He's sitting there telling me this, and I'm sitting there watching him cringe and shudder and tell me that she took her pants off and I'm groaning at the absurdity of it. It's not out of character, and she probably doesn't remember because she has issues with alcohol, and she probably forgot who exactly he was. God we are like the most messed up family that appears total normal.

After bonding and cringing about the above, we talked calmly about my inner critic that I call The Destroyer, about how it had totally taken over the controls of my body. I showed him an article about emotional self reliance, and we agreed that we both were stuck on being right but that we were both wrong.

Relationships are SO HARD, you guys. Couple that with anxiety and my poor emotional upbringing and it's a wickedly dangerous brew.

Maybe you're rolling your eyes - here they go again, and she's going to be back here writing about Chris and another argument in six weeks. But it's so important to get that this is an emotional outlet.

I don't write about how we went for a 40km bike ride together yesterday and got caught in a thundershower and waited it out in under a tree laughing and enjoying the world together. About how we made pretzels last night, alternating every 4 minutes to knead the stiff dough, him taking photos of me suited up with rubber gloves and goggles to dip the pretzels in the lye bath. About how there are good times, and so many of them, and how our lives are linked so deeply and how he knows me better than anyone else in the world. About how loyal he is, and about how I didn't think for a second that he was out with a girl on Friday night, and how he's honest to a fault and so principled that the world hurts him with it's heartless acts. About how I take this all for granted, how I take him for granted.

My demons run deep. The Destroyer seeks to isolate me, to have me binge and to tell me that I'm worthless and to ultimately drive me out of existence. It is a dark heavy weight that casts me eyes to the pavement. That tells me that counselling is a waste of time because it knows that counselling is its enemy. The Destroyer fights so hard to control me and to plant seeds of doubt in my brain.

The other thing is that if I don't deal with The Destroyer now, then it will come back in my next relationship. That my next partner may not have the patience to work me through it. That my life will be a repeating pattern of me walking away when things become difficult.