Dear Butterfy:

So what you stated so far in the last post and before it is that you have done nothing wrong to him, never mistreated him in any way. He has mistreated you repeatedly. The only thing you regret in the relationship is that you allowed him to mistreat you.

You also wrote that in past love relationships you weren’t mistreated, if I remember correctly.

And you didn’t respond to my suggestion yesterday that you may have been mistreated as a child and projecting that mistreatment into him.

All these lead me to the unusual yet possible reality that this is your first time being significantly mistreated and you are stunned at this reality: that you were all loving all the time to this man and he repeatedly mistreated you.

Being mistreated is unfortunately, a reality. Often happens to children who can not exit the mistreatment situation, having no place to go. Mistreated children try very hard to change the mistreating parent, be a good girl or boy and earn a good treatment. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen as the mistreating parent continues to mistreat for his/ her own reasons (the child never deserved it).

And so, you are fortunate that the first significant mistreatment occurred to you as an adult (if I understand it correctly at this point)- because you can, as an adult who lives away from the mistreating party, exit the relationship.

I wrote “fortunate”- we are never fortunate to be mistreated. Only it seems to me no one in this world is fortunate enough to never be mistreated.

anita