Warning! This isn't going to get any better. You are dealing with an adult who is damaged from his growing up process. If you end up marrying this guy you are going to end up stifled and resentful.

The ultimate test. If this was a girlfriend of yours would you recommend she marry him?

Oh cripes! LW, just buy this guy a nice, soft blankie, and leave him with it.

Isn't projecting this level of control over a spouse one of the early warning signs of abuse?

You're writing an advice columnist about your fiancee. And it's not a good letter. That should answer your question right there.

I read the other letter first, but my response is pretty much the same, and goes along with David M.
It's what I said to my best friend when she was whining about the problems she was having with her boyfriend. "If I was saying all this to you, what would you be telling me right now?"

I wish I could say that had some immediate results, but at the time all she did was sigh and say, "I know. But--" which is where I stopped paying attention. There's always a "but--"

This is one of the perils of a long-distance relationship: not finding out the deal-breaker until after you've moved in together. LW, I hope you're strong enough to give this guy his walking papers even now that you're cohabiting.

LW, before you throw in the towel, give this idea one shot. If it doesn't work, you have your answer.

Ask your BF what his definition of true love is. Then, ask him how he arrived at that conclusion. Where I'm going with this is, our current culture works awfully hard to sell that idea that true love means you have to be together every minute of every day. I'm not sure why, but it's a common message in today's society. He may be clinging to you because he's bought the story that "that's what women want".

My parents were divorced at the same age as his, and I didn't turn out clingy -- somewhat the opposite actually. However, my ex-wife was the type who expected me to be with her and paying attention to her at all times. There was a bit of a feeling-out process with my (now 17 years) wife before we discovered that we both appreciate some time apart.

I'm the most happily married woman I now (fifteen years now), and last night my husband went out with his fraternal organization while I went to a going away party for a girl from a club I belong to. A fine time was had by all, and we had something to talk about when we met back at home.

This isn't love, it's desperation, it's neediness, it's not knowing who he is outside the context of the relationship. He's expecting "love" to make everything in his life okay -- you're Prozac With Tits. The biggest trap here is if it's your job to make his life okay, anytime his life isn't okay, guess whose fault it's going to be?

Personally, I'd dump him. But if you want to try to work it out, you need to get him into counseling, both just by himself, and the two of you together.

"I'm thinking, "Hey, Crazy, calm down, I'll see you tonight, and I can go to the store without you."

She's thinking it, but has she said it? Has she really drawn the line? I'm kind of with Cousin Dave that maybe they haven't communicated enough. She should draw her boundary, then if he still can't deal with it or try to get help, leave.

This can be a sign of a very controlling personality. A friend of mine was married to a guy who wouldn't let her leave his sight. He even accompanied her to her gynocologist (and insisted on being in the room, even though the doc was female!). He was paranoid about her cheating on him, or at least that was his story...he'd been cheated on before.

Almost all this behavior stems from anxiety. If he's willing to try to stop it, he'll probably need some counseling and may benefit from some anti-anxiety meds.

LW doesn't say how old he is, but if he's around middle age, and has done this in every previous relationship, she should accept that this behavior isn't likely to change.

Run. Run now. Why are you even questioning yourself?? Can you say controlling? This type of person will not be happy until he's the ONLY one in your life. Picture that in your head. Did it cause screaming? Run.

He's a damaged nutcase, its not your job to fix him. Run like the wind.

There are a lot of people around like this. The problem they have is that they cannot attract people into their lives because they are generally either too boring, obnoxious, dysfunctional or similar, that few people really want to be around them. So the only way they can keep people around them is by using tactics like control, manipulation, emotional blackmail etc.

I haven't been in a relationship with anyone like this, but I have known plenty of such people including many family members.

Don't postpone your wedding.

CANCEL IT.

Unless you want to live like this for the rest of your life, do not marry this man. Clingy freaks like this are bad news.

"The rest of my life? But I could always get a divorce if things don't improve." ...Or he could kill you.

Not all clingy freaks are homicidal stalkerpaths, but virtually all homicidal stalkerpaths are some variation of clingy freak, or started out that way.

Do you want to live like this forever? Do you want to live like this TOMORROW? Of course not. Nobody does.

Dump him. If that goes remotely badly, start looking into restraining orders.

I agree that she needs to put a full stop on the marriage, but I'm curious - if she decides to cancel the wedding but stay in the relationship and try to resolve this together (and I'm not even remotely saying that she should), what would you recommend she do? Is something like this unfixable, or is there a way to work on it?

