Break up advice request
Here’s my story. I am not looking for a bunch of doom and gloom. And I am also not looking for a false hope of a rosy Outlook. What I am looking for is some realistic advice based on experience- clinical or relationship based. I know what works for one does not necessarily work for another, but I’m having a really really hard time. Not sleeping. Not eating. Miserable. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to answer.
I have been in a relationship for about 4 1/2 years. We started hot and broke it off for a couple months pretty shortly after it started. It was a brief break and when we got back together, things seemed pretty good for a while. With one major exception.
For context. My partner F 49 had lost her brother at 42, in the beginning of our relationship. She also has a past that includes childhood abuse. I don’t know if this is pertinent information.
We seem to be best friends and spent a lot of time together every weekend and at least one or two days during the week mainly nights. We don’t live together. She has a young son 10. We all get along very well, although her parenting style is very different from mine. I know I am not his parent and I do not set rules or boundaries. Unfortunately, she does not set many rules or boundaries either. It has been a slight rub, but it has not been the thing that has been the hardest.
The hardest part has been her anger and shutting down over things that really most would perceive as confusing to say the least. Abusive to say the most.
She can get mad in an instant when everything in the relationship seems perfectly happy. And I mean perfectly happy. She is kind, warm, affectionate, loving, funny and on and on. We really truly do feel like best friends, and we generally support each other on everything and most things seem pretty seamless. We have great dates and an unmatched physical connection. To be on the receiving end of anger when I feel like I have done nothing wrong, or often something great, and it just pops up out of nowhere, over time begins to feel very hurtful. The anger and yelling at me is bad, but It is the shutting down that pushes me over the edge.
Within a day or sometimes even shorter, she recovers and “forgets about it”. Problem is, I can’t completely I guess. It makes me feel unloved and afraid that the relationship won’t last. I would love to give plenty of examples of some of the things that have happened, but I don’t want make this post too long.
One time we were on a trip for her birthday. Just three days. The first day she woke up and drank 2 cups of coffee on an empty stomach and got hungry pretty quickly. She said we need to go eat and I had to get ready by the time I got on my clothes she was angry. She ended up being so angry at me that she literally did not speak to me that day. I am on a beach chair with the person I love who I took away for her birthday and she won’t talk to me. I don’t feel like I did anything wrong. It’s heartbreaking and it’s a major disconnection that is hard to recover from. So I am sure at some point over that weekend we are intimate and loving and somewhat recover. I think she completely recovers, but I probably don’t.
This pattern repeats in our everyday life over and over again as often as on a weekly basis. Albeit not on this level. She gets mad about something really ridiculous. Again not just the anger, but the fact that she will not talk to me for a period. It is strange and painful. The longer the period the more the anger belts on my hand. Feeling like I am being tortured for nothing.
I broke the relationship off two weeks ago. To be clear, I have broken off a couple other times because I feel like I cannot handle this pattern, and I do believe it is abusive- at times. The thing is I want this relationship to work. I love her and I love her son very much and most of the time things are good with the random anger about something stupid. She doesn’t always shut down and it’s not always a big deal. Sometimes these things just blow right by. It is the uncertainty for me of when she will be mad for an extended period over seemingly nothing. So after I feel like I have been pushed too far over and over again I tell her it’s not going to work and “essentially” break up with her. What I mean by essentially is that I DO- but in my mind I am not looking to break up. I am looking for a change- an acknowledgment that there is actually something wrong. And I do tell her we are breaking up. She basically says how much she loves me. She will do whatever it takes to make it work and loves me to death for a while, an undetermined amount of time until the next thing tweaks her.
Recently- having gone through this so many times, it happened again, and I lost it. We had been having a great night and we went over to a friend’s house after we had dinner and a couple drinks. A woman was there I had not seen in about 30 years. We were friends as kids. I walked over to her and put my hand out to shake her hand. She stood up and hugged me and we talked for a couple minutes about our lives and kids. When I walked back over to my fiancé, she was cold. She didn’t talk to me and when we got home, she just started yelling. “ you had a relationship with that woman, and you didn’t introduce me to her.” I explained the proximity, made it difficult to introduce her and she was tied up talking to other people. I only talked to her for a couple minutes. I explained that I had never had a relationship at all. Nothing. She wouldn’t hear it and just kept yelling and yelling through brushing her teeth, following me around the house. I went and slept in another room to make it stop. And that night I decided I was going to wake her up, pack her stuff and send her home. It was gut wrenching. It killed her and it killed me. I was very firm and probably not kind. I regret the way. I acted very much. But at some point, you need a change and there has to be a way to reach someone. Nothing I have done to this point has stopped the pattern. I was never firm with her before, although I tried, so she just assumed she could talk me out of it, and never took me seriously or made the steps to try and figure out what is actually causing her to feel like this. Obviously it got less serious to her the more times it happened and we just fell back together. This time was different. She begged me and told me we are friends. I told her we are not because friends do not do this to each other. I still want to puke thinking about how I acted, but I do feel as though I was pushed over and over and over again. And I broke. No excuse.
She called me every day the first week mostly I took her calls and they were great. I went away this weekend and she met me and we had dinner. Things seemed almost normal to me. We walked around a little after, and she held my hand, hugged me, and kissed me . We told each other we love each other very much. I wanted to have a talk about what we needed to do to be able to go forward, but we never got there . At some point, she wanted to go to the beach, but something suddenly changed and she told me I needed to go. I asked her forever? And she said yes. I get it. I asked for it. But I don’t get it because she says she loves me to the ends of the Earth and if I wanted to make things work, I would acknowledge my faults and ask for forgiveness and time to work on them.
I sent her an email with a bunch of these things that she has done to me over the years, told her I forgive her and apologized. I did this to try and show her the pattern because she had been saying “it is just our dynamic” I just didn’t think she understood her repetitive pattern. I was kind and She replied back and took accountability. That felt nice. I just don’t know where to go from here. She says she has not told anybody about this breakup and it has been two weeks.
I’m not a psychologist, but if I wrote about all the things that have happened, most of you would say something is wrong. Definitely wrong. There is something -like bipolar, BPD or it could even be something simple like perimenopause. I am not saying this so I am not the wrong party here. I have made my mistakes and I own them and I apologize . I have never known anybody to act like this. But I have not known many people who have suffered with some of the things she has been through. I’m not making excuses for her and I’m not asking for people to tell me I should tolerate abuse. What I am looking for is for someone or anyone who has experience with somebody who has been abusive and maybe has been able to get some help get some medicine. Or just for me to get some understanding of what this actually is so I can be more patient. Or someone who can tell me they used to be like this and this is how they got help and give me/her somewhere to start. I feel like if I knew she was bipolar, for example. Or anything else for that matter , I would love her through her down periods, even if they beat me up a little bit. Much easier to be understanding when you have knowledge and acceptance, not uncertainty, confusion, and questions.
I truly appreciate anybody who has taken the time to read this and has tried to help. I will answer any questions or provide more context if requested
Thank you. I’m HURTING.