In serious need of help about my long-term bf

Youre looking on the wrong side of the street - the GOOD relationships are over there! This side of the street holds Al Capones secret safe - its empty. Nothing to see here. Nothing you learn learn here will help you have a good relationship.

A good relationship is all on YOU. In the sense of say a tennis match. Youre are right now playing with someone who is not playing at the same level as you, for whatever reason. Does the reason really matter? Cant or wont? I used to believe it was "won't" and i just had to break thru something - but honestly, behind their won't is can't.

Where?

I always ignored the negative before. I need to not ignore them anymore.

I am playing like in what sense? I'm not following your train of thought, mind elaborating?

As for the bolded. I'm not the kind of person that tries to "break through" people in relationships. I know what you mean but I'm just not that type.

I think you are already feeling it. It seems you are trying to rationalise his behaviour i.e. engaging your head when you felt sense is screaming 'this ain't right'...

Otherwise, if you felt things were okay or this was a good enough relationship, you would not question anything and the answer would be clear. Your doubts, your 'icky' feeling or feeling something is not, or may not, be right - that is your felt sense. That is the sense alerting you to 'danger'. I would listen to that.

If you are already in therapy, please get a different therapist. If not, therapy would be a good place to help you work through this.

I think a number of people have already told you this person is not treating you well and no amount of ruminating on why will help him be better. Relationships shouldn't be this hard. He is not treating you in an acceptable manner and that is it. You seem like you're trying to make this okay in your mind or find the key that unlocks the "puzzle" that is him. He's not a puzzle. His actions say everything about him.

Okay, so.

I was not asking about whether this person is treating me well.

I was asking very specific questions about existing bad behaviours.

You - or anyone else - can be supportive by answering those questions and by simply letting me try and talk about this relationship on here.

In whatever way I try to talk about it.

If you feel too impatient to answer my questions or otherwise engage with my posts, you are not required to engage.

Thanks much for your understanding.


***

I realise in my OP I asked for advice too, so I will clarify now that I am no longer looking for advice. What I'm looking for is:

- Answers or options for interpretations to my questions I ask.
- A chance to talk about my observations of this relationship. Sometimes maybe about emotions too.
- Any perspectives that do not tell me what to do & and that do not tell me what I'm thinking or what my intention is. I would not like to hear anything like that.

(It's OK to say what you'd do if you were in my place, but just please do not tell me what to do, like things like go to a different therapist or to dump the bf right here and now and so on.)

Thanks much for your description of the felt sense and sense of danger. That was very interesting.

What I'm actually trying to do here is in part getting clarification on what the particular felt sense is that I'm having.

No, I'm not fully feeling all the emotions yet.

And it's hard also when I don't know what a truly good relationship feels like. Like I said this is a long-standing problem in my life that I'm working on.

But I'm also a lot like, I just want a looooong rest from all of it, I totally feel like I want to just withdraw from all emotions about this relationship for a while.

For a while I'll just be fine with periodically reading and picking up on things from relationship books and articles and even posts on here.

And afterwards, perhaps asking more on this thread, but I don't have any new questions or further thoughts about the relationship for now.

Anyway. What I was doing here above was, I asked about a clarification about some bad behaviours from the list on that site. I think all the answers helped me see it better, yes.

Then I asked if it makes sense to use behaviours of ignoring to seek attention.

I'm still interested in whether that makes sense. That's simple curiosity. I realise other explanations and perspectives exist too, so it's not really me wanting to decide that it must be this one.

So like, I don't really have an opinion on that.

I'm mainly just satisfied that I've worked so hard on not getting affected anymore by being ignored by people who I've paid attention to previously. That's something I worked really really really hard about, in the last few months.

There's a lot more things to work hard about. But this was a major thing for me for many years, and not just in this relationship.

It sounds as if you've somehow compiled a list of what emotions you'd feel if you were where you're supposed to be, and now you're working your way through the list making sure you feel the way you're supposed to. Whenever I've tried that, though, it's always turned out that where I was supposed to be, and how I was supposed to feel, depended a whole lot on who was doing the supposing.

In another thread we mentioned "mindfulness" and "starting from where you are". Once upon a time, while in the middle of a rather complicated relationship, it occurred to me that I'd seen/heard quite a few people use the word "centered" to mean (it seemed to me) quite a few different things. What "being centered" turned out to mean to me, though, was experiencing "I love her" and "I hate her" at more or less the same time; not trying to make one of those "right" and the other "wrong"; but instead, as it were, "standing with one foot on each" and seeing what comes next.

If, sometime later, I were to discover that I'd ended up with a checklist that now included "Stand with one foot on each (of whatever it is) so I'll feel centered," my experience then of feeling centered might very well look like standing with one foot on...

"Stand with one foot on each (of whatever it is) so I'll feel centered"

...and the other on...

"Oh, checklists are such BS!"

Ahh that's very interesting that it comes off like that.

In reality, I will admit I have no actual compiled list of emotions that I should be feeling and I don't believe in feeling whatever I "should" feel. If it wants to be felt, so be it. If not, then it's not ready yet to be felt. Or more precisely, I'm not ready yet.