If I don't stand or sit next to him or cuddle with him, he claims I don't like him. If I eat lunch with a friend instead of him (as I do daily), he's upset.

Well, obviously, there will be problems when you plan to marry a twelve-year-old girl.

I'm with lovelysoul in that she needs to actually say what she's been thinking if she hasn't already. You can't quietly put up with a behavior for a while and whip around and say you're cancelling your wedding because of it. Well, I guess you could, but that's not the adult, emotionally healthy way to go about this. Verbally state what you've decided you can't put up with and then talk to him about the state of your relationship and what, if anything, can be done to fix it.

Choika: I'm inclined to say that she needs to remove herself completely, at least for a while, because I don't know what she could do to help while she's still in the relationship. A man at this stage of clingy needs some seriously good therapy, and I can't see that she should stay around to hold his hand while he works on his abandonment issues. If he did agree to get help, it's likely he'd cling to her even harder at first. I think this is a situation that calls for a hold on the relationship. Especially since it doesn't sound from the letter that she knew him all that well before they moved in together. At the very least, she was missing or ignoring the signs of his clinginess, even long-distance.

"Isn't projecting this level of control over a spouse one of the early warning signs of abuse?"

No, it's just clinginess. We don't have to call everything that someone doesn't like a "sign of abuse". There's also no evidence he's a 'nutcase' either, it's just a personality trait, and one that LW doesn't like, and all we've discovered is that LW has moved in and gotten engaged with someone she doesn't actually *like*. Oops. But probably she bears some responsibility for that too --- I mean, come on, tell me something doesn't seem off here, she got *engaged* to someone she only had a long distance relationship with? Tell me that sounds like a normal and healthy thing to do. Who does that? These are the types of things you find out about people before you become engaged to them.

It's not enough to love the person you're with, you have to actually like them too. LW, you shouldn't feel compelled to marry someone whose personality annoys you, and it will do harm to both of you if you let it get further. It is sad and no doubt you'll both be upset and hurt, but it's best to go through the pain now.

Clinginess isn't necessarily some sign of the devil, it can be a simple self-perpetuating problem ... i.e. he seems clingy to her, so she 'pulls away' to get more of her own space (and in fact she is recoiling away from him as she discovers his personality), he *undoubtedly* senses that she is pulling away and that he is losing her, and thus feels additional need for extra re-assurance. This isn't abnormal, in fact it would be abnormal if he didn't feel that. People just need to match up with partners who give/take the appropriate amounts of space vs affection for their respective personalities. Here we have a mismatch. "Abuse", "nutjob" .. come on. He is behaving this way because he senses he is losing her ... and because he is correct.

That said though, now that I think about it, I've only been with one woman who was overly clingy, and she did in fact turn out to have a couple of screws loose.

"If I don't stand or sit next to him or cuddle with him, he claims I don't like him."

Let's be brutally honest here, you *do* actually not like him. You may love him, but it sounds to me as though the "like" has already gone out of the relationship. He is claiming you don't like him not because he's making insecure ridiculous accusations, but because he already senses that in fact you don't like him, most probably correctly, and wants to pry the truth out of you, because currently you're sending mixed messages.

"Isn't projecting this level of control over a spouse one of the early warning signs of abuse"

Actually, now that I think of it, it's worse, because ...

"I'm thinking, "Hey, Crazy, calm down, I'll see you tonight, and I can go to the store without you.""

... LW is in effect treating the person in her life as if he's continually annoying to her, and yet she is staying with him ... that *is* basically the very definition of *being* emotionally abusive. He is not the abusive one, he has probably been the victim of this type of emotional abuse, and is looking to repeat that pattern in his relationships. Both are not healthy.

I mean really, who stays with someone they don't like? She must be getting *some* pay-off from his feelings of being perpetually, implicitly rejected by her. If the gender roles were reversed this would be a lot more obvious, e.g. swop gender roles and look at it from the 'other side' and you'd see something that looks like 'my husband is cold and treats me like I'm annoying, i sense he always pulls away when i try to be affectionate' etc.

I can see where it can become a self-perpetuating cycle, Lobster, but it really depends on the degree she's "pulling away". Nobody can sit by or cuddle with their partner all the time, but it doesn't mean they don't like them.

