Ha - I love this!! I'm so glad my T isn't a jerk, but looking back I probably would have had emotional intimacy with Attila the Hun to get the revelation I did. It was through experiencing intimacy with T and all of the accompanying terror, misery, anger, etc that I discovered WHY I was afraid of it. Turns out my fear was logical and fully justified, and nothing to be ashamed of. The intimacy with T was a means to an end. My goal was to be able to have relationships in RL instead of running away from them.

And stopdog, if your relationship is adversarial there is probably a good reason for it. Just keep going. I hope the light bulbs will start lighting up soon.