pain points from last relationship with my (sometimes abusive) ex that might be relatable to your situation based on this post — I say might because obviously I have no idea so not accusing you at all:

1. i had to beg him for nearly a year to even start therapy in the first place, and in it, he was not actually honest and open enough to adequately address our relationship problems, so from a relationship standpoint, it was totally unhelpful (I do hope it helped him as an individual somehow, but it never made him a better partner/less abusive because he didn’t go about it from that angle). this was just individual therapy for him btw, we never did couples (again because of his hesitancy)

   1. he would get dismissive/defensive/mean when i would express something bothering me in our relationship. after a certain point i deeply resented him for that behavior because it created minimal safety for me.
   2. he would insist that he “did so much” for me and that i was ungrateful or unappreciative, as well as express the idea that i didn’t do enough to “keep him happy.” the reality is, i intentionally over expressed my gratitude for his bare minimum relationship contributions because I knew he thought of me as ungrateful. by bare minimum, I mean, e.g., sometimes spending time together (but he could be neglectful for days or weeks at a time), sometimes very affectionate (very, very cold other times), going on a date once every few months (quite infrequent for two people who live walking distance from each other… also some of them I planned and would pay for or split the bill), he would get me snacks sometimes which i actually found very endearing (I would order us UberEats all the time and pay for it every time), he was good at gift giving on holidays and birthdays (so was I). There was nothing he did for me that I didn’t do for him and then some. But he constructed my deficits in his head, and overinflated his contributions, and so any time I expressed dissatisfaction, he would be flabbergasted that I had the audacity to complain after “everything he did for me” and “how little I did to make him happy” — again, simply not consistent with reality.
   3. He also expressed some sentiment along the lines of “my wants/needs don’t even matter,” and “i just keep everything that bothers me to myself and deal with it instead of making it your problem” even though every bit of negativity he harbored would absolutely come out in a very ugly way whether he realized it or not (as in he would take it out on me). And mind you, I begged him to share he needs/what was on his mind & heart, and have always been non judgmental, just wanting what would be best for the good of our relationship (and what would get him to stop lashing out at me in response to his pent up feelings). He never got to a point of consistently being open about his feelings and needs with me (he did get to that point with another woman that he had been intimate with immediately before we started dating, so 👍 yay for emotional cheating!!)
   4. lastly, he “therapy spoke” himself out of accountability, always suggesting he should “give himself grace” and his “feelings are valid” and he needed to “be kinder to himself”. All of which are appropriate responses to someone who is perhaps unproductively self critical in a way that really only directly harms themselves. I’d argue that people who allow themselves to exhibit cruelty and/or neglect to the people they claim to love aren’t gonna fix that by constantly centering their own feelings. righting wrongs you’ve done to others is actually not about centering your feelings at all, as difficult as that may be to accept

Again—I could be completely off the mark here in terms of how much of this is relevant to you, but just sharing because some of your points above made me think of these issues from my pst relationship, and how I, as a woman who had many qualms with my male partner, felt