Transcribed from my video at youtube.com/askvictoria

A viewer asked me to help her because she is at her wit’s end in her marriage and she is poised to leave it. She feels like a second class citizen in that her needs are never heard or met.

I really want to address an email that just came in. We’ll call her DM. Basically, she asked about the fact that she’s getting ready to leave her marriage. She feels like a second-class citizen in her own family. She feels second to her children, like her needs are never met; she feels that there is no value given to her preferences or that her voice is heard. She’s asking what should she do? She’s ready to divorce, to leave. Sad situation for DM.

(1:04) What I want to say to you, DM, is this: you were obviously brought up in a family in which your needs were not allowed. You have no right to your needs,” seems to be the message you were given in your family of origin, so it sounds like you’ve become an approval-seeking, disease-to-please sort of person, and you have made your needs not at all a priority. You’ve given your family the message, over the years—you’ve taught them how to treat you, that you’re not valuable, that your needs aren’t important, and that what you think, say, want, need is not of value. You’re getting ready to explode it sounds like! You’re fighting all the time with your husband and kids, you’re losing your temper constantly, you’ve become irritable and impatient. I don’t blame you! Needs are human, and you have a right to your needs, and at this point it sounds like your system is saying, “Hear me! See me! Pay attention to me! Honour me! Respect me!” And you’re just exploding that truth, that human, innate truth that we all experience within us.

(2:24) The thing is, you say that your husband has become completely cold with you, withdrawn into his cave you say, and what is happening is that your message, your truth is being delivered in a raging, angry way. It sounds to me like the message is being lost, and all that is being heard is the anger. It’s a cycle of self-denial. You deny yourself, then you deny your needs, but needs have to show up, and they show up in a raging cover, and that raging cover is all that is heard. What usually occurs is that the person you are trying to communicate with withdraws, you feel abandoned because that person goes into a cave, saying, “I can’t handle all this rage,” and that rejection, abandonment of you causes you to feel guilty. In that guilt, you begin to question your sense of truth, whether you’re doing the right thing, “Do I have a right to my needs?” You go back to that cycle of self-denial. And on and on that cycle goes. I’m going to tell you that it’s not going to end, until you get in touch with your needs, and begin to express them in a regular way, and in a gentle, fair, kind and loving way, because no one is going to hear a raging, angry person, ever.

(4:13) Before you leave, before you decide to get the heck out of your marriage, I really encourage you to seek out therapy, and to look at how you have become a person who cannot teach people how to treat her in terms of having her needs heard and expressed. It’s a short answer, but not really, and I want you to continue to email me, and I’ll continue to answer your questions in this video series.