Dear Anna,

His issues in April were about some stuffs with one of his associations, it dealt directly with some people I knew as well. Hence why he reached me out, we even once spent 5 (!!) hours talking about it. A few days after this convo, I was made aware he didn’t feel good, so I sent him a message to cheer him up, to which he told me a few weeks later that he didn’t answer because he felt that nothing good would come from answering it (???).

[this is what you wrote on June 30, 2022] The two first weeks after the breakup he was always around me and if during our first 5h of conversation I didn’t insist of the two of us taking our distance for my own sake, he would have kept being around me.

Okay, so the 5-hour long conversation that you had after the breakup (on April 8) was actually initiated by him to talk about a student association that he belonged to. But then it turned into this marathon convo where you talked about your relationship too, his reasons for breakup etc, right?

You wrote about it before – you mentioned that that’s when you confronted him about that girl for the first time, because you’ve heard rumors that he cheated on you. He assured you that nothing happened, but that there is chemistry between them and that he kept his distance out of respect for you.

During that same conversation, you talked about your relationship and the reasons for breakup:

 He finally admitted some important things: 1) he was scared that he lost me for nothing because he was simply overthinking and that he actually had feelings for me 2) it was more about him thinking he couldn’t reciprocate my energy 3) he wanted to stay friends with me, but I told him that it wouldn’t be possible, not when so much feelings were involved… At the end, we both ended up crying a lot.

As it turns out from you latest post, he shut down after that conversation and stopped communicating with you:

A few days after this convo, I was made aware he didn’t feel good, so I sent him a message to cheer him up, to which he told me a few weeks later that he didn’t answer because he felt that nothing good would come from answering it (???).

This tells me that he didn’t feel good about the conversation – most probably about the part where you talked about your relationship and the reasons for breakup – and he chose not to answer. As much as you might have given him useful advice about his student association problem, I believe that the other part he found unhelpful and didn’t want to engage in it.

I will try to explain why I believe that. Please bear with me… What you concluded from this 5hr long conversation was that 1) he didn’t want to lose you and that he still has feelings for you, and 2) that the main reason for breakup was that he couldn’t match you energy. Originally, on April 3, he told you that the reason for breakup is that he doesn’t feel romantic attraction to you. But you didn’t accept it, you questioned it, you also questioned it here on the forum, explaining why it cannot possibly be that he didn’t feel romantic attraction.

So when you spoke again, on April 8, I can imagine (I am not claiming anything, but just see it as a possibility) that you pressured him again to explain why exactly he broke up with you because it cannot be the lack of romantic attraction. You also said here on your thread that he is a slower thinker than you and has some autistic tendencies. You also believed that both he and you are broken, dysfunctional, but that he specifically feels inadequate and not good enough for you (the latter is what you wrote him in your last message, before you blocked him).

So if you approached him (I am not saying you did, just speculating) – if you approached him with an attitude that you know better than him why he left you, and that he is confused and overthinking, and that most likely the reason why he wanted to break up with you is that he feels inferior to you – then this might have felt quite unpleasant for him. He might have felt pressured to accept an explanation which suits you, but which wasn’t really true for him. He might have even started to question himself and got confused about what he actually wanted to break up with you and whether this is the right thing to do.

So if this is what happened in that conversation, and if your tendency was to override his feelings with your own explanations – I can imagine it made him feel very bad about himself. So bad that he would shut down and stay in his room. And when you asked him what’s up a few days later, wanting to help, he didn’t answer because your help wasn’t really helpful to him, it was stressful.

Now, I can imagine that he truly wanted to stay friends with you because he cherished your many qualities and even admired you in many ways. He might have even agreed with you in much of your qualifications of him, such as his feeling of inferiority and inadequacy. He might have even sought your advice on how to develop more self-confidence or advice on any other topic (again, this is just my speculation!). If that’s the case, that would explain why he actually sought your company and why he was glad when you accepted to be friends again in May – in spite of the fallout that you had in April.

