80% bad / 20% good

John and I lived a roller coaster relationship. When it was good, it was very, very good. When it was bad, it would range from mildly stressful to utterly horrific and crippling.

We both experienced this very wide range of emotion. We both have felt loved, cherished, and adored. We have also both felt betrayed and empty.

The feeling of betrayal lived in John almost every day. Before I even met John, he had a very low view of all women. He didn't trust them at all. I can't stress just how low his view of women was.

His relationship with me helped to improve his view of women, but he would still layer his extremely negative views on top of me. I think these negative views had an impact on the dreams that he would have about me.

He would have nightmares of me betraying him. Sometimes the nightmares were so bad that they would cause him to physically lose control of his body - convulsions, urination, and defecation. He would dream of me cheating on him with multiple other men and rubbing it in his face. He would dream of me physically attacking him, cutting him with a knife, killing him even.

I don't know why he saw me like this. I'm NOTHING like that image. It hurt me deeply that he would see me that way.

He lived with so much torture in his mind. How could I fight these images in his mind in real life? How could I get him to believe that I loved him in the face of that?

Because of the thoughts about women that he held before I even met him and how those thoughts came out in his dreams about me, I was extremely limited. I needed his help. I needed him to consciously create images in his head of me loving him. I needed him to have a fundamental paradigm shift.

If only he could have seen me in his mind.... loving him.... he could have received and been nurtured by the love that I gave. He could have seen that I loved him. Even when I was busy with other things in life, he could have seen that I loved him. We could have built trust. He would have realized that he was my home, my anchor and that I would always come back to him.

But because of all the betrayal he experienced in his mind, he couldn't trust me. No matter what I gave, it wouldn't be a deposit. So many times, the bank of his heart and mind would be closed. How could I make a deposit if the bank was closed?

Then there were the times when I would be left in the dark. He wouldn't tell me about the nightmares that he had and the betrayal that he felt. So I would treat him as though everything was alright. Sometimes I was busy, out and about doing the activities of the day. If only I had known, I would have chosen to be right there by his side, showing him the love that he needed to recover from what had happened to him in the dream.

There were other times when I would be left in the dark, but I would sense that something was wrong. I would become afraid that I was losing him, and I'd cling to him and try to hold him to me, not out of love, but out of fear. Well.... love was there, but it would be overshadowed by fear.

The relationship that John and I shared was full of many deep-seated issues. I knew that they were there from the very beginning, when I had first met him online.

I knew that he had a very rough past. Mental health problems, lots of medication and professional intervention, violence, suicidal thoughts and attempts. I knew all of that. But despite the problems, I saw good in him.

I wanted to be a light in his life and help take away his shadows. It breaks my heart to see his suffering. I loved him so much. I still do. I wish I could be more to him, but at this point, he won't let me be.