I need help with the guilt, too
After my ABF broke up with me this past weekend, I am struggling with the guilt from some of the things he said. He told me I was stressing him out in his recovery and that's why he broke it off with me. Now I'm wondering if I was in the wrong. Over the past week, I tried to bring up a few issues with in our relationship, like:
1. It hurt my feelings that he spent the money he had to take me out to dinner for my birthday on a cash gift for his brother's wedding instead. (He had $200 cash, gave it all to his brother as a cash gift, in addition to buying him a nice gas grill). So he didn't take me out for my birthday. I'm not saying I wanted a $200 dinner--we could've just gone out for Mexican food for $30, that would have been fun to me.
2. I had also asked him to come up with a plan to repay me (slowly, in installments, if necessary) the money I'd loaned him for his bills and for a third gift for his brother's wedding (I custom framed a piece of artwork for the gift and paid for the materials myself in addition to doing the framing).
3. He created conflict between me and his family and I was therefore disinvited from the wedding and not allowed to attend. Yes, the wedding for which I paid in part for the gifts. He went without me. I asked him this week, now that the wedding is passed, to try to make peace between me and his family so we can all get along and not have stress between us. He refused to talk about.
I know people don't need excess stress in recovery, but was I being excessive? When you're in a relationship with someone in recovery, are you supposed to have no needs and never bring up anything about your own needs?