Thank you so much Anita! I feel your love and support through your words!

This forum was definitely one of the healing factors in my journey and I thank you so much for this. I will be sure to come back in the future! 🙂

Hello Anita

About what you said – I agree about how the person with the exposed nerves needs to learn self control. I find it very difficult sometimes to hold back or stay quiet another moment, or keep down my reaction. I will try to work on it.

About what he needs – I meant more of what he wants out of a life partner, which is someone who can go out more without a fuss, and maybe someone who he can express himself to, like you said…

What I need – I’m not entirely sure. I’m trying to focus on what I need RIGHT NOW, which is just compassion and a hug…

The conversation wasn’t great. I ended up feeling hurt and disappointed, but I accept this as my initial reaction, and I already feel it fade out to my real emotions, which are more accepting and empathetic to him.

Basically, he’s not ready to really look at the relationship the way I have. He simply doesn’t do it. He doesn’t look back. It’s too painful for him, and he’s scared to fall into a pit of darkness and never come out. He also absolutely cannot allow himself any bit of “maybe” or to dwell on the relationship, or to question the decision to breakup etc… I was hurt, because he said numerous times how we just need to move on, carry on, look forward– but it’s only been two weeks. And this was a very meaningful relationship for both of us. I feel like “moving on” so quickly, and to not look at our relationship and examine it, cheapens it or makes it feel like not a big deal. I was also hurt because I came to the conversation willing to be vulnerable, and wanting to share myself with him – my thoughts, my feelings, everything, the way I used to. But I am telling myself to accept the way he chooses to deal with it, which is by looking away from it and trying to get busy with other things. It makes me feel unimportant, but I understand that that’s all he can give me right now. I realize that I can’t expect him to give me what I want right now (closure, talk about the relationship). I hope that I can move past the hurt I feel right now, so that when he’s ready to talk, I can be there. But right now I understand that I can’t have these conversations with him, unless there’s something HE wants to say or tell me. The conversation was emotional and difficult, very different from the one we had a week ago.

I will say, that I got to share with him my realization about my anxiety, and how much it’s been ruling my life, clouding my judgement, and that I now realize he tried and he told me all of this, but I couldn’t listen. I told him I’m back in therapy and that I’m gonna start seeing a psychiatrist and really try to work on it. He cried as I was telling him this. He was very surprised by how much progress I’ve already made, and was happy and proud of me. He told me I was amazing.

He did say, about himself, that he realizes he has a tendency to run away from situations, and that he has commitment issues.

From things he said, I think he wants to “move on”, cut off contact for a while, so that we can be friends and still have each other in our lives. Right now, I feel like I can’t do it. I want him as my partner and I don’t know if I could handle being just his friend. It hurts me to think that it didn’t mean as much to him as it did to me. But the bottom line is, he’s just not looking at our relationship and what’s happened to it. He refuses to do it, or he cannot do it. It’s hard for me to accept, but I have to accept it…

Thank you again Anita. Your responses really help me reflect on things.

All the stuff you said is true. I learned to not rely on either of my parents from a young age. I learned to be independent from a young age, kept myself busy. I think over the years I created this core belief that I was a lone-wolf type of person, someone who enjoys solitude and doesn’t need anyone. What I learned through my relationship with my boyfriend is that I was sorely mistaken. I really want and need deep, intimate, close connections. It gives me meaning and enriches my life. I want to share my life with someone, and I want to have close friends. (I used to, in high school) I think I’m more social than I’ve taught myself to believe, or maybe it’s part of the false reality my anxiety created.

I wonder about these two things you wrote: “It is very, very difficult to replace powerful early-life experiences with later-life experiences.” and “if the two of you were to resume the relationship, you’d need to hear and prioritize him, and he’d need to become aware of his aggressive expressions (tone of voice, volume, other expressions) and get them under control.” Do you think it’s possible to change? I tend to believe that it is possible, and if people clash in their harmful patterns, then they can work on it and learn to better communicate with each other in a way that doesn’t trigger or touches the exposed nerves of the other person.

I agree with you about the origin of my mistrust in men. Seeing how devastated my mom was, I swore that I won’t ever let something like that happen to me. I developed a fear of men. What did you mean by “What if the reality of their marriage is … not exactly what you believe it is, I wonder?”?

I fear you’re right about the origin of my doubts. The question is, maybe it’s a good thing that he brought my unresolved stuff to my attention? Thanks to him, I’ve been made aware of so many things about myself that I need to solve and improve on. I ultimately want a relationship where we better each other, but I see now that I wasn’t ready to change. I am very stubborn, which is something I need to work on.

I hope in the future, after I’ve worked on myself, perhaps even manage to live a life with no anxiety, I could try again with him. For now, we still aren’t finished with the breakup… We are still there for each other in some sense, and still need to separate and move out of our apartment. This is all very heartbreaking for both of us… I want to believe that someday we’ll make it work, but maybe that’s just my heart fantasizing.

I have a long journey ahead of me, and I wish I could take him with me, but I see now that I’ve done him a lot of harm. We also were really good to each other, a lot of the time. There were only a handful of “bad” things between us. I hope we can both reflect on it all together, and grow from it.

Hello Anita, thank you very much for your response.

