Wow - thank you for reading! I'm surprised that anyone, much less two of you, made it through all that. I didn't intend for it to be that long.

Anyway, I started answering you last night, tsol, and I hit the back button on accident and it went away so I gave up.

I'm glad to hear someone else say that about him "talking down to me", it makes me feel like, okay, maybe I'm not misinterpreting things. I've always called it judgmental or critical, but I think we are talking about the same type of attitude. It has been an issue for most of our relationship. He is judgmental and not just with me (one of his favorite pasttimes is people-watching and making fun of their quirks). I think he gets it from his mom; the little bit of time I've spent with them together, they spend a lot of time gossiping about people in their extended family and friends. The criticisms or "talking-down" are more pronounced here than they have been in the past. I believe that's his pain/anger talking. You are seeing the worst of what I've been experiencing, so don't think he's like that all the time.

Honestly, the judgment and criticism of my family is hardest to take for me. It's one thing for him to talk about me and how I am, it's quite another to start in on my sister too. I think my family is more like yours, Tsol, as small as it is. It's really just my sister and I now that our mom died, since neither of us are all that close with our dad. But she and I are like your family in that we don't really need to speak our gratitude all the time, not to say that we never do, we just show it by being there for each other. Honestly, it goes without saying between her and I. A lot of things do. God, do I miss her.

I find it amazing how similar you and my boyfriend's reactions are/were. I suppose that sort of behavior elicits the same type of emotions in a lot of people. He asked me this exact same question, in almost those same words. This was the first time we talked after it happened (other than the conversation when I told him it happened). I told him the truth - and it hurt. The truth was, I knew what I was doing was wrong but I did it anyway. I found some ways to justify it. I wasn't sure if it would be worse for him to know that I hadn't forgotten him or for him to think that I had. So I went with the truth. I think it made it worse:

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I didn't know what was going through your mind but I do know now, from what you told me and (mishearing it I am sure) I am even more hurt. Unless I misheard this (something you say I do often to be honest) you said the thought of me did go through your mind when you started.

I've got a lot of those same questions swirling around in my head: "why? how?" I am working on the answer(s), I'm reading a fascinating book called Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both. It's more of a journalistic piece on the cultural shift in female sexuality in our generation than it is a self-help book, but it is illuminating in some ways, and relevant to my own behavior. I'm seeing my counselor once a week. So, I am working on that question. I figure it's the least I can do for him and it is the very first thing he asked me when we began talking again.

I wanted to explain why he sees borrowing money from me as a sacrifice to him. We met and started dating in Alaska, when we were both living there three years ago. He had already planned to go abroad to teach English for six months or a year that winter, and he didn't change his plans for me since we were uncertain of the future of our relationship. While he was gone, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and began treatments. I decided to move to Colorado to be near her and try to help her. So, we moved back here while he was in Korea. We had, in the meantime, decided to keep up our relationship. That was six months, but we did it. When his job was over in Korea, he moved here to Colorado to be with me two years ago. He had only ever been to this town once before, had no job prospects, no friends, nothing. He was never able to find a stable, full-time job and that put him in debt and caused him to have to rely on me. Since he was only ever in this town for me, and he blames this town for his joblessness, he sees the money I had to lend him as more of his sacrifice than mine. I kind of see it as a sacrifice on both of our parts, but I do see where he's coming from since he didn't really choose to be broke.

And yes, everything that has been a problem in our relationship is coming out now. I kind of think it's best this way; I need to decide if I really think these problems are solvable or if there are too many insurmountable obstacles to a health relationship. Having them all out there in the open is painful but necessary.

I've been saying he has unrealistic expectations of how a relationship should be after three years; he refuses to believe it. That may be one of those insurmountable obstacles... My counselor says he may be projecting a lot of his own problems onto me (depression, lack of contentment, melancholy, unhappiness, pessimism). I agree.

He has said he is willing to work on our relationship. He was a lot less resistant to counseling before the cheating episode. He had said he didn't really think it was helping but this thing about it being solely for me is new. Honestly, you are getting the worst of his attitude in these emails, his texts and phone conversations are much more positive. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's just easier to be so forward and honest in an email than over the phone or text.

RomanSunburn - He has been saying I changed for quite some time, longer than a year, and before my mom died. He's probably right. It may not be that I really changed so much as I behaved differently when he and I first got together. I was very happy - I was falling in love, after all - and I had much fewer responsibilities. I'm probably more who I am now than who I was then. I did ask him, in one of those emails, if the changes were new, like over the last year, or if they had been showing ever since he got back from Korea. He hasn't answered that part.

Okay, so my son was three when he moved in with us. His birth father pays child support but is otherwise uninvolved and it's always been that way. Oliver does not remember when Allen was not around. My plan for legal rights for Allen was to do it if and when we got married. He could adopt Oliver and marry me, all in one fell swoop. One issue with turning over legal rights before then would be the loss of child support. The other issue is I'm not sure I'm ready for that. Since, even before the most recent "episode", I have never been sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, I wasn't sure I wanted to give him rights to Oliver for the rest of his life. Does that make sense? I guess, basically, we just hadn't reached the point in our relationship where I felt comfortable turning over rights. Then, a couple of weeks before the incident, he wrote in a letter asking whether it would be possible for him to get legal rights. He was legitimately interested, so I don't know why he wrote above that

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I do not see getting legal rights to Oliver. I wrote that in a letter. I will never-in my opinion-be accepted as his legal or real father/dad.

. I imagine that since the cheating and break-up, he has had second thoughts about that, but in his letter, it certainly did sound like he was interested in finding out about it.

Thank you both for your replies, you have been very helpful. I know my posts are ridiculously long and I'm very grateful that you read them. It makes me feel better, at least, to have someone (other than my counselor, who is being paid) to talk to and who, at least in some ways, sides with me.