... leave. Now.

I know what it's like. I was you a couple of years ago. It got to the point where I was tiptoeing around on eggshells, dreading any slip up I might make. NOTHING I did was right. If I did this, he wanted that, and was angry that I didn't anticipate his needs. If I tried to anticipate his needs, he got mad because I wasn't thinking for myself. If I eased back a little, he accused me of being distant and having an affair (which I wasn't and he KNEW this).

It got so bad I had to seek professional help. I had a constant splitting headache and cried every day. When I washed my hair, clumps would fall out. The doctor said it was from sheer stress.

I put up with his abuse much longer than I should have .. it's so easy to stand outside that toxic circle and see it for what it is, but when you're inside, you keep thinking it can be "fixed" somehow. It can't.

Somewhere there is a sweet, kind man who would love to have you by his side. He won't be perfect - but he won't expect you to be, either. He will understand you so much better than this tool does. And for every minute longer you stay with said tool, it's a minute you won't have with the sweet man who will love you for who you are.

Trust me. Please. End it.

and it hasn't worked. and so now you are trying another way. a letter to an advice columnist. so that you, YOU, can fix the problem. uh. he should be the one writing. you are in an extremely negative situation. accepting things you shouldn't. you will get damaged by this. it will probably get much worse before you get out. and i'm saying that hoping that it won't. but usually that's what it takes for people to see the light of this. i agree with the codependent suggestion from another commenter. you should look into that, it might open your eyes a little. good luck, one day you will see this for what it is.

I have spent the past five years thinking that if I do exactly what he wants, he will eventually be satisfied.

This is the way abused partners tend to think.

I think you're in an emotionally abusive relationship, and the only direction you should be traveling is AWAY from this guy.

Be aware, though, that he'll decide that leaving him is just another one of your flaws.

Do not attempt to argue with this. Just tell him okay, it's one of my flaws, and LEAVE!

It's not enough to leave him, which you should do. You also need to be wary after you leave, because he may plead with you to take him back because he says he can change.

The thing is, since you have already pleaded and reasoned with him over this while you are still with him, that means he is too obtuse to see your point or he just doesn't care. If you let him back, the behavior will just start again.

Let him change for the next person.

It's amazing what kind of authority complete strangers will assume over someone else's relationship based on a paragraph or two describing only the problems. I have to assume that for this relationship to have lasted 5 years there are plenty of redeeming qualities about your boyfriend as well and those should not be overlooked no matter how clever an acronym these complete strangers can create to emphasize their point. Your boyfriend sounds like a remarkably critical guy- not just of you but also of himself. Perhaps he's depressed. Regardless, I agree wholeheartedly with Cary's advice to remind him of what's important, but also I would suggest drawing a line in the sand- stand up for yourself when you feel he's gone too far and don't back down an inch. Be loving, be supportive and remind him that what you feel for each other is most important, but tell him EVERY TIME when he says something hurtful and DO NOT let him convince you it's OK. It's not. And if he knows this, he will attempt to change (and that should be enough, at least at first) and if he doesn't, then he's not worth a damn afterall and you really should DTMFA.

"until I slowly realized he does not mean that I am perfect; he means that he would prefer to imagine me as perfect...when I do not live up to this image, he is devastated."

This is all too familiar to me.

Once upon a recent time, I had what I *thought* was a very good friend. He took an instant (platonic) liking to me, and it didn't seem that I could ever do or say anything wrong. He had clearly placed me on a pedestal, and my best efforts to remind him that I'm a flawed human being didn't seem to get through. It was a tad awkward, but I thought it was harmless and decided to let it be.

That worked up until the day he went and blew up at me completely out of the blue. I had shared a viewpoint that didn't fit in with his perfect-person image of me, and he couldn't handle it . His solution was to attack me and make me wrong for my viewpoint. I went from being the person he most revered, to the person he most reviled, seemingly in an instant. Despite my best efforts to resolve our differences, sadly, we're no longer friends.

Why do I share this unfortunate little story? Well, around the time this happened, I was sticking my nose into several self-help/psychology texts focused on self-esteem and the effects of various forms of child abuse on adults. What you describe fits the bill for what I've read about. In a nutshell, it sounds as if your boyfriend - much like my guy friend - has very low self-esteem. This makes it difficult for him to see and accept you for who you actually are in real life. It doesn't sound as if your boyfriend is as extreme as my friend was, but I think it's more or less the same phenomena.

With all due respect to Cary, no matter how much your boyfriend may care about you, I'm not so sure that merely explaining to him that he's upsetting you, and asking him to stop, will be enough to change his behavior.

You already know that he's not strong enough to accept what's there in front of him, and instead needs to build up a fantasy version of reality. It doesn't sound as if he's grounded enough in this instance to be able to see your viewpoint enough for such a request to register. He's not criticizing you for the sake of criticizing you - I think he's reacting to a desperate fear that you're not the fantasy person he needs you to be. If I'm right, then his fear, and his inability to deal with reality, are what need to be addressed to resolve the problematic behavior.

I'll apologize in advance if my letter is too direct - this is the first time I've felt compelled to respond to one of Cary's letter-writers, and I'm simply writing from the heart. It sounds like you have a chance of resolving the situation, and I wish you all the best!