Dear Neverdyed,

“I simply stayed silent when he said he didn’t even want a girlfriend in the beginning”

So if I am getting this right, your relationship started as a very casual one. In the beginning he didn’t even want a girlfriend but saw you as his “lover”, which to you sounded more like a mistress, i.e. for sexual encounters. You agreed to it and it didn’t bother you at first, because for one, you didn’t fall for him much back then, and also, you spent quite a lot of time together.

So it seems that in the beginning, neither of you saw it as a serious relationship. But then, what happened? You started falling for him and wanting more out of the relationship, and he started withdrawing? Was there ever a period where the two of you could share deeper thoughts and feelings with each other, or he (or you) resisted that?

“I discussed with him once and I said something like “only in a marriage can you ask for something”, and I’ve no interests in getting married.”

So it was you who said “only in a marriage can you ask for something”? Where do you think this attitude comes from?

“I’ve no interests in getting married.”

Can you explain why? What do you associate with marriage that makes you reluctant to get married?

Sorry for bombarding you with questions, but I think it’s worth digging a bit deeper to understand the dynamic in the background…

Dear Neverdyed,

I am glad you’re trying to get to the bottom of the problem, that’s the only way to resolve it.

“The last video chat ended after he said I’d made him responsible (I couldn’t hold my tears because I missed him even without addressing it).”

Could you explain this? In his view, what have you made him responsible for?

“Somehow I think only marriage empowers the couple to demand/request what he or she wants/expects, maybe it’s because it’s formal? As for my idea about marriage, I believe it’s related to my parents’ terrible divorce, but I’ve stopped claiming that it’s all their fault. I don’t mind having a partner for life, just “getting married” is totally unnecessary for me, the most important thing is being faithful/loyal. Now it seems weird to me for how infidelity scares me off as it has nothing to do with my parents’ divorce!”

So your parents had a difficult divorce, and it probably affects your idea of marriage. That’s why you don’t want to get married. You only want loyalty, however, here is one big problem: you said you can only request things (I guess this includes loyalty) if you’re married. So how do you request loyalty if you’re not married? Do you see your internal contradiction?

It’s totally understandable that infidelity scares you, in the sense that you don’t want to have an unfaithful partner. But you need to be able to demand that from him – even if you’re not married. That’s called a committed relationship.

So what would happen if you’d demand faithfulness from your partner? We already know that the man you’ve been involved with refused to be faithful. Not only that, but he suggested that you too should have more than one lovers (“he suggested me have more than 1 lover to avoid being stuck”). That’s when you started withdrawing and have been trying to forget about him, but it was very hard and it made you suffer a lot.

But also notice that him suggesting infidelity was the line you didn’t want to cross. You could tolerate his long silence, his not answering your messages for days on end and other stuff, but you couldn’t tolerate him being unfaithful. And that’s fine, that’s a healthy instinct. That’s a minimum in a healthy and loving relationship.

Do you think you could demand that from a future partner? Or there’s something standing in the way?

“Finally, I’d like to bring up a question since I’m quite afraid of being a third party without knowing it in the future… How to tell if a man’s single?”

Well, if he’s available to chat during the day (or if he’s busy working during the day, then in the evening), he’s available to meet during the weekends, he isn’t secretive about where he goes and how he spends his time, you‘re allowed to call him, you’re invited to meet his friends or his family… Also, he doesn’t promote open relationships, he doesn’t talk about having more than one partners, he isn’t avoiding you, he is eager to spend time with you…

Dear Neverdyed:

In this long post, I will take the time trying to get to know you by reading your original post of June 9, 2020, comment on it, then read my reply to you, your next post, etc., inserting quotes into the developing story. You started this thread more than 8 months ago. The topic: a situation in which you were stuck since May 2019, or before (“stuck in the situation for more than 1 year”).

The situation in which you were stuck was with a man (I will refer to him as M) who lived in a different country most of the time. The situation was “not a committed relationship”. You “hardly reached out” to him, and once in a while he reached out to you. After the first time you got together with him, whenever he reached out to you again, “the ashes inside (you) reignited”, but you kept a lot of your thoughts and feelings to yourself, until early June 2020, when you “finally spoke up for (yourself) last week”. You didn’t share with the readers of your original post what it is that you told M.

