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I, for one, alone as I may be in my opinion, cannot imagine punishing anyone for anything, day in and day out, with words and with silence, with glares and with avoidance, with hostile presence and hostile absence, judging, criticising, condemning, reducing the entire world I share with someone into an emotional chamber of horrors -- while doing my best to avoid any honest and open confrontation of the issues.
In fact, I don't think I have the capacity to keep that up for one day. It makes me sad and tired just to think about it.
Yet BF has kept it up for six months, and is showing no signs of stopping. He seems perfectly content with the status quo, while LW is tiring of trying emotional contortion after emotional contortion to fulfill whatever it is he is requiring of her. And rightly so, because the only thing he seems to be requiring of her is constant shame, regret, sorrow, and pain. He has not defined anything beyond that, tacitly or overtly, that she can give to make it right, and I'm thinking there is nothing else he wants.
In fact, I cannot help but conclude that, since he's keeping the pain up (on both sides) for so long, he's enjoying it. Normal people of goodwill can't keep up punishing others that long, and have no desire to.
As other posters have pointed out, he seems unwilling for her to leave. I am reminded of something Cary said to another LW a couple weeks ago; I was so moved by it that I wrote it down. It goes thusly:
For a man who has abused you to complain of the pain it causes him when you leave him only suggests that it is in his abuse of you itself that he finds pleasure and comfort. That is a chilling thought. But it is unavoidable: If the object of his abuse causes him pain when it disappears, then it must be in the abuse itself that he finds pleasure.
How is this different from BF? If it is, I'm not seeing it. He won't let her stay, he won't let her go, he is content to keep her twisting somewhere in between -- indefinitely -- in his resentment and her guilt.
I totally concur with the other posters who sense that the reason he will not leave her is because he needs the breakup to be her fault, and in the meantime is enjoying the stolen fruits of emotional abuse. Her own honesty, goodwill and compassion are the ropes he has tied firmly around her neck to keep her there and watch her suffer.
Regarding the "sin" itself, a consenting threesome is NOT the worst thing in the world, it does NOT have to affect the rest of her life negatively, and past sexual history (minus STDs and kids) only matters as much as you let it. Even convicted murderers such as Ted Bundy seem to be able to find forgiving and willing spouses on Death Row! I can't imagine that LWs "crimes" compare. Don't let it, LW. Leave this loser and run, before you cease to be more, in your own eyes, than the sum of your misdeeds.
