Wisconsin

Let me just suggest that most (if not all) of us in recovery struggle a lot with what I call overcorrection. We live so long in such an unhealthy, codependent emotional place that when we begin recovery and start to develop healthy habits, many of us overcorrect. We discount ALL our own feelings as irrational, or unreasonable, or codependent, or controlling. We go from one extreme to the other, trying to live a life of "acceptance" of anything and everything, regardless of whether we have a legitimate reason to be upset. We mistake "acceptance" for "not ever having an opinion." You can decide to accept something, and still walk away from it because it's not what you want in your life.

I understand the hypervigilance about your own reactions very, very well. I think it's good and important to be aware of your motives, and what might be going on beneath all of this. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes something makes you angry, and your anger is absolutely justified and healthy. I don't know where any of these things fall on that spectrum for you, but I do know that you have brought up these issues enough that it's obviously something that troubles you deeply. Like I said...you have come far enough in recovery that I think you do yourself a disservice to just write these feelings off as an unhealthy manifestation of your codependency.

If you decide to end this relationship, it doesn't mean your BF is a controlling jerk. It doesn't mean he's a bad person. It doesn't mean YOU'RE a bad person. Healthy, wonderful people fail at relationships all the time. Having issues with the way he approaches things doesn't mean you don't respect him, or that you don't love him. It doesn't mean you're being disloyal to him to come here for feedback. It just means you guys aren't on the same page on some important things. Nobody is necessarily right or wrong, and nobody needs to invest a bunch of time in assigning blame for a laundry list of problems. You make a list of things that are true deal breakers for you. You decide what you can accept, and what you can't. The fact is, when the vast majority of relationships end, there is plenty of "blame" to go around. I think as we get older, our list of "must haves" in a partner gets smaller and smaller as we really learn about ourselves and what truly matters. We become less interested in picking apart who did what to whom and who bears the blame, and more interested in just finding a place that feels right, and LIVING.

I don't know about you, but being married to an A left me *incredibly* conflict averse. Almost pathologically so. Perhaps that is one thing that might be playing a role here? You post about your concerns here, and then when other members express concerns about things your BF has done it feels like conflict directed at your home and you automatically put up your defenses and do everything you can to smooth over that conflict. Just something to think about.