Thank you for sharing your experiences and insights @atmosblack. Whether difficult or not, relationships in and of themselves tend to be small miracles, and always filled with teaching!

Ego-based relationships are so often toxic; the Ego makes demands and has expectations and "love" is reduced to little more than a transaction: "As long as you are doing things that make me feel happy I love you, but when you make me fell UNhappy, I reject you." But such transactional love is never real... and yet it seems to be the reality most people labor through.

Well done for finding your way out of that paradigm!

Bright Blessings!