Break-up: but working on things so we can be together?

Hi - I am in the middle of a breakup and really would value some other perspectives on the situation

My partner and I were together for 6.5 years, from the 2nd year of college. We had a wonderful relationship for about 4.5 of those years. Things really started going downhill once we bought a house and moved in together in September 2016. He became emotionally manipulative, called me names, said stupid things, didn't do any housework, accused me of being boring, crazy, overly emotional etc, and when I called him out on these behaviours and explained that they were disrespectful and hurtful, he would dismissed it as 'joking' and claim I am too sensitive. These behaviours increased until just after this Christmas when I realised I could not take it anymore. I tried talking to him about it, explaining I wanted to leave - I saw a counsellor and asked him to come to couples counselling. Nothing seemed to get in. I have also been suffering with depression about my lack of career progression and crappy financial position. I reached a point where the time was right and I left. I was concerned that he would prevent me from leaving, so my parents came down while he was at work and helped me move out. I am now living with them temporarily.

When I left, I put a letter on the bed and also texted him to explain what had happened. He panicked and raced back to the house, but I was gone by then. He called me crying and saying that he had been so clueless, that he would always love me and he would change and never treat me like that again. I was quite firm and said that I had made my decision and he needed to respect it. He then told me that he had been sexually abused as a child from the age of 6-11. He was 100% telling the truth and of course this broke my wall down. I was unbelievably upset and managed to speak to a specialist counsellor over the phone and passed on some support numbers etc to him. We spoke again 2 days later with him making grand declarations of love and promises to change. He had already spoken to 2 counsellors. I felt like there might be hope for us to be together in the future if he changed his behaviours but that I wanted to be on my own and work on things if we ever had a chance of a loving and healthy relationship in the future. I told him this exactly. The amount of pain and grief I have been feeling is huge.

He recognised that there was hope and since then he has been having regular counselling, is reading self-help books and practising good habits. Our interaction changed from incredibly emotional telephone calls with both of us crying, to respectful conversations about therapy, our progress and aims, and our perspectives on our relationship within 4 days of breaking up. This has continued but it partly feels as though he is acting like we are still in a relationship. We have discussed this and decided to described ourselves as 'separated'. We met up in person a few days ago and all my feelings were there, he arrived with flowers and had sent me poetry. It felt so good to hold each other and feel his touch.

At the same time, he seems to be hoping that I will come back to live with him in a few weeks. I have tried to explain that this is not possible and we need to come together in the future from a neutral place without any ties. I want to put the house up for sale and he is saying he wants to wait. I am under pressure from my parents to get the house on the market. I would appreciate some advice on how to get him to see that getting rid of the property is the best thing?

I love him and being with him. When I visualise what makes me happy I see the two of us, swimming in the sea and laughing, cooking food together, singing in the car, going on adventures and stuff. However, I also feel angry and frustrated about how he has treated me more recently.

I have told my parents quite a lot of detail about how he treated me and they are totally opposed to ever getting back together. My dad said obviously it is my choice but they would be very worried and would not support me (aka let me live with them or help me move out) if I chose to leave again. Things will never be the same for my family - they really liked my ex and we had holidayed all together. I feel a huge amount of guilt for uprooting everything and have thought perhaps I should have just left for a week and stayed in a hotel then gone back, without telling anyone.

I feel trapped by every else's expectations and opinions and my gut says I need space and time. I have felt so depressed and closed in that I have been contemplating killing myself as the only solution. This feeling comes and goes. I am seeing a counsellor weekly.

Do you think it is possible for someone to really change their behaviours and get over past trauma?

The ultimate issue is that he built a wall of jokes and ridiculousness between us and refused to put any effort into maintaining our relationship. All outside stressors took over and he let the relationship take a backseat. I have been the only one trying and the only one making an effort when it takes two to make a relationship work.

I am looking for new jobs and will need to relocate. I feel excited by the prospect of finding a good job and building my confidence back up. My ex is afraid that I will move on and not want to be together in the future. Is this overly possessive?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - thank you.