You did shared something about how he reacted to what you told him: “he judged me again and left it for me to decide, although he said something like less contact didn’t mean less care”-

– (1) he said “less contact didn’t mean less care”, therefore, I am guessing by speaking up you meant that at the least, you told him that you were unhappy that he didn’t contact you more often, (2) he judged you again, means that he judged you before. But what was the nature of his judgment is unknown, because you did not tell the reader what he judged you for, (3) he left it for you to decide- I am guessing means that he left it for you to decide whether to continue see him infrequently or not see him at all.

You then numbered 8 conflicts within you, not clearly stated. You listed “Conflict #6: My principles or his”, but you did not mention what your principles are, and what his principles are.

In conflict #7 and #8, you wrote that you “think it’s the right thing to cut him off”, but you are afraid that cutting him off/ no longer being in contact with him would mean that you “too self-centered”, and that because you wouldn’t want him to block or leave you on read, you don’t want to do the same to him.

In my first reply to you, June 9, last year, I wrote: “If I understand correctly, you want a formal, committed relationship with him, where you date only him and he dates only you, and you see him regularly. He on the other hand, wants to continue the current casual, not committed relationship with you where he can date other women as well, and see you once in a while. Your conflict is whether to break up with him or see him on his terms. Did I understand correctly?”

Your answer: “Yes, you understood correctly”, and you added that you rarely opened up and communicated with him, that you regretted opening up to him the week before because “the outcomes weren’t good”, and that you were considering to “be more guarded with (your) deep thoughts”.

Next, I asked you: “are you hoping for him to have a big change of mind and heart and discover within himself that he wants you after all as his one and only?”, you answered: “yes, I hope that he’d value my worth and suggest a try”.

Next, you shared: “It’s intimidating to be myself again and put myself before him”, and you asked me: “Would you agree that even though he said we were friends, I don’t have to be nice to him based on that?”- this question reminds me of your earlier concern that if you ended the situation with him, a situation on his terms, not yours- that would mean that you are self-centered. It seems to me that you do not feel that you have the right to make choices about your life in regard to whom to be friends with and even whom to have sex with- it is as if someone else needs to make these personal choices for you.

Next, I recommended to you that you “put yourself before him”, and you wrote: “One thing I’m afraid of is that I’d be selfish or totally cold when putting myself before him”, and that if you continue to accept the situation with him on his terms, you will “continue to shrink (your) true self”.

Next, in June 12, 2020, I brought up to you the topic of your childhood for the first time. I wrote to you: “If the cost of a relationship is the shrinking of your true self, better not be in that relationship. Unfortunately, this is a cost lots of children pay for their relationship with a parent, hiding their true self.. Later on, the now adult keeps looking for that hidden true self”.

In your reply, you talked about your childhood for the first time: “Talking about children, I seem to have abandonment issues, but I can’t recall if it stems from my childhood”. I asked you to share more about your childhood and you shared that (1) there was an “unpleasant atmosphere between (your) parents”, (2) that following a frightening process, your parents divorced, (3) that your mother has an “aggressive attitude during a fight” while your father’s attitude was “silent but passive aggressive way”, that you “can’t stand” her aggressive attitude and therefore, you “adopted (your) father’s silent but passive aggressive way”.

You explained that in the situation with M, you tried to not be like your father by opening up to M, and you tried to be like your mother by opening up to him calmly, not aggressively.

You added later: “I did feel rejected when growing up, mostly by my mother”. Next, in a long June 14 post to you, I suggested (now paraphrased) that as a child, you intensely disliked your mother’s selfish, aggressive ways and therefore, you decided to be the opposite of her:  selfless and passive. Your mother put herself first, loudly voicing her thoughts and feelings-> you put yourself behind others, silencing your thoughts and feelings.

I suggested to you to avoid both extremes: one extreme is putting yourself first at the expense of another person, and the other extreme is putting yourself last. The middle way would be putting yourself first while being considerate and respectful of the other person”.

Next, you shared that your “mother was always the one who forced others to talk during a fight”, and because you disliked her intrusive, aggressive behavior so much, you decided to not ask M any questions, “even those like ‘how’s your family?’, not wanting to intrude, not wanting to force him to answer, “if he wants to share, he’d do it voluntarily, if he doesn’t, I’d probably get a fake or reluctant answer”.

