I'm sorry, Owl. This is going to feel real bad for awhile. It's clear you care deeply for this guy. He may even care somewhat for you, but he will be with you only on his terms and his terms only. He would be this way toward any woman in his life. It's not that you lack anything.

He will be content, for now, to get female attention where and when he can. Itinerant musicians, like him, accept having nothing more than casual sex here and there, unless they find some devoted soul like you whom they can talk into accepting an impossible situation.

If I remember right, you've even been helping him financially. That was helping him sustain this life style of his. So you're the dragon now. You won't continue making all the sacrifices, while he makes none. Now he gets to see how life is when he has to lose something to keep this band thing going. So, of course, he's mad. He wants to have his cake and eat it to. Nobody gets it that way perpetually. He's selfish and immature. This is who he is. Even if he didn't have the band thing, he'ld be a selfish guy to build a life with.

Someday the music thing will bottom out and reality will set in. He will pay for the unrealistic choices he is making. We all pay for our choices. He will too. On the other hand, you are making a difficult, but realistic, choice. Difficult because it hurts. Eventually, our lives are improved by making tough choices. Unlike him, you are letting go of a dream, which is hard - very hard.

I knew a guy who did the band thing. But he maintained regular employment as well. So, financially, he was okay. He lost his marriage though. Guys like this seek, rather than give, attention. There is not the balance it takes to nurture another.

You don't have to be permanently broken over this. You are doing the hard work of making an adult decision. It sucks, but that's what being mature requires sometime. Don't tell yourself, "I shouldn't have had to go through this heartbreak. I should have got to keep my dream of a life with this guy." Say that to yourself, and you'll be thinking like him - insisting you should get what you want. You're better than that. When something isn't what we want it to be, we have to move on. This ex of yours didn't victimize you. He was what he was - and is. Maybe he can't be anything else. He probably can't. He's not withholding from you what you need. He doesn't have it to give. If a well is dry, you stop throwing down the bucket. There's other wells.

Give yourself time to recover. If you didn't really care for this man, it would be so easy now. It isn't easy. You did care. And you stayed in it too long because you thought things could change - that he would value the relationship enough to change. The lesson is that people are who they are. They usually show us who that is, early in the game. We need to take it seriously - what they show us . . . not what they tell us.