But as you two were getting closer again, you started getting anxious, wanting more than friendship, and wanting him to clarify his position (I couldn’t keep doing this masquerade with him. I decided that I wanted to talk to him about the situation. He avoided me.). You probably requested to talk about your relationship again, somewhere in mid May, but he didn’t want to. He started avoiding you again:

Those talks happened in May and it was actually when I tried to talk to him about the whole situation. The first time I asked him if we could discuss, it was very cordial, all I really wanted was to clear out the situation. He avoided me.

And during the next days until I met him the week after, he wasn’t feeling good at all, my friend who lives in the same corridor as him saw him multiple times and he told her he wasn’t ok. I mean, I know he had other reasons to feel bad. But from that moment, he went from someone who seemed to be happy around me, to someone who kind of feared me, I don’t know.

What I am thinking is that he didn’t want another round of discussions. He felt bad after the first one. But the difference is that he now showed you that he is unhappy with those kind of conversations – whereas before he would just disappear and go no contact without saying anything.

On May 26 you wanted to talk to him about the same topic again, and he was avoiding you. When you stormed between him and that girl, it really angered him and I think that’s when he decided that he doesn’t want to tolerate it any longer. He told you he doesn’t want to hurt you but that he owes you nothing and that he doesn’t want to talk about the past any more. I see it as him finally gathering the courage to tell you to stop analyzing him and trying to explain why he was wrong when he broke up with you. To stop claiming that something is wrong with him for rejecting you.

Anyway, this is my interpretation of what might have happened. I know it might be a lot to take in and not what you would have liked to hear… And also, there is a lot of speculation in what I’ve said because obviously I don’t know the whole story. But it seems plausible to me, based on everything you’ve shared so far. If you feel there is some truth in it and would like to explore it further, I’ll be glad to continue our conversation…

Ooops, the formatting got all scrambled. I am repeating the entire post:

Dear Anna,

now that you’ve provided new information about him spending quite a bit of time during April and May in his room, and you hardly seeing him (or not seeing him at all) during that time, I am re-arranging the “story” that I’ve created in my mind, through which I am trying to understand what happened. So this is the info that you’ve provided so far about the months of April and May:

The two first weeks after the breakup he was always around me and if during our first 5h of conversation I didn’t insist of the two of us taking our distance for my own sake, he would have kept being around me. I was the one who insisted to keep our distances in a first place, he didn’t take it well at all.

During the rest of April and May, we kept bumping into each other because we belong to the same student associations

I know he shut down many times in April and May (didn’t get out of his room for two weeks until end of April, two weeks and half in May he did the same pretty much)

So, in the first 2 weeks after the breakup, from April 3 to April 17, you were bumping into each other often and he sought your company. You insisted on keeping distance to make things easier for yourself, but he didn’t take it well. Then, about 2 weeks later, about the time he started seeing the other girl, you stopped seeing him around because he was spending most of the time in his room. I don’t know if you communicated via messages during that time?

Then, he popped up again in early May and you started bumping into him again. On May 10, you bumped into each other and you told him “yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other“, to which he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”. The friendship was reinstated and it was like in the good old times:

From this moment, we started to talk again, be around each other, bursting out of laugh as we used to do. During an event, he even said to one of his friends that he was going to stay with me and one of my friends instead of going with his own friend to join other people. At another event, we stayed talking for somehow 1h just the two of us and when a girl came, he ignored her. Finally, during a ball, I was ignoring him but when he saw that I wasn’t going to talk to him, he literally grabbed my arm to start a conversation with me.

This is just my interpretation, but during that time, you probably started hoping that he still has feelings for you, while for him, it probably meant going back to being just friends, which is the arrangement that he liked best.

