Dear Hannah:

You wrote that you “would never yell at him or tell him that he brings out the worst in me”- there may be things you say to you that hurt him very much and which he would never tell you. As individuals we are sensitive to different sayings and acts that hurt us a lot in the past. So we are careful not to inflict those specific acts and those specific words on another. On the other hand, we inflict other acts and words that are hurtful to the other person because of his individual experience.

It reads to me that you are probably not abused in this relationship. Your feelings get hurt, so does his. You get angry and upset and so does he.

Your last sentence is about feeling like dirt. When we feel like dirt, it is not necessarily that we were made to feel like dirt by the current person in our lives. Often enough it is how we individually process what someone says or does that makes us feel this way or that way, based on past experiences.

Again, from your examples, I do not see evidence of abuse. I see evidence of hurt feelings, anger and confusion/ lack of clarity about which of the feelings you experience is based on reality and which is based on incorrect interpretation of reality. The title of your thread: Anxiety or unhealthy relationship” indicates this confusion.

anita