Dear anon:

Your thinking and understanding of your boyfriend (or ex boyfriend) read reasonable to me. Reads to me that his parents have been mistreating him by fighting each other and him. He has been and is living in a war zone, really. This is why he is relieved his sisters don’t live there anymore. One self protective reaction to living in a war zone is to go numb. The three natural responses to danger are the three Fs: Flight (running away… which he should be doing!), Fight, and Freeze. Freezing is going numb.

It is bad enough for him to be living in a war zone, yet worse, he feels guilty for it. He doesn’t hold his parents responsible for creating the war zone, he inaccurately believes that he is the cause!

Then he proceeds to inaccurately project his false belief into the relationship with you, believing he can only harm you, just as he has harmed his parents (neither is true!)

Clearly he needs to get out of the war zone, join his sisters in no longer living there. Then he needs to learn that he hasn’t caused that war zone, and therefore that he is not a cause of ruin.

anita