Dear Ben:

Oh, a different guy then. Are you familiar with the term limerence, and do you think that the topic of limerence vs love, which I brought up above, applies to you in regard to your romantic relationships, most recent and prior?

anita

Dear Ben:

I want to understand the story of your relationship with this guy better, so I will re-read your original post and retell your story with quotes and my personal thoughts about your story (it helps me process information when I do that): back in 2018, five years ago, in Brazil, in the duration of two days, this guy caught your eye. You were attracted to him. “He was deeply into history, old things, old music, and showed me all his old books with great enthusiasm…  I was shy around him“- he was expressive, extroverted perhaps, enthusiastic; you were introverted, shy. Extroversion/ emotional expressiveness can be very attractive to the introverted/ emotionally suppressive.

Away from Brazil, back in England, for 3 years “I had never stopped having a bit of a thing for him, always a flutter in the chest when he liked a post of mine“.

Back to Brazil in 2022, you met him a second time on a Thursday night, just the two of you by the beach: “I, in a way, fall for him again, with no breath, nervous and anxious in his presence“. The two of you took off all your clothes and walked into the water, “skinny dipping in the moonlight!” (this description is made for a movie). You met his boyfriend the next day, and the visit ended on Sunday.

You keep in touch with him long-distance, having “‘teas’ together, a nice little video call talking about things… He mentions the relationship with his boyfriend is plagued by arguments, fights and a lack of trust… I sympathize a little, my relationship with another guy, though not as committed, is also a little topsy-turvy“. He flirts with you long-distance, and you booked a trip to Brazil to see him, in-person- a 3rd time.

The 3rd visit takes place in May 2023: “We make out a bit on the first night and I feel great to finally kiss him and feel his body after so long. I could go home and be satisfied“- not expecting.. or wanting more, not only because he has a boyfriend (I am thinking) but perhaps because it is easier this way: to not be involved in a serious, ongoing, real-life relationship. Something lovely and of a short, trouble-free duration has its advantages.

“We spend a lot of time together… and talk about everything…  One night he says ‘I think I love you’… We continue… slowly getting more intimate and the worst of all, making plans together“- worst of all because plans will complicate and spoil this easy, simple love story?

“I say ‘well, maybe after all, we’re just like ships passing in the night’“- two ships that passed each other in the night, watching the physical distance grow and grow, are not going to collide and go under.

“One day I walk out of the apartment because he was on the phone with his boyfriend, and when I return he is crying, crestfallen, begging me to stay and not to leave him again. I don’t push him to leave his boyfriend and I don’t know why, perhaps as I don’t feel he owes me anything and I am just happy to be with him“- perhaps the why is fear of a real-life, ongoing, committed relationship.

“The trip comes to an end… I get a job I had applied for when I was out there and weirdly it seems like it all makes sense, that I will earn money, save money and support him so that he can leave his boyfriend. I amaze myself at my commitment to this, no one has stirred up such resolve within me before“- this is the climactic point of the story as I read it: your move toward making this relationship an ongoing, committed real-life relationship.

“We videocall everyday, the plans continue, are re-affirmed. He plans to visit and spend 2 months here in his holidays to meet my family… His boyfriend announces he will visit him. I naturally feel this is a bit too much to simply ‘let’ happen and that he needs to break up with him. He says he will do it while he’s visiting as that’s ‘kinder’.  I tell him if he wants to prove all his beautiful words right, he has an opportunity to prove them so now“- this is you, the shy guy, fighting for a real-life, ongoing, committed relationship with him. I am impressed and moved.

“I start to realise he won’t… I call him, he says he is confused and doesn’t know why he can’t break up with his boyfriend… He says loving me is easy“- easy for as long as it is.. not a difficult, real-life, ongoing, committed relationship.

“I tell him he can only love me or him. He calls back the next day and says he can’t do it, and shouldn’t have said all of that if he wasn’t prepared to finally break up“- you fought for a relationship with him. You lost, but not without trying.

“I don’t know how to feel. A love that never was? A love that struck at the wrong time? A mere fling? A romance? I don’t know if I was a real sucker there or it was simply wrong time wrong place. Gosh ! A part of me still wants some far off possibility that maybe one day he will be available and I can love him. Another part is truly, deeply sad and feels an enormous loss.“-

– first, I am sorry for your loss. I wish that this story was different: that he was not involved with another man, at least not after you and him got romantically and sexually involved, and I wished this would have turned into a real-life, ongoing, committed relationship between the two of you. I think that it was a beginning of a love story, but only a beginning, sort of, like a tease of a love story, a taste of it.

What do you think about my understanding here, as it developed? (please take your time to answer this question, if you choose to answer it, of course).

anita

Dear Ben:

“I don’t know how to read this all, I think. I hope it was, as you said Anita, a sort of ‘opening chapter’ snuffed out by reality, maybe even the start of a love story unfortunately not possible because of the circumstances…  Yet, when I tell some people about it, they say he just used me and it was all a fraud, which lingers in my mind and causes a lot of doubt and pain. I don’t see it like that at all. But I greatly fear I am very grossly mistaken in my interpretation of it all“-

-I re-read your original post and following posts, and from what you shared,  I too don’t see it like that at all, and it is not my interpretation of it all either.  I read nothing to indicate that he deceitfully used you and that any of it was a fraud on his part (or on yours).

