Dear Anita and dear Bambi, I have read both of your messages carefully and given them consideration. Conclusion I have drawn from this is not heartwarming. Here is what I think. This seems to be an abusive relationship, where we are both being abused by each other.

I have done things, that haunt her to this day – some of which were definitely wrong (like lying) and are something I need to work on – and some other were lifestyle choices and personality traits that she could not accept (like requiring less “together time” or having one-night stands in my past). By being tormented by my both past and more recent actions, she is being abused by me and my behavior.

In an attempt to relieve pain and suffering, she creates long arguments, where she brings up both current and past issues and lashes out at me. By letting her anger be uncontrolled, she releases emotions bottling up inside of her. By spending big amounts of time together, she receives feeling of security and control. This is not unusual for people suffering from both anxiety and depression. But this behaviour is also abusive.

I am not saying that any of us is an abusive monster. All these seem to be behaviours that could be corrected over time (or removed when negative stimuli are removed too). Maybe we are just incompatible in terms of lifestyle choices (she stated more than once that would she know I have had one night stands, she would never date me, as this disgusts her, but now that she developed feelings for me, it’s not easy to just throw them away).

We also seem to be suffering from mutual Stockholm Syndrome, although I am not sure on this. It seems obvious that she is unable to leave me, feeling some sort of emotional bonding. She is also feeling helpless (perhaps feeling developed from her attempts to correct my negative behavior, which all failed) and thus is unable to move on with her life. Maybe she feels helpless in all spheres of her life because of that and this impacts strongly her self-esteem? And so she is using me as a crutch, and desperatedly attempts to hold me by her side with threats, guilt trips and reasoning (saying that I owe her that). She feels that without me, she would have nothing and nowhere to go.

Myself, I am sticking around and am unable to leave her, but I am unsure as to why. I feel guilty for what I have done to her, an this is one of causes. Her reasoning seems not faulty either – least I could do is to help her get back on feet. Although being free of this toxic relationship is something I currently long for, I am unable to push for. Not only because of reasons mentioned above, but also because I don’t want to. I feel bonded to her and leaving her would hurt me. And I know I would hurt her, which is something I don’t want to.

Truth be told, it was me who tried to break up first. Half a year into our relationship, I felt overwhelmed with her presence. She wanted to spend together much more time than I would, and would constantly get upset if I refused. She got upset when I wanted to meet at later time. She got upset when I stated upfront that we would see each other for shorter time. She got upset when during our meeting I stated that I’m going to sleep early and we need to split up for the day. And I was never able to bring myself to tell her “hey, we’re having amazing time, but I’d like to spend this evening on my own you know”. I knew she would be really upset about this. But as I have told her I want to end things, she started having a panic/anxiety attack. She got lightheaded, started having difficulty breathing, and when she could breath, she would hyperventilate. She was unable to stand up (we were on a grass field) and would immediately fall down. Terrified, I tried to calm her down and found myself unable to leave her. And we decided to stay together. Maybe I should have broken up with her back then and that would have spared us all trouble.

Where we are at now, is an unpleasant place. She is lashing out at me for things I did, and I don’t find any comfort in her presence anymore – I am always on alert, trying to avoid triggering her anger. Maybe this blocks my emotionality, because she always says I am unable to show any positive feelings. But I am often afraid when spending time with her.

We are both unable to make a move in any direction. And I don’t know what to do. As you say, any of us can not heal in this relationship and perhaps ending it would be best or even only choice. But I cannot bring myself to do it, and whenever she tells me to “piss off” because of some reasons – I find myself apologizing or defending my point. Maybe because I know that when she tells me to bugger off, two days later she will message me again, saying things like “so this is you changing yourself like you promised?” or “you don’t know how bad I feel because of you and you probably don’t care, but know that I haven’t eaten for two days and all I do is cry”.

I am so lost and scared.

My crime is somewhat worse than that, I believe.

1. Casual flirting with other women. No physical contact besides welcoming and parting hugs. Our relationship suffered a strain because my libido is low to nonexistent. I still need to find out the cause, psychological or medical (though I have isolated few medical issues that may cause this). Thus she sees me seeking extrarelationship intimacy and not doing things couples do. Honestly, I seeked outside acceptance, which isn’t nice and cool either.

2. Lying to her when interrogated or trying to avoid being interrogated, yes. Whenever I did something wrong (for example not responding to her messages, trying to rest for a bit, catching alone time, but lied about working overhours) I’d lie about it too, to avoid confrontation.

3. Getting angry at her during all her lashing out at me, as you call it, yes. I yelled at her several times and called her names few times when I couldn’t stand her calling me names. This was highly unprofessional way of handling anger and other emotions, I know. Sometimes she gets mad when we argue, because I start yelling at her – I often raise my tone when I’m excited or stressed, that’s true. Not to the level of yelling though.