1. What you said about anger was very interesting to me. As a child, I was pretty quiet and introverted. Through therapy I’ve realized that I had a lot of anger as a kid (my parents divorced when I was 5, and since then they haven’t been able to answer my needs properly), but I didn’t properly expressed my anger, instead turning it inwards and internalizing it. That’s how I’ve grown to hate myself so much as a teenager, and would punish myself with self harm, starvation, and even from the age of 10 I remember I had suicidal thoughts. Since then, though, I’m glad to say that I no longer have those horrible thoughts about myself, and I’m no longer suicidal.

About my mistrust in men, it definitely comes from my relationship with my father and my parents’ divorce. My dad emotionally cheated on my mom (I only found out in the past few years). He was the whole world to my mom, so when he left home she was devastated. For a few years, I remember my mom just lying in bed and being generally unhappy. As a kid I was very creative and imaginative and was excellent at keeping myself busy with dolls, movies, and later on the internet. So I experienced very early on how men can ruin women. Furthermore, despite my father insisting on seeing me and my two older brothers, and he always loved us and wanted to be a part of our lives, he simply did not have the time. He had his own business (to this day), and he would leave early in the mornings and come back at 8PM or later. After the divorce, the days we were at his place, he wasn’t very emotionally available, and so I learned not to rely on him in this sense and not to expect much from him. Nowadays, I do have a good relationship with both of my parents. My mom is one of my best friends, and we talk about everything. My dad has grown to be more emotional over the years, and so I open up to him a little more. Both of them are married to other people, and live about 20 minutes drive from each other, so if I come back to my parents for the weekend, I would usually visit them both (separately).
As far as being jealous of his parents or his family – far from the truth. His family is very complicated. His parents also got divorced when he was around 5 years old, and he grew up mainly with his father and his new wife, along with her 3 children, which he considers to be siblings because they grew up together. They are 7 children total, 3 biological, 3 step siblings, and one half sibling. His father lives in the same town as my father, which is why we’ve known each other since we were 16. He has a complicated relationship with his mother, who’s been alone since the divorce (about 20 years). Right now she lives out of the country, and they communicate on the phone about once a week, but he finds her draining and difficult to talk to.

On that note, I know as kid he wasn’t heard at home, either. He was often forgotten about. When he was a teenager, he would often sleep and live at friends’ houses, leaving his own home after fighting with his dad and slamming doors. I also see that in our fights that we had, he always got up and left. He has a pattern of running away, and I have a pattern of expecting men to leave me, like my father did all the time.

2. The point about claustrophobia is interesting… But I didn’t come back to my parents when covid hit. I was still living alone which resulted in isolation, during covid… But I do agree that often times my parents’ house felt like a gilded cage.

3. You are right. Taking responsibility and accountability for my mental health, anxiety, and how it affects my partner is something I’m only now realizing I needed to do. I kept him out when it came to my anxiety, guarding it and protecting it, even though it only did me harm. I couldn’t listen to him when he expressed that he was worried, and wanted me to be free of it. More than that – he believed I can be free from it. And I didn’t believe it. Now I’m starting to believe, and I’m mad at myself for not being able to see it sooner. I was too caught up in protecting myself – my anxiety – and my own well being, that I didn’t leave enough room for his emotional state. I made him feel unheard and not prioritized.

4. I agree again. I think I would say it was arguments, only the last time being a fight. But regardless, our communication in those moments went out the window. I love the idea of negotiation, I think it’s the right way to go about it.

5. Yes. I feel like I never knew if my uncertainty in the relationship came from intuition, or because of all of my baggage, my mistrust in men, my mistrust in long-lasting relationships…

I agree about your last point. I thought I could work it out with him, in the relationship. I know he really helped heal a lot of my mistrust in men, and I learned to lean on him and trust him. At the same time, I do have a lot of unresolved fear, anger, trauma, which culminates to me having anxiety and over-protectiveness over myself, which often times results in me pushing away people who care about me. I feel like the anxiety taught me false-truths, and I believed it until it became my reality. I always thought my mental health issues and emotional instability were facts, something I would always have to deal with. Now I see there could be a reality where I don’t have to fight myself so much and struggle so much.

I do want to note, that he also has harmful patterns. Especially in the arguments that evolved into fights, often times he would raise his voice (which completely shuts me down), and because he’s very passionate he can come off aggressive, which I interpret as hostile, resulting in me getting over-protective. I think he, too, doesn’t know how to express anger in a healthy way. I’m not trying to deflect the guilt, but I’m wondering if we are compatible, and if these things can be worked on and we could, someday, make it work better… Or am I holding onto false hope?

Right now, we have some contact (the breakup happened two weeks ago), and we’ll also need to sort out the apartment that we share (I went back to my dad’s house, and he’s subletting a unit close to our apartment. He can’t be in our apartment, it’s too painful for him). We are both hurting, we love each other and care for each very much, we’re both confused… I think we should breakup now, because everything seems too big and I’m not sure we can unravel it all right now. I know for myself, that I need to start my journey of solving my anxiety, and working on my tendencies to shut people out, not listen, etc… But I miss him a lot. He’s been one of the closest people to my heart for a decade. We click on an amazing deep level. But I still have doubts, and I don’t know what’s causing them.