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I've been reflecting on the past four years in my relationship. And I realize that I have a lot of suppressed anger.

The start of my relationship was a very vulnerable one. I had just gone through a severe assault from a family member. And my world was completely shaken up. And so in the midst of all of this I found somebody that made me feel less alone. That looked at me like I was the best thing in his life. Someone that put me on a higher pedestal then I saw myself on. I had just quit my dream. I just dropped out of my college. I felt like I had no basis in my life. I felt like a complete ghost. And I was experiencing such bad depression. But I didn't remember how to enjoy myself anymore. I wanted to die every other day.

So I started dating my BPDboyfriend. And he started telling me things like, despite the fact that I was 25, I had the mentality of a seventeen-year-old. That I was too dependent on my parents. And I was too dependent on my religion. Once the criticism started it didn't really stop. So today, four years from the beginning when we were talking about it. He talked about how he could relate to a 17 year old girl that he's been friends with for a couple of months. And he doesn't see it as a weird thing for a 25 year old dating a seventeen-year-old. Because she seems really mature. And that is not much different than dating a 25 year old with the mentality of a seventeen-year-old. Aka the mental state I was in back then. I've changed tremendously since that point. Through hard work and therapy I've become practically a completely different person to who I was. I've learned how to be strong. How to set limits. I've found an identity and how to say no. I haven't called a distress line in 8 months. I haven't felt suicidal in two.


I've recently been binging on the show Escaping polygamy and honestly I relate to to it so much. I feel like I left a polygamist cult that was in my own head. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with being stuck in a prison of your own making because you've spent your entire life traumatized and alone and abandoned. That's how the first 25 years of my life felt. I didn't realize how terrible my PTSD was. And so from his perspective he thought that I was immature and had the mentality of a teenager. But really at that point in my life all of my defenses had fallen away. All the coping strategies that had maintained my sanity and made me seem like a well adjusted adult stopped working. They were replaced by a bad dysthymia and life phobia. At 18, I could manage through life and cover my mistakes better than I could at 25. I was like a pressure cooker that finally blew. People mistook me for mid twenties all the time.

And so I started a relationship where I couldn't handle his constant criticism of everything.

He asked if there were some positives to it, to his tough love approach, since I've become so much closer. And I tell him bluntly no. There was nothing good about it. I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't ready for an emotionally abusive relationship like that. I didn't have the coping mechanisms. Every time he berated and devaluated me hurt so much.

I am so incredibly angry. I told him that you found me broken and that's why it seems like I was so immature. Because I was broken because I had no sense of myself.

And still being with somebody like him seemed like my only lifeline.

And in that moment he tells me that he is sorry that I regret the relationship. More than anything I don't regret being with him but I easily forget the fact that he never understood why I was like the way I was and he probably will never understand. I will never truly get that validation because some 17 year old girl is mature as f* after being repeatedly sexually abused by one of her family members. (His friend) But I seemed immature because all of that maturity is finally falling away because I didn't have even a shred of sense of who I was. I was closer to a borderline in that way than I was to normal but that's just developmental PTSD.

I hate him so much. I hate the fact that he put me through that. I hate that he holds this perspective even though I know that he's never going to truly understand. But I'm just starting to feel that anger. Because I didn't deserve any of that. I didn't deserve to have to go through that all the fuging time.

In the end, the anger is healthy. I get to feel it, rather than suppress it endlessly for his benefit.

And then I'm not so angry any more. Then I'm closer to being real. Closer to truly expressing love and letting myself feel closer to my partner.

OK. Not sure why it was placed here.

However, before I got to the second post, I was struck that it did belong here (detaching). Your first post was very moving and insightful. When I got to the last sentence, though, about how processing what you didn't deserve and what you're not getting now that you DO deserve, leads you to be able to be closer to your partner ... .And I wondered if that is a plan for getting what you need and want, from another person, and also, from yourself.

  Miz.

I guess that's the strange part. Because right now my relationship with my partner is the best thing going on in my life, and my life is on a really good track right now regardless.

We had a wonderful weekend together and feeling that happiness, feeling that Blissful Joy of being with somebody who is so gentle to me,. Seeing how hard he tries to make me smile. Seeing how considerate he is of everything i ask  and how he keeps repeating that he wishes he was better for me. How scared he is that he's not going to be able to give me what I need out of the relationship. I feel so much love towards him and from him. We talk candidly and openly and I react honestly. I cherish this new found closeness. And it's not temporary idealisation any more. It just keeps building on itself and deepening the friendship.

But feeling so much happiness and having a more stable relationship triggers all my previous suppressed feelings from before. When things were unstable and chaotic. When saying the wrong thing garnered a silent treatment and hours of angry rages from him and demanding me to leave him forever. When he refused to tell me what was going on except to project it all onto me. Our biggest turning point came two years ago when I initially completely detached and finally realised I wasn't getting what I needed from the relationship and so when I resumed the relationship I started fighting to get it and the dynamic changed. But that doesn't mean I got to grieve through the past experiences. And that's where these rants come in. Letting go of these emotions and grievances lets me move forward.

It sounds like you are feeling safe enough to express and experience emotions from your past, like anger. And your boyfriend is no longer sucking all the emotional oxygen from the room, no longer making sure that any intense emotions are all about him.

That would be great progress.  |iiii

And much of that progress looks like your emotions being all over the place, in a way that they weren't before, and probably a bit disorienting!