It’s not over until it’s over

We had a row tonight. We haven’t had that many lately, so it was a bit out of the blue.

We were at a out of town shopping centre and after it closed, we got something to eat and started to drive home. Helpfully, they’d closed the bit of road I needed and hadn’t put up any diversion signs. I finally got going where I was going but I was tired and a bit under the weather and really didn’t need a 50 minute scrabble and diversion so we ended up picking at each other. The picking turned to fighting.

I’m aware that he’s not at his best either but sometimes these discussions just happen. In the six and a bit years I’ve known him, he has always threatened to leave. He means in a going missing kind of way. He asked me if I could cope with that better now. I started to cry and said that he was being stupid and that would never be ok. I said I would always look for him and it would never stop. I said it was a horrible, selfish, hurtful thing to do and it didn’t matter when, it would always be that. My mum’s first husband vanished and she still wonders, nearly 50 years later, what happened to him.

This disappearing thing is always his go to place. It’s always upset me and it feels like this threat being lorded over me. It’s one of the main reasons we broke up in the beginning. I couldn’t feel safe and secure knowing he just might go if he felt like it. I think you need to have some security in a relationship and he didn’t ever provide me with a single shred. My mum thinks it’s hot air and he’s just sounding off. It’s so hurtful and deeply distressing and it’s hard for me see past that. He says he’d tell me he was safe but that isn’t acceptable. I’ve known suicide but I haven’t had anyone just leave so I don’t know if they are similar but I expect so.

I keep telling him that he has to take himself with him, if he left. He wouldn’t suddenly stop being bipolar if he moved and changed his name. He wouldn’t miraculously be able to hold down a job or have a girlfriend. He said his biggest regret is that I know the real him. He said he wished that we’d never got close and that’s why he wants to leave. He wouldn’t then have our friendship anymore. That’s such an extremely hurtful thing to say. I’ve done everything I can to care and support him. I’ve loved him even when he’s cheated on me and always been there. It’s a shame he can’t be there for me in any way, ever.

It’s over

Well, that’s it. We have called it a day.

I’m not sad. I tried. I tried way more than I should have in fact. We will still be friends and I will continue to support him but I won’t have us sailing into the sunset in my mind anymore. It’s a shame but it’s for the best.

Jealousy

Chris is jealous. There isn’t anything I can do about it.

Thirteen years ago, just before I became a student, I had the presence of mind to buy a flat. It was a shitty hole but it was mine. As the years have gone on, I’ve improved it. Nothing is original now to when I bought it. I’ve just had it valued and it’s tripled in price. He is angry with me because I bought and he didn’t. I only met him six years ago! I’m not quite sure what he expects me to do. He jokes about me being loaded. Of course, it isn’t real money. I am going to sell it, but I have to buy something else. I’m not suddenly going to be wealthy. I have to buy a place smaller than this so I’m actually downsizing. Still, that isn’t good enough.

We had a fight tonight, in a supermarket car park, about my flat. He stayed here once and didn’t look after it. I told him that I was now having to put right his damage but he wouldn’t accept any responsibility. He just went on about draughty windows and an erratic boiler, both of which have now been replaced. He stormed off and got a taxi home, despite me offering an olive branch and staying in the car park. He has sent me the obligatory vile text(s). I haven’t read them and have turned my phone off. Always having to have the last word, he took to Facebook. I replied asking if he really wanted to air this in public. He usually deletes my comments. This time he’s deleted me.

I don’t really get it. He has had significantly more money than me in his life. His family had money and mine didn’t. This has turned out, in the end, to be a good choice but for the six or seven years my flat was in negative equity, it didn’t feel like a good choice. When I ended up in court for not being able to pay my service charge, it didn’t feel like a positive. I couldn’t afford to live in it then and the rent I got didn’t cover the mortgage and service charge. Around the same time I was almost declared bankrupt. My mortgage provider decided to try and recall the loan, twice, and it felt like a fucking millstone then. I had so many suicidal thoughts. I ended up in a psychiatric hospital a couple of times.

Why can’t he just be supportive for once? Why can’t he be pleased for me that it’s actually worked out?

Dinner failure

I never know when the outbursts are coming. They just appear without warning and I’m left wondering what the fuck is going on.

We were going to go out tonight. Nothing unusual. We see each other a lot. Rather than playing text ping pong, I rang him to ask where he wanted to go. “Anywhere. I don’t care. You choose.” I’ve been caught in this trap before. I means that he doesn’t know and I have to suggest 20 places for him to sneer at. I play along and suggest some places. None of them are good enough, as always. I suggested watching a film on Now TV. “I don’t have anything to play it on remember?!” He was burgled a few days ago but he didn’t tell me he’d lost his Roku box. I gently remind him of this and he starts yelling again. I then suggest I take my Now TV box over but he refuses.

“Oh, I know!” He jumps in with. “Let’s go to that cafe I like!” This particular place serves mostly fish, which I hate. There’s literally 3 things on the menu I can eat. I said we could go there but is it open on a Sunday. I get my iPad to check and he explodes. “I don’t fucking care if it’s open. Why can’t you be spontaneous? I just want to go there and find out. Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand?”

That’s all very well but this place is an hour’s drive away. I try to explain this but he is still screaming at me. I then told him to go out with someone else and he hung up on me. I’ve now received a text, which is standard. It is extremely abusive. He’s declared he doesn’t want to see me until I’m feeling better. I have to put up with his abuse but he can’t cope with me being mentally and physically tired.

Why is it so hard to just go out for dinner?

Recent chat

Chris and I had a little chat tonight. These happen from time to time. He tends to change the subject fairly quickly and, depending on my mood, I either let him or not. I didn’t have to drag him back to topic though, which was unexpected.

