Hi Mia,

Thank you again, it is really nice to hear of someone else who has been through a similar situation! During the break-up talk, he sort of mentioned my “stress when we do his activities” but then also subtley tried to accuse me of not trusting him or thinking he was doing “things he’s not supposed to do” when he does activities without me. I’m assuming he’s referring to the fact that he does a lot of these activities with other women, including single women. I shut him down, immediately on both counts, and told him “that is not what is going on and I really don’t think it would be worthwhile or productive for us to get into that right now.” I’m seeing now how the issue was always the same but the blame shifted depending on my response to it. Going back to what Anita said about how he’s not likely to ever be satisfied. He refused to accept responsibility for being selfish with the way he “planned” things and did not try to ever take my schedule, wants, or needs into account when attempting to spend time with me. Instead, he tried several tactics to make it my “fault,” and each time I stepped up to correct the fault, somehow a new one would appear.

Right now I’m not struggling with the “I should’ve been more patient or less judgmental.” I’m struggling with the “I should have been more assertive, maybe if I had been stronger in pointing out these behaviors and done so earlier on, he would have responded better.” Meaning, he just needed a stronger, more assertive woman and I failed in that regard. But then I remember the times when, like you said, I did try to, extremely gently, get him to see another perspective and how he reacted and talked down to me, and I decided it wasn’t worth the energy and the sick feeling I got trying to make him look at things differently. Or the times I did firmly say “I need ___, or it hurts me when you do ____.” Strong woman or not, I have to remind myself that it’s not my responsibility to get him to change. If someone who loves you is gently trying to get you to see a new perspective, it is your job to try to be receptive to that, whatever the outcome. I know that whenever I hurt him or he tried to get me to see my flawed thinking, I thought about it carefully and usually ended up apologizing and tried to look at things from that perspective.

Like I said before, I can’t recall a time when he’s said the words “I’m sorry.” He has acknowledged his behavior, even acknowledged that he should do things differently, but I’ve never once heard him say he’s sorry. Those words are powerful and meaningful, and I wonder why he always held them back. To subtley make me feel like I was still the root cause of all of the issues? Because that’s what ended up happening.

I am taking your advice- I got really down yesterday thinking about all of the good behaviors. Now I’m trying to focus on all of the times I felt flat-out ignored, all of the times he was extremely passive aggressive, the times he refused to accommodate me and made me feel like I was bad or wrong for even having those wants or needs, the times he suggested I get on medication or see an endocrinologist or hinted that I was lazy. And I remember all that he didn’t do and didn’t see, all of the amazing things I have accomplished in my life, the challenges I’ve overcome, the dreams I have for myself. The focus was always, always on him- his needs, his dreams for the future, and how I fit into that. I love him, I do, and he did have some really amazing qualities. But like you said, I can see how he was already shifting the blame in his mind. My good quality is that I always seek to see the best in people. I need to remember that sometimes, like now, I need to focus on the flaws so that I can move on.

What you said about how your ex “used all my “issues/anxiety” that I opened up to him about as a way to try and say “I have big issues and need lots of help!” also really struck a chord with me. I opened my heart to this man, which was scary for me, and all of the things that I have struggled or had happen to me in the past somehow always become fodder for shifting blame on to me. I would talk to him about a want or need of mine not being met, and he would basically discredit my claim, saying it was due to anxiety or because of my “past issues.” But of course, I could never bring up how his past might be affecting his behavior.

It still hurts. I know it will take me awhile to move on from him and not miss all of the good things about him. But I need to remember that I am good too, I was good to him too, and I deserve, as Anita said, a win-win relationship. And so do you!!

Anita,

I think you hit the nail on the head. His relationship with his father was strained and he spoke of his father negatively. He said his father had extreme social anxiety and instead of dealing with it, he attempted to control every situation so it went exactly the way he wanted it to go. If his father couldn’t control it, he would avoid it. The resentment he felt towards his father was palpable whenever he talked about him. He would talk about essentially battling his father, how he used conversations about, say, where they would go out to dinner as an opportunity to “not let him control the situation.” He would always say things along the lines of “I’m not going to let him get away with this behavior.”

His conversations with his father, that I witnessed or that he related to me, often seemed like a battle of wills. I’d watch them both argue about something really insignificant, each stubbornly claiming the other was wrong and didn’t know what they were talking about. And that’s always what it was about- being right. They both just had to be right. Again, it was one of those situations where I couldn’t really say anything to get him to see a new perspective, have him try to let go and accept his father for who he was instead of trying to change him or show him that he was wrong. His anger around the situation was so intense that I just instinctively knew better than to try to say anything about it.

I see now that he was playing that dynamic out in our relationship. He probably saw my attempts to set boundaries or have my wants/needs addressed as me trying to control the situation. His father has anxiety, and I have anxiety, therefore I was just like his father. So he treated me the way he treats his father- by showing and explaining how he is right, by making me feel like I was wrong or bad for wanting to do things differently. And yes- by being angry. I’m seeing that now, all of the ways that he was very angry and frustrated with me for the smallest things I would do.

Perhaps I was always trying to have a conversation about what works best for both parties, but knowingly or not, he was always engaging in a battle of wills. I see how that played out in his “ideal” way a relationship should function- he plans things and I go along, then I plan things and he goes along. He had no interest in truly working together, just taking turns submitting to each other’s wishes. Except, of course, I ended up doing the submitting, and the few times he did things “my way” were used against me when I tried to talk about how things weren’t working for me. We went over that point again and again, and I could never really get him to see my perspective.

I’m also seeing now that this is perhaps why I endured the relationship for as long as I did, and why I felt compelled to keep trying to make it work. My step-father was a very angry man, and had an angry way of relating. My childhood with him was always about structuring our lives, days, and behaviors around “not making Mark mad.” He was never physically abusive, so I’m not sure that any of us understood how threatened we were by his anger. I remember once my Mom took me and my brother out for ice cream, and she was frantic about us hiding all of the evidence, and adamant about how we were to never tell him about it, how it was our secret. I felt bad and wrong for even just existing, for being a kid and doing kid things. Everything was always tense, I felt like I always had to be on guard lest I make a mistake and set him off. Maybe that’s why I can handle relationships that aren’t peaceful- some part of me thinks tension is normal in relationships.

And even to this day, though she divorced him years ago, my Mom will still talk about my step-dad’s good qualities, how he was a good provider and a hard worker. I think I was essentially trained to be submissive to angry men, and to look at their anger towards me as a sign that I had done something wrong. If I’m honest with myself, my father also has a temper and was often angry, and I had to tiptoe around him as well. His anger issues have gotten exponentially better in the last 5 years or so, but he was angry throughout my childhood. Maybe that’s what I subconsciously think love and relationships with men looks like- waiting out the anger, trying to change myself so they are less angry.

I’m getting pretty emotional typing all of this out. If all of this is true, which it feels like it is, I struggle with what I do with the information. How do I break this pattern? How do I recognize the anger for what it is early on? I want and know I need to take some time before I begin dating again, but I want to make sure I know how to break this pattern before I try to put myself out there again.