Hi Jackkar,

Your post really struck a chord with me as I am/was in a relationship which has many similarities to yours. My guy is also 12 years younger than me and also 33 years of age, we didn't have parental disapproval but we did have the disapproval of several of his male peers (which really opened my eyes to the total double standard out there for women who date younger than themselves as opposed to men who date younger than themselves....but that is a whole other can of worms..), and he also broke up with me over the Christmas holidays too...although mine was the day before New Years Eve....yours was even worse being three days before Christmas. I know exactly how bad that must have felt. It still bothers me that he couldn't wait till after the holidays to break up with me. It was also on my two week vacation which makes it even worse I suppose.

My relationship is so long and involved I don't want to get into it too much because I could be typing forever. I will try and summarize though. I met him at work when I was married and ended up leaving my husband of 17 years for him. Right from the beginning he was controlling and possessive. I should have run the other way rather than stay with him but I didn't. I know I have major self esteem issues and having someone like him pay attention to me, take an interest in my life, pay me loads of compliments, want to handle all the tough things was what I needed. It took me a long time to realize that what he was doing was controlling me, trying to run my life, make me into the person he wanted me to be. He is basically a control freak, highly critical, very disrespectful, emotionally abusive, non supportive, etc, etc. If I thought my self esteem was low before I got involved with him....I had no idea how low it could really go.

We were together for over a year before he broke up with me for the first time. That breakup lasted for a couple of days. Then we got back together and started into this weird cycle of him being happy for a couple of months and then right around the three month point he would start questioning everything in his life again: his job, his friends, his life and of course me. I could always tell when we were at the stage when he would want to break up again as he would become increasingly critical of me, disrepectful, dismissive of any viewpoints I had, argumentative and downright condescending. I learned not to argue and never to give my opinion if it differed from his (unless I wanted a huge argument to start)

The breakup in December did last for a couple of weeks before he came back into my life again. At first he said he just wanted to be friends. We tried just seeing each other as friends once or twice a week but it evolved into us sleeping together again. That by the way is the only thing that really "worked" for us. We always had great passion and chemistry and that never seemed to change.

So we went into a new phase from January till the end of August this year where we were technically "just friends" but what that really meant was I was there for him whenever he felt he wanted to see me and sleep with me. We would go through weeks where he felt close to me and we would spend a lot of time together, go out all the time, etc, etc. Then he would go through a time where he would push me away. Over and over this happened till the "final push" in August. He started pushing me away and not being there, not calling, etc. I told him I had had enough of it. If we were going to just be friends that is all we could be. He seems to have handled this very well but I on the other hand had such a hard time letting go. I probably deep down though that he would always be there in my life in some form. Now all it is is an occasional email. He did come over to have coffee one night and of course we ended up in bed. That just made me feel cheap the next day. What a mistake.

It has been a couple of months now and I feel I am well on the way to being over him now. I can recognize how bad he was for me emotionally and I am going through a phase right now where I feel very mad at myself for letting him walk all over me like he did. There are so many instances of him being disrespectul of me that have been haunting me lately.

All I can say to you Jackkar is if you really want to get him out of your system you probably need to stop totally seeing him, talking to him on the phone or even in email. I haven't totally gone the NO CONTACT route but I know to completely get over someone you need to do that. Because if you let them keep coming back into your life and mixing you all up that puts you right back to the beginning of your recovery from the relationship. I can see so clearly now that I needed to initiate NO CONTACT with him right back in January instead of being "just friends" which was a stupid thing to do. How low does one's self esteem have to go in order to let a man come in and out of your life, sleep with you when they want, date you when they want while never having to have a commitment with you. If he doesn't want you enough to do more than just have a half time relationship forget him!!

I hope I have helped you in some little way with my long story. Keep in touch with me if you like. I think we could both help each other out in getting through these "wrong men".
Take care!