Dear MsMel:

You wrote that you re trying to “remember the bad to push away the sweet thoughts”- I don’t think this aim works for anyone, to push away the sweet thoughts. I don’t think it works because it is based on an all-or-nothing thinking, which is not true to reality. I will explain my point (and it is for your evaluation of course):

better aim at holding both kinds of thought: the sweet and the bitter. Because in reality he was a good man and a bad man in your life, both, not one or the other. So better hold on to both groups of thought. When we try to push one group, the other will find itself back in and take possession.

Reads to me that your ex boyfriend had and has a pathological relationship with his mother. That is a shame as this pathological relationship affects him (and you) so badly. He may have been correct when he blames his mother for causing the breakups of past relationships. Maybe his mother drilled in him guilt about being loyal  to any other woman, other than her, that is.

Maybe.

Regardless, he was not open to therapy and indeed there is nothing you can do to force him to go to therapy. His charming self, that was probably genuine. I am sure you observed a lot of genuine, loving parts of him and that is what is so confusing, isn’t it?

We tend to think of people as good or bad. It is hard to hold both in mind. Thing is, in his case, in your life, he has been bad for you, overall.

Even the cruelest person in the world, by the way, has his (or her) loving moments.

I am carried away with my thoughts…

anita