LeReve
Fewer than 3 Posts
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Posts: 1
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« on: December 09, 2016, 01:48:13 AM » |
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I have spent years reading various psyche forums. I have never registered on any of them or posted or made comments. I often read forums for advice. I decided to take it a step further and actually join the conversation. I am a 33 y/o female, never married, currently in a highly volatile 5-year relationship. I have been in and out of therapy since I was a teenager. I have had therapists tell me I am completely healthy and others tell me that I have BPD tendencies. Others say I have complex PTSD. I find myself repeating ad nauseam the nuisances of respect and validation to my partner. Kindness and compassion. I have sent my S/O probably hundreds of articles on empathy, narcissism, the effects of stonewalling, articles on verbal abuse, trauma recovery, how to apologize, how to repair after pain, emotional trust. I have read books and asked him repeatedly to join me in reading them. This obsessiveness is probably an indication of my own instability. I have struggled to draw boundaries. In fact, I find myself being abusive myself in the way I try to enforce my boundaries. For instance, I have expressed how much pain his reaction to stress causes. I have tried to tell him that he needs to stop being sarcastic, dismissive, mocking, ridiculing, and/or contemptuous when we disagree. I feel pathetic in how many times I have tried to express this. Each time he says he agrees, says he will "work on it", etc etc but then when it happens again, I lose my patience, I point out the behavior that I hate that he promised to change, he usually gets more enraged, and this causes me to break up with him on the spot, impulsively. This cycle repeats weekly. He points to my behavior of breaking up with him weekly as the cause of all of his behavior because he doesn't feel safe, doesn't feel like he can call our home "home" anymore, and says he can never relax. But I believe he has cause and effect flipped. I do not know what else to do, besides "breaking up" when it happens. His hatred feels so insidious during the heat of the argument. I am often mocked or called "soft" or "too sensitive" when I try to say, "can you show me that you actually care about my experiences and perspectives? Can you hear what I have to say without judgment? Can we have a back and forth where we still have respect and love for each other?" He'll often say "whatever" and walk away for 40 minutes at a time and if I follow him or try to say something more he will snarl, "I'm taking a break! Let me please take a break" without any indication of when it might be safe for us to resume. His breaks are often abrupt and 40 minutes or longer, and almost always we will resume the conversation because I initiate it. If I say nothing, he will often avoid me for the rest of the night, and act distant the next day. This will sometimes last for days. We only resume the conversation when I approach him. And even then, he isn't any more engaged. He doesn't have any thoughtfulness. He often forgets what he said an hour earlier, or loses his place in the conversation frequently. He has trouble following the conversation and asks me to repeat what I said many times. And even then he is quiet and when I ask him to engage he says he has nothing to say. It forces me to give up. When I give up, he feels satisfied that we "talked" and feels we should get back to normal. If I go along with this, peace resumes. If I bring up the fight a week later or a month later and say it is unresolved for me, he will simply say, "I'm sorry" and will remain silent indefinitely. When I say, "I need a little more than that. I'd like to talk it out." The same silence and confusion on his end returns until he says he is exhausted, or yells at me to "just let it go!" at which point he walks away, again indefinitely and without apology. There is little affection left in our relationship. He doesn't understand why all of these lingering fights kill my libido and often pressures me because "he needs it". I tell him I need him to demonstrate that he can hold my hand and laugh and smile with me once in awhile before we jump straight to sex. That I need to feel like we have some friendship, some romance. That I want it too but I've been deeply hurt too and I need to ease into things. He usually says, "ok" with his eyes cast down and then goes in another room for hours. Every time I try to discuss our relationship, he says angrily, "if you would just let things go, stop being angry every hour, and stop breaking up with me everything would go back to normal" and then he walks away. He never acknowledges how deeply his disrespectful arguing style hurts me or effects me. He doesn't acknowledge that I break up with him only after he mocks me repeatedly and refuses to stop after I ask several times or does something else equally upsetting. He doesn't acknowledge that he has promised to correct this behavior hundreds of times through the years but has actually failed to show any significant action for any length of time. Or that trust is broken on my end too. I really do feel like I try very hard to focus on empathy and validation and compassion. Or that I used to. I think I have given up on giving these things recently. He feels he can't get a word in edgewise. I often feel like the only time he tries to talk to me is in retaliation of a concern I have initially raised. I feel like he is masterful at deflecting, changing the subject, or putting the blame on me for my own feelings often. I try to ask questions rather than make assumptions. I ask for clarity. I ask for empathy. I ask for support when I need him. I try to be clear about what I need in order to be happy and to be less angry and more relaxed. None of what I say seems to matter.
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