coolfonz - i know it makes DP sound terrible. And it's done a huge amount of damage I can see now, over the years, as each time it happens I lose the will to fight back and to have to be the emotionally strong one. A little bit of my love for him has been worn away with each outburst.
However, I know that these outbursts of DP's come from a deeply insecure place. I understand this partly because I have a very good friend who does/did the same to her long-term DP and she has tried to explain it to me, without excusing it.
This, of course, does not make it any better. My DP will sometimes try to make a joke out of it afterwards, treat it lightly and is always apologetic. However, I know it is emotional abuse because that's how I feel afterwards - abused. And as I've talked about it on here and with a friend I've come to see just how much anger and resentment has built up inside me over the years about it. Every time it's happened, I've had to be the one to point out all the reasons we are good together, why we're committed, why i would never leave him (that was then....).
But the last time it happened I started to feel numb. Like it wasn't hurting any more, it was just making me very angry.
That's probably got a lot to do with why I stopped feeling emotionally close enough to my DP to want to have sex with him (altho' we still did but I didn't feel the same about it), which in turn probably made me start to look outwards a bit more....
This is not an excuse for the way I'm feeling towards OM - there are other factors of course - and it's not an excuse for having an affair. I'm just painting a picture I guess.
Now it's whether I care enough about DP and our relationship to fix it. I do. I just wonder if things will actually change. I always think they will. We have a great 5 months - and then back it comes... "DP: We shouldn't be together because you don't make me feel good etc etc..."