How to not feel guilty for being honest

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When I'm dating I really try to avoid criticizing my partner at all for fear I'll upset them and when I do I feel awful and like I'm a b***h even if it's completely justified.

Last night my boyfriend and I were talking and he was bringing up the past again and we've discussed it so much but it's like nothing I've said has gotten through at all and he's still stuck on s**t that happened three years ago. He's got this narrative in his head about what happened and why it happened and no matter how many times I've given him my (our if you count the other two people involved) side of what happened and the reality of it (we didn't hate him, we don't hate him, there's no ill will, we still cared about him when we stopped being his friend) he's just stubbornly staying there.

So I said something, said essentially what I said here, said he castigated himself because it gave him temporary feelings of atonement and was easier than actually confronting things and moving on (something I know from personal experience of having done it), that dwelling on things like this when you aren't getting anything out of it is pointless and bad (again, personal experience), he seemed more concerned with the past than the present, and that it made me concerned that some part of him resented me.

He was clearly upset by what I said even though he agreed, and I ended up feeling like the world's biggest b***h and apologizing even though I meant everything I said. I don't want to apologize. I don't want to feel bad for saying something that, while harsh, needs to be said.

How the heck do I handle this stuff?

People have to move on sometimes.

Otherwise, people are stuck.

So if I understand right you and mutual friends of your boyfriend decided to stop being friends with him three years ago? I mean could be he is worried about being abandoned again if it has happened in the past? But I admit I am kind of confused about the situation he's having trouble getting over.

Also just repeatedly telling him he was in the wrong and your and your friends version was correct over his, probably wont help him get over it....You'd probably have to try and reassure him he wont have a repeat of that experience 3 years ago. Maybe you and these others did care when you ended friendship with him but I think it is reasonable to feel and think people don't care if they just decide they don't want to be your friend or having anything to do with you. I can see how he might have a hard time trusting that regaining the friendship is a lasting and real thing.

Also how did this incident end, did the other people you mention re-friend him, or are you the only one? And why/how did you and him get into a relationship if something severe enough occurred to make you and others abandon friendship with him 3 years ago?

Yeah. He was going through a rough time, but instead of trying to deal with it he was being a dick to us. We have him chance after chance after chance for the three years we were friends but eventually we had to leave. Time elapsed. We've all grown up. Throughout we always wondered how he was and hoped he was doing better. We were pleased to find out he was.

In late July I contacted him mom to see how he was doing. It ended in me talking to him on the phone and us reconnecting. Which turned into a relationship by late August.

Anyways, he's talked about what happened multiple times and I've tried explaining that we never hated him or wished ill on him but he won't move past what happened. He just beats himself for it constantly.

Last night he mentioned that he always felt snubbed that he wasn't part of some of the stuff us three girls did - we left him out of sending nudes, doing each other's makeup, and talking about sex. With the nudes it would have been weird cuz he was a guy and because he wouldn't have even sent any himself. He refused to let us put makeup on him. Sex clearly made him uncomfortable back then. So we didn't have in depth sex talk with him around. We were trying to like be mindful of him with keeping him out of it.

I apologized for hurting him by leaving back then but I maintain I absolutely needed to. There's no justification for treating your friends like that. He understands that and like i said I've explained that contrary to what he thought for 3 years we didn't hate him or were sick of dealing with his problems (we were sick of how he dealt with them in regards to us), we didn't want him to be unhappy. That we thought about him and talked about him a lot. Idk what else to do.

Every time he brings it up his own words contradict his claims that he doesn't resent me. I don't think it's healthy to date someone if you resent them even mildly.

I'm really the only one who has rebefriended him. One has hung out with him once with me, since we started dating. The other doesn't even hang out with us anymore cuz she's so busy. I started dating him because he'd changed a lot and I was attracted to the person he'd matured into.

That makes more sense, but yeah seems like he hasn't actually moved past it and is sort of sabotaging himself with it. If he's beating himself up over it and genuinely feels bad for how he was acting then, it could be he just doesn't know how to forgive himself...maybe he just needs to know everyone screws up so its not the end of the world he did and it's in the past. But if not that then it certainly does sound like he's still kind of resentful about it which certainly is not good as it can cause animosity in the relationship.

But yeah you can only tell him so many times that you never hated him or didn't care, but couldn't keep hanging out with him back than because he was being a jerk. But yeah it might be hard to continue the relationship if he's going to cling to it to the point of not even trusting that you have no remaining hard feelings about it. I mean if he keeps clinging to it he might unmature back into who he was 3 years ago.

But yeah that does sound difficult not really sure what the solution would be...but he does need to understand for the relationship to continue he has to let it go I'd imagine, since it would be no good for you to be in a relationship with a bitter angry person that holds things from the past against you.