And this behavior can be an early warning sign of abuse. Not to say he is abusive, but it's something to watch. Being jealous of her having lunch with a girlfriend, or a visit with her family, is unreasonable and may be a sign that he wants to isolate her. In fact, the sulking after family visits is especially worrisome.

It's also easy to dismiss this behavior at first, when you're not yet living together. Like she said, she thought it was sweet in the beginning when he wanted to go everywhere with her. She probably thought, "Wow, I've found the only guy who likes to shop for shoes!" Yet, later, she realized this wasn't about shopping at all but about not letting her out of his sight.

"And this behavior can be an early warning sign of abuse."

Yeah, but when you start thinking like that, just about every tiny little thing "can be an early warning sign of abuse". If you listen to how people speak like this, frankly there are so many "early warnings signs" flying around us in our lives that you would think everyone must certainly be being abused all day long by multiple people. I guarantee you'll find "early warning signs of abuse" in every single relationship if you start analyzing them all with this type of "abuse-warning-sign-colored glasses". Statistically one would say it's a pointless test taken on its own because the number of false positives (and false negatives) would exceed the number of genuine positives by a huge ratio.

I think that LW is giving us a distorted picture, as her behaviour doesn't really make sense if you think about it, and secondly, I honestly think that she might not have fully owned up *to herself* how her own feelings toward this guy have tapered off, and how that might (in fact, would certainly be) tainting the relationship --- to pretend this wouldn't have an effect would be silly, because people definitely pick up when there is trouble like this.

I mean, look at it this way: She is at the point of writing to an advice columnist in effect over whether she should break up with this guy --- and yet, simultaneously, we're supposed to think he would not have picked up ANY signs that he might not quite like her so much anymore, and that there is something wrong with *HIM* for wondering if she still likes him? She's thinking about breaking up with him, OF COURSE he picks up on this, and when he asks if there is trouble (i.e. asks 'if she still likes him') she is presumably, I can only guess, lying and saying things are OK, saying one thing with her mouth and another with her body language and letters to advice columnists.

If your SO is at the point of writing to an advice columnist wondering if they should break up with you, I guarantee you that unless your IQ is sub-70, you will feel unsure as to whether or not they actually still like you. Keeping him in this weird mixed-message limbo is mean. Look at it from his point of view.

There are people, women too, who do this sort of thing on purpose, because they get some payoff from it, like emotional bullying. Now I don't know if she's doing that, or if she is just afraid to hurt his feelings this far in the relationship, but either way, the damaging effect on him is the same.

Put another way: Sometimes you wonder if the other person still likes you because you're insecure, and other times you wonder because it's actually true. Wondering doesn't automatically make you insecure, and here we also have blunt evidence that it's true.

Lobster, you're assuming she stopped liking him BEFORE his behavior became possessive...which then led to his posessiveness...but there's nothing to indicate that from her letter.

Why, for instance, would he become sulky and upset whenever they visit her family? That makes no sense. Her visiting family doesn't relay a message of "I don't like you anymore." After all, she's taking him with her! It sounds like he doesn't want her to show any attention/affection towards anyone else but him.

The controlling guy my friend was married to actually got upset if she petted a dog or cat. One day, he freaked out because she had a cat in her lap and was stroking it. He claimed that sort of affection should only be reserved for him. That sort of jealousy is irrational.

I can see him needing reassurance if he felt she was spending too much time with friends and ignoring him, but getting upset whenever they visit her family is a HUGE warning sign of someone with major control issues.

"One day, he freaked out because she had a cat in her lap and was stroking it."

I can see a woman freaking out because her guy is stroking another pussy, but...

Lobster:
"No, it's just clinginess."

LW:
"If I eat lunch with a friend instead of him (as I do daily), he's upset. Even when we spend time with my family, there are repercussions (moping and drama when we get home)."

That's not ordinary clinginess. That's a huge red flag. He's upset when she spends time with other people. If he could, he would undoubtedly stop her from spending time with other people, and the pouting and drama and whatever are obviously his attempts to stop her. That's classic controlling and isolating behavior. It's not normal, it's not healthy, it's a warning.

He also sounds like the kind of person you read about in the papers all the time who goes after his ex-wife or girlfriend and then kills her and her family in public before killing himself because he can't stand the idea of being away from her or her being with another man.

Lobster, you're a hoot! Anyway, i agree with you and with lovelysoul. Steamer, you're a scream.

