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Originally Posted by talaniman

If you reread this whole thing carefully, a number of facts start to surface,

We see who has mental illness, (you), and who is in denial (you), and who doesn't know when to quit (you), and who is a glutton for punishment (you).

Whats most apparent, is who has the power to change things (you), and who needs a very swift kick in the a$$ (YOU)!!!!

How dare you sir, keep blaming all your problems on her! She is a first class lying cheating beeyatch for sure, don't get me wrong, but lets be real, the actual problem is what you have done about it.

8 years?????? Naw YOU are the one with the problem, NOT her. At least you are a good snoop, but lacking sorely in the dignity, and self respect department.

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( Can't rep)

Exactly!!

So we got back together. It's still not so solid, but I think we're on track. No, I'm not super excited. I'm totally confused. I just want to lay down with her and feel the love. It's insane? I guess, but I don't seem to be able to understand why or do anything about it. For now, all I can hope to do is repair us. I have to figure out how to forgive her. She needs to figure out why she's so angry and thinks she can treat me this way. At least I cam say that she definitely has admitted she needs help from professionals and is being very proactive about making this work.

By the way, I appreciate all the sincere efforts to help in the last comments, and agree that I have serious issues for taking her back. Still, some of what was written was a bit harsh and insulting.

I don't see where I've blamed my problems on her. What she did to me this summer was really wrong. She kept me hanging on, lied to me, cheated on me under the guise of having broken up, and then wants to take me back when it's OK for her. If I can't say that she's done wrong without sounding like I'm making excuses, whatsthe point of reaching out?

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Originally Posted by ;

So we got back together. It's still not so solid, but I think we're on track.

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With that happening, lets just hope for the best. Good luck. Take her to professionals if needed.
Also,

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Originally Posted by ;

I don't see where I've blamed my problems on her. What she did to me this summer was really wrong. She kept me hanging on, lied to me, cheated on me under the guise of having broken up, and then wants to take me back when it's ok for her. If I can't say that she's done wrong without sounding like I'm making excuses, whatsthe point of reaching out?

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Our point here was to let you know that you were listing all the faults at her end, but you have failed to notice that you went too soft, denying to look at other options at all.

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If I can't say that she's done wrong without sounding like I'm making excuses, what's the point of reaching out?

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Well how would you tell someone they are stuck on stupid, and going around in circles? I can't reach through the screen and slap you! If I didn't care, I would not have said anything, so instead of being insulted, open your mind.

It doesn't matter what she does to you, or the reason she does it. All that matters is what you do about it. Or the deeper question, why you put up with it. Then complain WHY??

You're on track to where exactly?

This train derailed a long time ago and going through the motions over and over again is futile.

Eight more years of this?

Good luck,sorry,but you sure need it.

/shrugs

Gahhh!

Some people are just gluttons for punishment.

hello again

it's been a year since all that… a terrible year…

My health, career and friendships have suffered.

I haven't seen that girl in 6 months. Since I stopped writing here we tried to stay together for 6 months, and it went up and down, back and forth from amazing to tortuous, and again she had an affair, that time even her uber-religious mother started picking up on it and she lied to us all.
Again I took it upon myself to get the truth, and she finally admitted it.

