Man, the title of this thread grabbed me hard! I feel like that's what my boyfriend thinks of me sometimes. He's a recovering addict (been clean for 3 years) which is awesome - I'm so proud of the progress he's made...he completely turned his life around which is not easy - many people die trying. The thing is, I stood by him through the worst parts of it (9 years) and we also had a child in the midst of it. A LOT of damage was done - broken trust, gaslighting, you name it! While I'm happy to say he isn't adding new damage, he isn't willing to participate in counseling to help me heal from the old damage so we can move forward. It's like he looks at me and says "What more do you need to heal? You already know I'm sorry for the damage I caused before and I changed so I'm not doing it anymore, so we should be fine now!" It just seems like there should be more to it than that because I don't feel healed and so I can't move forward - I feel like I'm holding us back. He's happy with the life he has rebuilt for himself (as he should be) and he doesn't want to dwell in the past. Truthfully, I don't want to dwell on the past either, but I feel like he's trying to skip a step and sweep everything under the rug. The problem is, there's no more space under my rug because of all of the things I previously swept under there for him before. I don't know how to heal on my own. I feel like it's important that he be a part of it so we can move forward together, otherwise it'll just feel like we're drifting apart rather than growing together. Does that make sense?