Then, after the ball, which was sometime in mid May (after May 10), he disappeared again and spent 2 weeks or so in his room again. Next you saw him was May 26, at a pub event, when the incident with the other girl happened:

On the 26th of May, we had a pub event, I wanted to talk to him but since the moment I asked him if we could talk, he was being distant. … Later in the evening I think my world crumbled. I saw him going outside of the pub to meet with a girl, not a random girl, but the girl he told me nothing happened. They didn’t stay long together, she didn’t get in and at the end he.. PAT PATED her to say goodbye. But it was already too much for me, I stormed between the two of them, he got mad, I got mad and then I left.

I must say that when looking at the events now, I realize that I’ve made a wrong conclusion in my last but one post. He actually wasn’t pursuing you during the entire April and May, as I thought before, but only in the first 2 weeks after the breakup, before he started dating the other girl. Then he disappeared – maybe to be with her? (just a thought). When he reappeared in early May, he was friendly, but he started communicating with you only after you gave him the green light. You told him (on May 10): “yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other”, to which he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”.

He might have thought that you don’t have a problem being friends with him anymore, that you “cooled off”, and so he went back to his usual style – being friendly, talking and laughing together (I don’t know if physical touch was present too?).  You probably interpreted it as “he still cares about me”, while for him it was just friendship. When he grabbed your arm at the ball, he might have wanted to talk about some practical issue, since you said he used to ask for your advice?

Then later in May, after the ball, he disappeared again for 2 weeks or so. During that time, was he in touch with you via messages? Was that when you sent him a supportive message, to which he hasn’t responded? (How can you feel that it would not bring any good to answer a simple supportive message yet thinking that staying around each other in real life was less dangerous?)

And then May 26 happened. First you wanted to talk to him about something (perhaps about his real feelings, i.e. the game you felt he was playing with you?), but he avoided you. And then you saw him talking to the girl you knew he fancied, and you stormed between them. That’s when he got angry with you and isolated himself for 2 hours. Later that evening he was just staring at you. Here I can see how he could have been angry and offended at what you did, and that’s why he didn’t even utter a word.

The next day the two of you had a conversation. He told you he doesn’t want to hurt you, but that he owes you nothing and that he doesn’t want to talk about the past any more. A week later, at another party, you confronted him about the girl, and it turned out they have been dating since April 17/18 and that he has feelings for her (although he didn’t know how serious it all is). He also said he doesn’t have feelings for you anymore. The next day you sent him a message, which you shared here, and then you blocked him.

Now viewing it through this new prism, I must say I’ve changed my opinion once again. If this is how things happened, I don’t see that he was pursuing you and leading you on with his behavior, because a) he wasn’t in touch with you when he started dating her, b) when he reappeared, he was friendly and sought out your company, but only after you agreed that there is no point in avoiding each other. In May he disappeared again and wasn’t around much, so again you weren’t really in touch. Unless he was trying to contact you via messages?

So all in all, I don’t think he behaved selfishly, except in the beginning, before he started dating her, when he told you that he didn’t want to lose you and that he still has feelings for you. And that you may even end up together in the future. Maybe he said those things to make you feel better, but in fact, it gave you false hope, to which you held onto ever since.

He in the meanwhile has moved on, started dating someone else, and distanced himself from you somewhat. But you haven’t really noticed it, you kept seeing his friendliness as a sign that he still wants to be with you. When you wanted to clarify it, he refused to talk about it and avoided you. So yes, this is another problem – that he didn’t clearly told you “no, I don’t have feelings any more, sorry”. He was probably a coward to admit it, and only did it when you confronted him about the other girl. So in a way, by refusing to “push you away”, i.e. say clearly that he isn’t interested, he left you hoping all this time. And it caused you pain.