And so I just have the gut feeling that I haven't got through all of them.

But you are right in that I do feel some kind of obligation. That obligation would tell me some feelings are appropriate and some are not.

That's how I often am with people.

And then it's hard to find and feel the "inappropriate" ones.

EDIT: When I talk of appropriateness, I mean appropriate either 1) for the particular, public situation or 2) for the overall relationship. When it's just 1), I find it easier to find and feel the "inappropriate" ones.

That's very interesting. Like, being able to feel ambivalent by having and fully feeling very different, opposing, strong emotions.

I do think I am very bad at that.

Tbh I hate all kinds of messy drama like that, due to certain experiences from the past.

But I do know I do somewhere have very different/opposing emotions that are strong.

I just don't want to be like "split" and feel only one then feel only the other one and keep changing between them like crazy so I try very hard to keep reasonable and realistic, and try to find what attitude and emotions fit the actual situation.

Yes, I've had that thought myself & it makes complete sense. But I can only do this rationally. I cannot do it emotionally. Emotionally it's way way way way more a mess.

Reading Gottman's science of trust book right now.

I can see we are at that point where it would be about to go into that so-called absorbing state of negativity, mutually. (I think I did absorb too much negative before anyway but it wasn't mutual or leading to escalating drama....)

It's supposed to be a state or phase in the relationship where you both start absorbing the negative in the conflict and it'll all escalate and not get fixed, and parties are stuck in it, in the bad drama like that.

Then eventually there can be a point of no return, with too much lost trust and rewritten narrative of the entire relationship story.

It does mention self-regulation (self-soothing) and co-regulation as well and how I see it is, if you can't co-regulate your partner and he/she can't co-regulate you either, and you can't calm down on your own either, when away on your own, then it's bad.

And it mentions that mostly for men, if they suppress the expression of negative emotion during the conflict, they'll find it hard to calm down. Unfortunately, while not a man, that's part of my problem here.

In those recent, worse conflicts, we did co-regulate each other some, with rational approaches too, the problem is that I did not ask for it or express any emotion for one problem that I'm hung up on.

I still have not been able to talk about it with anyone. But I feel closer to being able to now, but it's still impossible for me to imagine talking about it.

I've oriented myself about what he really was doing with *that*. I sorta get it now. I still do not know however how to orient about it inside myself. Other problems in life have taken my focus off it for now so that's helped but I will still have to deal with this.

Right now the plan is, I've been given a reference to a couples therapy site, and it looks great because it says the work starts with laying down the foundations for each party separately before working together.

That's exactly what's needed here.

I just don't know if I could talk about "the problem" there either. If I can trust they keep it confidential in a one-on-one talk, then maybe.

I'll respond to this again. I think my internal state is characterised better as a state of extreme detachment and avoidance standing right at the point where it's probably very, very dangerous to go on from in some directions, hence waiting to be oriented first. Wanting to find in time where the danger is, because it's all opaque now.

Couples therapy with the approach I've just described sounds and feels right to me. I'm like, I'm completely *unwilling* to move in any direction unless I can go through that route first.

Thanks everyone for letting me talk about it here and reminding myself of this very important point.

He sounds a little like my ex fiance. I left him eventually, accompanied with a (further) tirade of stinging insults. But he had said, often, how much he ''loved'' me. My family of origin was neglectful and abusive and I was unsure fully at the time how abusive this person was. I also think that if you marry him he will dish out even more control and abuse. I fully agree - I also think he is in love with the idea of having you to abuse and control (at least the person I used to ''know'' was )

I've also been thinking of therapy again but have felt completely freaked out (again) by the issue of therapy having started exploring it (again) closer to ''home''..

My fiancé doesn't actually throw a long tirade of stinging insults so far, it's "just" a long list of hardly rational criticisms about whatever little issue I "caused" when he goes on like that.

I did get and am still very hung up on the arguments when he actually tried to do demeaning insults. In one case he did stop when I asked him to, but I could see he didn't like having to stop, in another case he restored his rational sense and figured out the rational answer for whatever he randomly so much disliked in my behaviour. But there is something I still cannot deal with about some of our worst recent conflicts we've had. (Nothing new, it's still the same ones I already posted about. He's away right now)

I know he used to be more rational than this, the worst is he probably *thinks* he's still being rational when he's like this purely because he's not like having a complete meltdown that even he would be capable of noticing emotionally. lol.

My problem is I don't think I'd be satisfied with just telling him to go back to his senses if he gets like that. I'm still trying to find a way to talk about it all more intimately, I mean my problem with all this. I do have the sense I could do this perhaps in the couples therapy if the couples therapist and I talk on one-on-one first for laying down a "foundation". I know, somehow I know that I won't be able to try in individual therapy, even if I wasn't going to try deep therapy, just some random talk therapy thing to simply talk it out. I feel like, individual therapy is about me only and not me and other people together in my interpersonal relations. Too much of a vacuum talking about the relationship, I wouldn't be able to trust the therapist's expertise, my experience whenever I'd try to talk about relationships is that they tend to try and fix me in a vacuum instead of looking at the relationship dynamics too as well as the other people involved beyond me. So I would not even be able to relax enough to start talking it out.