Dear Panel,

I am a very loving and kind person with a good heart. But I have had "bad luck" with a few major issues in my life. I just always seem to not quite get the right path to walk on. But I'm stubborn to overcome these obstacles even though some of them I have no control over. (I can't "fix" the problem.)

I Am Now Back With My Old Boyfriend

I'm 27 years old and have been with the same guy off and on for about 10 years. We have lived together for about 8 of those years. Chris and I broke up after having lived together for over 5 years,and I dated, got pregnant, got married, and divorced another man. Then Chris and I ended up back together, and have been living together again for almost 2 years.

Chris is my boyfriend/best friend. He is 29 years old, very intelligent, although somewhat pessimistic about "life". However, he just wants the same basic thing that I do; to be a good person and to have other people be good to him. He loves me and helps me in so many ways and I believe that in some ways he needs me.

His Mother Never Accepted Me

His parents are very important to him and are totally unconditional to their children,which is the way it should be. The problem is Chris's mom, mainly. She is very stubborn and somewhat hypocritical . The first impression she had of me was about 7 years ago. A lady friend of hers that she played bridge with said some very ugly things about me before Chris and I were together and Vickie took them to heart without judging for herself.

In The Beginning...

We started dating in High School, it took a couple of years before Chris finally admitted (to his mother) that he and I were living together even though she already knew. We snuck around while living together in college.

I really only have this "big problem" with Chris The fact that he is so non-upfront about us. He is very intimidated, for lack of a better word, by his mom, it seems, and so very headstrong in EVERY other area of his life that it truly makes me feel like he is ashamed of me. Although, I do not believe he his.

Somehow, I started to be around his family and things between me and his family were good. But, Chris and I were not good. Chris and I ended up breaking up just as I was getting to know his family, and vice-versa.

We Broke Up

His mother was pretty standoffish, but I think she was coming around. We broke up after about 2 months of me being around his family. Things between us were pretty far gone, according to me, but were "getting better" according to him. I broke up and he moved back in with his parents.

He and I had been living together and, just getting out of college, that was the easiest and least expensive idea for him. He is very financially "good", where I am not. His parents, of course, welcomed him back so he and I were broken up and for the next 6 months he stayed with them and turned into a "new and improved" Chris

I had also done some unintentional financial things and pretty much left Chris "holding the bag" when we split up. Not EVER meaning to be malicious or mean, he had to save up and pay some money off that we had accumulated from before. He also, I believe, had a "bruised" ego since I was the one to call things off. He had always done the "ending" of relationships until that point.

Anyway, my guess is pretty close, in that he "badmouthed" me after we broke up, not realizing that later on we would be back together. All of this to say that now that our paths crossed again, he is very scared to tell his parents that we are back together and even though we have both figured out that we are the best when we are together, he has some overly weird thing about putting his life with me and his life with his parents in the same world.

His Parents Now Know We are Back Together

His parents do know now, as of recently, that we are living together again, although his mom knew in her gut more than a year ago that this was the deal.

I don't go to any family stuff with him, and it's very hard on him, but it's frustrating to me that he KNOWS we are "meant to be" and he tells me this sincerely. He just can't resolve this issue and I know that his mom makes him feel worse at him ever so often.

Neither he nor his mom can seem to deal with the subject of me. It's just an obvious taboo, but I feel angry towards both of them because I KNOW how each of them feels independently. There's nothing I can really do about this, because it's the MOST VOLATILE subject between Chris and i. I worry about this a lot because I never want to make Chris feel like he has to "choose" between me and his family.

How do I deal with this and put it to rest in my heart?