Dear everyone,

Took me long time to sit through messages, read them carefully and carefully consider your words. Jennifer hit it on the spot too – it takes a lots of gut to admit our weaknesses, especially the ugly ones. Just reading my message again made me feel uneasy and after reading the responses, my heart sank. I am a monster after all, born from an unattended child. But as easy as it is to push blame onto others (in this case my father), it’ll do me no good. It is me who broke that poor girl and not my father. It is me who failed to teach myself in older years value of honesty, assertiveness and courage required to build healthy relationships.

It is painfully true too, that in this relationship my role has already been established as The Abuser. I get pulled into that role too often, whatever I say, The Abused sees it as an invisible threat, she seems to think “somewhere there hidden are lies, hate, agression” and thus simple questions become igniting points for hours long arguments, where I said something completely insensitive, showed that I don’t care or made her feel like poop. All that while I’m clueless as to how I offended her, how I have not cared about her, so on and so on. Is it possible that anything I’ll say she will interpret as abusive or at least will attempt (very hard) to find that “abusive load” in my words? I certainly believe so!

The problem is, I am too weak to follow this through the way you are suggesting. Break up requires too much willpower from me. Or maybe that’s not lack of willpower but overwhelming guilt, or even worse – sense of duty, feeling that I shouldn’t do it. It’d set me free, maybe it’d set her free too, but whenever that “we break up and cut contact, this time for real” comes up, I can’t follow through. Because she will say things that make my heart sink deeper into guilt, she tells me she has not a single reason to live now that I leave her, that after all I leave her with all the damage I’ve done and now she’s alone with her problems, that I failed and she never deserved it – and she is right to say these things.

She seems absolutely powerless in these times, crying her eyes out, seemingly phasing out and becoming a hollow form without a human soul. And I never wished that fate upon her, so I stay, I make amends and I genuinely try hard to fix at least something in her life. And the cycle repeats, oh how I wish I was free from it, but what of her then? What if she fails to recover or even worse, does something to her out of desperation or depression? I want her to heal, to thrive, to be happy, not sink deeper into despair or harm herself. Am I not responsible for her misery? Is it not my responsibility to support her in these dark times then? Her family is far from perfect, her friends are none, and her therapy is not helping. Should I really leave her alone with all this?

And I am not looking for place of comfort, Bambi, nor for return to my comfort zone. I know very well that only outside these changes happen. But the stress I’ve been living in for one and a half year now has taken its toll on me. In the morning I struggle to exercise, trying to lose weight. After that there’s eight hours of work which I need to support myself financially. After that there’s usually six or more hours spent with her. Inbetween I try to fit house chores. Four times a month maybe I’ll get a chance to meet with a friend, but sometimes I’d rather stay at home and relax in solitude. I am overwhelmed and unsure how to follow this routine.

This just seems like a place of no escape as of now. A very dark place with many very wrong choices:

stay with her and possibly hurt her more or even cause harm just by being normal person, because what if she’s reinterpreting everything I do as abusive
bless her and let her go, and know for rest of my life that she’s drowning even more in her despair, because I broke her and then chose my healing over her healing
supress my identity and become more of a obedient servant than a partner in order to let her heal, in the process probably causing harm to myself (which option out of three sounds most fair and just, but what if I break before she heals?)

And I don’t know how to proceed anymore. I’m feeling completely blocked.

Dear Anita and dear everyone,

Is her weapon truly guilt, when she only speaks of harm I’ve done to her? She is hurt, she is in pain, she wants this all to end, would it not be natural to talk about what I’ve done to her? Would it be wrong to talk about all I’ve done to her, if it brings her a moment of relief? I am indeed at her disposal and willing to resign from meeting friends or spending time alone, if she has her emotional pain moment. But shouldn’t I, if it was me who lied, who failed to keep boundaries with other people, who failed to understand the social construct and its rules?

And yes, I was acting in a way that many people probably would see as flirty and promiscuous. Months ago, after many sessions of meditation and self-reflection, I found out I only wanted these people’s acceptance. So I crossed not only boundaries of social interaction but boundaries of my own. I always wanted to be accepted so hard that I failed to see the only source of acceptance I need – and the one that was empty – is my self. But intent is not action and I was judged for my actions. And these were seen as flirty and promiscuous, not something you do in a classical, exclusive relationship.

Yes, when confronted for long time about very same issue, I feel helplessness building up inside of me. How long must I repeat same answers to rephrased questions? How long must I misinterpred these questions and hear that if I’m “that stupid” then I’d better not answer at all? I always try to remain calm (which often comes off as cold and emotionless, I’m really bad at being empathetic or maybe I’m a sociopath?) but after some time, I’m so tired, so scared of confrontation, that probably this is the reason I’ll lash out. To make everything stop.

