Moving On Rather Slowly

[may22]

I think it's manipulative for him to keep dragging you into R talks.

Yes, absolutely. After my conversation with the IC my boundary on R talks feels very clear-- at least, boundary around the A, AP, or the fantasy future. Those are hard lines. And he actually hasn't tried for the last couple of days. I haven't told him my boundaries yet (explicitly-- the last couple of times the R came up at all, like in the conversation about his talk with his brother, I just put up my hand and said I don't want to talk about that and he said OK.) Trying to decide if I should state "these are my boundaries, please respect them" or just enforce them when they come up.

Your post about the manipulation was really helpful to me too. I think I need to keep just spotting this. It doesn't matter WHY he is doing any of this, but the fact that he's doing it is not okay. I'm particularly not okay with discussing the fantasy future D scenario. The last time we talked about it was maybe Saturday. I need to also be OK with the fact that if we go down this road, I don't need to give a $hit that he understands why I will make the choices I do. Just like he needs me to validate his decisions, I think I need him to not think I'm just being an unreasonable b**ch. I need to let that go too.