OK, I understand your frustration, BUT, remember the string of posts with Mojo (sorry Mojo, here I go again, no offense meant though) where she kept deflecting to the point that you got so frustrated and fed up that you left her thread for a while? For some reason her deflections didn’t get to me. I guess I saw what was happening and looked at it more like a science experiment (like someone (you?) told Chrome to do). So I just kept plugging away, addressing each deflection until she ran out of excuses and had to stare the hard facts in the face. Then the epiphany finally came.
Like I’m sure you know, people in counseling can baffle their counselors, or at least keep them sidetracked long enough to never confront the true issue, so they stay in counseling forever (assuming no counselor conspiracy to keep the sessions going forever). Maybe the threat of a jail term will bring him to his senses, along with the impact that could have on the rest of his relationships.
As for his mother…. Well when my wife gets going on my side of the family, I often have a hard time defending them because they are fcuked up. So I tell my kids not to look on my mom or their cousins as relatives, but rather from the perspective of looking at monkeys at the zoo. Those monkeys can do all sorts of crazy dysfunctional things and the kids can just laugh, rather than get caught up in the drama.
Your BF’s mother, like my mother, seems to be one of those crazy narcissistic monkeys. My brother has the best way of dealing with my mom. He calls her out on her crap by going along with her presumptions and trying to understand why other narrow sighted, selfish people just don’t get how great, good and sacrificing she is. He says this is such a dry, almost matter of fact way, that sometimes it goes right over her head. Then we just all laugh. Sometimes she gets pissed off, but then… who cares.
My point is that you need to detach a little and not let this BS get under your skin. Also, don’t be so quick to bail. Something is making you do this from your FOO, which is unfortunate because you may be bailing just when things are getting good, not just in terms of the irony and sarcasm available to you, but also the opportunities to move forward.
One other more serious point… My wife has this same tendency to bail, except she used to throw out the ultimatums. Just knowing she was always ready to launch that weapon kept me on eggshells and maintained this cloud of intimidation over the relationship. I finally realized how she was indirectly controlling me and it really ticked me off. Maybe your BF feels some of the same.
What may make it worse for your BF is that he may be replicating in his relationship with you his feeling of powerlessness he has with his mom (and his ex). So he has pre-existing hot buttons that are very difficult for you or anyone else to avoid. If his mother is anything like mine (a dominate, assertive, self centered personality), the only way he could survive and assert himself was through passive aggressive behavior. He seems to have an awful lot of this in him.
You know that not acknowledging and processing anger is not atypical of passive aggressive people. Since his bottom line issue is probably over abandonment of some form (guessing this because of his narcissistic mother), it would make sense that he too developed the not wanting to want defense mechanism and so avoids intimacy. So if he is like my wife, I am guessing that maintaining anger keeps him in the safe zone – he has an excuse to not confront his relationship dilemma (commit to you or accept your leaving the relationship) because his anger is not his fault but that of his ex-wife, and this in turn makes a good defense for him to avoid confronting his abandonment issues. I hope these are some of the things he is working on with his counselor.
