It is a dance. I was shocked to realise that my Ex had been bullying me for years. He didn't scream and shout or exhibit what I classified as bullying behaviours. He simply wore me down on everything, he would go on and on until he got his way, he would make me feel guilty and unworthy. He was passive aggressive and controlling. He gas lighted me on many occasions. Yet because I was so used to all of those treatments from my family, I just accepted that it was because I was less valid as a human being. I covered up for him, I defended him and most importantly I enabled him. He left me for another woman, and now he is dancing a very different routine. She says jump he says 'how high?'. She is like his narcissistic mother, self obsessed and he is the little boy desperate for her attention. The dancers are intrinsic to the style of the dance. My ex had neglectful parents, his mum abandoned him and his brothers, his dad couldn?t cope and survived by avoiding as much of life as possible. I had neglectful parents, my dad left and my mum was nuts. The combination of my Ex and I was a chemistry experiment gone wrong. He dealt with his childhood by trying to control everything, I dealt with mine by trying to comply. His father?s avoidance of responsibility and his mums absence made him determined to live a life of material accumulation. He never valued me as the mother of his kids, I think it hurt him deeply to see me love our kids because his mother didn't love him the way he needed to be loved. He resented me and the resentment built. My childhood taught me to comply or face punishment. the rules of compliance were changed without warning constantly, so I became a very anxious frightened person, too afraid to have core beliefs or opinions of my own, because to express them would be interpreted as insolence, and that was the ultimate crime. I lost myself, and learnt to live in response to others rather than as a person in my own right. Recently I dated a guy for 15 months. I tried to split up with him maybe 4 or 5 times, because I found him emotionally unavailable. Each time I tried he would suddenly open up to me and communicate and that would be enough to draw me back in, pretty soon I would realise that I was back to being treated as though I was on a never ending interview, passing tests and being judged, never quite declared fit to be his true partner or equal. Finally I split with him. I don't think it was a deliberate tactic on his part, I think he was emotionally crippled and could only display emotions when forced to do so, he had his childhood demons and a divorce that had cut him, so he was hyper vigilant. Being with him was making me crazy, none of my needs were being met and I was again dieing inside. He wasn't making me crazy, the situation I allowed myself to become stuck in was. It was the groove I was used to, I slipped in to it and followed the track around and around. I was so hurt and angry at my X, but it wasn't his fault any more than it was mine or should I say equally as it was mine. We were a diabolical combination. We fit together like a co-dependent tongue and groove set. I look back at our relationship and I too can list the occasions when something registered deep inside me as wrong, just like gb's moment with her Husband and his Sister. I knew it was wrong, if I were healthy I would have known to walk away, but instead I stayed. I swallowed my emotions, added one more tick to the 'things that must be wrong with me list' and I persevered. I'm trying to reprogram me myself. Compassion is key. I think I too have PTSD. I think I lived on a knife edge for my childhood. I spent my days trying to build a house of emotional cards only to have them flattened. There were no emotional safe places, just an open battle field where I was the canon fodder. I was traumatised when my Ex left because I had done everything possible to comply, I had given up my dreams, I had lived where he wanted, worked as much as he wanted, sacrificed my own happiness and none of it was enough to add up to anything. I did all that in exchange for what I thought would be safety and security but instead I got my greatest fear - abandonment. I don't think he made me crazy I think he exposed me to my greatest fear and that made me crazy. The only thing I had as a child was the belief that compliance would save me. So - I'm so sorry i have meandered in and out of topic here. I think it's our own inner belief systems that make us crazy - the ones hard wired in to us during our childhoods. These people we attract and are attracted to because of the familiar feelings they illicit - they simply give us our cues and we then auto pilot our lines and positions in the dance.