Once the break up was clear, I didn't want to go back.
When I was inside the relationship, I had been trying to fight hard for it. I had been dedicated to it. But now that I wasn't in it anymore (that all happened at the end of December, by the way, to give everyone an idea), it became like entering a relationship, and it was completely different.
I wasn't willing to enter a relationship that was so unhealthy, with someone unstable. Raga is a wonderful person, but he needs more confidence, or to learn to fake it. I tried to give it to him during our relationship, but I'm the one who ended up feeling like crap in the end. Being with me wasn't enough for him to feel confident or happy, and it made me less confident and less happy.
He would ask if I regretted being with him, over and over again, no matter how many times I said no. He would say nobody was on his side no matter how much I was. He recently (before the breakup) said he had never had any luck in love even though he was in a relationship with me.
At some point down the line, I started taking it out on him. He made me feel worthless, and I resented him. "Do you regret being with me?" he'd ask for the umpteenth time. Sure! Why not? Maybe you'll stop asking.
But I was becoming someone I hated. The more he was placing himself as the victim, the more I ended up filling the part of the person hurting him. The more he complained about things, the more it made me think "with all I've tried to do for it, you only go moping around? I'll give you reasons to complain!"
I was becoming a terrible person. I didn't like it. And because I loved him, I also hated making him suffer. But in a way, it felt better than before. Because before, no matter how hard I tried to be nice, understanding, the best person ever, the person who would make all he had to go through worth it, the person who would fix everything that had been wrong in his life, the person giving him his "happily ever after", he always ended up sad in the end. And the more I tried, the more devastating it was that I wasn't helping any. And the more he swore he was happy in the middle of crying and saying he sucked, the more I felt like he wasn't.
But now, with the new dynamics (and thinking back, it might have been years. I think I switched as a self-defense mechanism after having such a hard time living with him for a year in Canada. I think in 2007 or so, when we moved to France, I was already starting to change towards that), now it was different. I felt bad about hurting him, but at least I hadn't done all I could do not to.
If he was going to be hurt anyway, it was so much easier to feel like it was what I wanted, too. If he was going to feel like he wasn't worth anything, it was so much easier to act like he wasn't, too.
This is all very hard to talk about. I would have times of fighting it as much as I could, trying to be nice, understanding, help him, and then he would be so... It's hard to say, it was like everything about him was yelling "punch me in the face! Please, punch me in the face, that's the only thing I can relate to!". But, emotionally, not physically or anything.
When I fell in love again, it reminded me of how good a person I could be, I had been, I used to be. I tried to use that in my relationship with Raga, with some success, but there were relapses.
When I was being nice to him, he would provoke arguments. When we were having a good day, he would find ways to talk about things that pushed my buttons. And he knew how to push my buttons. And we would argue, and I would resent him, and he would feel worthless, and somehow the circle was starting again.
I don't think at any point he did it on purpose. I think it was subconscious. I think he just didn't believe he could be happy, and was worried to be disappointed, and so caused things to go sour because this way, he knew when things were going to go bad and didn't have to keep anticipating it.
I could be completely off-base here. It's hard to tell with these things, and I'm no shrink. But there are a lot of things he did... Not showing up to job interviews in France, and then saying he couldn't find a job, even though there were interviews, he just didn't go to them. Refusing to apply for some jobs because he "wouldn't be accepted". Who knows if he would be?
Later on, in Canada, hiding bills even though we could pay for them. Being clumsy, breaking things by just walking in a room and falling on them.
All of these look like they could have been ways he was trying to make things tense between us without even realising it.
I can't be sure about him, but I can analyse my side of things. I'm someone who tries very hard to be what people expect of me. When I was a teenager, I had a slutty phase that was completely due to thinking it would make men happy, and had nothing to do with me and my own happiness. I didn't have sex with people I wanted to have sex with, I had sex with people because I thought they wanted me to, and therefore if I did I would be pleasing them.
I have issues with my parents being demanding, and my trying to please them to no avail. So it's an instinct I have that I haven't always been fully aware of. And it might have a terrible feel for things.
Maybe Raga was subconsciously trying to make me upset with him, trying to make me treat him badly. Maybe he wasn't. But one thing is sure, subconsciously, my "pleaser" instinct thought that was what was expected of me, and I acted that way.
To be continued.