I've come to believe she has Borderline Personality Disorder, after consulting with many mental health professionals, costing me thousands of dollars.
I'm writing now to help anyone who reads this thread looking for help. Although all the kind people who posted here meant the best, the approach they took is not helpful when dealing with a person who is trapped with a borderline personality partner, or any psychologically abusive partner.
It is important to understand that when a person is in a psychologically abusive relationship, that they are indeed trapped - no amount of coercion will push them out. The abusive partner employs age-old tactics to render their partner nearly helpless, destroying all defenses they might have and rendering them too weak to go on without that cycle of push and pull (well, at least they leave the victim no recourse to believe they can leave). It sounds unbelievable to those who aren't in that situation, even if they have been before. "How can you not have the willpower to just up and leave," they think, but it is so nearly impossible to understand from a healthy, self-confident person's perspective.
If a person had their legs cut off by their captor, it makes sense that they would be completely trapped… try to imagine the psychological equivalent of this: the thought processes and emotional tools required to leave one's partner can also be disabled, and in a way this is the most general description for the methods used by abusive partners.
It is domination, pure and simple, and the most devious dominators always use psychological tactics… even on a grand scale, recall the rise to power of all the great despots of history… even violence is just a tool for psychological oppression. If it can be used successfully on entire populations, it can certainly be used on individuals.
I have no advice on what to do if you are trapped… obviously all these kind people who posted here had the right answer, EITHER YOUR PARTNER SUBMITS TO PROFESSIONAL CARE OR YOU LEAVE, but the delivery of this answer is nearly impossible. For me, it has only come from hitting rock bottom. Experiencing love with others may only worsen your powerlessness, as you might feel as though you done something wrong and this remorse will only be used to make you feel worse. Resorting to 'fighting fire with fire' will make it worse, because you would be consciously doing what they are almost certainly unaware of doing to you, and therefore you would feel remorse while they feel only more self-righteous. There is no easy answer and this is why the patterns of abuse have survived in human culture for so long, forever it seems.
There were times that she tried to make me hit her, and gladly I have enough discipline that I did not. If I had, she'd have claimed absolute victory, while I'd have been in jail. It matters not, in the end, that she hit me on many occasions, because in our sexist society it is not acceptable for a man to claim that he is being abused, evidenced by the tone of the responses above. People will say it is your fault for staying and putting up with it. This is not true. You can ask a psychologist.
One of the biggest lies we are taught today is, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." The truth could hardly be more precisely the opposite! Words can permanently injure people! It can cause life-long injuries, resulting in physical symptoms even! I can say that I am lucky to have such a steely spirit… I have survived… I overcame those attacks, but I can say confidently that the vast majority of my friends and family would not, and have not, but carry with them the scars and neurosis implanted in them by patterns of abuse in their families, friendships and romances.
Things were said to me that affected my ability to sleep, my ability to work, my sexual performance, that twisted and perverted my desires and fantasies into nightmares! Your mind is more powerful than you can imagine, literally, and when someone else gains control of your mind and your heart, you are literally powerless!
But you are never hopeless!! You can escape! You can be happy without this person! They are not only less important than you believe, they are less than worthless to you, and their absence is worth more than you can imagine right now!
What saved me was a combination of my strong survival instinct (expressed through aggression) and ability to endure suffering… My subconscious began forcing me to become very aggressive, to do things I regretted at the time, that now give me a greater capacity to trust in myself than ever before. I DO NOT CONDONE THE ACTS THAT FREED ME, and I am very glad that my martial art training helped me to keep from hurting anyone. I broke things, destroyed them! The police were involved multiple times, but despite the stereotype, every time I was lucky enough to have police that were smart enough, well trained enough to identify the situation properly. I was never arrested, and in fact the police took my side every time! I never denied what happened, I took the responsibility for my actions. The police then removed her from the situation… For this I am grateful!
Yet, I am also very disheartened, because I definitely could have avoided all of this if I had the strength to leave years ago. But I wonder if I would have the understanding that I do now, as I fear I would have been hard on myself and believed I had left out of selfishness and weakness… WHO CARES?
If this makes no sense, that is because I am only recently beginning to realize what happened. No person I spoke with helped me to get here. It was by my own research that I began to comprehend what was going on. I know that if you are in the situation I was, reading this just won't sink in, as your own mind is contorting what you are reading to fit its masochistic agenda…
You are not alone… there is a world of love out there, be it rare and hard to identify. I won't lie to you, there may not be anyone out there who will love you, you may never find happiness, but that doesn't matter! You will not survive the situation you are in. Your abuser will only get worse and worse, and they will turn you into a monster just like them. That is how they got to be this way to begin with… someone did this to them before, or they grew up in a home where it was done to others, and in the cradle of their mind these patterns of abuse are equal to their sense of "home" and "comfort," sadly it is true.

