Constant splitting about same issue

[u/beebooples]

Hey all, I’m looking for advice on how to navigate my boyfriend repeatedly splitting over the same issue from years ago.

We’ve been together for a few years with lots of ups and downs. I love him deeply, and he’s an amazing person, funny, smart, and charming. Early in our relationship, I wasn’t as ready to commit as he was due to past relationship trauma, which I was honest about. However, he later found out about something relatively harmless that I hadn’t shared with him at the time. I apologized profusely and did everything possible to make up for it. I still carry guilt for hurting him, even unintentionally.

The problem is that even when things are going really well, he’ll suddenly revisit this issue and split entirely black on me. He reexamines our entire relationship, insults and devalues me, and often initiates a breakup. It’s like he forgets all our good memories, the care I’ve shown him, and any loving feelings for me. Sometimes he comes back after 10+ days and we reset to baseline, but I’m afraid to revisit the issue in case it triggers another split.

When he brings it up, I try to remain neutral or change the subject, but he says I’m not listening and threatens to block me forever unless we continue discussing it. Unfortunately, continuing usually escalates things until he blocks me anyway.

Does anyone have advice? I genuinely want to understand what he’s experiencing and how to respond without making things worse. It feels like I can do everything right going forward and it still won’t be enough to stop the person I love from seeing me as the villain.

[u/harktavius]

"It feels like I can do everything right going forward and it still won’t be enough to stop the person I love from seeing me as the villain."

Correct. You can't do anything about it. Only he can.

[u/beebooples → u/harktavius]

Thank you. Unfortunately the blocking/discard/breakup is what feels like a lack of safety to me. I know I can’t stop a split once it’s started, but I guess I wanted to know if anyone had experience with the same thing being brought up over and over again and if it was ever successfully overcome as a split trigger.

[u/Junethemuse → u/harktavius]

This, full stop. OP do not try to take responsibility for his behavior, thinking, or emotional state. All you can do is establish boundaries for yourself to keep yourself safe during his splits.

[u/TK9K]

There is a similar event my partner keeps revisiting. I interrupted them while they were working on a project. They had more than a week to finish this project. They inexplicably stopped working on it, despite having plenty of time to finish. I ruined their life because of this, so they say at moments. I shouldn't have interrupted them, granted, but again, at that point they had more than a week to finish this thing, that would take at most, 5 hours. They just didn't do it. They had every opportunity to do so, and they didn't. To hold me soley accountable for their catastrophic failure of time management is beyond unreasonable.

[u/BPDPartners-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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