“He mentions the relationship with his boyfriend is plagued by arguments, fights and a lack of trust… We spend a lot of time together…  and talk about everything. His family history, his physically abusive father who beat him everyday“-

– it takes only a few seconds to say something like “my father physically abused me and beat me everyday”, but this piece of information about his childhood, aka his Formative Years, is very significant: it is a very significant part of who he has become/who he was formed into. Has he stayed with his argumentative, combative boyfriend because his boyfriend is like his father, and he is trying to resolve that abuse by proxy of his boyfriend.. (in addition to financial considerations)? I don’t know.

You are very different from his argumentative, combative and forceful boyfriend. You were peaceful, shy (“I was shy around him“), accepting and Polite (“Later on he said… I was being ‘Polite’ and not forcing anything“)

“He is adamant that he will end it with his boyfriend and be mine…I call him, he says he is confused and doesn’t know why he can’t break up with his boyfriend, if it is guilt, pity. He says loving me is easy but he doesn’t know how he feels about his boyfriend. He says cries about at night in the shower, the only time he is alone without his boyfriend watching him“-

– What if he really meant that he will end the relationship with his boyfriend.. I tend to believe that he meant it truly. But then, he couldn’t because the boy in him is still trying to make his father- by proxy of his boyfriend- love him and stop beating him.

It is a common compulsion in adult-children who were abused as children by a parent, to resolve childhood abuse in adulthood by proxy of a romantic partner who is similar to the abusive parent. (I was abused by my mother and I felt a lot of guilt and pity, the words he used. She hit me and shamed me terribly, yet I felt pity for her and I felt that I deserved her treatment and that it is me who should change my behavior, so that she will finally love me).

“I tell him he can only love me or him. He calls back the next day and says he can’t do it, and shouldn’t have said all of that if he wasn’t prepared to finally break up“- he sounds like a conscientious person, feeling guilt and regret for promising what he wasn’t able to deliver.

“‘My relationship was deeper than I thought’ he says. ‘The end of a chapter but our book is still open, life is a pandoras box”. I don’t know what that means“- perhaps his relationship with his boyfriend is deeper than he thinks, that it is, like I suggested above, a re-enactment of his childhood experience aimed at resolving it. You, on the other hand, are too dissimilar to his father to provide such (futile) opportunity for him.

“In October 2022, he sends me a message, he’s moving to Argentina, without his boyfriend, to study medicine… He moves to Argentina in January 2023. We talk more and more frequently“- it makes sense that away from his boyfriend (and the compulsion to resolve his childhood trauma), he became more available to have a healthy romantic relationship, a relationship with you.

“He says when he graduates he wants to move to England etc… One night he says ‘I think I love you… He was learning English phrases by himself, watching things in English, trying to learn them. Even with the visit he was going to make here he said “do you think your parents will like me?” and was asking about what my family liked so he would get on well with them while he was here and I was at work. We named our children, created a joint surname‘”- reads sincere to me.

“Towards the end of the trip however, I remain besotted and he buys a ring for me (not for marriage, but as commitment, something they do in Brazil). The one his boyfriend bought him has been left in a jewelry box since I’ve gotten there. The picture of them together is put in the cupboard, replaced by the UK flag he asked me to buy“-

– here is a way to think about it: the ring that his boyfriend bought him (and the picture of them together) represent being imprisoned in his childhood trauma, while the ring he bought for you (and the UK flag) represent freedom from his childhood trauma and moving on to a healthy, love relationship.

“Right up until his boyfriend visited he was so warm and constantly wanting to talk, sending me things, either love messages or things related to our mutual interests. Even at the end of the first week of his boyfriends visit, he was still saying it’s all part of the effort he’s putting in for ‘us, our future, our children, our lives together’.“- it took one week of visiting with his boyfriend to be sucked back into the compulsion I mentioned above.

“He accepted he’d maybe been a bit careless with my feelings. For me that was a solid foundation of a relationship…I still am amazed at the commitment and dedication someone managed to stir up in me!“- your commitment and dedication was based on a true solid beginning of a love story, as I now see it, or guess that it was, a foundation that cracked a week into his boyfriend’s visit because of that common compulsion of abused adult-children to repeat and resolve  childhood trauma.

“Yeah, the reality of the situation, it seems, dawned on him too. He had to come to terms with the fact he was in a relationship, but also completely dependent on that relationship to pursue his dream course“- you are referring here to his dream of becoming a medical doctor. I am thinking about a different kind of dream, that which brings a smile to my face as I am typing right this moment: the dream to change an unloving parent into a loving parent.

“Their relationship is toxic but I suppose he keeps holding out hope that they will somehow resolve all their issues“- yes, and you  know what issues I am thinking about, which I repeatedly mentioned above.

“I really don’t see them having a future either… I’m not sensing a strong, stable relationship with a bright future“- I agree, based on all that you shared and my understanding of what you shared.

