I’m trying to figure out what happened in my recent breakup. I had been with my partner a little over 2 years when we ended and I originally thought perhaps it was incompatibility but the more I think about it, the more I think he wasn’t actually a nice person. I want to know what people think.

In the first year, things were pretty easy. We had our disagreements, but we both always reflected about our part in things and made apologies promptly. We also both made changes to make things feel smoother between us.

I don’t know when the change happened, but things all came crashing down. He started to tell me everything was my fault. If I raised a problem or said something had hurt my feelings, I was too sensitive and couldn’t take a joke. If I said something that hurt his feelings, I was wrong for having said that and I needed to change (see where this is going?). No matter what I did, it was my fault, and no matter what he did, he was in the right. A clear example was I stayed up all night waiting to go and collect him and he decided last minute he wasn’t gonna bother coming because he couldn’t be bothered being round my family. This was a regularly occurrence. And guess what? I was in the wrong for this. I shouldn’t expect so much of him and I needed to keep my feelings to myself and let him do what he wants to do.

He was often cold with me. He would get into an avoidant state and I actually remember saying to him once that I just wanted to connect and he said, “well I DONT want to connect, read the room”. He would never come to events with me and always claimed I was being ridiculous and unreasonable for expecting him to show up for my friends and family even though I never missed a family event of his. He would make mean jokes which half the time weren’t even jokes, they were things he actually didn’t like about me or wanted me to change. I picked up on this and he still denied any responsibility to stop making those “jokes” and said I’m not able to have a laugh. One thing we did was laugh. It was the thing which bonded us in the first place, so my gut was telling me this wasn’t true. We laugh all the time. He used humour as a tool to be passive aggressive.

He thought I dressed weird and said why didn’t I ever just wear jeans and a plain jumper. He got jealous of me having male friends sometimes too. Another thing he did was shove me twice. He didn’t hurt me, it wasn’t hard enough to do any damage, but twice when he was annoyed at me he shoved me out of the way. He blamed me for being upset. One of those days I had bought him tickets to a show I thought he might like and he couldn’t be bothered with it.

By the end, he seemed so fed up with me. I was turning up, being kind and gentle always. I would make plenty of time for him, and if he shared that he felt unhappy in any way, I bent over backwards to make sure that any behaviour of mine which was contributing to his unhappiness didn’t continue. He acknowledged this after I ended things at the end of 2023 and he admitted he had been lying to my face when he said everything was my fault. He begged for another chance to be with me and gave me such a thorough list of everything he was gonna change so I accepted this offer and we tried again. Two months later, he started getting uncomfortable when we were talking about moving in together. I had to pull it out of him but it turns out he had been telling all his family and friends that he didn’t know if he wanted a permanent commitment with anyone for months behind my back. He asked for a week to think about it and I got back to him to say it’s over because I don’t trust you at all anymore. It’s also worth noting that he had threatened to leave me about 4 times at this point. He wouldn’t communicate any issues then he would suddenly threaten to leave me, I would be a total mess and he would suddenly feel better for having shared. Meanwhile, I’m left feeling utterly traumatised and insecure thinking he’s going to leave me and feeling completely powerless to change anything.

I don’t know what posting this will do. I’ll be the first to admit I have my faults too, and I had moments in the relationship where I really needed to pull my boots up. The difference is that I did just that and I maintained it over a period of months. When he called me reactive, he usually meant because I would bring things up to him and tell him how I felt. I did this calmly and tried really hard to communicate effectively but he just wouldn’t hear it. Or I would be hurt by one of his critical jokes and he would tell me to put my reaction to one side.

So, is this incompatibility or is he not a good partner?