I said I was concerned about another woman. That makes three in as many months. He said he wasn’t interested in her but they talk everyday and he flirts constantly with her. She knows I exist but that’s nearly always the case. It all sounds far too familiar to me. I said that the hardest thing for me was that it showed how unwell he was at this point in time. He tried to brush it off but I persisted. I also said that another woman, so soon after the last two, makes me feel rubbish. He said “but I come home to you.”

I’ll give him that. He’s right.

Being punished

It’s a fairly regular occurrence when Chris punishes me for something. This time my crime was to say that having sex with someone I know is unacceptable.

He’s just finished an amdram thing. I’ve been desperately waiting for it to be over as he has been horrendous. I’ve had to put up with so much, including moods, women, violent temper, screaming at me, being rude and aggressive and his excessive tiredness. I encouraged him to keep at it, despite the toll it was taking on both of us. Ultimately I felt it was good for his self esteem. I just grit my teeth and thought about when it was over.

We went to the after show party last night with a couple of our friends. As usual he kept vanishing. I told one of his mates about how we were together and that I was fed up of fielding all these women. He said Chris hadn’t told the group about me but I reminded his friend that I had. Chris came back eventually and said this girl had asked him out and that he’d said he was single and could go out with her. I told him to go and tell her he wasn’t single and tried to make a joke out of it. His friends were shocked he’d say such a lie to someone. Hopefully one of them will set her straight in the near future.

I drove us all home and dropped two of his mates at their place and carried on to Chris’s with me, him and a friend of mine who was staying at mine. Got to Chris’s house and he asked if we were coming in. I didn’t fancy it because of his earlier behaviour and I thought we’d end up in another fight. I was due to go to the last performance today and he declared he didn’t want me going. He went on to say that he didn’t want me to pick him up either, despite arranging that over a week ago. He became abusive and said “this isn’t working.” He got out of the car and went in. He always continues the abuse by text and I got a text within ten minutes of getting home. It told me he was fond of me but didn’t think it was going to work. I replied with that we should talk about it when we both weren’t so tired and stressed.

I haven’t heard from him at all today. He is punishing me for last night. I dared to say he couldn’t sleep with this girl (she is a girl and almost half his age). He does have sex sometimes with other women but the agreement is that I don’t know them and they are random strangers. This is someone who knows who I am and that makes me extremely uncomfortable. We spent the night together a few days ago, which was the first time in nearly two years. As soon as we start moving forward again, he has to treat me like shit again.

I’m at the point where I don’t know how much I can take. I’m not very well at the moment and I need a bit more consideration than usual. I am expecting this nightmare to be over soon because the show is finally over. I’m worried that as we’ve got closer he’s gone back to his old tricks. He used to be abusive when were together before. He used to try and control me and tell me who I could be friends with. He is trying to force me to be civil to the woman I’ve mentioned before. I told him I could choose my friends and she would never be one.

His behaviour is getting worse. I’m hoping it’s a symptom. If it isn’t or it doesn’t improve soon, we will have to part company. I can’t cope with it anymore. You’d think after nearly six years, he’d have finally learned that I’m not going anywhere. I’m tired of the constant tests.

Pretty shitty day

I do my best not to let Chris’s bipolar get me down but sometimes he pushes my buttons too much.

He’s away for the weekend at the moment and told me to feed his cat. I agreed, not that I really had a choice, but that’s not particularly important. I said I’d just do it on Saturday as he was leaving today and coming home on Sunday. He said he wanted him feeding today too, as he is fed twice a day. Rather than argue, I went there this evening.

I opened the door, walked into the kitchen and the cat’s bowls were empty. Got a pouch and some biscuits and put them down. As I went to put the rubbish in the bin, I saw his washing machine was full. I opened it and the washing was soaking wet. I thought how stupid he was for leaving wet washing and got a clothes airer to hang it on. As I was doing so, a pair of women’s knickers dropped on the floor. And then a little vest top. I was pretty sure I knew who they belonged to and I text him a picture with a comment of “care to explain these?” I got a defensive, shitty reply so I rang him.

He told me they belonged to a woman who, as he told me originally, had been stalking him. I said it was pretty weird to have her knickers in a current wash and reminded him that he said she stayed over about six months ago. He got abusive and started shouting at me. He said he’d put the washing on two weeks ago and what was my problem. I said washing smells in a machine if it’s left for two days but he carried on shouting and then started demanding to know why I’d emptied it anyway. I said it was because I thought how horrible it would be to come home to stinky, mouldy washing and he just kept saying his machine isn’t like that. Every machine is like that.

He then declared he didn’t have a mobile charger with him, and his phone was beeping, and would run out of battery any second. I couldn’t hear it beep, as I can usually, and then it disconnected. Often, when he hangs up, his phone rings me again. That is exactly what happened this time.

He lies to me frequently. I always know when he’s lying but I don’t always know what about. He is lying about this woman. He eventually said that she is another one of his projects. I’ve been through these before. He decides to “fix” these people. He can’t fix a plug (or himself) so I have no idea why he thinks he can help anyone. I’m just expected to put up with it and if I say anything, I get abuse.

At the moment all I am getting is the worst bits of him. I’m getting the tired, stressed, insecure, panicky him. In the mean time he goes away for a weekend leaving me behind and I’m still getting the shitty him. Yes, I’m jealous. I’m jealous of other people getting nice Chris. I’m jealous of this fucking woman getting the attention I should be getting. I don’t have a problem with him having sex or flirting with other women. I have managed to get over that. I mind them when they affect my life. This is affecting my life. I am desperately hurt. I’m rethinking our whole relationship.