Now. He will never change and you will turn into a nervous wreck trying to live up to his unattainable standards. I threw away two years of my life doing the same thing with a man who was exactly like your boyfriend and spent a year after leaving him learning to stop feeling like a worthless piece of crap for leaving a CD in the car on a hot day. You don't need this.

That is emotional abuse. He's trying to tear down your self-esteem. He's already lured you into believing that you are under any obligation to "perform" for him, to be an object of perfection instead of another person. You need to get out before he really starts escalating the abuse.

Honestly LW you had to write somebody about this? Here's a simple truth - you can't change people. The only way BF will change is if you dump his rear end tonight. Maybe he'll get better by the next girl, but you've accepted his crap day in and day out for 5 years - this is the pattern, and it will stay the same for the rest of your time together. Stop pretending it's going to get better. It won't, get out, period.

i was in a similar situation. and now suspect that my ex-bf had borderline personality disorder. but at the time i blamed myself for failing to be perfect, for hurting him when in fact he overreacted to everything. i don't know... maybe this guy has bpd too?

Get out of this relationship ASAP. I've known a person like your boyfriend for 40 years. It doesn't get better. If you stay, you will start to internalize all the absurd criticism. You'll start to think you really are bad for leaving a door open, or burning something on the stove, or forgetting an appointment, or what-have-you. It is emotional abuse. He is doing it to control you. He is an infant. Leave now.

It will never get better and you will start to shrink and die unless you immediately cut the cord. Please don't look back.

I am full of mistakes waiting to happen, but they are livable mistakes.

These are the words of a wise and self-accepting person.

Now DTMFA.

This sounds like what my marriage turned into about seven years in (about the time I was diagnosed as infertile, after we'd always planned on having a family). All of a sudden I couldn't do anything right. There was no reasoning with him a la Cary. I got so tired of it that I left, and filed for divorce a year later. The day the divorce was granted, I walked out of the courthouse feeling nothing but relief. I've since heard other similar stories from women in which it eventually came out that the man wanted out (often because of a girlfriend on the side) but didn't want to be the "bad guy" and end the relationship. LW, I think you're going to get a unanimous response of "run" from the posters here. Then after you've run a safe distance away from being constantly harped on and belittled, ask yourself why you put up with it. You do not deserve it. No one does. It's better to be single than to be with someone who constantly reminds you what a disappointment you are ... and I speak from experience.

You're obviously co-dependent because you recognize what bullshit you're putting up with. That means you are to blame. Your choices are to dump the idiot and be rid of the problem and your sick attachment to it, or stay and obey his wishes while writing letters to advice columnists. If you stay, it's not your jerk boyfriend's fault if you continue to be abused, it's yours.

I'm so stunned by this, I've lost my powers of metaphorical writing. This is abuse, passive now but working its' way to aggressive. Get out NOW. Plan ahead, but stick a fork in him. Wave a tire iron around in his aura. He's not there for you. Leave ASAP.

My friend married one of these. Total disaster. Kids, real estate and her trashed self image later, she finally left.

As Cary said in a column awhile back -- in one of his greater moments of wisdom -- back slowly away from the hope. This guy is not going to change. Ultimately, his criticisms are not really about you. They are just a way of blaming you for his unhappiness. If you would just fix "x," then he would be happy right?

He's not the man you imagine him to be, and you are not the cause or solution to his state of happiness.

Collect what is left of your self esteem and leave now. Seriously.

Found I had more to say about this...

Cary's answer is useful, but I don't think gets to the heart of your situation. Yes, he's hurting your feelings, but I don't believe he's doing it on purpose.

Because he doesn't understand that you have feelings.

Because he sees you as an OBJECT, not a person.

Because only unchanging objects, or gods, can be "perfect." Non-human things. Humans are, by definition, imperfect.

I knew someone like this very briefly, before I got him out of my life. We'd met only once, and corresponded for a little bit. He had an idealized notion of who I was that was based only on what he WANTED me to be, not on what I actually was. Whenever something I did or said didn't match with the perfect image of me he had in his head, he was "disappointed." He didn't want to learn more about who I was; he wanted me to be this mythical girl he had in his head.

So yeah, he's hurting your feelings, but more to the point, he doesn't know or care who you actually are. Because a real, complicated, imperfect person is too much for him to deal with.

It may not have taken me five years, but I was in a similar position with my wife. I think part of it was just pure unadulterated love and infatuation. We hadn't known each other for long before we got married (long weird story). And the gloss just hadn't come of it.

Second, by viewing my new wife as perfect, I was allowing myself to be the immature and imperfect one in the relationship. As long as one of us was the more responsible one, somebody was in charge. And clearly, it wasn't going to be me.

But, thankfully, I grew out of that. We've both grown up and thankfully we've grown together. Thirteen years of marriage this week and two kids later we're both acutely aware of our flaws, an dwe still love each other.

As I say, five years is a long time, but with a bit of motivation and guidance, he may mature, as I did. Here's to hoping. If he cannot take a hint or attempt a change, then I'll have to go along with the (so far) majority.