I had been out of the dating game for a while because it is so rare that I am attracted to anyone, and being over 35, I had pretty much lost hope of finding a lifelong partner / having kids.  I just moved to a move city and was excited to meet people, and my first week living here I attended a social event and met someone I felt an instant connection with (also never married and single, in his 4os).  We went out on several dates, but only once a week, things moved really slowly but I kind of appreciated that and filled my time with meeting other people since I had just moved here.  Long story short, while he told me he wanted marriage and children he didn’t want to date exclusively because he wasn’t ready but really liked me and wanted to “see where things go,” and so I ended things after 3 months of dating.  He had to go out of the country for 3 months for work, and when he returned it was the pandemic.  We started talking again, and eventually started dating again, and for months this continued on and was honestly really fun and playful and intense but also causing me a lot of anxiety, until I finally insisted on talking about being exclusive.  It was there that he brought up some “reservations” — about my political views (which are more progressive than his, but I didn’t see it as a problem — he is a registered Democrat and when we spoke about things it seemed that our values had been aligned).  I am very passionate about my political views (plus they pertain to my work) and told him that they likely will not change but that he doesn’t have to agree with me.  He was insistent upon us not ending things and kept dragging things on but he seemed conflicted at the same time and I felt sick wondering if he was also dating other women (I have only ever been in monogamous exclusive dating situations or relationships).  Meanwhile he was getting in endless political debates with me which I didn’t really care to do with him and which we had never done before. One ended with him screaming “f***you” in a hotel room at me and I nearly ended things, but he did instantly apologize.

For months, this continued on and although I made romantic gestures like sending him cards and really putting a lot of thought into his birthday, he did not return these things.  But he did introduce me to his friends and talk about our future and spent almost all of his time with me.  Finally, after about 16 months of this (including our 3 month break), he asked me to be his girlfriend casually while we were putting furniture together in a house I had just purchased on my own (a lifelong dream of mine).  It didn’t feel romantic or special at all and I guess I just felt hurt.  Nonetheless, I said yes, and finally felt comfortable introducing him to more of my friends since we were official.  However, he told me in private all his judgments of them (one talked about her weight management issues too much, a few talked about sex too much, etc.)  and that there are a few of them who identify as communists (it’s true, they do), and that if we got a house together because of his career I couldn’t have people who identified as communist in my house. He is in the military and has been for a very long time, and obsessed with the topic of communism, drilling me to see if I am a communist, even becoming enraged at me when I watched a south korean drama that featured a north korean military officer for 20 minutes in his presence.  I wondered if this had to do with PTSD but he refuses to get help.  I refused to submit to this and said my friends will always be welcome in my house regardless of their political ideologies.  He also started picking more and more political fights.  For example, we both agreed that we hated fast food and he said the solution was to tax it so people would eat more healthy food.  I said I understood where he was coming from and once agreed, but ultimately I think this policy just harms poor people, and gave the example of my mom who is poor whose main source of happiness at the moment is fast food and dr. pepper and it doesn’t seem very empathetic to tax the things she loves so she can’t access them.  He said I was “too empathetic” and accused me of “babbling on about my mom,” and said my opinion was “stupid.”  He also accused me of saying his opinion was “bull****” the day before as his defense for calling mine stupid, which I never did (and we were laughing and holding hands in the park the day before, not arguing at all — I can only imagine having said something was bullshit in a playful way but we discussed nothing serious).  I immediately broke up with him, and told him that in addition to that behavior being unacceptable on a more basic level I was really hurt that he had taken over a year to commit to me and just didn’t know if I could get over it (he had been refusing to tell me if he was dating other people, saying it was none of my business until we were committed).

It felt like I had no other choice.  Instead of apologizing, he started texting me demanding that I admit that he is right, apologizing for calling his opinion bull**** and that I always “talk over” him and “can’t be told anything.”  I was in complete shock, but he continued texting similar things for weeks until finally I told him that if he kept doing this I would have to block him.  Then things got really crazy, he said the most insulting things to me, including that he had once watched a speech I gave and that it was “painful” to watch, that I was bad at my job (which involves politics), that I am “arrogantly incompetent” and “babble on,” and that I had pushed him further away from all my political beliefs, and that everything that was happening was my fault, if I had just changed a few minor things, we would be fine. Really hurtful things, intentionally hitting on my worst fears / things I care about most / deepest insecurities.  But also while saying all of these things, telling me he wanted to work things out and still wanted to date. Finally, I had no choice but to block his phone number, which I have never done, to anyone.  It is now 30 days later after blocking him and I just unblocked him because it made me feel like such a cruel person to keep him blocked (but I have no intention of contacting him, and don’t guess that he will contact me).

Just typing this whole things out makes me feel….like I can’t believe I put up with so much of that for so long.  It makes me feel disappointed in myself.  It makes me think of how I spent years wanting my mom to accept me for who I am (but she never has — we have vastly different political and religious views) and how I maybe replayed that dynamic in this relationship.   And despite all of this, I miss him and am still crying about it, and just can’t believe that he can sleep at night having said such horrible things and not even attempt to apologize.   I feel like this was possibly my last chance at a lifelong relationship (and specifically, to have kids) and now I have lost that.  I also feel overwhelmed with empathy for him, knowing what he has been through in his military career, but sad that he won’t get help, and somehow wondering if I shouldn’t have given up on him.  I feel like everything I said in this last paragraph is contradictory, yet they are all thoughts going through my head.

I also, in some ways, feel like a complete failure.  I like to think that I am really good with people, from all walks of life and political views, and feel that I am able to connect with people from all walks of life given the many paths I have taken, just see people as people.  But here I failed and I can’t figure out why.

How do I get back to a place of not doubting myself, and also how can I stop missing this person, or caring about whether he apologizes?