You're not the practice round. You were the main event, and HE was the one who walked away from that. No one else is going to get YOUR life. They're going to get the same mess from him that you did.
Thanks. I'm not so sure. Aside from me seems to date women like his mother (an odd combination of controlling and dependent) and replays that relationship, trying to win them over to prove something to himself. And, of course, the side effect is that he's safe because he can't get close.
I was the exception, and the one he could actually get emotionally close with. He met me when he was doing his first - and only - stint in therapy, so I don't think that's a fluke.
He acts entirely different with the other type of woman than with me. I'm the only one he got angry with, set boundaries with, and parented (better than his actual kids. Boy that was fun!) With them, he is submissive and doubtful of himself. One would think he'd value what we had, but giving him enough safety and security to assert himself meant that I got all of the anger he had for the women who would not allow that.
So he made progress in choosing me, but resorted to his old "skills" and it blew up again.
He's now at a point where he's not going to be happy for long with his old type of woman, now that he's been in an actual loving relationship rather than something that resembles that. Blaming me for his unhappiness means he also doesn't see a need to work on himself and change. So it's possible he's going to realize that he can't get what he wants with how he operates, and go get some help.
At that point, he'll either look me up or some other woman will have arrived and met him at the right time.
Plus, a great deal of the stress on our relationship was from his heinous ex, and he only had to deal with her for a few more years. So that part is painful for me, too. We faced so much stress so early on (thanks to her) that I thought our relationship was rock-solid, until I think he hit an internal crisis. I couldn't help him with that crisis because he was so busy projecting it onto me and telling himself he'd feel better if he got away from me.
So it kills me that someone else could get the future we worked hard to build because of timing. I have to hope that underneath all of this, he is still connected to me emotionally.
He did the same thing to me in 2014. Picked a stupid fight and used it as a reason to leave. I'm starting to think he's been in MLC since I met him, and that was a premature return. All of his pretty words about the error of his ways didn't mean anything when it came to preventing the behavior.
Sorry to potentiall threadjack, Thornton. But I think our exes are similar in some ways, so maybe there's something valuable here for you, too.