Beneath our modern "mammalian brain" there is a reptilian one. Mammals have emotions, empathy, a capacity for love and care - a potential, not a promise! On the other hand, our survival depends on the reptilian brain, the emotionless, selfish, all-in-all psychopathic survival mechanisms that enable people to commit the horrible atrocities you see on the news. WE ARE ALL CAPABLE OF THOSE THINGS, whenever our mammalian brain is disabled. These patterns of abuse are malfunctions, or perhaps better described as infectious computer viruses, that disable our loving natures and give way to survival instincts. It is purely fear and anger that drive these patterns, there is no higher-level-consciousness involved. Therefore no one can reason with you!
Look at chickens, they are not mammals, but they are not reptiles, they are something almost in between - not biologically but for the purpose of illustrating my point. They have social adaptation, but no emotions beyond fear and anger. They survive by patterns of abuse, known as "the pecking order." I have seen with my own eyes what the chicken at the bottom of this order looks like, with its organs hanging out, somehow surviving! Does this chicken leave the social group? NO, NEVER! It will stay there until it is killed or rots from the inside out.
YOU ARE NOT A CHICKEN! You are a beautiful human being, the highest form of life, a spiritual vessel! You are the captain of that vessel! Steer clear of the evils that have infected so many, so very many people… their empathic response has been corrupted or disabled, so it can be said that THEY HAVE BECOME LESS THAN HUMAN. If you are reading this than you are capable of healing yourself… BUT YOU CAN NOT HEAL THEM! They are not without hope, but their only hope in in themselves, if they can admit to themselves what they have been doing, albeit very unlikely. If you have read this far I KNOW YOU CAN HELP YOURSELF because when a person is that far in denial of their own ills and evils they could not possibly bear to read all this, because they would begin to recognize what they have done and who they have become - and that would spell the demise of the demons that took over their mind.
DO NOT SEEK ADVICE FROM LAYPERSONS!! THEY WILL NOT UNDERSTAND, THEIR RESPONSE WILL BE OUT OF ANGER, but only because they will not understand and become frustrated at their inability to help you…

I hope something about what I've written has gotten through to you… I hope that you have allowed yourself to consider that your partner may not be in control of themselves, but whatever it is that has control over them also blinds them to what they are doing, and equips them with tools to use against you - tools which have survived the test of the ages, very affective and subtle methods for disabling not only your defense mechanisms, but your will to defend yourself!
I am not condoning in any way the modern notion that if you are not full of glee and seeing rainbows everywhere that you should leave… but if you can not see the rainbows when they are there, if you don't see the beauty in smiles anymore, if the things that brought you joy and fulfillment your entire life lose their substance… YOU ARE BEING DISARMED BY AN INFECTIOUS MENTAL PROBLEM THAT PLAGUES HUMANITY, and if you don't leave, even if you survive, you will pass this disease on to everyone you can; your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and especially your children!
Breaking the cycle depends on you. First free yourself, then never stop examining yourself for signs of these ills… BE STRONGER THAN THEY ARE MEAN TO YOU. Never let their behavior become a rationalization for you to do the same to yourself or others.
Do not listen when people tell you "you are letting them do this to you." It may be kind of true, but it is an ignorant statement. They have made you incapable of NOT letting them do it to you, and eventually they will make you feel that their abuse is actually an expression of love, and you will feel good when they make you feel bad. If that continues, you will express your love for others in the same patterns, and you will not be able to see what you are doing…
Don't be angry at them, because they are not aware what they are doing. They are acting out of survival mechanisms, it is the reptilian part of their brain that is acting, and the mammalian brain has been injured to where it has no ability to recognize or inhibit these behaviors.
The only way they have a chance in hell of ever recognizing that they are ill is BY LOSING YOU! Nothing you say or do will register with the reptilian brain so long as they still have you around to look at. It's like training a crocodile! You have to take away the object of their desire, or else they will simply continue to rely on their ancient survival mechanisms and bite you, bite you, bite you!

It's cliché, and almost pointless to say to you, but you "must love yourself as much as you love them," and you must disappear… slowly you will heal. They will likely move on to the next victim immediately, with surprising grace and no sign of remorse. What would you expect a crocodile to do if it's prey had escaped it jaws before it got a meal out of it?

Thank you all, who have given your time and energy and compassion to my cause! In no way do I intend to discredit the care that you have exemplified.