This suggests to me that as a child (and onward), when your mother tried to force you to talk, you gave her fake and reluctant answers, so to satisfy her aggressive intrusion and be left alone (“I just wished her to leave me alone”, you wrote later).

This also suggests to me, that having taken the opposite way to your mother’s, (1) you are not able to get to know another person in a relationship because you don’t ask questions, and (2) when you don’t ask the other person any questions, you give him/ her the impression that you don’t care about his/ her life, thoughts and feelings.

You shared about M: “He told me before that I should talk whenever I wanted to, but how do I know if others want to hear from me, instead of risking, I choose to stay silent… I know words can be mean, so I’d rather say nothing”-

– this suggests to me that when your mother aggressively forced you to talk, and said mean things to you, you hated that experience so much that you decided to never be like that to other people. Like children often do, you took an extreme opposite of your mother’s behavior=> silence.

You added that your mother criticized you for not sacrificing for the family like she allegedly did, and that “she’d threat on her life”, “My mother also picks up fights with me by saying whatever is on her mind, and pushes me to talk rather than being silent.. My mother expects us to listen to her lengthy stories, when we don’t she often lashes out”-

– you were/ are so offended by your mother’s behaviors that you decided to be the opposite of her: silent: “When I’m upset with someone, I just keep silence”, and regarding M: “I kept much to myself when interacting with him”.

On July 10 2020 you took a break from your thread and returned Feb 13 2021 (over seven months of silence). You shared this month regarding M: “I still replied but with coldness. And he complained… contacts are gone once again, and I’ve decided to not respond anymore if he returns”, that he told you from the beginning that “he didn’t even want a girlfriend”, but it didn’t bother you much at the time because you didn’t fall in love with him yet, and the two of you spent a lot of time together.

The relationship was secretive, “no family or friends were introduced in person”, he took you to his parents’ house and to his sister’s house when “no one was there”, and you did go out in public, “we went out and did things together”. When the two of you were together, “there were deep conversations and I could talk better, and he’s the one who showed more affections”. In the last video chat with him, you couldn’t hold your tears because you missed him, and he told you that you “made him responsible”. After that video chat, he suggested that you “have more than 1 lover to avoid being stuck”.

Regarding your mother, you shared: “Although I get along with my mother now (better than before), I just recalled her recent comment (‘your life has been too smooth’), and I’ve held the belief that she’s jealous of me… In addition to my freedom (without the need to take care of family..), now I think my mother’s also secretively jealous of my health”.

And now my comments today, June 28, 2021:

Back in June, you wrote regarding M: (1) “When I returned to my country in 2018, I didn’t expect him to stay in touch, but he did and rather frequently“, (2) “I talked a lot when I was with him… I did share things with him”, (3) “he once complained that he had to be careful talking to me”, (4) “I may be hot and cold to him“, (5) I know it can be tiring for him to deal with me from time to time“.

– these sentences make a dent in my previous interpretation of you being silent, as in Silent Neverdyed who does not express her thoughts and feelings. You “talked a lot” when you were with him, you were not silent. You were sometimes silent with him as part of being “cold to him”, as in giving him the silent treatment.

I think that you were passive-aggressive with M, that you sometimes attacked him, using his words against him, and this is why he “complained that he had to be careful talking to (you)”.

You asked me early on: “Would you agree that even though he said we were friends, I don’t have to be nice to him based on that?”- you were often not nice to him, but aggressive and/ or passive aggressive to him, and you didn’t want to feel obligated to be nice to him just because he said you were friends.

I have no idea who M is, but I believe that you did not present yourself honestly neither to him, nor to the readers of your thread. Some of what you shared is true, some is not. Maybe you learned to interact dishonestly with others when your mother lashed out at you, forcing you to speak, and you gave her “fake or reluctant answer(s)”, just so that she will leave you alone. It is an understandable strategy under the circumstances of your childhood. I don’t fault you for that.

But now, it is time to change this strategy: it is time to be honest and straightforward in your chosen intimate relationships, friendships and otherwise: (1) choose people who are honest and straightforward with you and (2) choose to be honest and straightforward with them.

anita