So, I have an ex whom we started off as strictly platonic, long term friends. We were great friends for about 4 years, then starting early last year we got romantically involved. I will spare ridiculous amounts of details as I am prone to becoming incredibly long-winded, but basically as we live 1000 miles from each other now (He's military), it was a bit difficult. I visited last spring and after coming back home he discovers that his ex-girlfriend is trying to ruin his career. To give a little more background: He experienced a painful divorce almost 3 years ago where his wife constantly fooled around, lied to him, etc., and while he was still in a bad place from that, he got involved with one of his soldiers, which resulted in her getting pregnant. According to him he decided to break things off because she was mentally unbalanced (e.g. Name calling, having tantrums, gambling problems, threatening to kill herself and/or the baby, etc). This all happened MONTHS before we became involved with each other.

As we had a long history and strong foundation of developed friendship and trust, I of course never passed judgment, and despite the fact that the thought of being involved with someone who already has a kid makes me want to run the other way I felt safe and assured with starting a more intimate relationship with someone that I connected with.

Now, if any of you are military, you know that fraternization is strictly prohibited. The fact that he was a paralegal made it look even worse. He was literally in the process of being transferred to another base and being promoted to Sargeant First Class when all this happened, and he of course had plans to retire out. The type of person that he is... he shuts down. To this day he says that it was one of the worst periods of his life and admits that it was a pretty unattractive side of him. At the time I really did try to understand. Having the threat of your CAREER being snatched underneath you after setting a plan in place, deploying multiple times and contributing so much cannot be easy.

And I admit I wasn't easy to deal with then either. I had been attacked by a drunk neighbor in my apartment and had a brain injury from it, which required surgery and multiple hospital stays, and on top of that I had two friends who passed away and a psycho ex-boyfriend who was literally stalking me. A few months later this other ex also threw gasoline on me, lit a match and threatened to set me on fire. He was seriously nuts, and even when we were together years ago he was abusive. He had broken two of my ribs at one point, beat me on a daily basis, cheated on me constantly, once he even locked me in a closet where I couldn't see or barely even stand and turn around in for 4 days and without food. I'll spare additional sordid details, but suffice it to say it was a terrifying relationship that took many hours of counseling for me to overcome.

He knew about this... he knew the terror I felt being stalked by this madman. I begged him countless times to talk to me- that I needed him to be there for me and supportive... but he didn't care or at least that's how it came across. We would get into these really petty fights, and instead of communicating with me he would ignore me despite knowing all that I was dealing with. Maybe it's selfish, but it's hard when you need someone through one of the most trying periods of your life and their response is to ignore you. Or I would try to express my feelings or my problems and he would somehow derail the conversation so he'd talk about his problems instead. Again I know it's not easy to lose a career you've worked for for 10 years or to be denied pictures of your kid (she was transferred to another base several hundreds of miles away before the incident), but, in my opinion, that also doesn't justify you abandoning someone that you claim to love.

We were on and off all year. We broke up early on after all the mess, but somehow we would go through this continuous cycle of ceasing contact, picking things back up, being friendly, sorta kinda getting involved again, then something else would happen. There's so much to this, and I recognize that I'm not the perfect little angel in everything. I've said and done ugly things too that I'm not proud of. I don't know what type of conclusion I'm looking for in all this. We've started talking again over the last few weeks after not speaking at all for 3 months. He's sends me mixed signals all the time- constant flirting, mentions of our past, how we intellectually click and our sexual compatibility, how we're "kindred spirits" and that we will continue having this love-hate relationship well into us getting old and wrinkly. Hell, he even sent me a sex video.

But what I can't understand is how two people who have always had this undeniably strong connection can't have consistently healthy interactions. I hate feeling like it's my fault every time he shuts me out. Mind you I don't text bomb him or leave a dozen voicemails. I'll say my peace then leave him alone. I've spoken to some of my friends about this, but I never get much helpful feedback to resolve what's going on between us. I'm sick of him contacting me at his convenience followed by his pretending as if certain things haven't happened. Meanwhile I'm still deeply hurt and bothered by it, but if I don't want to be subjected to more silent treatment I have to keep my mouth shut, keep my feelings and thoughts to myself and go along with it. I've gone to such great lengths to be heard by him, but nothing ever works. I'm terrified of this cycle we can't seem to shake.

We've known each other for almost 6 years. It's only been the last year that the problems have arisen. We had none of these problems before we became romantically involved, and now we can't even seem to go back to being JUST FRIENDS. He always says that we're kindred spirits, that I'm important to him, etc. etc. We've talked about having a family and getting married both when we were in an actual relationship and even after we broke up. I know what he tails me isn't a complete lie, but I question the truths in it, and how can I fix a problem when I don't even know what the problem is?

There's quite a bit that I left out, but I figured I'd try to not make this post anymore ridiculously long than it already is. This guy is someone I love and deeply care about despite some of his faults, and I want us to be able to maintain healthy interactions. I just don't know what's going wrong. I feel like things really went downhill when this whole mess with his career started, but it doesn't seem to really be getting better.

Anyway...Thank you very much whoever decides to read this long-winded novel of a mess. I appreciate your time.