[April Masini, your AskApril]

First of all, [b]lax26[/b], please post your question as a new thread so that the responses to your question aren’t confused with the responses to [b]Jerry[/b]. I’ll answer your question in the fresh post once you do that! 😀

As for Jerry:

Your response speaks volumes. You’ve channeled your anger at yourself and your situation onto [i]me[/i]. You’ve also twisted my question: “I’m a little confused — how is he “making you” do all these things?” into something it isn’t. 😕 In fact, [i]you didn’t answer the question.[/i] 😮 Instead, you came out with this doozy: [quote]If I was getting my ass beaten, good to know you’d be telling me to take it in the body because I must deserve it.[/quote]
😯 😯 😯 😯

Is your boyfriend beating you? Because you didn’t mention any beatings or physical abuse. Nobody deserves to be beaten, and if you’re being beaten, you should immediately go to the police.

Real abuse is very serious and should be treated as such. The problem is that a lot of women fling around the term and they use it bully and victimize men. You’ve tried to do that with me. 😮

You said he “made you” buy a house, sell a car, change your job — I don’t understand how, as an adult, he made you do that. I think your anger is because I touched a nerve. You don’t want to admit your part in this relationship dynamic. You say that you’re tired of being “the nice guy” who is “strung along”. 😯 I’m not sure what you did that is nice. Enabling someone may make you feel like you’re a nice guy, but it isn’t being a nice guy. It’s enabling bad behavior. 🙁

You’re certainly free to not take my advice — clearly, that’s a given. But if you’re going to reject advice as quickly as you did mine, you’re probably going to stay stuck. 😳 This site is not a pity party. It’s a place for people to ask questions and get my advice, and the advice of others, and weigh what works for them. It’s a place for people who want to do the work in relationships to share their journeys. When you ended your post with the admission that you might take this guy who you claim is abusive, back, because you’re afraid “you’ll never have anyone else” — you scratched the surface of the problem.

I hope you’ll not give up on the journey to find Mr. Right, and that you’ll decide that you are worth the work required to be in a healthy relationship, and that you’ll get to the bottom of this problem, rather than dismissively twisting good advice into something it’s not, and then tossing it away without considering that it might be right. 😉