Being willing to change and grow

There was a conversation we had as it was all ending last summer where he was focused on my flaws (and perceived flaws) and he briefly brought up trying couple's counseling before he called it quits.  I don't remember the exact words I used but I told him that it was time to focus on his end of the dynamic and that I wasn't willing to have conversations about what was wrong with me until he started doing that.  I didn't want to waste time in couple's counseling only to focus on me.  He was flabbergasted and interpreted that to mean that I was unwilling to change and so he quickly shut down the idea of any counseling.

He didn't actually hear my response to that because he wasn't willing to listen.  I had spent more than a decade adjusting how I showed up in our dynamics, trying to find ways to improve our communication.  I had listened to every hint of a complaint he had made and tried to make adjustments.  I thought I had made a difference and maybe I did since we lasted so long but I realized in that moment this past summer, that it didn't matter how much I did if he wasn't willing to work on his half.  

It wasn't that I was unwilling to grow.  I will always look for ways to grow, mature, and improve.  For me, it is a never-ending journey in life.  It was that I was done trying to carry our entire relationship on my own, something that I'm not even sure I was aware I was doing until that moment.  I deserved reciprocal effort.  And honestly, our communication problems really stemmed from his unhealed trauma.  Fixing my response to that hadn't and couldn't heal his trauma.  That was work he had to do himself and until he did, he would continue to depend on unhealthy coping mechanisms that did more to sabotage our relationship than they did to nurture it.  

Because of how much he kept to himself, it wasn't until this past summer that I realized how big of a gap had grown between our emotional maturity levels.  I had spent the last two decades growing into a mature woman and he had done a really good job masking his lack of growth during that same time period.  

From the outside to those who know him superficially and even to those who think they know him better, he really looks like a put together, mature, responsible adult.  I think he had developed a protective persona that allowed him to present himself to the world in a way that he was confident would be socially acceptable.  I suppose self-reflecting and maturing would have required him to leave that protective persona behind and maybe that terrified him.

Maybe I should feel angry he chose to run instead of growing (and sometimes I do feel moments of anger) but mostly I'm just really sad.  He must really be struggling to discard a woman who loved him so much she would have stood by him and held his hand as he did that healing.  He must be really miserable to make that choice and making that choice instead of healing will likely just lead to more misery.  That's a horribly sad way to live.