But it’s not that these accusations are false (as said in previous paragraph, these are based on my actions, not intentions), it’s that my answers seem to fall on deaf ears. Topics will always return, like today we’ve already (it was around noon to clarify) had an argument about how I like red hair and how she has black, thus I must dislike her hair. She sees me taking liking to red hair as something obsessive, given that 50% of my partners (which is 3 out of 6 women I dated) had red hair. How can I not see her (a normal girl with normal hair) as sexual and would prefer these “redhead sluts” as she calls them. But I don’t, though no amount of me stating that seems to let me get through to her.

I have once read somewhere, that in adult life people who had abusive or dysfunctional parents tend to find partners with negative personality traits or problems similar to those that their parents had. This is done because their inner children still yearn acceptance from their parents. We subconciously want to know that we were ok people to our parents and find such partners thinking that if they accept us, our parents would do it too. This seems very true to me, because this relationship is very similar in the way we handle arguments to the way my father did it – there was no winning them. It’s not like he had to be right. He simply “was” and woe to them who disagreed.

But still I am helpless. You paint a very scary picture of future that awaits me, which seems repetition of last one and a half year. But what should I do? Probably, the answer is to break up, but I just can’t muster up the strength required to do so. Though I love her, I am scared just thinking about us having a relationship. But I’m even more scared of breaking up. She is of weak mind and in a very dark place right now, very alone. If I sever her only connection to outside world (which is me), what will she do? I have put her there and yes, indeed I feel guilty about it. I want to help her, it’s just… I’m helpless where I am right now.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Desmond.

Dear Anita,

My girlfriend says many things out of anger, helplessness, aversion or disgust for me. Bashing women with red hair is one of them. Calling “sluts” every one of three women I’ve had casual sexual encounters in my distant past (last one was more than six years ago I reckon). She also called me many other names which I never liked, but her point was that after abuse she suffered at my hands, I’m more than fit for these names.

But let us assume I have flirted with these women with direct intent to covertly escalate into a full blown affair, the way she sees it. I have probably been serving for around a year or maybe a bit more, but still less than one and a half year (when problems in our relationship started, though this was largely unrelated with lying or flirting at that time).

I believe too that it’s worth noting this behavior (making me “serve time”) isn’t an all time activity. It comes and goes, and at times we spend very good moments together. But a slightiest mention of an uncomfortable situation or her catching me looking at other women (I don’t by the way, but she never believes me, “it was obvious” she says “that you were looking at her boobs/butt”) can trigger that angry response in her. And after what I’ve done to her, I believe she has right to lash out at me. It was me who failed her, not the other way around.

My crime is somewhat worse than that, I believe.

1. Casual flirting with other women. No physical contact besides welcoming and parting hugs. Our relationship suffered a strain because my libido is low to nonexistent. I still need to find out the cause, psychological or medical (though I have isolated few medical issues that may cause this). Thus she sees me seeking extrarelationship intimacy and not doing things couples do. Honestly, I seeked outside acceptance, which isn’t nice and cool either.

2. Lying to her when interrogated or trying to avoid being interrogated, yes. Whenever I did something wrong (for example not responding to her messages, trying to rest for a bit, catching alone time, but lied about working overhours) I’d lie about it too, to avoid confrontation.

3. Getting angry at her during all her lashing out at me, as you call it, yes. I yelled at her several times and called her names few times when I couldn’t stand her calling me names. This was highly unprofessional way of handling anger and other emotions, I know. Sometimes she gets mad when we argue, because I start yelling at her – I often raise my tone when I’m excited or stressed, that’s true. Not to the level of yelling though.

And. There were many times when I said things that might’ve hurt her, because I’m an idiot. I don’t even understand how, when she explains it. There were many times I’d ignore her messages, because I was scared of engaging in arguments. Stringing her like that isn’t polite. I never wanted to talk about parts of my past – I never liked talking about past sexual experiences and experiments for example, but she pushed and pushed and pushed so I told everything and she didn’t like the answer. Sometimes I went radio silent – I was too occupied with having fun with friends, and she was worrying sick about me. There were already five times like that I think.

She says I’m also not 100% commited, because if she ever wanted to leave town and move elsewhere, I said I wasn’t really sure what I’d do – where I live now, I have a brilliant job that basically is my dream come true. And I wouldn’t like leaving my friends, but I could visit them I guess. And she said she wants to move out some day, because she needs it to heal.

I could give few more examples if I’d think about it. So I guess my crime list is quite large.