi Yaela,

Thank you for writing to me.  I think you are very right to be concerned here.  While it is understandable that your history of sexual abuse could be daunting to a partner, you shouldn't feel like it's a mistake to reveal it.  Part of true intimacy is revealing the more unpleasant aspects of our life stories to our partners because it gives them an understanding of who we are and how we came to be.  It sounds as if this man may be afraid of real commitment, and is using your sexual abuse history as an excuse to avoid it.

I don't want to sound as if I'm judging you (I'm certainly not), but I question what you're getting out of this relationship.  It sounds as though you have so much going for you and yet you're involved with this man, who is unstable financially, uncommitted to his sobriety, and potentially abusive to both you and his daughters.  I think there are more than a few red flags here and the inner social worker in you probably has picked up on them.  His lack of boundaries with his daughters is, in layman's terms, just plain weird.  Even if no abuse has occurred, it suggests an inappropriate intimacy and a lack of maturity on your ex-partner's part.  The lack of maturity seems to be a theme in terms of him not being able to deal with your past history, not being able to deal with your suicidal tendencies, his seeming inability to accept that you have dated outside your race, etc.  You sound like an incredible woman with so much to offer; I think there must be a better option for you out there somewhere.  When you meet the right person, he will accept you and your past and not be afraid.  I know because I grew up in an emotionally and verbally abusive/alcoholic household, and have found someone who understands.  The right person is out there somewhere; you just have to find him.

Well, I'm not a professional but I hope this may have helped you in some way.  Please feel free to write me back with comments/questions.  Thanks.

Good Luck,

Dana