Hi Anita,

That is true, we did talk about it, but it wasn’t by choice. I actually was talking to my father on the phone about what was going on, and she chimed in which is often the case. Like I mentioned, I am not really able to discuss things with my father alone. I suppose I do accept her attempts to give support or advice, but I definitely do not seek it from her.

I think I did always love him, I did want things to work out between us, but I was deeply scarred from my past. I had been really beating myself up over discussing my past with him, but I realized today that a lot of that was because he is very inexperienced in relationships (I am his first girlfriend and his 27 years old) and I felt I needed to explain what is normal in relationships. He was always very hard on me in our relationship, sometimes to the point of meanness, and while I believe this helped motivate me forward in my life professionally, it had a deep toll emotionally. I constantly asked him to be nicer to me, and I think this is where past exes would come into the picture because I deeply missed having a partner be kind and sweet to me.

My current partner/now ex is an only child, from a Croatian background. His parents lavish him with attention, constantly. They do not and have not ever scolded him, even when he was rude to them. In fact, the last argument we had was regarding how he was speaking to his father. I simply could not stand how mean he was being to him, as I have now for some months been on the receiving end of that anger and meanness. I think he doesn’t ever want to be questioned for his behaviour. He did not seem this way when we first meant, he was so kind and sweet to me and we started the relationship as friends. I thought he would always be that way to me, that even if our relationship ended, we could be civil to one another. But it did not end this way, and I’m truly saddened by the cruel things he said to me and to this moment stands by saying.

I miss my “best friend”, but I feel he is gone now. Perhaps it is my fault for not loving him enough when we were together, but I truly did my very best. And I am sad to say that no matter how I did or didn’t act in the relationship, I don’t think you can ever truly justify meanness and cruelty, especially since I was apologetic and sad the whole time. I truly wish I had loved him better while we were together, appreciated when he was kind to me more. But at the same time, something in my gut feels like no matter what I did, he wanted a relationship on his terms only, and did not want to factor mine into those and this became more apparent as we got comfortable with one another, which I believe caused me to miss previous partners more where this wasn’t the case.

I believe sadly this relationship is over, but I am more sad about how it ended, especially when at the very end there seemed to be a chance of reconciliation.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by laelithia.