Adam King's blog : Rapunzel and The Bitter Old Troll

Dear Bitter Single Guy: My ex-fiancé and I dated for 7 years. We broke up a couple of times during this 7 years and have had a lot of problems.

He is selfish and thinks that everything he does is right. He expects me to be perfect and never wants to work out/talk about any problems because he believes they’re all my fault. If I do bring up an issue, he will say I’m ruining the mood for the day. If I get upset and not talk to him, he blames me for not letting him know that I’m upset about something.

We broke up about a month ago over an argument. During that time, he told me “he knew and that I should’ve known that this was never going to work”. All my friends think that I deserve better but I just can’t seem to let it go. I wake up every day feeling like sh*t. ~Lost and Directionless~

Dear LAD: The Bitter Single Guy is usually hesitant to bash one half of a relationship when he only hears from the other half. In other words, it would be easy, based on your description, to conclude that your ex-fiancé is a bitter old troll and you’re a sad tragic princess locked in a tall tower…but it’s rarely that clear (although the BSG loves the imagery there, don’t you?).

So in the absence of clarity about Bitter Old Troll’s behavior, the BSG will focus on one point: you wake up every day feeling like shit (the BSG is OK with minor cursing). The BSG assumes that you feel like shit since the breakup and based on your description he assumes that you felt like shit a lot while you were in the relationship, too. That’s enough LAD. If you’ll recall from your fairy tale training, whether the princess in the tower is looking down at a Bitter Old Troll or at Prince Charming, locked in a tower is locked in a tower.

What the BSG means with all this Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair reference is that it’s not OK to be treated, or believe that you’re being treated like you describe. You will find yourself saying that if you bail on this relationship now you will have wasted 7 years. The BSG thinks this is the biggest bunch of horse-poop imaginable. The logic there is that if you’ve invested 7 years in your unhappiness you deserve to be unhappy…what…forever?

Let it go. You don’t marry a man, whether he’s a Bitter Old Troll or Prince Charming, who makes you feel like you’re imprisoned.

LAD it also seems that you may be in need of some self-esteem building. You’re coming out of a relationship where you believe you’ve been berated and made to take responsibility for everything that went wrong, so you’re not likely to be feeling a good bit of personal power. The BSG recommends getting some healthy control over your personal environment as a way to get some healing going on. This could look like getting an apartment or house on your own, getting a pet who you can treat responsibly, or…not always the healthiest choice, but an incredibly effective choice…a rebound relationship with someone you can stomp on a little then dump when you feel powerful again. ~BSG~

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