I am at a point in my healing journey where I finally not only (intellectually) understand, but really feel all the ways my trauma responses led to abusive behavior patterns in my relationship.

I am ready to look past my toxic shame and actually change my behavior, I apologized for my behavior, like I did so many times before, but this time without making the apology into a weird fake-apoligy by over-explaining the traumatic why behind my actions to someone who ofc does know all this.

My SO of 17 years is my world, and to be fully honest, I was being majorly codependent on and toxic (lets be real: emotionally abusive) towards him for the last 17 years. This is something I finally can see, like really see. Before that I heard him say that, I saw that he was trying to get through to me to change many behaviors. Ofc I am more than my shitty and hurtful behaviors, but fact is: I hurt him. Deeply. Not once, but many many times.

I was not ready to see my part in all it's uglyness, I somehow could not get past all of my survival strategies - and so I kept on treating him very badly. I stepped over his boundaries, I forced him to regulate my emotions, I shifted blame onto him, I couldn't be there for him when he needed me most since his weakness triggered me so badly.

He stood by me through everything, had my back when I was finally seeing the abuse I lived through by my mother, helped me come to a point I went NC with my abuser and kept believing in me when even I couldn't anymore.

But now he lost his hope. It feels so devastating, it feels like I needed him to fulfill my self-fulfilling-prophecy of being all alone in the world to finally be able to change.

He does not want to end the relationship, he tells me that, but he lost his trust in me. He is just being bluntly honest, and he does not want to feel this way.

So many times I thought I understood myself, so many times I apologized and then made the same mistakes all over. I get why he is at this point, in a weird way it feels almost healthy for him. But I am so utterly sad and feel so deeply for him, but also for me.

I am learning self compassion, and I know I am not a bad person. But I also know that his feelings are valid, make sense. It's like he finally broke free from my trauma in a way, but now we both don't know what's left.

I really wanna earn his trust again. But it's so hard, because I don't know how. I know what I will change, and for the first time I have actual hope that I will achieve this. But at the same time I see him suffering, I see his own childhood trauma being intertwined with what my behavior made him feel. He cannot shake the feeling of being not enough, of thinking "how could she do that to me for such a long time, even if I told her again and again that it hurts me so much?".

So, we are in this awful situation where I finally want to make amends without my shame being the reason I do so. And I know that I will change. But maybe it's just too late. And we both don't want to accept that. It's like a bad joke, after almost 20 years waiting for this major shift to happen - and then realizing that maybe there was just too much hurt and pain, and perhaps it's really too late to make something work that could have been the most beautiful thing in the world.

Right now we are more or less living like roommates, but like terribly sad and broken roommates. Just 2 years ago we bought a house in the countryside together, and now we are living at this place that should have been our own little paradise, not knowing how to move forward. He does not want to leave me, in fact it's a ridiculous thought for both of us somehow. we always have been family for each other.

But what now?

I don't know, I just had to get this all out. Maybe someone has any insights on how to move forward, or maybe just a little compassion for a very confused and sad fellow survivor desperately trying to heal and break this fucking cycle.