After leaving a Mr Sensitive four years ago, and now being very happily married to Mr Ginger, I've only just realised that my ex was a walking talking embodiment of Lundy Bancroft's Mr Sensitive. Acc to LB:
The central attitudes driving Mr. Sensitive are:
• I'm against the macho men, so I couldn't be abusive.
• As long as I use a lot of psychobabble, no one is going to believe that I am mistreating you.
• I can control you by analyzing how your mind and emotions work, and what your issues are from childhood.
• I can get inside your head whether you want me there or not.
• Nothing in the world is more important than my feelings.
• Women should be grateful to me for not being like those other men.
I'm not sure when emotional caretaking becomes a form of abuse. I only know that now I'm not with the ex, I'm not always anticipating how he might feel.
And yet I've only realised it recently because of now being with a man who doesn't expect me to anticipate all his moods, doesn't tell me how 'lucky' I am that he fancies me, takes our daughter out so I can work, without endlessly reminding me of the fact, and doesn't SULK or look sad if I happen to want to be alone! It was exhausting and depressing, but when I tried to explain it to friends, they just thought I was mad leaving such a 'nice man'. He (ex) rang me up the other day as on the surface, we get on ok, and he was going away on a work do. He moaned and complained about how 'tired' he was and overworked, and when I snapped at him to stop whining and he was lucky that his work financed a foreign trip - all expenses paid - he got quite shirty.
Come and tell me about your experiences with a partner who needed constant emotional caretaking/Mr 'Sensitive'.