Dear trekker_87:

I can only imagine how much communication gets distorted when texting. In the context of your thread I understood certain things not the way they were: I thought that wearing tight/revealing clothes was part of her idea of performing her music. But not so. And I thought she was concerned about a spouse not supporting her music career because of the clothing involved, but not so: her concern was about a spouse wanting her to have an income from a job related to her education. Am I understanding it correctly now?

And this is key, going back and forth, correcting misunderstandings.

You asked: “Do people really drop off without any sort of discussion?” Yes, even without the little communication she did give you, before she went silent. People don’t like to feel uncomfortable and I am guessing telling you more than she did, or having a discussion felt like an uncomfortable, distressing endeavor, for her. So she avoided it and avoids it.

And yes, texting is known to be a faulty mean of communication. It is a good way to communicate something like: “I will be late for dinner, be home at about seven” something like that, that is all. Not heart-to-heart talks.

anita

Dear trekker_87:

I will try to help you understand better by presenting facts and possibilities.

Reads to me that your behavior toward her was indeed very thoughtful, considerate, kind, honest and respectful. I do think you did your best and did very well.

Fact: you never got to know her that well, to know and understand the person she is. You communicated with her long distance for five months only, lot of it texting,  and met her a couple of times in person.

Observation: she seems to have a lively social life in Thailand, going places on weekends with friends. Maybe she overslept often because she went out at night, getting home late. On your end, you did not have a busy social life. You were focused on this relationship aiming at it as a lifetime relationship. On her end, she had a busy social life and was not focused on you the way you were focused on her.

She probably had doubts about the relationship with you way before she ended the relationship with you, she was weighing the pros and cons of it, not in the strong rational way you operate, but in her own way, finally deciding the cons overweight the pros.

She most likely did not talk with you about the breakup because she is uncomfortable with conflicts and confrontations. After all, you wrote: “her friend also shared with me that she is non confrontational person”.

You wrote that she “kept apologizing that in case if she had hurt me unwittingly asking for forgiveness, which was very confusing to me”- this is meaningful although I don’t know what it means, I can only guess.

She did not respond to your efforts to contact you because, reads to me, she doesn’t want a confrontation, feels uncomfortable about it.

I suppose she was not as honest with you as you were with her. This is all I can figure out at this point.

anita

Dear trekker_87:

You wrote: “she is a people pleaser and tried to please everyone… She tries to be sweet to everybody”-

if she cares so much about pleasing others, she also cares very much about not displeasing others. It makes sense then that she is not confrontational, not sharing any information that is displeasing to another. And so, she did not share with you any discontent she had regarding the relationship before the breakup and did not discuss the breakup with you before or after informing you of it.

She is not an honest person, not because she wants to deceive but because she doesn’t want to displease.

This is my understanding: you are a good, decent man and you lack experience in relationships with women, a bit naïve in your belief that everyone is as honest and as rational as you are. Often this is not the case and this is why you have to get to know people over time before getting invested in them.

You also take responsibility for what you are not responsible for, believing that if something goes wrong it is necessarily your fault. It is not your fault that she avoids confrontation and therefore is not hnest- she avoided confrontations way before she met you, nothing to do with you, not your fault.

It is a good thing that this relationship didn’t end in marriage because of her lack of honesty, lack of disclosure would continue to be a problem for you lifetime. You would continue to wonder if you did something wrong whenever she would appear unhappy or withdrawn, not telling you what is on her mind. (And you cannot read minds, so how would you know what is troubling her…)

Better you get to know a woman next, see if the next woman you consider confronts people, if she shares her thoughts and feelings, even if those are displeasing. This is what you can learn from this experience so to make better choices in the future in regards to a future relationship.

You wrote that you are confused about whether you are trying to absolve your guilt, whether you are trying to get a moral high. My response: you are not guilty, there is nothing to absolve.

You wrote that you lost a lot of weight, confidence and motivation following the break up. It makes me sad that you are so negatively affected, that you suffer. I wish this was not the case and I do hope you feel much better and soon and that you post again.

anita

Dear trekker_87:

You are welcome. You wrote in your recent post that you are trying “to understand what does it signify about the person”, you mean your ex girlfriend, correct? You asked: “Does it show a severe lack of empathy?” again, you are referring to her, I understand.

“Unable to remove my rose tinted glasses, remove her from the pedestal and look at this objectively”-

this is my understanding of her: eager to not displease, she has been dishonest with you for some time as she has been and is dishonest with others. This does not mean she intended to deceive you or that she intends to deceive others. It means that she is anxious about the possibility of conflicts with others and will do anything to avoid such. By anything, I mean, including avoiding you as she as done so far.

And her being dishonest with you does not mean that everything or most of what she told you was a lie. It means that she hid some truths from you, truths that you had the right to know. Truths that if you knew, would have helped you make better choices for yourself. She has hurt you by hiding these truths. And she hurt you by avoiding you all this time.

It is not my job, nor am I qualified to label her as a good or bad person. What I take on as my job here and elsewhere is to state reality as it presents itself.

Does she lack empathy, you asked. I don’t know about the extent of her empathy. What is clear though is that her fear of confrontation is greater than her empathy for the person she doesn’t want to confront. She cares more about not being uncomfortable herself than she cares about how you feel.

Let me know, if you will, if my understanding is helpful to you.

anita

Dear trekker_87:

You are welcome. I do hope you recover from this heartbreak, this betrayal of your trust. I hope you take your time to know the next woman in your life, the one to become your wife. You want a trustworthy woman as your wife and the mother of your children!

Remember that you are not responsible for another person’s feelings and choices.

anita