What to say...

My partner of 10 years left me a few days ago, but he told me he isn't "shutting the door on us." I'd like to know what I can say to make him feel good about coming back home. Of course it's a long complicated story, and I won't go into full detail, so I'm looking for general ideas to get me started.

I've always loved him so deeply, but I have failed through the years by taking out my negative emotions on him. I didn't realize I was doing it. I genuinely thought he was the one messing up all along. The last year or so have been quite devastating - we lost my maternal grandmother suddenly (who he was also close to), my paternal grandfather a few months later, then our dog about two months after that. THEN we started facing conflict with some of my family members and it has required us to leave our home of 9 years at the end of this summer (that's a fun story on its own). We started fighting frequently in late-January. We almost broke up then, because I was so mean to him during our fights (which often started over nothing ugh!). I was 100% on board with being better to him, and I started working on myself. I needed to anyway, with my life feeling like it was falling apart and how much more irritable I had become.

I should mention that I had a rough childhood, which included elements of abuse, neglect, abandonment, divorce, money issues, etc. At some point in the last few years, that trauma has bubbled back up... I never learned to heal from it. I recognized that a lot of my patterns are directly related to my childhood traumas/negative experiences, and I thought I could get rid of them on my own, by focusing on myself. Boy was a wrong.

After the January fight, things went well for a couple of weeks, but by mid-Feb we were fighting again about once a week (more than we ever had before). At the end of the last fight, I finally saw the truth in my actions. I recognized that I was antagonizing him, that I was gaslighting him, that I was so obsessed with being "right." I apologized the next morning, but he was understandably upset still and didn't want to talk about it yet. In the two days following, I reflected in a way I never had. By the third day, I was flooded with new layers of optimism for our relationship, and I decided it might be more productive to focus on US and HIS needs rather than myself. This wasn't meant to forget about myself as much as it was to buy us time, get me out of my head and just LOVE HIM. I went to the library and found books that I could read to help us - how to fix chronic fighting, how to navigate relationships after childhood trauma. Just in the random snippets I read, I found life-changing clarity. I was so relieved to have these guides. But when I got home after work that night, he told me he was leaving. I was too late.

He's in town, and we are loosely in contact but I'm not bothering him. I also could use some time and space, as much as I just want him immediately back. I have my first appointment with a therapist on Thursday, I've been reading these books, and I've been writing down every mistreatment I'm guilty of, as they come to mind. I'm not beating myself up, truly, but I do need to make sure every brick of my wall of denial is gone. I'm so focused, so hopeful. Every devastating thing that has happened recently had ZERO hope, except for this. I will hold onto it fiercely. 

This is way longer than I intended it to be... I can clarify things if you'd like. But I'll take ANY feedback. Being in a relationship for 10 years made me think we knew what we were doing, but clearly that's not the case.