I think the thing that gets me, maybe you can relate, I can kind of tell how she feels and/or what she'd like to say but when it comes out of her mouth it's all hate. It's like she just can't spit out what's really on her mind.
My assessment is he can't spit out what's really on his mind because he doesn't have the emotional development that allows him to self soothe and therefore see reality. When he's upset he's delusional. Once he argued with me that his car tires were being slashed. I asked him to come look at the tires with me because I noticed problems on all the tires being cracked. He told me I was crazy and didn't know what I was talking about. Reality was the tires were dry rot-- per the car shop. And all 4 had to be replaced. He now minimizes the discussion.
My situation is I am/was an independent person living my life happy when I met him. I have a good career, no children, etc. We have always had problems with the push/pull for various reasons. Primarily his ex of 17 years. We dated a year and he convinced me to sell my small but new home of 10 years and move into his mansion. 3 days after I move in he tells me I have to move out. We get back together. After another year we get engaged in front of about 45 friends and family. A few months later he takes the ring back and says he NEVER asked me to marry him. We stay together more years. His ex gets dx with a serious medical condition and he turns into a crazy obsessed person wanting to help her. Mind you she has family and her own boyfriend. He gives her thousands of dollars. Helps her. He's melodramatic that he asks if she needs hospice can she come live with us? (She's a long way from needing hospice.) I move out of his mansion because I can't take him obsessing over her medical care.
The rest is typical push pull. He wants us but he calls and manipulates the conversation so it's all about what I could have done better. How things I did were wrong and hurt the relationship. That all the things he did were a reaction to something I did wrong. He acts like prince charming now. Until he doesn't get the answer he wants. This last time I told him what I would have done better was to take care of myself. And that I would never be abused again. He doesn't think any of his behavior has been emotionally abusive. Over the last month we talk and when I tell him when he's being manipulative and abusive, he then gets mad and says he's never going to speak to me. And he calls the next day. However, I am finally 2 days of NC since I left him. Meaning he hasn't contacted me.
He has said he's sorry in the past, but at this point just saying sorry but not telling me how you are going to keep from doing hurtful things to me tells me it's more manipulation. Putting me in the place he wants me and me not being happy because I compromised by accepting his apology but nothing changes in fact I get less and less of what I need in terms of love, affection, and commitment from him. I'm so over the push/pull pattern. Sorry I tried to make it as short a story as I could.