OK how to be brief and to the point here... first off, this is a complicated question, at least to me. It's a very distressing problem that I can't get my head around and I'm not even sure how best to articulate the issue in a post like this. Here is my best effort.

I've been renting a room from an elderly woman, mid 70's, for nearly 6 years. I am presently 62 years old, 63 next month. This relationship is not a romantic situation, I guess you could say it's entirely platonic but during the time we've known each other it seems to me we've become very close friends and it has been my impression that is true for her also. We talk alot about a range of things from politics to religion and spiritual matters, all kinds of deep and meaningful conversations as well as light hearted chit chat and joking around, an area which I feel we've gotten much better at understanding each others jokes, etc.. which certainly wasn't always the case.

It has seemed to me we've always gotten along well, except for occasional conflicts that arise from time to time and can be very intense and volatile. It is some kind of a communication problem that appears now and again but represents less than 10% of our total interactions, to me at any rate. When one of these episodes is in full flight, though, it can seem alot bigger and the emotional intensity and the conflict and sense of impasse can seem insurmountable. The pattern is genarally pretty consistent and it generally is very explosive and can go from a conflict free situation, all cool, to total breakdown in communication and impasse very quickly. (I'll refer to her as Bev for this post),

As a rule, what triggers one of these episodes is something Bev will say or do, usually a comment of some kind, that I find mean, harsh, nasty, hurtful, etc.. As a rule, her comment will seem not only incorrect, but it will often seem unjust, uncalled for. Like it just came out of nowhere to cut me deep. That's how it will seem to me and I will generally respond by saying something to that effect. I may react with an annoyed tone or something to that effect, in an effort to communicate my feeling about whatever was said. At this point, the exchange is still not in explode mode, usually. And depending on her response to my reaction is what will determine whether it escalates or not. On some occasions, she'll come right back with something even more cutting and hurtful and that can push me toward seeing red and becoming angry.

At that point we'll both tend to be rapidly triggering into knee jerk emotional reactivity and once that state grips us both it will escalate quickly to an impasse situation where communication breaks down entirely and neither person seems to be capable of understanding the other. For me I think its usually a case of an angry facade acting as a protective shell to underlying hurt. I may describe the things she has said as being like a knife stabbing me in the heart.

For her, she seems to pretty consistenly adopt a posture of dismissal of my perception of things. She seems to believe that in those instances, I am applying meaning to her words or actions that are entirely delusional. In other words, she will completely invalidate my perception of reality, particularly my interpretation of things she said.

In the past couple days I got an email from her that was simply a link to a short video clip, it's title in the subject field which read, "How Emotionally Immature People Distort Reality". I contemplated the clip for a day or two before asking her about it and of course the message from her in sending it was how accurately it described me. As far as she is concerned, that is how she views what's going on during one of these conflict episodes. Basically, it is me reacting to my own distorted imaginings of what's happening that have no basis in objective reality. She has also told me she believes that I create drama deliberately, causing drama to erupt either because I love it or I'm addicted to it. But the bottom line is a situation is just fine and I will find a way to introduce conflict for no other reason other than my sick need to do so. The suggestion that there may be anything she did or said to contribute to it is agressively invalidated with an entirely dismissive manner, as if it's utterly ludicrous to even consider such nonsense. I am at it again, living in an imaginary reality due to my emotional immaturity.

The real oddity is that my perspective is very similar, only exactly the opposite. From where I'm sitting, it is her who is totally blind to herself. She will say something that from my point of view is objectively mean and hurtful. My view is that any reasonable person would see it that way and her denial is just that, denial. Either unable or unwilling to see or acknowledge it. Honestly, at those times it honestly does seem to me that Bev is completely blind to certain things about her own behavior. But it also seems that the accusations she is directing at me suggest basically the exact same thing. I'm the one who is blind to my own patterns of behavior.

So there is the essence of this impasse, we both appear to believe the exact same thing about the other person being blind to their own faults, and those faults being entirely to blame for these episodes of conflict.

One final thing I will say is that invariably, I am the one who wants to talk things out and get to the bottom of it where Bev shuts down and will refuse to communicate any further past a certain point. And I'm talking now about any attempt to come together after an incident and try to talk about it. I am always keen to do so but she will become very upset very quickly and simply shut down all communication. As far as she is concerned we cannot discuss these things because talking to me is like talking to a broken record and there is nothing I can say that she hasn't already heard a hundred times before and her conclusion is that I am not capable of ever understanding anything because I am trapped in a delusional view of things that I can't stop replaying over and over.

To me this just seems like a mechanism she uses to avoid facing the actual truth of the matter. If I try to communicate that to her she accuses me of calling her a liar.

Despite all this, Bev has become family to me at this point and I love and care about her and the animals that also live there are kind of like kids. The vast majority of the time Bev is lovely and we get along well. It's just these episodes and as it happens there is one going on now. Which is why I'm here. The truth is I honestly and sincerely want to understand things. Bev is inclined to make sweeping suggestions in the midst of conflict that she can't live like this anymore, her view is that I'm becoming mean and hurtful and unkind to her and that she doesn't deserve it, etc.. And she seems unable to see any of the good things in our friendship at that time. It always blows over though back to pleasantness. And that did seem to be becoming more the case more of the time while conflict seemed to be less frequent.

Anyway, there's more detail that could be included but I'm tired and I expect this is enough to give ya'll a pretty decent glimpse into things. Any feedback welcome. Thank you. Brain