Thank you for that description. I can't tell you how enlightening and empowering this is. Finally validation of what I felt was going on all along.
As I read your post so many things are coming back to me! So many things he said, not only to me but his very own mother!
The last few months he was here, I tried so hard to connect with him but it was reciprocated with rejection after rejection. When spew time came, it was all about how I rejected him! When I called him on how I tried to connect with him he told me that he felt so awful as a man that he was scared to death to get close to me. If he got close to me and felt rejected, it would've killed him. Everything he accused me of rejecting him on he was the one rejecting it. After many months of getting stonewalled, I just let it go and let him be. Then, we had a self fullfilling prophecy.
Now, the "We've been friends since we were kids. I can't imagine you not being in my life. The thought of that just isn't right". But over the years I've come to think of you as a bitchy room mate. I've done everything I can to avoid you. This is not how a man should feel about his wife. I have every intention of remaining friends with you. That's all I've felt like for 6 years now is just friends. I can tell you don't want to be my friend." Seperation conflict at it's best there.
Oh my question: Is there a method to deal with this madness and still have a decent relationship with this type of person?
I now see that I wasn't crazy. I could see him bring down the walls just enough to be honest with me and himself, but then afterwards that wall goes up and the push becomes a shove because we just got too close.
All I can see is nothing but push - pull from here on out. The slightest hint of any sort of normal conflict, difference, whatever will just send the PA into the walls being put up, and us being shoved into outer space so quick we won't know what happened.
