Reflections on assisted dodging the bullet.

I wonder if post break up we have stories of realizing our partner that left us was caring enough to leave us because he/she realized they were poison to us.

For example, my now ex-H, almost was caring enough--lol. When he was under severe psychological stress he had entertained divorcing me for the sake of my safety and that of our child, as his mental illness was causing him to obsess about harming us. I decided to stand by him and give him support so that he wouldn't self harm. It was years later he told me that he was on the verge of divorce for those reasons. Fast forward a decade later and I divorced him. So, end of that story.

I wonder about current relationships I have where I feel the person(s) prefer to distance kindly themselves from me so that 1)I am not fully aware of their shortcomings and 2) so that I am less affected by the fallout of what goes wrong in their life.

Anyone have something like these?

I think many people leave because they fear that they are deeply hurting their partner. Some of them are right. Some of them are just looking for any excuse to get out and not be "the bad guy". If they are doing it to hide their shortcomings from you... that isn't doing it -for- you, that is doing it for themselves. If they were doing something for you they would be working on their toxic shortcomings instead of distancing themselves because they don't want to do the work... or at very lest don't want to do the work with/for or around you.

I have created distance with some friends because the things I was going through were to triggering for them or they were on-boarding my pain in ways that made things harder for both of us. Or their support left me feeling terrible. I will make distance from folks I feel I'm negatively impacting... but that is almost always at the level of not terribly close friendships. When it comes to romantic committed long term relationships? I expect my partners to understand we are in this together and they don't need to hide or protect me. I expect my partners to trust me with their flaws and their fears. If a partner was pulling away for those reasons I would feel like it was childish and lacked faith in me and our relationship. It would make me question if I wanted to be committed to someone who handled hard emotional stuff by pulling away. Because life is full of hard emotional stuff.

I think that, foremost, people have their own best interest at heart when breaking up with someone. They leave because they feel that the relationship is not right for THEM / THEY are not happy in it, NOT for the benefit of the person they leave. That may be an added plus, but not the main driver of their decision. I cannot imagine someone being happy with/ wanting the relationship yet leaving in order to protect the other person. If they indeed entertain such thoughts, imo it is rationalizing to the point of denial, in order to feel less guilty.

Thank you for your responses. Being on this site is teaching me that I really must have a warped sense of other people in the sense that I think positively; belieing they care about me even in the face of their incredibly negative behavior and lessening the importance of my needs. Even in writing this, my thoughts are "but these people DO care about me and love me". When I can think logically, it's ridiculous.

It's depressing me to my core and I'm not sure I can even tell what is genuine from men, or if it's just that the ones I've met are generally self-serving.

At least I think I now have some identifiable things to work on when I get a therapist. Obviously I need one.