Dear Hannah:

It reads to me like the two of you engage in arguments/ fights. Maybe you didn’t raise your voice as loudly as he did, but it is my understanding that you are at least as responsible for the fighting as he is.

I understand that you suffer from anxiety, but it is not a license to fighting. It is possible to be anxious and to not fight.

When he told you that his feelings matter too, do you think he made a valid point (better made without yelling, I agree)?

anita

Dear Hannah:

You don’t have to “forgive and forget” and often enough, it is not a good idea. If you hold a person responsible for their behavior and remember their behavior, then you can protect yourself from abusive behavior. If you forgive-and-forget abusive behavior, you will experience more and more of it.

You wrote that he verbally abused you (post before last), and in your recent post, you wrote that he said a lot of hurtful things to you. Can you give a couple of examples of such hurtful/ abusive things he said to you?

anita

Dear Hannah:

The examples of what you feel is hurtful and abusive things that he told you are:

1. “just get over my past like an adult.”

2. “yes because no one else makes him mad like I do.”

3. “I have to sit here and be ok with your anxiety, when it just ends up costing me more money.”

4. “(you) should just go be single and alone “.

5. “(He) refuses to subject himself to that treatment and is sick of just ‘fitting in’”.

6. “there’s no way to be compassionate over text”.

7. “(It, your behavior, I assume) is not normal and I need to learn how to adjust”

My input: I see no abuse whatsoever in # 5 and 6.

Regarding the rest: they are unkind but not necessarily abusive, depending on the context of your behavior. In example #4: it is unkind, no doubt. But if the context is that you complain to him on and on and on about him, how dissatisfied you are with him, and many of your complaints are unreasonable, then he may get angry, naturally, and resort to a retort, which is what #4 may very well be, as well as a few of the others.

Will be back in 7-17 hours. I hope other members will reply to you next.

anita

Hi Hannah,

There’s no need to be around someone who makes you feel bad, or scared because of his outbursts. He’s probably a great guy, but at some point he is either going to have to decide whether keeping you around is more important than the way he treats you when he is upset. At the same time, maybe you can start to explore what’s out there a little. What’s that saying? “Just because you look at the menu, doesn’t mean you have to order something.” There’s a lot of food items out there!

And at the same time, maybe you can focus on your own self-progress, your own development. What do you want in a relationship, in life? You can make of goals, choose one, and then create a list of steps that will get you to that goal. I usually stop checking my progress after the first step, but just the feeling of progress can be better than being sad.

And I just remember reading something yesterday… I think almost everyone wishes they could go back and handle the ending of relationships better (if that’s what you decide to do). Just because you two might have started to burn out a little doesn’t mean he can’t still have a special place in your life, if that’s what you want. Imagine the relationship you want to have with him in the future, and make the necessary and sequential choices that will lead you to that. Sometimes relationships at this point can turn nonexistent, or even worse, into feuds. But you can make it into anything you want it to be.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Mark.

Dear Hannah:

You wrote that you “would never yell at him or tell him that he brings out the worst in me”- there may be things you say to you that hurt him very much and which he would never tell you. As individuals we are sensitive to different sayings and acts that hurt us a lot in the past. So we are careful not to inflict those specific acts and those specific words on another. On the other hand, we inflict other acts and words that are hurtful to the other person because of his individual experience.

It reads to me that you are probably not abused in this relationship. Your feelings get hurt, so does his. You get angry and upset and so does he.

Your last sentence is about feeling like dirt. When we feel like dirt, it is not necessarily that we were made to feel like dirt by the current person in our lives. Often enough it is how we individually process what someone says or does that makes us feel this way or that way, based on past experiences.

Again, from your examples, I do not see evidence of abuse. I see evidence of hurt feelings, anger and confusion/ lack of clarity about which of the feelings you experience is based on reality and which is based on incorrect interpretation of reality. The title of your thread: Anxiety or unhealthy relationship” indicates this confusion.

anita