This may sound ludicrously simplistic, but today I came to the startling therapy-assisted realisation that from now on, I genuinely don't have to worry what one person thinks.
This shit could change my life.
It's the one good thing to come out of an awful situation, though ironically, it was a right I should have had anyway, that had long been overwhelmed. A sentence I've often used to explain the nature of our relationship was that I always felt a step away from disappointing this person as a natural starting point; so even if I did what they wanted, that moment had passed with the next potential let-down just around the corner. And I often couldn't predict what their expectations would be, which made it relentless.
You also couldn't discuss the problem without making things worse; at best we'd argue without progress, and if we were on the phone, they'd often hang up.
(But I don't want to make this about them when this realisation's about me.)
Now, after years of tension and a total loss-of-reality of late, I'm leaving the arena; the only way to resolve a situation when you've exhausted your resources is to sidestep the argument and let it be. I've lost so much time trying to explain basic concepts of fairness and honesty to a person whose high expectations of you are at total odds with what they dish out. I won't stoke the boiler anymore when we're both in different timezones and are out for different things; because, put simply, they're working from a different rulebook.