Jim is not an infant. He is a human being with intentions. Where you are concerned, I suspect his intentions are no longer good. This is because you are getting a little bit better and, with that improvement, he senses he is losing control over you.

Here is an ugly human truth: We connect with the people we think we deserve. Consciously, we may think we are getting a deal. However, our old subconscious trips us up everytime.

There are people who want someone that they can feel a bit superior to, someone who makes them feel stronger. They look for weak so that they can feel strong. They look for dumb so that they can feel smart. They look for poor so that they can feel rich. Needy people are a people they eat for breakfast.

You probably wonder how your communications here could go so wrong. It is quite simple really. You expressed in you letter three weaknesses. You said that you had been in need (which others read, correctly I think, as financial need). You said that you had had mental health problems. You admitted to being female.

The first weakness, financial, is one that some people simply cannot understand because they have never had to scrape or scounge for a living, and if they have, they fear going back there.

The second weakness, expressing a need for therapy and medication and mental stability, exposed you being labeled in advance. I don't know of any group that is still so unmistakably discriminated against as people with mental health problems (unless it is fat people). Only now, instead of just calling you crazy, people who are educated can come up with all kinds of fancy terms.

Your third weakness is being female. I know that there are people who will hate that I say that, but it is true. It means that everything you say is automatically suspect. You are a daughter of Lilith, Eve, and that Magdalen whore. You (and all your kind) loosed original sin upon the world. You lie by nature. You are a prostitute by just being. In many parts of the world just having a period would still make you unclean. People, both male and female, who would claim that they have no religious impulses are driven by that atavistic fear that you might, with your hideous weakness, derive some measure of power over some man. Or any man. Anywhere.

Only look to this thread. Look at the snarls and the salivation.

Then think of your Jim. You have begun to fear him a little, haven't you? You are hesitant to call him an abuser, even though he is beginning to abuse you. Do not let the fact that he is a "child" lull you. "Child" tyrants can be the worst of all. You can overlook their tantrums and be wooed by their childish charms. Overtime, they can steal your future.

I would sooner have a rattlesnake in my bed!

So do what you can to extricate yourself, reasonably and safely, taking care to look to your future and to protect your new found stability.

When you learn to be more honest with yourself about your own mistakes and your own unacknowledged fears, you will express your needs better and more directly. You will have few communication problems.

Of course, people may still think that you are a bitch. Betcha there are plenty of people who will think what I just said, which I hope is direct and unequivocal, makes me a bitch.

In the U.S., people are allowed to live together without getting married. Get over it.

He is not her "husband." He is her boyfriend.

We have absolutely no way of knowing what she contributed to the relationship by way of labor. For all we know, she spent half her time picking up after him. If she washed his dirty underwear, do you think she charged him?

Having a vagina does not make one a prostitute.

In the U.S., there is no legal dowry system.

Even in America, money isn't everything.

Sorry I missed your last post. It sounds like you have done a very good deed indeed. I hope the young woman finds justice and peace.