Dear Mia:

You asked for “advice on what you think about the relationship”. I will paraphrase your story as I understand it and include quotes in it:

At about 27 you met a 23 year old man online. The two of you live in different states, and you never met in person (?). For a year and a half you played computer games together and communicated on social media, maybe on the phone as well. In the beginning of this year, partly because of the pandemic, you spent a lot of online time together, and on the phone, and had sexual interactions over the phone.

For 3 months you were in an online/ phone relationship. During the three months you were clingy, wanting “to spend all my time with him”, and you were repeatedly upset about it being “the one initiating all the time.. asking him to do anything”, about him wanting “to do his own thing”, instead of spending time with you, about him treating you “as an option instead of a priority”, and you were upset over him repeatedly raging during video games even though you told him that it bothered you. At times you yelled at him and called him an ass***.

The day after the “first big fight”, he sent you flowers and everything was “back to being happy and normal”, but a week after the first big fight, there was a second, because you felt “neglected again”. This time he didn’t send you flowers, but avoided you instead, and that made you even more upset. You finally talked with him on the phone, and “he told me that (he) avoided me because he was scared of me with what happened in our last big fight where I yelled at him. And that I was walking all over him”.

A short time later, you got upset again and broke up with him. Two days later, you contacted him, telling him that you didn’t want to break up. He told you that the two of you should spend less time together, and you told him that you will try to be less clingy with him. You got back together, but a week and a half later, he raged playing a computer game, and you got upset about him “saying things that would hurt me and that I considered to be very uncaring”. You withdrew from him emotionally and the texting slowed down significantly.

Some time later, you told him that you “felt ugly when I was with him. I felt like an option, not a priority”, and the two of you broke up. Later, you told him that you want to try again, but he said “that he really can’t be in a relationship”. His last text to you was 3 weeks ago. Since then you texted him but he did not reply to your text. You regret “starting the fights.. swept up in regrets again”, you “feel shame”, you blame yourself some days, and you blame him other days(“but really in the end, I don’t think he really cared. Or fought in the relationship”).

My input:

1) Regarding his raging while playing computer games- I am assuming (and correct me if I am wrong) that it means that while playing games, he yelled, used profanity perhaps that was not directed at you, but at the characters in the game. I understand why that behavior bothered you, and it was fair that you asked him to stop raging. Seems like he tried but got too much into the games and raging was part of the fun, part of the release of stress involved in playing some computer games. If I was in your place, at that time, seeing that he was unable or it was too difficult for him to stop raging, I would have stopped playing computer games with him, at least those computer games that promote raging. It was not a good idea for you to continue playing those games with him.

2) Regarding your clingy, possessive behavior: yes, you wanted too much from him, you demanded what was not fair or realistic to demand from a friend or a boyfriend: to spend so much time with you, to not do his own thing, to place you as his No. 1 priority, above himself, to be too careful about what he says because too many things he says offend you, etc.

And, if you want someone to spend more time with you, you accomplish the opposite of what you want when you demand, complain, yell, and fight; you can see, that your aggressive behaviors caused him to spend less and less time with you, and then none.

* You can and should express your upset and concerns in a relationship assertively, instead of aggressively. Assertive communication is a skill that you can learn.

3) I think that your childhood experience played a big role in this relationship: it seems to me that as a child you were neglected, emotionally if not physically; that you felt far from being a first priority, or any priority, that you felt hurt and angry, and your painful, unfortunate emotional experience of childhood came alive in the context of your relationship with this man.

Let me know what you think of my reply if you want to.

anita

Dear Mia:

You are welcome. I hope you heal and learn from your experience with this man, and from earlier life experiences that led you to being so anxious and therefore clingy, demanding and angry in this online/ phone relationship.

I am glad to read that you are speaking to a therapist today, and I hope you will be seeing regularly, for a while, a competent therapist who will help you gain insight into the origin of your “pretty severe fear of abandonment”. I assume this severe fear of abandonment expressed itself so far in your life in many ways.

Maybe you avoided in-person relationships (?) for this very reason: being afraid of being too close. Maybe a long distance relationship felt safer.

I had lots of shame and regrets for many years. But because I have been deeply engaged for so long in healing and learning, the healing and learning have replaced the shame and regrets.

anita

Dear Mia:

You are welcome. About your concern that he hates you: if he thoroughly understood what motivated you when you mistreated, he would not hate you. One day, when you finally understand what motivated you all along, you will no longer hate yourself/ feel the shame you mentioned.

I think that you projected into your online boyfriend a role that didn’t belong to him, that of a parent- a parent who must prioritize his child, who must spend all this time with his child, etc. But he is your peer, even younger than you. He was not your parent, he was an equal.

You do need someone to understand you, and through that person’s understanding, you will  understand yourself more and more. But that someone cannot be a guy, it has to be a professional, a therapist. Regarding the guy- if you have a way to send him a detailed, private apology message, I can help you write it.

anita

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by .

Dear Mia:

I read your share that you apologized to him already and that he suggested that you reconnect perhaps in 6 months or longer, but forgot this part when I suggested sending him (another) apology message- so I take it back. The apology text you sent him was good enough.

I highly recommend, Mia, that you don’t contact him again, that’s the best you can do for him. Frankly, if you contact him again it will be an act of harassment, some kind of stalking.

The title of your thread is “Help  on moving on”- if you contact him you may make it difficult for him (and for you) to move on.

This relationship was all online, with no actual plans of a practical, physical partnership– something to talk about further, with a therapist: when will you be talking to a therapist and will it be the first time you talk to a therapist?

anita

Dear Mia:

Congratulations on your first hour of therapy. I hope a second appointment was made. I am glad that you will no longer contact the guy no matter how you feel- it’s the right thing to do.

When you were young and your father punished you for crying, and when your family was not one you turn to (“my family isn’t the ones I turn to for emotions”)- that’s equivalent to being emotionally abandoned, isn’t it?

anita

I agree with you. The most important part is that, the lines of communications between you and him have been mutual, open and accepted. You know your boundaries and you know how to deal with this maturely. Stalking/harassment is easily thrown out in verbal context these days and in forms of writing, which shouldn’t be taken lightly. So when Anita mentioned it, it’s very important that you thoroughly understand the acts/behaviors of it. Especially defamation of character, so take what she said lightly, according to your situation but be aware of the definitions of them, in case you made need to know the signs in the future.