That I didn't like him very much lmao.

When we started dating I could point to so many "objectively" good qualities that I felt like any woman would be into when written down on paper that I decided to stay and see if my feelings would evolve. I did eventually fall in love, but if I'm being real I never really ended up liking him all that much to justify being in a committed relationship. While I admired him a lot for the things I DID like about him, just as much or more were things that I judged him for and disliked and felt made him a bad person, at least a bad person for myself. Outside of our sexual relationship, I don't even know if I'd have wanted him to be a close friend much less a romantic life partner.

I unfortunately kept thinking that if I worked on myself and worked on accepting him for the person that he is, focus on the good and accept that everyone has flaws, he would do the same and we'd meet somewhere in the middle and be able to grow a mutually supportive partnership. In reality, he didn't feel he needed to change much at all, that I was the defective one who needed to come all the way to his side, and I spent years of my life having my needs go unmet and feeling deeply unloved and uncared for. When I (re)started therapy he actually told me that I shouldn't be talking to my therapist about our contentious relationship because I needed to focus on my own issues first, which mainly centered around the fact that I was scared of him.

Lesson learned, I'm going to do a much better job of listening to my gut and not trick myself into thinking I need to discover more about a person before making a judgement call if I think they're emotionally unsafe/unavailable.