Edit: Having now also read your previous thread, while I still believe people can and will change, I do think your ex's changes would have to be drastic and you would have to be careful. If you two worked it out and tried to improve together, then it would probably take quite a while. Maybe a year of probation. The part of "holding you in a 'cuddle' when you'd try to breakup"is particularly terrifying.

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I absolutely think it is possible for someone to change their behaviors and get over past trauma. I'd argue that it's not that hard or rare either, if this kind of improvement is done with the right considerations in mind. Your ex reminds me of myself in some ways, so I feel a lot of empathy for him, and being in his situation really, really sucks. I was not the greatest boyfriend (but was mostly self-destructive instead of mean/etc) to my ex due to certain childhood traumas, but as she strung me along and gave me glimmers of hope after our breakup (which seemed more caused by wanting to date someone else than just bursting from strain), I catalyzed such massive personal improvement that I've noticed most of my issues dissolve (and my interactions with other people drastically improve as well). Now, granted, I had always wanted to improve myself and was aware of my issues but felt like things in my life were holding me back.

My thoughts on your parents saying they wouldn't support you in the future if you did something they wouldn't want you to do is that.. well.. just shame on them for that. I don't think that's what family should do. Different familial values for different families, though.

I do not think it is possessive of your ex to be afraid that you will move on. If your ex is legitimately making serious progress for the well-being of both of you, with a lot of it being you in mind, then I don't think that comes from a mindset of possession, but rather, comes from a mindset of devotion and emotional investment. When a family member is in the process of dying, and someone feels a ton of grief and fear over losing that family member, I don't think it'd be fair to call that someone "possessive". It has to do with really valuing the person and relationship.

I think it is a contradiction to say that you have some hope there could be a relationship again, while simultaneously saying you would want the two of you to "come together again" without any ties. If you want the relationship to work out, then you should be in the relationship and work together, as a team, to get past the issues involved. If you choose that, then it's a shame that your teammate was not putting in enough work for the two of you beforehand, and there is the risk that if together again, then your teammate would revert back to bad past habits. If you would want the two of you to "come together again without any ties", then I'm sorry, but not having ties and coming back together is akin to meeting someone entirely new and starting from scratch. To do this, you would probably have to commit to complete, indefinite no contact with 100% intention to move on and 0% intention to get back together. Maybe aliens would take over the Earth in 15 years and force you and your ex to "come together again" with 15 years in-between to demolish the ties you had (which includes all the old happier habits such as cooking together).

Talking to your ex, referring to your situation as a "separation", and even encouraging his self-improvement on the issues that hurt you is going to drag his heart on a string and hurt him for the entirety of your contact period, even if he has massive and tangible improvements (I went through that. I became better in more objective terms, but was being tortured by contact and in a way worse place otherwise. The personal improvements are a consolation prize, but I would have preferred to not go through the contact period.) Over time, he could learn to resent you for doing that to him. It's misleading, especially to a desperate, devoted dumpee who's delusional from breakup trauma.

For this kind of situation, with a dumpee going to great lengths to "fix everything" with huge hopes that the relationship could be salvaged, in my opinion, either:

1: Completely break up with him, with no intention to ever get back together regardless of what he does, with total dissolution of all ties together, total no contact outside of business for dismantling your ties together for inevitable (and ideally, soon) non-presence in each other's lives, or

2: Truly commit to being in a relationship with him, even if he's on probation. If maintaining "separation", then put an expiration date on the separation phase. While your boyfriend would be "on probation", it would be extremely important to empathize, understand, and most importantly, accept his flaws and his desire to improve. Anyone you end up being in a relationship with will be a different person after 5-10 years, maybe even changes every 5-10 years, so acceptance of flaws with encouragement for mutually-beneficial and cooperative personal and relationship improvement should be a lifelong task. If the issues can't be fixed in a reasonable amount of time and you want out, then break up permanently.

Either be all-in and work through this, or be all-out and don't string him, and yourself, along with slivers of hope. A breakup should be a fatal decision.

