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Was I A Toxic Boyfriend?
Oct. 29th, 2019 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyDEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This is unusual, because after reading all your blog posts about toxic relationships and such I’d like your insight on my previous toxic relationship. The twist : I think I was the toxic one.
I was in a relationship with a girl for 3 years. She was madly in love with me in the beginning and would do almost anything to please me (mistake #1). I was less into her at that stage but I figured hey what the hell she’s cool to hang with and the sex is great so why not. There were things about her I didn’t like and what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things, because of mistake #1.
Her family didn’t mesh well with me mostly because some of them would treat her badly. I didn’t keep away from them out of fear or jealousy. I kept her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them.
The same applied to her friends. I kept her from the ones I judged as irresponsible drunks, and when she wanted to hang out with the mature ones who had normal lives and wanted to take her to coffee I said “Go and enjoy yourself” and didn’t go with her so as to give her some space.
I did always use the “Then we should break up” when arguments go heated and she told me that I was the only person who made her so upset and angry that she would start throwing things around. I think my being calm when she was losing it made her even more angry.
Eventually it ended and now she wants nothing to do with me. I miss her dearly and recognize that I’m not in a good place to make an informed decision about whether it was in fact a good relationship with bad parts that I’d like to fix or if it was terrible.
I want to know whether I should blame myself. Was she just not the right type of woman for me? Do I have to be with someone who has mature friends and a loving family? Did I ruin her life and leave her with more bitterness than I could ever make up for? Finally, is there a way to move on without always feeling like I should go back and try to make amends?
I did contact her to try and just set up a normal coffee meeting where we could chat about normal things, because I figured “talk is cheap” and saying “I see where I went wrong” was less useful than showing it but she refused and I could hear the bitterness in her voice so I accepted the no and said goodbye.
Blaming Himself
( Read more... )
I was in a relationship with a girl for 3 years. She was madly in love with me in the beginning and would do almost anything to please me (mistake #1). I was less into her at that stage but I figured hey what the hell she’s cool to hang with and the sex is great so why not. There were things about her I didn’t like and what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things, because of mistake #1.
Her family didn’t mesh well with me mostly because some of them would treat her badly. I didn’t keep away from them out of fear or jealousy. I kept her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them.
The same applied to her friends. I kept her from the ones I judged as irresponsible drunks, and when she wanted to hang out with the mature ones who had normal lives and wanted to take her to coffee I said “Go and enjoy yourself” and didn’t go with her so as to give her some space.
I did always use the “Then we should break up” when arguments go heated and she told me that I was the only person who made her so upset and angry that she would start throwing things around. I think my being calm when she was losing it made her even more angry.
Eventually it ended and now she wants nothing to do with me. I miss her dearly and recognize that I’m not in a good place to make an informed decision about whether it was in fact a good relationship with bad parts that I’d like to fix or if it was terrible.
I want to know whether I should blame myself. Was she just not the right type of woman for me? Do I have to be with someone who has mature friends and a loving family? Did I ruin her life and leave her with more bitterness than I could ever make up for? Finally, is there a way to move on without always feeling like I should go back and try to make amends?
I did contact her to try and just set up a normal coffee meeting where we could chat about normal things, because I figured “talk is cheap” and saying “I see where I went wrong” was less useful than showing it but she refused and I could hear the bitterness in her voice so I accepted the no and said goodbye.
Blaming Himself
( Read more... )