I was a dick to M after she ended things. I’m not proud of what I did but here let’s get it all out in the open.

1. I took a playlist I’d made for her and removed almost all of the songs and replaced them with 3 songs about breakups
2. I told her that I thought she’d deliberately manipulated, used, and then discarded me in what appeared to me to be a clear case of matte crime
3. I used a trigger for her (thumbs up) when messaging because I was hurt and, at the time, convinced that she’d planned to cause me emotional distress with the ridiculous arguments we’d had over the past week
4. I took money out of our joint account totaling around $585.

There that’s the list of intentionally shitty things I did after she kicked me out of our home. I’ve apologized. I tried to explain to her that I was having a post traumatic stress episode and that my actions were shameful, I own them, and hope she can heal from the damage I caused.

Side note: I don’t feel bad about #4 in absolute terms because I’d been paying half of the bills there for 3.5 months. I started in mid march and had paid through the end of June. I was kicked out on June 7th. The $585 I got from the account is about $100 shy of what I should have been refunded for June’s bills.

Accountability is huge for me. It’s actually pretty common for autistic people to get fixated on things that are wrong. It’s not about getting an apology it’s about acknowledging that something happened and taking ownership of it. It irks me to no end that she has refused to take accountability for all of her bullshit. A little bit ago people on the autism forum suggested that I script out the conversation that I wish I could have had with M so that I can get the closure she refuses to provide. The things is that I don’t need a conversation. She could have said the following and I’d have been good:

You came to me in good faith and tried to help me appreciate the challenges we’d face in communicating with each other and I dismissed your concerns thinking that I knew better than you about your own life experiences.

I had no frame of reference for the issues you were raising and I should have taken time to listen to your concerns instead of personalizing them as a lack of trust in me as your partner.

It was unfair for me to demand that you trust me and then to turn around and not extend to you that same trust when I thought you had changed your views about what I do with my body. You told me in the beginning of our relationship that you didn’t care what I did with anyone else as long as things were good between the two of us and we could communicate openly about our feelings. I broke that trust by 1) not communicating with you and 2) by jumping to conclusions and not listening to you when you tried to clarify. I should have raised my concerns so that we could discuss them instead of shutting you out. I thought I was protecting myself from more controlling and possessive behavior because I didn’t know how to interpret your attempts to share your thoughts with me. I took your questions about disrespect at the Art Bar as a personal attack despite you clearly saying that you were “…not trying to criticize or modify [my] behavior…” because I have issues that I have not worked through from my prior relationship and it was not fair to saddle you with the weight of the work I haven’t done on/for myself.

I understand that it was cruel and insensitive for me to have heard you repeatedly discuss the abuse you wen through as a child and still make sexual comments and references to you doing things as an adult that were mirrors of the abuse you suffered in childhood.

It was selfish of me to expect you to be ok with me changing our arrangement in the house without discussing it. We had agreed that if the relationship failed, we would work out the living arrangements but I was so scared from my unaddressed trauma that I treated you unfairly and kicked you out of the place that I told you was your home only 7 days after telling you that you were safe with me. That’s fucked up and I own that. It was also self-centered for me to say to you “this is your space” and then to take that space away from you to allocate it to the people I’m dating when you and I agreed to be 50/50 partners and you’re paying half of the bills. I should have listened better and heard you when you told me the issue was the unexpected change. I was so self-absorbed that I thought you were trying to control me instead of gain comfort when I say one thing and do another or tell you something is yours and then take it away and give it to someone else.

I’m sorry that I lied to you about our conversation. I told you that I never asked you to not be home when in fact that’s exactly what I did and when you pointed it out I was shitty to you because I felt emotionally naked. It wasn’t fair.

You have every right to express your feelings and thoughts. It was unfair of me to take what you’d written in an attempt to give me insight into your thought process and treat it as if you were attacking me. I asked you to trust me and when you did I betrayed that trust by shutting you out and not giving you a chance to be heard. You told me about your abusers and how they used to do that same thing to you. I should have been able to get over my own bullshit long enough to realize that I’d treated you exactly the same way they treated you even if I didn’t intend to.

I’m sorry for fucking up what we had by not listening to you. I’m sorry for telling you that this was our home, taking away the parts that I said were yours, and then kicking you out without being willing to have a conversation.

I am sorry for putting you into a situation that was impossible for you to navigate successfully. I have work to do on myself and you should not have been caught up in my inability to face my own demons.

Feels good getting that out of my head. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with the reality that I can now never hear those words come from M. I mean, sure she could say them or some approximation of them but I’ll never be able to trust that she actually means what she says because I should have gotten that about a month ago. Hearing it now is dilute but especially after I hit the “publish” button. I can’t *trust* that anything she says is real.