Me and my partner of 10 years recently broke up. She's been staying with her sister who's been pushing hard to convince her that I was emotionally abusive in the relationship. She was on the fence about it until a recent incident, which I'll do my best to describe impartially.

But I'm really not seeing it, and I don't have a problem with accepting hard truths about myself. If anything I'm overly willing to believe and internalize any negative thing about myself.

Meanwhile I've suspected that she is, but am reluctant to believe this about her, especially given he strong feelings about treating people respectfully.

I've been reading over the signs. Mostly it's a hard no, but there's a couple maybes that I think need qualification:

Being emotionally unavailable, sure. I'm bipolar and have intense depressive episodes.

Being constantly defensive, yes. But it's because I feel like I'm reacting to something real. Unfortunately this one is hard to articulate, and I'm struggling to think of examples.

A recent one I have on record is where she asked if I'm working all the time now. Picking up shifts had been a source of contention, especially when one time I did when I legitimately forgot I promised not to (my memory is seriously that bad). I immediately felt the need to defend myself, though this time caught myself and realized that she was probably just curious.

Even now though, I'm struggling not to read things into it, like she thinks I'm doing something I shouldn't. And I can't tell if this is coming from me or something historical with her that I'm reacting to.

Stonewalling, yes. I'd feel emotionally threatened and completely shut down while she angrily talks to me for literally the entire day, getting more and more pissed off. The qualification here is that I don't do it on purpose and she's agreed at least once that I was being attacked.

Being dismissive, yes. She would constantly ask me for reassurance that I still like her. I would do my best, but never good enough. She'd respond by doing impressions of me to show why it wasn't convincing. Eventually I said that I was tired of trying.

She'd also say we weren't close anymore, and we never spend time together. I'd say everything is fine and ask her why the things we do together never count. There were in fact problems I was having, all the reasons I was suspicious she was emotionally abusive. But I wasn't really ready to admit them to myself, let alone bring them up.

There was also a dynamic where she did a lot more for me at her expense than I ever did. But this wasn't something I wanted or asked for, and in fact very much wish she hadn't. But I think the solution there is for her to stop, not me reciprocate more.

So, the incident. She's out in another state with her sister. I'm making plans to go out. Were both the same height and have a history of sharing clothes. So when I go to look for a dress and can't find it, I ask after it since it seemed reasonable she might have taken them and didn't want to hear the house apart while they're 10 hours away.

Since I wasn't comfortable telling her why I needed it, she said I was making her uncomfortable. That, in her mind, was supposed to be the end of it. I decided I had a right to ask after my things and persisted until I got an answer.

I was also being defensive, explaining why I thought she might have it and how I didn't want to keep looking for what wasn't there. Her response was that I shouldn't make it her problem, if I can't find it deal with that reality on my own.

Having talked to her about this later, she says that doing this to any friend is out of line if you aren't willing to share what your plans are, and that it's psychologically damaging. She suggested that this is the reason I have so few friends.

She said the reason this is emotionally abusive is that I completely ignored her needs and feelings. And ignored a reasonable boundary after she said I was making her uncomfortable by asking.

So there's that.

So, here's my concerns about her being emotionally abusive, which I have now talked to her about:

I found it to be too much effort to make friends because I would worry about how she'd feel about it, whether she'd be jealous. I found myself watching who I talked to, and usually deciding not to. She said this was coming from me and she always wanted me to make friends.

Relatedly, I think she was always jealous of everyone. Though she denies it.

I felt like I had to carefully manage my time. Not take too long at the store, never do anything spontaneous. Or else I would have to answer to her. She says she was just joking when she asked what took so long, or worried too much that I was okay.

I'm sure there was a rule about not talking to other people about our relationship problems, but she denies it and said that it only applies to casually talking shit. On the other hand, the two times I actually did this she freaked out. The first time being excessively angry with me, the second time she had a full blown panic attack.

That second time, ultimately ending our relationship, she immediately became concerned that I might have an emotional affair with her.

Eventually she found out that I changed the pin on my phone (for unrelated reasons). She demanded to see what was on it, or else we'd go tell the kids we were getting divorced immediately. I went with the second option, prompting her to throw my phone out of a moving vehicle, and then over a barbed wire fence. And proceeding to drive like a crazy person...

She did think that was beyond out of line, but maintains it was an isolated incident. That she's not typically jealous, and that I failed to sufficiently reassure her that I understood the risk of emotional affairs.

Which reminds me that towards the end of the relationship she had taken up threatening divorce to make me take issues more seriously. Maybe that one could go either way...

I definitely felt that she was an unsafe person to open up to. Whether that was because of me or something she was doing I'm not sure.

One thing that's not debatable is the immense relief from all this when we broke up.

TL;DR There's suspicions floating around that me or my ex were emotionally abusive, and I seriously need outside perspective to figure out what's going on.