I am sorry, Anna, that it ended like this, I truly am. I hope you can move on from this, and in the process heal from the false belief that you aren’t worthy of love. Because you are worthy, Anna, and you deserve a guy who will say a clear “YES, I want to be with you!”, without second thoughts and lame excuses…

Dear Anna,

I am still thinking about what happened with you and him and that other girl, and one thing is puzzling me: if he dated her since April 17/18, how come she was never with him at various social events that both you and him took part in? For example, you mentioned a ball sometime in the second half of May, where you were ignoring him but then he grabbed your arm to get your attention. How come she wasn’t at that ball? I mean, considering that she was his classmate, I’d assume they’d spend a lot of time together, hang out at the same places, go to the same events…

Dear Anna,

you wanted and at the same time didn’t want to cut the ties, obviously, because it’s hard to stay friends with someone you have feelings for. He, as it seems, was seeking you out because he needed some help (He was seeking for my advices about some stuffs and we spent many hours talking.) However, this doesn’t mean that he wanted to pursue you romantically.

Maybe he thought you could be just friends again, you helping him out and giving advice about his student life, e.g. about his poor financial situation that he found himself in after dropping out and not receiving his scholarship any more? Could it be that he wanted your help and advice in such matters, but not any more being involved romantically?

I also understand that you are hearing some hear-say from his best friend: “it also what his best-friend told me very recently: (on Monday actually) him still holding strong regrets for me, not being sure about the situation with me and that girl.” I understand this is hard for you because it could easily take you back into that “what if he still cares?” mindset, and you start hoping, and looking for signs and pursuing him… Even if this were true, it would only be a proof of his troubled mind, because he is certainly not showing any interest in you when you meet him in person. So even if there is a morsel of regret in his mind, there is a huge amount of rejection too. So it’s good that you are not falling for this kind of hear-say (“I don’t want to care anymore”) because it would only hurt you more. The only proper thing, which will help you, is to let him go. Which I know is easier said than done, but still…

Anna, I wish you a nice stay in London, and hope to hear more from you when you return home!

Dear Anna,

Congratulations on your graduation! I hope you are having a wonderful time at the cruise with your friends!

You were (and are) trying to understand your boyfriend’s motives for leaving you and also for his current behavior. I agree with anita’s assessment of him (post No 402380): that he had romantic feelings for you and liked you a lot, but when he found out about your background, he started feeling inadequate, because that is his core wound and a core belief (“I am not good enough”). And then he rejected you before you (in his imagination) would reject him.

He did that even though you never gave him any reason to feel bad about himself or his financial/social status. That’s the power of false beliefs – they distort our view of reality and make us reject things (and people) that are good for us. They make us work against our best interests.

Unfortunately there is nothing you can say or do to convince him that he is good enough for you, or good enough in general. He would need to heal that wound first. The best thing you can do at this point is to distance yourself from him and wish him well.

I know it’s hard for you not to be angry at him. But it might help if you saw things a bit differently: that he didn’t leave you because he hates you or he is evil, but because he is wounded. And his defense mechanism was to run away, and to even hook up with someone less “challenging” (in his view), to probably feel better about himself. It’s a quick fix for a much deeper problem that he has: a sense of inadequacy and lack of self-esteem.

Anyway, I know it’s hard not to be angry at him, but try to understand him. Try to understand that he cannot go against himself. And then let go of him. Because you cannot save him from himself. Only he can “save” himself, if he chooses to. But it’s not your responsibility. It’s his.

As for him not being polite, not even greeting you but just staring at you, maybe he cannot or doesn’t want to pretend that he is fine, when he is not. If I understood well, your communication stopped completely when you wrote him a long message spilling out everything you had (I assume your outrage and disbelief about his actions), and then blocking him on social media. He probably didn’t take that well, even if what you said was mostly true. I imagine there is a mix of feelings in him: anger at you, a sense of embarrassment at himself, perhaps even hatred and disappointment in himself, combined with resentment towards you, perhaps also a sense that life in unfair etc etc…

There could be a storm of conflicting emotions inside of him, perhaps he isn’t even aware of all of them, and this makes him kind of stuck, like a deer in the headlights – frozen and unable to respond. If this is true – if he is an emotional mess right now and doesn’t know what to think or feel, it would explain why he can’t even utter a word to you. Or he might be resenting you for the things you’ve said – things that in fact might be true, but he doesn’t want to admit them. And so he “punishes” you with his silence.

