In successful relationships, both parties accept that neither one is perfect, and work to compromise and to live with their partner's flaws. This is not a successful relationship.

At best, your boyfriend is a nut. At worst, he suffers from one (or more) of the many disorders theorized by readers.

Men don't change, especially after age 25. If you expect him to, you are a nut as well. If you marry him and have kids, he will nag them too, and his criticism of you will increase. (I speak from experience, as I was married to the female version of your boyfriend.)

Maybe you think you can't do better. I bet you can. Get while the gettin' is good.

Dear LW,

It's never going to get better. I was in this kind of relationship for almost 6 years. This isn't about you and your "mistakes." This is about your bf and his issues with control. It is mental abuse. It hurts. You will feel so much better without this kind of torture in your life.

But I hope for their sake you never have kids with him, because they will be absolute messes.

I too dated a guy like this. I'm grateful that after nearly 3 years I finally had the courage to leave him.

I didn't realize how badly the relationship had screwed me up until a year or so later when I was dating a really nice guy. My new guy was upset about something I'd done, so he told me that it had bothered him. I immediately began apologizing profusely, promising it would never happen again, and basically completely over-reacted to the conversation. He was a little freaked out by my reaction, and kept reassuring me that it wasn't a big deal, he just wanted me to know how he was feeling. That's when I saw how conditioned I was to the horrible treatment I'd received from my ex. It took a long time and a lot of therapy to reverse the damage, and to figure out why I'd put up with it in the first place. I think your guy sounds like a lost cause, so you should make a clean break and get yourself into therapy. Good luck.

OK--a married woman I know once told me, "there's always someone who usually takes command in the relationship, whether it's the woman or the man." I had always wanted, as my perfect relationship, just a sort of cheerful, friendly, and not-at-all controlling relationship; get serious about the large stuff, by all means, but acknowledge that very few things really are large stuff. Don't sweat the small stuff. So my friend's declaration bugged me a bit (especially because looking at any relationship I could think of, her view seemed much, much more universally applicable than mine, heh). I can see the point that every band needs a leader, and in the Beatles it was John and Paul. That may just be how it is, except with a rarely self-actualizing couple.

But, um... at a certain point, someone's sort of going off the rails a little bit. It can be either the man, or the woman (especially if she's from New Jersey), being a harpy and waaaay, way too controlling. I think Carey's advice was a very good first step in opening a dialogue.

The LW needs to have boundaries, and her husband needs to start respecting them. Having one person tend to direct things like where to go for dinner is fine, if the other doesn't care as much to direct things. But there's such a thing as control-freaking. His constant tweaking of her isn't respectful of her need to direct her own life (not least, her desire to have a little peace and quiet and relax in their own home). Relax, dude! And I hope that they see a counselor soon, so as to learn a more productive way to get along. Otherwise, I think he's going to lose her. Who could stand it?

--I don't want to go all Brightstar on ya, [but this is called NAGGING...] If the LW had been a guy, he need only have said "My wife nags me constantly, about every little thing I do" and most people would know instantly what he was talking about.

Rereading the letter from the LW yet, I don't see anything about physical abuse, hitting her or something like that. So I think it is awfully premature to decide that he's so deeply mentally ill that she needs to escape from the relationship in the middle of the night and go "whew!" I was in a relationship with a woman who was like the LW's husband, and I didn't bag everything at the first sign of trouble and declare her insane. That's ridiculous. Someone else below said, "guys don't change after they're 25." Wha? Who the heck decided that the magic age of 25 is the age when men can no longer reflect upon themselves? That just seems nonsense on its face. Of course older people can reflect and make changes.

Sure, the relationship is in crisis now, and it's a situation that I wouldn't put up with, and neither should the LW. But unless there is any physical abuse, the LW owes it to herself as well as the guy, to say, "we need to go to counseling and address this problem, because what's going on between us is wrong." If he refuses even to discuss it before a therapist, then by all means, he's choosing his pathology over the relationship. But simply assuming he's a psychotic wife-beater-to-be and ditching him without even giving him the chance to explore himself? That's pretty simplistic.

If he closes his eyes and won't look, then ditch him. But if you oversimplify in the way suggested, then you'll be the one closing your eyes to something, and you'll set a pattern for meeting future relationship problems by running away, the minute there's a problem. Don't do that, LW.

Life is way too short, dump him.

Is to beat him to death in his sleep, with an Estwing framing hammer. He has it coming. Embrace your inner sociopath.