Hi Freddie,

no we weren’t really resolving anything, think we just fell in the pattern of enjoying each others company when we were together and buried what we really needed to be talking about.

Right… you said you otherwise had an enjoyable relationship (The relationship was happy for the most part, we get on really well, we enjoy similar things, we made each other laugh and the sex life was great), and I can imagine how easy it is slip into the feel-good aspect of it.

It’s like having a pink elephant in the room and pretending it’s not there. As long as both of you pretended, things were fine and enjoyable. But as soon as you started asking questions, you were made to be the bad guy. You disrupted the “idyll”. Only it wasn’t idyll, but something that had the potential to turn into a major problem a few years down the road…

She did talk about it a little bit with me after I set this in motion but again it seemed like the abridged script and I think it’s a bigger, deeper topic than a 10 min chat.

Would you like to share what she said about it? I agree that it’s a big topic, and not something you can explain in 10 minutes and then put it to rest forever.

I think it became easy to put the blame on me due to the back and forth I was doing and I took a lot of the blame,

Yeah, it seems you felt guilty (and were probably blamed too) for bringing it up again and again, for not being able to let it go. It’s almost like blaming yourself (or being blamed) for mentioning the pink elephant again and again, and refusing to drop the subject…

although I shoulder some responsibility I’m beginning to see that how I was feeling and what I felt were valid too and it seemed them issues became non issues to her, but they were never fully resolved.

I am glad you’re starting to see that your feelings and concerns are valid. And that it’s not the way to go if she believes that what concerns you (and rightly so) is a non-issue and refuses to talk about it.

I need start getting a grip on why I feel anxious and looking at dealing with these issues around feeling guilty all the time.

Yeah, I think so too. What occurred to me is that there might be a certain similarity between you walking on eggshells around her for the past 6 years and basically people-pleasing her (not asking “uncomfortable” questions), and what you said about your childhood and people-pleasing those “friends” of yours. Perhaps you didn’t dare to stand up for yourself back then, similarly like you didn’t dare to stand up for yourself until very recently now, in your relationship?