This woman needs to read "The Dance Of Intimacy".

Unless she wants the proverbial ball and chain, she should free herself of Mr. Clingwrap now, as the thought process that accompanies "i can always get a divorce later" is flawed. Always, always, always, "later" comes with a house and mortgage, combined finances, combined lives, sometimes children, pets, family vacations, ...you get the picture? No? Divorcing is SO difficult.

Do the hard work of the relationship now and save yourself the heartache. If Mr. Clingwrap doesn't agree to counselling for his childish behaviour, LW should put a full stop to the wedding. Posters who say "it'll only get worse" ARE RIGHT.

Lovelysoul is exactly correct about the type of guy who gets mad and throws a hissy fit over family. My ex was like that. After a while it got predictable that he would pick fights with me once we got home, after i spent time with the one sister with whom i'm very close.

He felt threatened, but for no good reason. Turned out he was abusive too. The physical assaults started a few years later. These character traits are *usually* found in controlling, domineering, damaged people, and i'm not so sure can be treated with the normal course of psychotherapy because it is just who they are.

There are some people who LOVE the stiffling attention one of these guys would give them. But LW obviously is not that type. It's simple logistics: a mismatch.

So, unless you are in the market for that ball and chain, i would advise you (as others have) to leave now.

"Why, for instance, would he become sulky and upset whenever they visit her family? That makes no sense"

We don't know how she behaves when they visit her family. We could make the assumption she's wonderful, but I had a girlfriend once (briefly, I might add), who would purposely not just ignore me but also be nasty and make me the butt of jokes in front of other people, including when visiting family. So when visiting her family, undoubtedly she would have described as being 'upset upon return', since I was, and rightfully so. I just can't shake the feeling we're only hearing a very one-sided story here. There are signs that a few things are 'off' from her side too. You can project assumptions, I prefer not to make such harsh judgments of the guy based on incredibly leaped-to conclusions/assumptions from such a one-sided story in which she paints herself as perfect.

"The controlling guy my friend was married to actually got upset if she petted a dog or cat. One day, he freaked out because she had a cat in her lap and was stroking it. He claimed that sort of affection should only be reserved for him. That sort of jealousy is irrational."

Sure that's irrational and screwed up, I agree. But that's somebody else entirely. Not LW's bf. It's also irrational to project the personality of the controlling guy you knew directly onto LW's fiance, with vague rationalizations about a particular "sort of jealousy" that supposedly ties them.

"He also sounds like the kind of person you read about in the papers all the time who goes after his ex-wife or girlfriend and then kills her and her family"

Lol ... see, this is exactly the sort of irrational hysteria I'm talking about. I would venture to guess that perhaps one in a million clingy people actually do this (and that many of the people who do do this are probably not clingy, and that this probably holds no real predictive power whatsoever), and yet people go 'OMG clingy he could be a murderous freak'. Puh-lease. I bet whether or not he chews with his mouth open has more predictive power over whether or not he's harbouring murderous tendencies.

Here's the problem. We evolved over millions of years heavily under attack from actual predators, so it made sense to evolve a deeply instinctive paranoia under which we imagine predators around every corner (because they were). Suddenly we're living in the safest, cosiest world humans have ever lived in, by a massive margin. And yet we're still living with the same irrational hysteria encoded into our DNA --- we're literally afraid of the 'ghosts of predators past', not actual weirdos / clingy people. So we go around over-searching for "clues" in the people around us that they're go about to go off the hook, labelling them "freaks" and "stalkers" and "abusers" at the feintest possible wisp of a hint of anything we dislike, that the people around us mutually corroborate as being the "warning signs" to look for.

We're scared. Irrationally. It's in our genes. We want warning signs. They're comforting. But the only valid tool we have to deal with this fear is rationality, not more irrationality; statistics, science, facts. If you want to live with a perpetually scared "why take a chance" approach, that's also fine, just acknowledge then that it's you, not the people you're labelling.

Tony, you might do good to view the following:

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

"Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."

Lobster,

So...your argument is that women are just hysterical about abusive boyfriends and stalkers? That nobody should ever be concerned with possessive or controlling behavior or unhealthy relationships because DUH, evpsych says you're just overreacting!

The LW didn't say she wanted to break up with him because he doesn't pick up his socks, she said she's concerned because he's acting in unhealthy and unbalanced ways.

Not trivial.

/done feeding apparent stalker apologist troll