Thank you Sunrise.

I haven't said those things, not recently and not in that way. I spent a year saying more or less that, but in an angry and demanding way until we eventually reached the point of feeling we were not able to understand or fulfill each other at all.

I told him recently that I wasn't sure if I felt like trying to fix things, I said it thoughtfully, wonderingly. I was almost thinking out loud, instead of actually trying to communicate something to him and thinking about the best way to phrase things. He surprised me by reacting (I've gotten used to a mysterious silence) and he asked 'why everything is a threat' with me. To which I said, 'what, a threat? It's not a threat! What do I have to threaten you with?'

It was strange, because the first sign in months (a real, unchecked emotion and reaction from him) that he cared one way or another what would happen to us in the future. It's bizarre. I really don't know what he is thinking. And I have asked him. And received the response that he has to work himself out first. He seems to expect us to be able to go away to our respective caves and work on ourselves, while 'keeping in touch' in the way friends would, and then, maybe, at some point, come together again and work on us. He has never verbalised this, no matter how I have asked him, so I can only assume that's what he thinks.

Anyway, we've had a couple of conversations recently in which I was able to speak more calmly, without anger. But I do feel he has trouble taking things in, I feel he is completely wrapped up in himself and doesn't have room for anything/anyone else in there. I said this too.
As usual, he didn't say much.

I am getting tired of trying to work him out! Maybe that's my ultimate point. I have always been engaged in working him out. I am angry about that. At myself too.

His biggest fear, he says, has always been of disappointing me. There are so many things wrong with that it's hard to know where to start. But he has disappointed me, hugely.

At some point he seemed to give up and wonder if we were compatible at all. Because I demanded that he be clear, which I had never done before.

When I begin to think about this really, I do see that I still have a lot of anger. I wonder if it is resolvable. Or if I wouldn't just be better letting it go. I think I know how to do that now. You just forget someone, put them out of your mind and fill it up with other things.

I know couples counseling would help, even to make a clean break it would be good. But isn't couples counseling also possibly unnecessary pain? Why go over all that again? There are so many changes we'd both need to make and he has so far to go before he is even at the relatively embryonic stage of self-understanding that I've reached.

Sorry, this is a bit all over the place. I would try to make this more logical and restrained but that would just mean having to do the work on another piece of paper first. I hope ya'll don't mind I do my thinking here, in front of everyone.

Hey, thanks, invisible kindhearted people.