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You make another heartfelt, meaningful apology. And in the next argument, they bring the same incidents up again, as if they've never been discussed before. If you didn't know for sure, you'd swear that this is the first time your loved one has brought this issue up, and that you must be crazy. And it happens again. And again. And another year or two passes by.

You've tried your own personal brand of intervention: OK, if this person can't see for themselves that their actions are terribly harmful, I'll "let them go with love" until they see what they're doing. I know that the possible loss of my relationship with them is something that will open their eyes, break through their denial, and make them come to their senses and stop the madness. But no. This has no effect except to give them more ammunition to defend their view that I'M the one who hurts THEM. And their comrades-in-arms, the people that support and feed your loved one's illness, eat this up. So you abandon this failed intervention. As painful as it was to attempt, it didn't work.

After years of this insanity and pain, you KNOW that they're out of touch with reality. But their defenses have developed into such a spectacular force that, if you're one of their chosen adversaries, there's no possible way for you to get through to them. But you love them deeply. You want to be with them. You want them in your life. You have given so much of your soul to this person. More time passes.

Then you get an idea. You've often fantasized that if you could get this person into an emotional courtroom of some sort, with a lawyer, maybe Moses, to break down all of their implausible arguments; and a judge, maybe God (who's about the only authority they might accept), who could keep things fair and logical, and be able to verify what actually happened 16 years ago - if you could put all this together, you could finally make your loved one "see." OK, you could never have all this, but you COULD have some relatively neutral party - not one of the other people who support, and suffer from the same affliction as your loved one - but SOMEONE who could sit in while the two of you try to talk things out. You feel confident that if this could happen, your loved one would not be able to flit from subject to subject and engage in constant logical fallacy; they'd be forced to listen to the truth, forced to be logical, forced to be confronted about their hurtful behavior, and finally "see." You know that all of their pretzel logic, fabrication, and confabulation would dissolve if your loved one had to do it in front of someone else - someone who isn't as emotionally attached as you are; someone who, unlike you've done for many years, won't humor your loved one's delusions out of deep abiding love and a desire to have even a few minutes of stress-free relations with them. Dream on.

They completely refuse this option, although they have what they feel are good and logical reasons. You guess that you're not really too surprised at their refusal. But what happens in the year that follows does surprise you. They turn up the heat, on a stove that you thought was already about to explode. They see you less and less, always having a good reason for not being able to. These kinds of people are very busy, you know. Eventually, they start making noises that YOU are not good for THEM. They've really upped the ante. Now they don't just start arguments, they do things to you that are so horrendously hurtful that they KNOW you'll react - probably overreact. Then they use your temporary overreactions as collective proof that you're bad for they're emotional well-being. Eventually they tell you that they want YOU out of THEIR life. See, as you continue to chip away at their denial, which theoretically should put them closer to a reality check, they instead, redouble their hurtful behavior; they must deny the reality of what they've done and are doing, at ALL costs. Finally, they kick you hard in the stomach, one last time, and they kick you out of their lives.

Are you crazy?! You're crazy if you keep thinking this person will respond to reason and logic. You're crazy if you CONTINUE to leave yourself open to their constant barrage of intentional slights and insults, misplaced and fabricated anger, and all of THEIR emotional pain - to be directed at you. Yes, you're crazy. And yes, you didn't react to some of the attacks as you wish you would have. But this was all new to you. You've never seen this in a book, movie, or soap opera, let alone, in real life. Of course it took some experience in trying to figure out how to deal with and respond (or not respond) to these attacks. You never did really learn.

But you love this person - still. Head and heart seem impossible to reconcile. Though you know just what you would tell a good friend who was dealing with this, YOU can't reconcile it. It's a circle with no end. Your heart and soul tells you that you won't abandon this person and that you can't stop trying to reach them. But your mind tells you that if you continue to take the abuse, it will slowly kill you, emotionally. It's a circle with no end. And another year or two goes by.

