I'm in a situation where I have isolated myself from everybody but my boyfriend who I live with far away from where I came from. I'm facing spiritual and emotional dilemmas right now and I don't have anybody I can trust to talk to.
My boyfriend thinks I'm nuckin futs for the ways I feel and act but I can't help but feel like our relationship is unhealthy in sinister ways that I feel guilty to even think about. On one hand,
I can't even trust my perception without having doubts go one way or another. Whenever I've brought up anything like this with my boyfriend he feels accused and becomes emotionally unavailable. When I feel horrible, he doesn't comfort me and is cold and piercing in his demeanor. Again and again, I've felt like he doesn't really love me or he would reach out and feel for me when I'm in an emotional place but I always get the message that my negative feelings are not welcome.
The result of our long term relationship is that we've both been saying that it's all in my head and I'm making things up and in order for things to be good between us, I need to stop being so silly. He just is the way he is and he shows that he loves me with everything that he does. Even if I don't ever feel sympathy or empathy from him, he loves me in his own way genuinely and in having these feelings, I am wronging him deeply and if I loved him, I would realize just how much he really does love me. The way he likes to explain his lack of empathy is, "I'm not you." It's as if the mark of his love is his willingness to put up with me and all of the problems I create between us.
I can't stop feeling like he's a different person than the one who always lures me back here..
Whenever I'm deeply upset, he becomes frustrated and impatient with me. It's almost as if he feels offended. when I've been in a more hopeful and positive state with him, he's said that he acts that way because it's not the person that he loves who is upset and he feels inconvenienced.
it is true that I've been able to believe that I want to be here and in those positive states, I'm happy to take responsibility for our lives.
I've read and I've read but I don't know what to believe.
This article and some other information sources scare me because they sound familiar and I know that I'm a vulnerable woman. But my sense of reality feels so shaky as if I've been brainwashed and I'm in a daze. There is doubt surrounding everything about my relationship with him and my choices.
My boyfriend says he wants to help me if only I would actually just listen to him. I can't buy into that because I know that I need to help myself and I can't trust anybody to be able to figure my life out for me. Especially somebody I'm in this kind of relationship with.
Nonetheless, it seems my boyfriend always knows everything and has all of the answers. He's of the opinion that the way my head works is set up to be flawed and my negative emotions are a nuisance and they way I take them seriously is my error.
I'm coming to terms with my past lately and I see parallels between the way my parents treated me and the way things are for me here. I'm isolated from the world and I'm sacrificing my real self in order to do this. This creates another layer of guilt because if I were handling myself correctly, I really would want to do this and thrive in this potentially perfect relationship.
I know I've been stuck in black and white thinking because my main reason for being with my boyfriend has been "but/because.... he loves me." kind of magical thinking. because of my codependent nature, I feel like leaving him is not an option. I feel like I need to stay here because it's for the higher good. It's been hard for me to actually be able to objectively look at his behavior as well, because I have been the scapegoat for all of our relationship problems. He's admitted some faults but real responsibility seems to lay with me and I've accepted it again and again.
The way our relationship has molded me to feel is something like, "I'm screwed up in the head but here is this amazing guy who is superior than me in integrity and intellect, and he will grant me the gift of his patience and love and perhaps even redeem me if I am good."
I've been feeling like his life is in my hands. Every time I've left him before, he's been devastated and would then see the errors in his ways. Once he would reform and become his brilliant conscientious self again, it would be clear to me that I couldn't leave this special person behind to be by himself. He needs me to be happy. He's told me he would kill himself without me before.
I know I am placing his needs before mine. Part of my thinking was the idea that "everybody can win". Hit two birds with one stone. Take care of myself and the person I love that loves me too!
Now that I'm starting to face the futility of what I'm doing and the feelings inside of me that make me behave this way, I'm starting to get an idea of how helpless and powerless I've really been. It's obvious. And I'm unsure of how my boyfriend sees this in me. He's said things before that allude to an intimate understanding of my behavior. I just can't wrap my heart around the idea that he wants to take advantage of my vulnerability and spin in it in his favor more than he wants me to be happy within myself.
In my head, even though so many bad signs and red flags point to my boyfriend being an extremely manipulative person, I desperately want to hold onto the wishful fairy tale idea that says, "no, no... that couldn't happen to me. he loves me. I'm okay." I feel like the world depends on it. I can't bare to keep this to myself any more. I'm tired of living my life by avoiding the pain that I have inside of me and I want to heal my perpetually broken heart. I've been in complete denial of the spiritual necessity of honoring my emotional self.
Can somebody please help me work through this? I really want to explore this but I can't do it by myself. There's so many roadblocks in every direction.