I suggest you cut yourself some slack and accept you have a legitimate illness. As for your ex I believe he loves you but fails to understand how your illness negatively impacts you.

Neither of you are at fault in my view.

Relationships cause anxiety anyway: your relationship will be causing him anxiety too. So what you have are two vulnerable, volatile people with a great deal to lose, terrified, burned, coming together in one more attempt.

I think the thing we can forget is that everyone's anxious in a love affair. Everyone. And it's important to go slowly. Be gentle. Take time, take stock. Talk about problems when you are not in the middle of them, so that everybody can start to unravel what goes wrong. No blame games. No anger, no recriminations: just unravelling the ball of wool.

It does not really matter what the starting point is, it's whether you two can slowly progress or not that is important. And everything is worth it in the long run. In twenty years' time, will you two still think this is important, or will you laugh and reminisce about how fraught and scared you both were way back then? :)

Thank you for your help. I know my illness is legit and I know he is aware of my illness I have shared a lot about it so he can understand. I think he feels I am lying about it 9 he discounts my feelings. When I do get anxiety I try to talk to him calmly at first but it doesn't seem to ever work. If I say I dont like this or that because it gives me anxiety he gets mad and defensive instead of trying to validate my feelings or understand. When hes gone I hardly go through it at all in any other relationship I have. But he says that is different because they are not man woman relationships. I'm not sure. I always question myself. I talk to friends and family about it and they say they don't like how he treats me and they see it. I just think am I the cause of it all and I keep letting him come back. A lot of times I think if he did love me he wouldn't treat me that way. He would be more helpful. I think I'm more of a possession to him - not a partner. I have tried to avoid going back many times but he is relentless if I cut him off. He shows up where he knows I will be (On my way to work, Church, and the store) and even has waited in his car around the corner and spied on my house for hours. I didn't know until he came back last time how bad that part was. I have found his cigarette butts outside my bedroom window when he has left me and isn't supposed to be in my backyard. I just wonder if my anxiety may be the cause of all this bad stuff or is all this bad stuff the cause of my anxiety. I get confused. I question myself a lot.

Your Inner Truth is Apparent to Me, however You Are Not Listening To It. The Answers to your questions are in your own words here. Trust Yourself to Know What is Best for You and Your Daughter.

Wishing You Inner Peace!

Now that you have elaborated further you reveal him to be the sick one.

work out if you want a relationship with him or not. If you do not, give him a clear message. He's clearly hurting and he's clearly confused.

I don't think he thinks you are lying: he thinks you are cheating. Not 'with another man' cheating. I mean cheating at cards. Cheating at the game. Not playing fair. He carries his anxiety, and he has to carry yours as well. and whenever you two have a disagreement, you trump him with this anxiety card. He cannot get his needs met. He cannot get a fair hearing.

How about you carry your anxiety, and he carries his? Your anxiety is your problem. Especially in a love affair. I can't think of any way to ruin a love affair quicker, than to not carry your anxiety and try to get them to. They can't. Don't consider yourself the only person under stress. You're only under as much stress as they are.

A love affair requires equal power. If you know this key, you know that you must not disempower them, and you must not let them disempower you. You must maintain a balance. And that means carry your own insecurities and don't ever carry theirs.

And if your anxiety is something you cannot carry in a relationship, then definitely the best thing to do is to get out of that relationship, and solve your anxiety problems before having another one.

So I would say you can't have one with this guy right now, and it's not his fault, and it's not your fault. It is timing. The organism that is you is not in a pairbonding stage. It is in a pupating stage. You have to do it alone.

it's all very well to say he's nuts: but the reality is the confusion he is experiencing is what is driving him nuts. He has bonded to you; he has committed to you, and he's not getting that back. That drives a person insane.

Let him down easy, let him understand it's actually your stage of evolution, you want to stay friends, let's go to the movies but right now you need to be solo. :)

I'm sorry. I'm coming back to say this the way i should have said it before.

Anxiety will make a person cling to someone they wouldn't put up with for five minutes, if they didn't have it.

And anxiety will make someone throw away a person who they wouldn't throw away, if they didn't have the anxiety.

Being in a bad state of anxiety is like wearing a blindfold. I know this, it has happened to me.

So the only thing you can do is back out carefully and kindly. And say that you are not in a stage of development (or whatever) where you are able to have a relationship. That it is not fair on anyone. If he loves you he may hang around till you are free. If he wants he can move on. That is the risk you all run. But the point is that now, you are fighting with your arms tied behind your back, and a blindfold on. You want his hands tied to make it even, but he won't let you.

And that's no fight at all.

When you resolve the anxiety, you become far more powerful. You release all your fears and you regain all of your control and power and confidence. At that point you are ready to have a love affair. But not before.

The last thing you want to do is marry a man who only likes you when you're terrified and clingy. Because he will never let you get strong. So you definitely do just have to go it alone until you are the you you want to be. And then you can go out and find the man who likes that you. :)

well I know my anxiety can control me and my feelings at certain times. I also know he does very unfair things to me and I can't deal with it. I am going to try to go to a support group meeting in hopes it can help me focus on my wellness instead of him.

I have to agree with bridgie. Anxiety kept me in a crappy relationship for far longer than I should have stayed because I was afraid to be alone and thought that at least my partner was there to help if I really needed the support. Problem was - I was lying to myself.

Since I got divorced three years ago, life has never been better. There are still times where I feel a bit nervous, but it's not because someone is being horrible to me and I feel trapped. Now it's because I'm conquering a fear I want to fight. Like taking a trip somewhere or repairing something or taking a class.

Here's the bottom line - if someone is treating you like crap, it doesn't matter why. And it's unlikely to get better. So often we give them the benefit of the doubt because we're afraid of being without them. But you may be much better off on your own.

These people will often actively foster the anxiety - making you more dependent on them and then being angry with you for that very dependency. They make you feel less capable than you are - and more anxious.

It takes some time to unlearn those habits after you're out but it is SOOOOO worth it!