ThrownAround

That does help. I had suspected a lot of that myself, and it helps to hear that I'm not just crazy and those things have occurred to another as possible. One of the things that made the relationship initially seem so viable is that he HAD hit his "quarter-life crisis" and just joined the military, seeking to start over, so in the sense of beginnings we were in similar life-phases. The more I reflect on it, the more I think that it's a combination of factors. Thanks so much for the thoughts.

I'm a beautiful, intelligent, mature 18 year old woman in her second to last year of undergraduate school. I just this weekend broke up with my boyfriend of some 8 or 9 months, who is 12 years older than I am. Originally, the age gap didn't seem to mean much to either of us, but recently I suspect it as the cause of some of the problems we were having. We both play the online game WoW, and he became stiflingly controlling, demanding to know with whom I was spending my time and criticizing the fact that they were mostly men. The majority of people who play online games ARE statistically men, though, and I have never given him reason to not trust me. The past day or so he became truly vindictive, denouncing me hatefully and adopting a startlingly superior attitude towards me. On the one hand, I interpret this as a controlling man backpedalling (and I'm rather ashamed I didn't notice beforehand how abusive the relationship was bound to become), but on the other hand I have some sneaking suspicions that a good deal of it is just the culminations of age-founded tensions. Any input here would be greatly appreciated, I'm pretty deeply hurt by his complete change of attitude and pretty badly need to understand the cause of that.