Whatever it is, his behavior is immature, driven by his emotional issues and wounds. I’d say don’t take it personally because his rejection of you is in fact his deeper rejection of himself. Try not to blame him and judge him, but at the same time, let him go. You cannot save him, he needs to do it for himself….

Dear Eric/Felix,

I’ve recently started getting a bit more active on the forums, and I’ve glanced at your thread as well, where you are successfully communicating with anita. It seems you are making some real good progress, you’ve joined a gym and are communicating more with members there. I am very happy to hear that! I am also glad that my advice over the last year helped you as well and that it made a difference. Thank you for your positive feedback!

Please keep communicating with anita, since she is giving you excellent guidance and some great tips for reducing your anxiety, and also for making better decisions. I loved her recent advice on whether to post a song to that girl or not. She told you to accept that the girl might not respond the way you’d want to, and also to promise yourself that you won’t bang your head or hit the wall no matter what her reaction (or lack thereof) might be. If those two conditions are met, anita told you to go ahead and post the song if that’s what you want. I thought that was a really cool advice! And it helped you come to a decision. So just keep working with anita, because you are getting great guidance and great results with her!

Dear Natie,

I’ve been mostly away from the forums in the past few months and haven’t followed them closely. But I’ve noticed that you’ve posted again recently and feel the need to say something… because I see that you’re having a hard time, torturing yourself with self-doubt, believing that you are a bad person for leaving your ex.

Your inner critic is working overtime, telling you things like:

im paranoid i am afraid im narcissist or a sociopath.

i feel like i have the bigger part of being the toxic person

sometimes i feel like im not normal or that im asking too much…

what if i never loved him enough , what if i broke him for life

what if after everything i have put him through that he is right that i am the devil or this kind of a horrible human…

sometimes I wander if this sour relationship was all my fault and if i lost a gem

maybe im the one who deserves the pain

it makes me wonder if im ever worthy of love again

You are taking all the blame for the failure of the relationship, making him into a saint, and yourself into a devil. But based on what you’ve shared earlier, he was no saint. Over time he got increasingly demanding and accused you of being selfish for not giving up on your career for his sake.

You yourself saw it and at times had some clarity about it. For example this is what you wrote in December 2021:

i made good progress in the last couple of months accepting that this relationship has ended and i realized exactly why i lost attraction to him after 3  years of dating; simply because i never felt understood or we never really connected ( as i mentioned in my earlier posts it was more of mother – son / teacher-student) relationship and so i got exhausted and lost any kind of attraction, thats not to say that i didnt mess up big time as well and hurt him at one point.

But then the inner critic took over and you spiraled into self-doubt and guilt again. Anita noticed it in your previous thread, and I agree, that you have a deep core belief that you are bad (“I am bad”). This core belief is feeding your shame, guilt and doubt. And I can almost guarantee you that this belief has formed in your childhood, even if you haven’t been aware of it.

You said you used to write apology letters to your mother if you got a bad mark – that’s how big your feeling of guilt was. You also felt guilty if your parents fought with each other, and you tried to do everything to prevent it – you tried to make your siblings behave themselves (you were “controlling”) so your parents wouldn’t get upset.

In short, it seems to me that you felt responsible for your entire family and also felt guilty (and a bad person) if you failed to keep your parents happy and conflict-free.

I believe that’s how your core negative belief of “I am bad” or “It’s all my fault” developed. And I think this belief was lurking in your subconscious until you cheated your then-boyfriend with a woman. That’s when the “genie” was released from the bottle and it hit you with full strength, telling you that you were a monster, a devil etc etc.

And it’s still active now, telling you those same things for leaving your boyfriend (that it’s all your fault, that you are toxic and he was a gem, that you deserve to be abused, that you aren’t worthy of love etc etc…).