I agree that your ex was mistreating you and that you didn't deserve that. If you want completely out, then you are fully justified in the breakup. However, I think you still need to come to a decision, and be completely forthright about that decision, regarding whether or not you're truly going to break up with him as soon as possible.

Thank you, I really appreciate your advice. My feeling more for option 2 - you've helped me get some clarity on things and perspective on his situation. I feel like I'm in limbo and I expect he does too.

Sorry this happened. Excellent you left an abusive relationship and enlisted the help of your family to do so. Continue therapy and your research/reading about abusive relationships and the cycle of violence. Now that you left he's being contrite, very typical of the honeymoon stage. Don't take the bait and get lured back into what you left. Continue your career goals and moving forward. Your ex does not want you to move on or be happy. Block and delete him from everything.

I was concerned that he would prevent me from leaving, so my parents came down while he was at work and helped me move out. I am looking for new jobs and will need to relocate. I feel excited by the prospect of finding a good job and building my confidence back up. My ex is afraid that I will move on and not want to be together in the future. Is this overly possessive?

Thank you, I really appreciate your advice. My feeling more for option 2 - you've helped me get some clarity on things and perspective on his situation. I feel like I'm in limbo and I expect he does too.

I'd like to make it very clear that, apart from my edit at the top, my reply came while not knowing of your first post. You will know the quality of your late relationship far better than anyone on this forum, and you will know how bad it could be (since it was clear there were serious issues with it, particularly with how he treated you). The last thing I would want you to do is let a stranger on the internet convince you to walk back into what could just amount to a toxic relationship again, especially if that stranger felt like they could walk in your ex's shoes and had a dumpee's bias (though I almost never degraded, grossed out, or disrespected my ex like yours did to you. I was just horrendously unstable and insecure in my relationship, which hurt us both as I'd get self-destructive.) Don't take my perspective on this as too much like his, but I do encourage you to humanize him as needed.

You have proven that you are strong enough to leave and survive without him, so if you do opt to go through a quite long "probation period" to see if he's truly capable of change, then you should ensure that you have the strength and patience to be stern about your needs, to make the rectification process take as long and be as healthy as it needs to be, and to command respect from him by being in control of your own life and your own well-being.

You should, in the very least, keep the separation for a while longer so he can cool down / stabilize and continue his self-improvement, so you can remove your rose-colored glasses and get a taste of what life is like without him for a while, and to ensure that you know what you path you want to take. Now that a serious breakup has happened, trying to fully reconcile too quickly could be quite risky.

Just my thoughts/perspective on this. Also do what Wiseman says about researching/reading about unhealthy & abusive relationships, continue therapy, and avoid walking back into him if suspect he's just going to "be the man you fell in love with for a while before reverting back" once again.

Also, for a little self-esteem boost for you: I love your writing style. You seem quite smart, well-spoken, well-adjusted, and.. idk, I guess "real".

Thank you - of course, I will make the decision independently. I guess I need to read a lot of self-help books also! My therapist has said that a decent period of time apart, such as 6 months minimum, combined with counselling and active change can mean someone can really improve their behaviours. It is this that has given me hope. Again, I really appreciate your advice and thank you! That's very kind.

Does your therapist know about all this abuse? If so, you need to get rid of this quack telling you "6 mos apart and he'll change for the better"

- he started making inappropriate sex 'jokes' about my family members, calling me names 'in play' like stinky/smelly/ etc and imitating me like I was stupid, slow or insane.

-Once we bought our house, however, his behaviour got a worse. The name-calling and stupid comments became constant.

-This has progressed to him calling me fat, telling me I don't to go the gym enough, telling me every time I eat ice cream or something to 'yes, keep eating', suggesting I put on make up when I choose not to occasionally, calling me piss lips/stinky/turd/testicle face, pointing out my chubby arms, double chin or cellulite.

-in the past year or so he has just called me 'moany' tells me to 'shut up' in a stupid voice and/or covers my mouth if I try to say that the name-calling has to stop or mention something else that is bothering me.