This might take some explaining...
As I said, we shared the house for a year and a half after we broke up. Throughout the split, which lasted for months, and for some time after it was intolerable. Gradually we came to be able to coexist in a kind of uneasy impasse. Eventually we reached a plateau of distance but understanding. We'd both expressed a lot of feelings that had been unspoken the whole time we were together. We came about as close to closure as I think it was possible to.

He had no real means of moving out (the house was in my name), but then I met someone, the other ex mentioned above. He needed somewhere to stay when he split up from his wife and it made sense for him to move in with me - my rent is ridiculously cheap - and so instead of renting somewhere more expensive, he paid CF ex's costs to move out.

He is now living a few miles away, and I still speak to him occasionally. Despite everything I bear him no ill will. He has his own side of the story and I would hate for anyone to read my side of things and judge him solely on the strength of it. I am now balanced in what I take responsibility for, and while I see that there were many things I blamed myself for unnecessarily, I also said and did things I am not proud of, things that hurt him greatly.

The whole thing was a tragedy from start to finish. I do believe he loved me. And I believe his need to control came from lack of trust in people, and the universe at large, and insecurity. This was something I started to think while we were still together and I started to try to convince him that he had problems that he wasn't addressing... which of course he resisted, at my expense. But I know he wasn't like that because he liked being a bastard... he was trying to fulfil his own need for love, the only way he knew how. I think he knows now that I would have freely given him all the love I had if he had handled things differently. And that works boths ways.

I don't judge him. Or myself, any more.

[apologies for lifting some of this from a gaz I sent earlier, I couldn't think how else to explain]
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Sat 4 Oct 2008, 3:02, 1 reply)

I could almost have been that guy...
...but much younger. At the age of 22 or so having spent lots of time studying the interfaces of psychology, hypnosis, and "magic" I had a funny bag of tricks which I was not above using for amusement- for example I once "trained" a girl to experience a tickling sensation if I hummed a few bars of a particular piece of music.
Later I fell in with a much younger woman and she fell hard in love with me ( I did not discover this until much later- please understand I would have been more gentle otherwise) and we lived together for several years. I eventually realised that she was too-much "into" me and discouraged this as best I could without hurting her (read: not enough). Luckily she met someone else and began "cheating" on me. I found out and let her know it was ok by me- but we were no longer going to be together sexually. So she transferred her affections to this other. Again luckily, we remained friends- and are to this day.
I feel guilty because her "new guy" was rather like "that guy", cutting her off from her old friends (including me) and administering the odd beating (ironic, that, since she was considerably stronger than he and she was well-schooled in the art of hurting a fucker) but after 5 years she's finally kicked that shit to a kerb and married a man who while I find him dull, she finds endlessly fascinating... and he treats her as well (or maybe better) than she deserves. Finally!
(douchebarge, Sat 4 Oct 2008, 6:39, closed)