The counselling has been an enlightening experience. It is making me realize how different we are in our personalities and how we both have been making mistakes in how we communicate.

We have a recurring type of argument that always ends the same way: badly. He repeatedly tells me what I'm doing wrong and that I have to change in order for our relationship to progress. Obviously this isn't a one-sided problem, and I put my foot down two weeks ago and told him that I refused to have the conversation anymore unless we had a referee present.

Well, I'm not sure what the outcome will be, but the counselor is spending way more time working with Daniel in our sessions. He is the aggressor, and whenever he acts in this way it causes my defenses to flare up, which is a primal reaction that she told me that I essentially have little control over. I mean, there are things that I can do to diffuse the situation, but it's validating to hear that the real problem is *him*. Not that there aren't things that I'm doing wrong too, but it's definitely not me that has to do all of the changing.

I am not open and caring around him because I fear being judged. Previous events have scarred me, and because of this previous pain I am guarded around him. It's not that I don't have the capacity to be caring - Alf was proof of that - it's that I struggle with being caring towards Daniel.

The easy thing is to run away from a relationship; however, we are 8 years deep in this thing, and we have so many shared experiences and I know that he truly loves me more than anything else in his life. We just need to change a little, for me to relax my guard, to let each other inside of one another and create a deeper connection.