I know that might sound inappropriate for the LW, who apparently has been doggedly pursuing her own emotional betterment through therapy and what not--but there may still be some level of pain that she's not willing to face yet, and wasting time with one basket case after another enables her to define herself as the "healthier" one in contrast.

My situation was never as extreme, but I recall what happened to me when I finally started dating a man who really was sane and stable (and, interestingly, not hugely attractive to me at first--although we did fall in love and have now been together 13 years). Although I thought I'd already been honest with myself about my family-of-origin troubles, shortly after beginning this great new love, I experienced a huge backlash wave of anger, remorse, and profound sadness, and had to go back into therapy very seriously. The loving environment of my relationship made it SAFE for me to experience my childhood grief and anger in a way I hadn't faced before. Believe me, this was no fun at all. It had been far more interesting to be the relatively sane one embroiled in somebody else's emotional drama. Now, I was no longer blind to my own vulnerabilities, and over the years I had to learn to let someone love me DESPITE the fact that I had all these flaws and weaknesses.

It is not easy being the more damaged person in the relationship--darling husband has his flaws like anyone but is genuinely more balanced than me--but it is the only way I was able to mature and heal. And it is so much better than secretly martyring myself with one lunatic or another.

The guy who questions the reality of the letter doesn't realize that these days, Indians with money are likely to travel several times a year to the States or elsewhere to visit their far-flung adult children...nor does he understand how a mother can be so overbearing as to feel like she does live next door, even if she's actually a 22-hour plane ride away.

But to get to the point: As the 40-year-old American-born daughter of Indian immigrant parents, I hear so much that's familiar in this LW's story--it makes me wonder if there isn't a component of Indian culture that encourages insecurity and narcissism in its women. My own mother was never as extreme as LW's, but even in her 70s, having been a self-employed doctor all her life, she is still at times shockingly girlish, jealous, immature, petty, and just kind of clueless about what other people are thinking. Such self-absorption on her part, coupled with a general emotional abusiveness, meant that I grew up with terrible confidence issues and still struggle with them today.

What I hear in LW's writing is that she is still very enmeshed in this dynamic and needs to find a way to GET OUT. For me, a combination of things (lots of therapy, getting older, having a great marriage, and nurturing a long habit of writing and journaling about my mother) has helped me detach somewhat. What's very interesting is that when you start to stop caring what your mother thinks, LW, she will probably sense the futility of her weird little competitions and back off. Or else, if she's truly emotionally tone-deaf, she'll keep coming at you, but she'll seem like a pathetic clown of a person and, although you may still love her, her "long face" will no longer make you feel guilty or upset. It may instead make you want to laugh--a tad bitterly, of course, but laugh nonetheless.

Nicole, people sometimes fall out of love. It happens. Especially if the original relationship was based in part on rather calculating motives, as seems to be the case with the LW's green-card-hungry wife. Or if the original intensity and attraction isn't backed up by true compatibility and friendship. Writing off a man--or woman--just because they've had a prior failed relationship seems like an old-world superstition. (I read an article a few years ago about how eastern Europeans avoid marrying people whose PARENTS are divorced, believing it to be almost like some kind of infectious disease.) Emotional constancy is partly a character issue, but it's also situational. In this case, it's hard for any of us to tell from just a letter--LW might be as fickle as you fear, OR he might be a really great guy who made a mistake but fully intends to find the right woman and grow old with her. Why not take someone at face value and trust him until you've got some real reason not to?