Dear Ann:

Here is the list of his behaviors that you provided and my evaluation of it being respectful or disrespectful:

1. “Wanting to be with other girls (but I could not be with other men)”- He disrespected and mistreated you when he had sex with other women while in relationship with you, even in your presence, because it HURT you and it was okay with him to hurt you.

2. “Wanting to have sex even if I didn’t feel like it and accused me of being non sexual (he wanted sex 3 times a day)”- He disrespected and mistreated you when he pressured you to have sex with him when you didn’t feel like it. He disrespected and mistreated you when he accused you for something you are not responsible for. You are not responsible for your feelings, so he had no business accusing you for feeling this or that. Accusing you made you feel bad. He hurt you, again.

3. “He followed me and guy friend to see what we were up to.” He disrespected your privacy. By following you he have you the message that you are not trustworthy. Even though you were trustworthy. Once again, he accused you and hurt you that way.

4. “He said that I’ll never find someone like him”- he disrespected and mistreated you by predicting a future he cannot predict and has no business to predict. The purpose of what he said is to lie to you (suggesting he is something anyone would want to be with, as if it is something good to be with him) and to create fear in you, that you will not find a boyfriend after him. It is mistreating you to lie and scare you.

5. “He said that other where cute when I was sitting there, in a nasty way.” He mistreated you by hurting you, trying to make you feel badly, less than other women.

6. “He wanted to marry me because he did not trust me…” He mistreated you when he suggested you are not trustworthy even though you were trustworthy. Again, he said yet another thing so to hurt you. To cause hurt is the same as to mistreat.

7. “I remember once when I had a little procedure done at the hospital…when I came out he was so angry at me…I was still quite frightned over the small procedure that was done so I just cried.” He mistreated you when instead of comforting you following your procedure, when you were scared, instead of that he …again, hurt you by behaving angrily.

And then you wrote: “The list of his behaviour that I kind of excepted went on and on.” Meaning there is 8, 9, 10 and so on.

Regarding the rest of your post, here are quotes followed by my comments:

1. You tried to “change and adapt” to his mistreatment/ abuse of you. Bad idea. When mistreated, exit the interaction/ relationship. Do not adapt to it (You had to as a child, unable to leave your abusive family. Now you can leave).

2. “But when I no longer could (adapt) he left me.” Meaning he his MO was to mistreat you and he didn’t want to have a relationship with you otherwise.

3. “He had a terrible childhood…” I am sure he did. And so did you. And so did I. Neither one of us has the right to mistreat another person because of it.

4. “I thought he could develop and grow from that”- if he wanted to. But he didn’t.

5. “he started to resent me when I tried to help him, It was almost like I’ve seen his inner secrets.” He didn’t want your help, didn’t want to confront painful feelings about his past. And your responsibility, Ann, was to help yourself, not him. You needed help.

6. “The same when we were recording my songs…I did not have much say at all in anything of the production. Of course he has done music longer than me but it was my songs.” He may have respected music, like you wrote before, but he didn’t respect you as the one singing, the one creating the music.

7. “He got really angry when I tried to tell him this – that I wanted a bigger voice in the production- and accussed me of hating the songs..” It was his way- or the highway. And he accused you a lot so to keep you subdued to His Way.

8. “The time I fell pregnant and phoned him after 4 hours after finding it out. He redirected the focus on him and his problem”.. His relationship with you was not about you at all; it was about him. And that is what you adapted to.

9. “After the abortion when he left me in car for such a long time, not understanding the pain”- he didn’t care to understand your pain. This is consistent with his other behaviors. The relationship was not about you and your pain.

10. “Or cuddling with my best friend on the floor in the middle of the night and not saying sorry it – saying I was overreacting and so on.” He accuses you a lot, so to subdue you to His Ways.

11. “Anytime I tried to share my feelings and so on all I get is a defensive voice than minimize my feelings.” The relationship, as far as he was concerned, was not about you, your pain, your feelings.

12. “There is constant invalidation of me so therefor as I look up to him I do not know what is wrong and right.” And this is how he gets His Way.

13. “He gave me ultimatums that if you do not come back you’ll never see me or the cat ever again..” Again and again, he is consistent: it is His Way or the Highway. And did I mention: the relationship is about him, only him.

I am stopping here because I had enough of him and I wish you had enough of him yourself!

The last sentences in your post: “My problem is that I want to understand everyone else when they do hurt me. I have no clear boundaries as I can understand why people would treat me the way they do and it might not have anything to with me at all. That’s why I get along with most people and I accept them for who they are.”

My comment on that: I am okay with trying to understand people. We can try to understand that …””partner”” here, if you’d like, analyze his behavior and motivation. That can be interesting. The problem is that you shouldn’t be in a relationship with him. If we did analyze him we will find out that underneath his abusive behavior there is a little hurt boy. Now, there was a little hurt boy in Hitler too, and Stalin and in any of the serial killers in history. No need to volunteer to be their victim.

anita