the majority of his complaints were about a stressful AX con weekend where we sold together;

I had invited him to sell at my AX table during the first con we sold at.

it was kind of a mess because he had trouble respecting my boundaries; during the first con, he offered our room out to his friends without talking to me privately first, which is also what he did when it came to offering up my limited table space without asking me privately first. it sucked

I tried really hard to go along with everything he wanted, because I liked him a lot and wanted him to be happy. he confessed liking me during the first con, and... that made it even harder to say "no" to tonedeaf requests that pushed past what I was comfortable with.

I just got put in positions where I constantly felt used and unappreciated, but i knew he had severe anxiety and tried my best to understand how to communicate through that, and to be understanding

it was hard. it was frustrating. i had never dealt with anxiety like this that manifested in this way for someone else, and I didn't really know how to address unspoken issues... how do you talk to someone who pretends things are fine?

if their actions don't match the feelings they're putting out, it becomes really jarring for me, and that made it difficult to understand how to help or how much space to give or anything like that! it's a guessing game then

I really wanted to help give him confidence in his work, since he was a talented musician and had such a cool eye for his original world; I wanted to help other people see that, too, which is why I even invited him to the first convention we sold at!

I really wanted to help get him started in having confidence in his work despite the fact that he'd felt bad about dropping out of college a few months prior (because I'd been in that spot before, too!)

so when we were at the first con... and he kept offering up my time, space, etc to his friends without consulting me about the idea privately first...

i really wanted to help them, too, because he wanted it. but I realize NOW that this was him not realizing that I had boundaries, and not realizing that he was heavily trampling on them by offering me up like that to anyone he also wanted to help. like i was just a resources machine for his friends

before the 2nd con (AX), there was some stress because his friend put off prints until the last moment, for personal reasons I was never told. I was frustrated because this friend wanted me to print her stuff for her, but I was told this very last minute, and I had very limited space in my bags! there was a huge amount of guilt applied to me over this.

I tried hard to explain the feelings weren't personal, but the friend would hear none of it, and that sucked

for trying to enforce a boundary, here, the friend got super upset and started talking to my ex. the friend wouldn't trust anything i said.

this was fucking maddening. i had gone out of my way to make arrangements for this friend to sell with us; (as an aside, with influence from my ex, I also bought the friend a DS game that we could maybe all play together at the con (animal crossing))

anyway the friend got upset, and became paranoid about me for some reason

this was frustrating. i found out THROUGH MY EX'S CALLOUT some 15 months later that the reason this friend wanted help with prints instead of doing it locally was because of an immediate death in the family.

anyway the callout made me out as a monster for not caring about this family death i had only learned about FROM that post, despite the fact that i PRINTED THE PRINTS FOR HER ANYWAY.

the only thing that made sense was that my ex thought i knew, for some reason

that was the start of the rift. during the 2nd con i tried SO hard to be accomodating of his anxiety, but at every turn in his callout he accused me of not caring.

but for him I:
1) checked in as much as possible
2) went to do errands (that he should have been doing, as my table helper) so that he wouldn't have to talk to strangers
3) tried to calm him down and let him arrange the table display how he wanted, after he was seething in annoyance

etc

I legitimately didn't know what to do, here. he was very cold and stressed during the 2nd con, and nothing seemed to be going right. none of my efforts seemed to matter.

near the end, everything devolved into everyone having petty feelings of frustration, among everyone. no one was able to communicate what was wrong, not even if I asked pointedly

I had no idea what to do. this was so beyond me; if someone doesn't want to talk, to communicate, they won't.

anyway let's skip to after the con.

he was supposed to fly back to my place afterwards, and did not, because of all the misunderstandings that accumulated making him decide to make plans to go back home, instead

which... fine. i mean that sucked hard to find this out last minute, to not even have a chance to talk about it, but. you gotta do what you gotta do to not explode from anxiety, i get it. it was probably for the best this way

so...

after that, things were strained, and our attempts at understanding each other were stressful.

I was heartbroken thinking we'd not be able to be friends again; it looked like he blocked me on skype (...I found out from him some 2 years later that HE thought *I* blocked him.)

since (I thought) he blocked me, i was devastated, but I didn't want to circumvent the block! so i... stewed on it a little and became agitated, not knowing what to do

in the meantime, my (soon-to-be-divorced) husband was still talking to my ex.

and here's the part i've never talked about until recently.

i was distressed bc my husb was trying to make arrangements...

...to visit MY EX? which, what? what the fuck? he wanted to go visit him instead. what? why? I couldn't fucking understand what was going on and KNEW it was a bad idea and he WOULD NOT LISTEN TO ME WHEN I ASKED HIM TO STOP TRYING TO PLAN FOR THAT. i HATED it.

let me state it clearly.

1) my ex and i break up, he doesn't visit me when he was gonna
2) my husband wanted to visit *MY* ex, instead...
2a) ...and wouldn't listen to me tell him "no you can't fucking do that this is a bad idea"

I should have realized what I felt was mistrust of his intentions. i should've probably broken it off with my husband years before this past month.

but i didn't know i could do better than someone who ignored my boundaries, so I didn't.

anyway. my bad feeling about my husb wanting to visit my ex...

made me feel urged to do something drastic. so... what I did was write a vent post about him on my side blog. all my frustrations about the weekend that my ex wouldn't listen to me over. all my frustrations about my efforts to help him getting turned on their head. but my tone in it was just so regrettably mean, because i felt so stupidly cornered. it was a bad decision to make those thoughts public.

but here's why I did it: I knew I had to write something that would signal "we can't talk again". because in my mind, if I didn't do that, my husb would have kept on trying to pressure my ex into a visit, and I... I didn't know how else to deal with that.

I went for the worst possible way of doing it, the least constructive one, because all my options looked horrible and so I had to pick between two kinds of shit

this does NOT excuse the hurt that he was caused

...so when my ex made his mile-long callout over a year after separating, and I found out it was "in response" to my short vent post...

I couldn't even read my vent post without feeling the embarrassment of "why did I post this publicly. this was stupid. this is so mean." and it's one of like 3 times I can remember being that mean on purpose with a destructive intent.

i just wanted to cut him away from my husband, and it ended up shattering his confidence.

so I completely understood why he felt so hurt, after giving it some time.

think about how jarring that'd be. you're with someone who's encouraging at every angle for the entire 6 months you know them, and then, instantly, they can turn around and make a vent post with mean angles that destroys the confidence that they built up in you.

it doesn't matter that my reason for doing it was with "good intentions". i should have striven for a better solution