If I said it to him that ‘he was the impossible one’, then he would look angry and walk around the room as in a temper and would end the relationship or at best he would cite all the things he has done for me.

Thank you for your reply. It makes a lot of sense and you are spot on, I can see that the peacemaker approach is reinforcing the behaviour.  I feel as if I can’t do right for doing wrong and he constantly puts me down.  He is a business man in his mid 60s and I am 57 but I feel his behaviour is immature. He deflects everything back at me.  I can see that what he doesn’t ‘like’ about me, I can see in him.  He makes me feel small and treats me like a ‘child’.  He assumes I don’t know much and he knows ‘it all’.  I continued to cooked the mini chicken pieces last week after he started them off in a pan.  I asked (just out of conversation really) how long they were cooking.  He snapped at me and thought I was asking him for ‘advice’ (I am a trained chef), then he said in a very curt, snappy and insulting way  “it doesn’t matter how long they have been cooking for, it is about the thickness etc”.  The point here is that he disslikes any ‘attitude’ I portray. I don’t think I am as sharp and obvioulsy brutel.  he reduced me to tears and saw me with tears in my eyes and then drew away and said “oh for Goodness sake” in a very stand offish way and didn’t want to empathise with me.  He told me yesterday on the phone (the breakup phone call) that I am not empathetic and rams it down my throat many times when we are together. I always ask how he is and try to talk to about current issues (his flat sale that pulled through for example) but everything I said that was positive, he knocked me down and said “you can see by my expression and body language that what you were saying didn’t resonate with me, but you kept on and on”.  I was talking about a story of a Secret Millionaire who made a lot of money from being positive and taking positive action.  He said that I am in denial.  I see a lot of paralles with him.  He can’t admit that he has ‘faults’ and thinks he is perfect and that he is so successful and treats me like a child. He even used to call me ‘little girl’. He doesn’t trust my judgement on things and I lived a life before he came along nearly 4 years ago.

I bought him a red rose last week as a gift when we were Christmas shopping.  He said he was touched but then it didn’t last.  He even threw it back in my face metaphorically but saying “you only bought it to say sorry for YOUR bahaviour’.

I had changed my mind about the shopping destination and as it was cold I suggested we go to a shopping mall. Earlier he had suggested a couple of seasidy towns with shops up and down the high street.  He got really upset with me for saying that I would be OK to walk down to the high street in the town outside the shopping mall. He thought I was illogical and really ‘went for me’. Not physically but emotionally. He thinks he is right and I am wrong.  He complains that I contradict myself and that I talk nonsense. He puts me down a lot.  I can’t do right for doing wrong.  He often lists all the things he has done for me. I never do that to him. I have treated him to two holidays and bought expensive gifts.

My son bought him a bottle of expensive fine wine that this relationship said he liked. When I notieced it was gone from his wine rack, I asked where it was and he told me that it ‘wasn’t that nice’ and even couldn’t recall who had bought it’.  He had forgotten.  He can recall everyone else”s gifts and presents and gladly tells me in detail who bought what (his family usually or a connection to his family).

He wrote a letter to the counsellor about me, and my counsellor showed it and said I could keep it.  The relationship didn’t know the counsellor had given it to me. I think the relationship ‘guessed’ I saw it by some of the things I quoted.

He doesn’t feel proud to have me and all my friends say I am better off without him and that I will find a loving, loyal, kind, tender and good man to love and him love me.

I am not upset today strangely.