Dear Helena:

It seems to me that your relationship with him from early on has been one between a submissive person (you) and a domineering person (him).

Online definition of submissive: ready to conform to the authority or will of others, meekly obedient or passive.

Online definition of domineering: asserting one’s will over another in an arrogant way.

* “I tried to talk to him about some of the stuff in the past but have been told ‘that’s the way I am'”-

– “have been told”, passive tense, this is your passivity, obedience, submissiveness.

– “that’s the way I am” is his arrogance, his domineering behavior.

* “I always seem to wait for him to do that. To leave me, to move away, to divorce me”- this is your submissiveness.

Your submissive behavior and his domineering behavior is evident throughout your account of your relationship with him.

You wrote earlier: “one thing about me is I value stability and loyalty about all. I have never betrayed anyone in my whole life, not even people who I thought betrayed  me and that is why this hurts so much”-

– maybe you are equating loyalty with submissiveness to a domineering person, and betrayal with asserting yourself with a domineering person.

Do you think so, and if you do, any idea as to the origin of your submissiveness to a domineering person?

anita