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What do you do when someone you love starts taking every loving thing (as well as a myriad of neutral things) that you've ever done, and starts turning those things around to use as evidence that you don't love them? Oh, and the multitude of hurtful things that they've continuously done to you since they started this, several years ago - those are now things that you did to THEM. And, by the way, they're not going to let YOU mistreat THEM anymore.

What do you do? For the first couple of years you wonder if you're crazy each time one of these events occurs. And you feel terrible, more and more of the time. It starts to take you over. You constantly rerun these incidents in your mind, trying to figure out what you did wrong. You love this person with all of your heart, so you're always trying to smooth things out - but each time it's only a temporary fix. After another year or two, you notice that the calm times occur less often and are growing shorter. Your mind now constantly revolves around either the resentment and hurt that you have experienced, or trying to figure out how to help this person. You're lucky if you can distract yourself for an hour or so, here and there. Your mental life is miserable, even if your other relationships are fine. Except they're not really fine because this emotional stress spills over into every area of your life. There seems to be no answer. And you see this loved one's symptoms intensifying to the point where it seems that it has to end in a major crisis, or explosion, or something. Then it goes on for another year or two.

One day it dawns on you that your loved one doesn't seem to like emotional calm. Even when you feel things are relatively good for the moment, you start to notice that they LOOK for things to argue about. They pull things out of the air that seem insane to you. You bring this up to them - that they seem to look for things to get angry and hurt about. You see where this is going, don't you? Next thing you know, you're the one who always wants to start trouble. Why do you always do this to them? Now you know - you really are crazy.

Every corner of your soul is in agony. Occasionally, tears come, seemingly out of nowhere, sometimes flowing uncontrollably. What force on earth could have taken control of your loved one this way? What person or thing could have this kind of power; to effect this intensity of betrayal; to cause your loved one to act as if they hate you, when you've done nothing except to love them for all these years?

Forgiveness. Many of your books and confidants speak of the importance of forgiveness. You would love to forgive. You have forgiven many times. But there are two problems. Number one, whenever you have forgiven them, or opened yourself up, emotionally, to them; possibly by apologizing for whatever you may have done to them; or some other form of emotional self-disclosure - it has the opposite effect that you'd expect. With most people, this would open up communication and make things better. Your loved one may initially give the impression that this is how they feel. But strangely, the next few weeks or months have them treating you worse than ever, as if the taste of your emotional blood has them now wanting your flesh. You try to block it out, but you find yourself sometimes paralyzed from the debilitating pain.

Your second problem with forgiveness is this: How many times can you forgive, and how many new ways can you come up with to forgive your loved one when the abuses, and the slights, and the mistreatment continue. You'd forgive everything in a second, in a meaningful and lasting way, if the offenses would just stop, and you could have your relationship with them back. But this never happens. It seems that something's gotten a hold of their mind and won't let go. Anything that you try only deepens their denial, their false sense that THEY are the wronged party. And your pain intensifies to the point that it seems it could really kill you. Then another year or two passes.

Here's what you've tried. Of course, you've tried to talk to them. No matter how much you swear to yourself that you're going to stay calm, the conversation always turns into an argument, with both of you getting hot. It's impossible to stay on one topic because this person has a gold medal in Subject Flitting - you try to discuss one incident of how they hurt you recently and they immediately flit to 16 years ago when you did or didn't do this or that. While doing so, they completely rewrite history to reframe what happened 16 years ago - sometimes to the exact opposite of what you know, for a fact, to have really happened. Then you try to explain how their recollection is not accurate, or try to present proof, and they tell you that this is what you always say, and this is how you always get out of taking responsibility for the hurtful things YOU'VE done to THEM. Just like the time 5 years ago… Now the original point has been thoroughly forgotten. And another year goes by.

You are human. You've done or said a few things to this loved one over the years, which you regret. You're human. But you have given heartfelt, meaningful apologies and done your best to make amends. But in the next argument, after flitting from the real issue at hand, again, they bring it up, again.

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