And. There were many times when I said things that might’ve hurt her, because I’m an idiot. I don’t even understand how, when she explains it. There were many times I’d ignore her messages, because I was scared of engaging in arguments. Stringing her like that isn’t polite. I never wanted to talk about parts of my past – I never liked talking about past sexual experiences and experiments for example, but she pushed and pushed and pushed so I told everything and she didn’t like the answer. Sometimes I went radio silent – I was too occupied with having fun with friends, and she was worrying sick about me. There were already five times like that I think.

She says I’m also not 100% commited, because if she ever wanted to leave town and move elsewhere, I said I wasn’t really sure what I’d do – where I live now, I have a brilliant job that basically is my dream come true. And I wouldn’t like leaving my friends, but I could visit them I guess. And she said she wants to move out some day, because she needs it to heal.

I could give few more examples if I’d think about it. So I guess my crime list is quite large.

Dear Anita,

My girlfriend says many things out of anger, helplessness, aversion or disgust for me. Bashing women with red hair is one of them. Calling “sluts” every one of three women I’ve had casual sexual encounters in my distant past (last one was more than six years ago I reckon). She also called me many other names which I never liked, but her point was that after abuse she suffered at my hands, I’m more than fit for these names.

But let us assume I have flirted with these women with direct intent to covertly escalate into a full blown affair, the way she sees it. I have probably been serving for around a year or maybe a bit more, but still less than one and a half year (when problems in our relationship started, though this was largely unrelated with lying or flirting at that time).

Dear everyone,

Took me long time to sit through messages, read them carefully and carefully consider your words. Jennifer hit it on the spot too – it takes a lots of gut to admit our weaknesses, especially the ugly ones. Just reading my message again made me feel uneasy and after reading the responses, my heart sank. I am a monster after all, born from an unattended child. But as easy as it is to push blame onto others (in this case my father), it’ll do me no good. It is me who broke that poor girl and not my father. It is me who failed to teach myself in older years value of honesty, assertiveness and courage required to build healthy relationships.

It is painfully true too, that in this relationship my role has already been established as The Abuser. I get pulled into that role too often, whatever I say, The Abused sees it as an invisible threat, she seems to think “somewhere there hidden are lies, hate, agression” and thus simple questions become igniting points for hours long arguments, where I said something completely insensitive, showed that I don’t care or made her feel like poop. All that while I’m clueless as to how I offended her, how I have not cared about her, so on and so on. Is it possible that anything I’ll say she will interpret as abusive or at least will attempt (very hard) to find that “abusive load” in my words? I certainly believe so!

The problem is, I am too weak to follow this through the way you are suggesting. Break up requires too much willpower from me. Or maybe that’s not lack of willpower but overwhelming guilt, or even worse – sense of duty, feeling that I shouldn’t do it. It’d set me free, maybe it’d set her free too, but whenever that “we break up and cut contact, this time for real” comes up, I can’t follow through. Because she will say things that make my heart sink deeper into guilt, she tells me she has not a single reason to live now that I leave her, that after all I leave her with all the damage I’ve done and now she’s alone with her problems, that I failed and she never deserved it – and she is right to say these things.

She seems absolutely powerless in these times, crying her eyes out, seemingly phasing out and becoming a hollow form without a human soul. And I never wished that fate upon her, so I stay, I make amends and I genuinely try hard to fix at least something in her life. And the cycle repeats, oh how I wish I was free from it, but what of her then? What if she fails to recover or even worse, does something to her out of desperation or depression? I want her to heal, to thrive, to be happy, not sink deeper into despair or harm herself. Am I not responsible for her misery? Is it not my responsibility to support her in these dark times then? Her family is far from perfect, her friends are none, and her therapy is not helping. Should I really leave her alone with all this?

And I am not looking for place of comfort, Bambi, nor for return to my comfort zone. I know very well that only outside these changes happen. But the stress I’ve been living in for one and a half year now has taken its toll on me. In the morning I struggle to exercise, trying to lose weight. After that there’s eight hours of work which I need to support myself financially. After that there’s usually six or more hours spent with her. Inbetween I try to fit house chores. Four times a month maybe I’ll get a chance to meet with a friend, but sometimes I’d rather stay at home and relax in solitude. I am overwhelmed and unsure how to follow this routine.

This just seems like a place of no escape as of now. A very dark place with many very wrong choices:

stay with her and possibly hurt her more or even cause harm just by being normal person, because what if she’s reinterpreting everything I do as abusive
bless her and let her go, and know for rest of my life that she’s drowning even more in her despair, because I broke her and then chose my healing over her healing
supress my identity and become more of a obedient servant than a partner in order to let her heal, in the process probably causing harm to myself (which option out of three sounds most fair and just, but what if I break before she heals?)

And I don’t know how to proceed anymore. I’m feeling completely blocked.