I Feel Sometimes It Is All About Perspective

I almost put this under I eat raw cookie dough because... that stuff is awesome, but it would be rather off the point. Someone thinking to indulge in lighthearted conversation would get pulled into the morass of my rather complicated existence at this point.

I'm living with a person who has wronged me in so many ways, and I can't hate him. I hate the abuses, but there is also an emotional distance. How do you explain to someone that you love them but cannot ever see being more than a friend. You can say it - repeatedly, but you just see this hope in their eyes. For them, there is no pain because you have done nothing wrong. You have taken care of them at the expense of your own emotional well being and LIFE. You gave up so much LIFE and LOVE to situate yourself in such darkness. I think he knows, but I also think that part of him is holding on to it as a motivational factor. I don't like that - because in a sense it's just more emotional blackmail. I can verbalize "I'm not staying," but I have been so (I don't want to say selfless, but it's something like that - putting the needs of someone else before my own) - so I worry about enabling him to put me in that position and allowing him to carry on with the "interim situation" for longer than it should be allowed.

I don't know, so I am looking forward to hearing from people who have had to deal with separation from an abusive spouse and how you dealt with it. Did any of you live with them? Thank you for listening. Take care fellow humans!

JoyfulSilence · 51-55, M

Sorry for all this stress, my friend.

Of course you know I have no experience. The only people I lived with as an adult were college roommates. My first one was rough. I wanted to study, he wanted to play his music. And other things annoyed me. I tried to get along with him at first, but it was no good.

For the rest of college, I roomed with a friend. We had some conflict at times, but it was pretty good. He asked me to be his best man at his wedding years later. Then we lost touch. I am a loner, as you know. Then I reconnected with him later on Facebook and he said his marriage was rough, and he did not like his wife anymore. She had always seemed nice to me (they met in college so I knew her a bit then). The situation was complicated since she had health problems, and they have two children, one of whom is autistic. But he tried to be cheerful. He always seemed to have a positive outlook (probably why he could endure my morose attitude in college!).

Feel free to contact me anytime to talk.