It pains me to see you torture yourself like that, telling yourself these things, because I know they stem from a false belief and have no basis in reality. It was formed in the child’s mind, because we as children always blame ourselves for our parents treating us (or each other) less than lovingly. The way I see it, you’d need to heal and transform that childhood belief. This will free you from your relentless inner critic and allow you to feel better about yourself…

Dear Simon,

I have been following your thread, and there is one thing that I would like to comment on, that stands out to me. It is about lies and pretense, that you say have been at the center of your life:

My life has always been a tapestry of lies, people being part of my life but who were often spoken of with distaste among my peers.

I’m so low so so lonely and I’m out of ideas to keep the pretence going… I feel it’s all a pretence.

You said that your parents have always kept their lives secret from you:

I feel my parents have always kept their lives private from me and we only communicate on a superficial level

You say your parents were almost never at home at night, and that you slept 4 nights a week at your grandparents, 2 nights a week at your aunt’s, and only once per week (on Sunday) in your parents’ home. You also say your parents didn’t sleep together, and that they fought a lot. This would suggest that when they went out at night, they didn’t go out to party (or at least not together), but went out for some other reason? Perhaps to attend some business? Did they work at night?

You also mentioned there were people in your life “who were often spoken of with distaste among my peers.” Perhaps your parents were hanging out with bad company? And maybe that’s why they were keeping secrets from you, which made you feel that your life is a “tapestry of lies”? I am just throwing in ideas here, not claiming any of this is true. Just trying to piece together parts of your story, to understand it (and you) better.

You don’t have to answer any of this if you don’t feel comfortable. But if there is some truth in what I am saying, I think it would help you to put together a true story of your life (you can write it for yourself, on a piece of paper), so that you can finally take account of your life. Also, it would help you to see and understand yourself better, thus answering your own question: What’s my purpose? Who am I?

The reason I am saying all this is because it seems to me that when telling your story, you at first tried to dress it up a little, to make it seem nicer than it really is.

For example, at first you said that you have a wife and 5 children, which would suggest that all of your 5 children come from the same woman: “I have a wife 5 children a successful business and I own my own home”. But later you said: “I have 5 children with 3 mothers”. This paints a different picture…

It’s not that there is anything wrong with having 5 children with 3 different women. It’s just that you might have felt uncomfortable mentioning it at first, and so you omitted it, to give a different impression of yourself.

Or another example: you say you don’t really know if you are a good husband and father: “I find myself questioning myself always all day everyday… are you a good father, good husband, good son.” A few posts later, it turns out that your wife doesn’t really think you are too good of a husband (“My wife tells me I behave awfully”), and you yourself admit that you behave badly with her: “I swear at her and belittle her at work”. So it seems that you are aware that you aren’t that good of a husband, but still, at first, you were uncomfortable to admit that, and so you described yourself as a good husband, or as uncertain if you were a good husband.

I am not saying this to criticize you or anything like that, but merely to point out that you might have a tendency to keep certain things hidden, perhaps even from your own awareness, so not to feel the pain of it? Things might have been hidden from you in your childhood, you have been lied to (“My life has always been a tapestry of lies”). So maybe you are now hiding things from yourself (and others), trying to keep the pretenses? Trying to prevent things from crumbling down? (I’m out of ideas to keep the pretence going.)

If so, the answer is in becoming completely honest with yourself, perhaps admitting to yourself certain things that you feel afraid to admit. Whatever it is, know that you are not a bad person, but you are hurt. And your behavior (e.g. belittling your wife and swearing at her) is a defense mechanism, to protect yourself from pain. But of course, as in any unhealthy defense mechanism, it creates more pain, both for yourself and others.

it seems as though I am writing my life story which is good as my therapist and I often go off track.

I think it would help you to write a true, raw, not dressed-up story of your life, and show it to your therapist. And discuss it with him/her. Your therapist should have enough empathy and compassion to “hold” you and your story, without judgment. I think this would be a key step in your healing…