“In our final call, he’d said with me he’d never felt such ‘freedom’ to express himself and be himself… I think the worst bit is not knowing what it was for him. We can only guess of course as no one is a mind reader“- he’d never felt such freedom to.. temporarily be free of that compulsion, seems to me. And of course, I am not sure and I am not a mind reader. Yet that compulsion I mentioned is so very common that it doesn’t take mind-reading to appreciate how humanly common it is.

“I worry about the future. Is there any point in talking to him at all? I get anxious when he is brief in conversations. Not cold necessarily, but merely not talking as much as he used to with me. Again, I know why, but I don’t know if I can handle it… It’s hard to adjust to all those plans I made now turning to dust. Working in this job I’d got for him and for ‘us’ – I’ve started to resent it a little, as now I’m leading a life that’s not for me alone but was for me and someone else“-

– you can’t control or experience peace of mind based on what’s happening in his mind, heart and life, but you can hold on to/ rest in the fact that you are an honest, loving man who is able to love and be loved in return. Protect this honest, loving man (yourself) and treat him well.

anita

Dear Ben:

You are welcome. “Nothing is more irritating than people analysing you during a confrontation“- I agree. I made the mistake of offering unwanted analyses to people many times in the past. I agree with (and impressed by) your analysis of him and the situation.

“Childhood trauma is a powerful thing. I suppose it’s a funny coincidence that I wrote my first topic here at 25, just the age he is now…  I hope he will be able to find the way in the month or years to come“- this is a very compassionate attitude, on your part.

“He is capable of reflection and growth… I wonder if soon they will start arguing again“- they probably will argue again: he is capable of reflection and growth, and his boyfriend may be capable of it too, but not together, not when the relationship itself (without attending couple therapy and working hard on it) is keeping both of them stuck in sickness.

“We are still having very robotic chats up to now. A ‘good morning’… I wonder if that will last, or we will drift away, or we will stay talking…“- you will surely know the answers in a year from now, maybe sooner. Can’t predict the future, as you know.

“In a way I feel better carrying on with my daily routine, seeing he’s sent a message causes almost a dread… should I reply? how to reply?… It’s still early days, only a week since the end of the ‘start of a love story’… I don’t know whether to make more effort to talk, to ask him things, or to hold back… If I want to share something with him, share it“- my thoughts: (1) Keep in mind that you have the option of No Contact, if that would be better for your mental health. (2) Reads like he needs space, so for as long as you choose to be in contact with him during this time, if I was you, I wouldn’t ask him any questions other than the general how-are-you? and surface questions, and not many of those. I wouldn’t share much with him either, unless he asks and then, I’d keep it short.

“It’s interesting what you said about the UK Flag. In our last call, which was going to be brief because ‘I’m studying for exams and don’t have much time’ – he said, and yet it ended up being 3 hours – I asked him about it. Didn’t his boyfriend comment on it? (He’s never been to the UK, he had one for Brazil and Argentina). He said ‘he did, but I pretended not to hear them’ – in the video call, it’s still up on his wall. The picture of him and his boyfriend is back, and the ring we used is in his box, but the flag I bought is still there. Perhaps it means nothing, he just wants the collection. Perhaps not.“-

– (1) I like reading your reasonable, objective thinking: seeing the bigger picture/ different possibilities, not just a corner of the picture, that which fits wishful thinking. (2) In the opening of your recent post, you wrote: “at least someone somewhere sees it with more nuance than ‘he used you and you were played’“: if he was playing you, if there was deceit on his part (like it was suggested to you) then he would have removed the picture of him and his boyfriend from sight during the video call…? Reading and re-reading your story, I didn’t notice any evidence of deceit/ you being played.

“I feel a bit hurt remembering the last call, at one point he said “it felt good, and in the moment I had to do what felt good” – perhaps not those words exactly, but words to that effect. It gives me an anxiety“- I am lost at this moment reading this. What was he referring to by “it”?

(I will soon be away from the computer and back in about 8- 24 hours from now).

anita

Dear Ben:

“I struggle to even reply to him…  But I do want to communicate with him. I still want to share things with him, even if they are because of mutual interests rather than future plans“-

– talking to him about mutual interests sounds good. You shared in your original post: “He was deeply into history, old things, old music, and showed me all his old books with great enthusiasm, including a shared interest in old coins etc.”- mutual interests..

“I am fully aware I may fall for him again“- I was under the impression that you are still in love with him.

“No one can tell the future, but also what is love without hope?!“- excellent point!

“This time, with him, it provokes only uncertainty in me, I don’t know really what he wants from them, either in his conscious or unconscious mind“- if you know for sure what he wants- not in relation to you (ex., to study medicine)- then you can figure if you can possibly fit into what he revealed that he wants via his conscious mind.

“He said ‘I want to keep your friendship, to keep our calls, my relation to you is still strong’, yet his messaging seems to be a bit more distant than merely friends, so I feel a bit confused with his admission to me“- no one keeps the same closeness/ distance with a friend or a romantic partner at all times. Sometimes we feel closer, at other times we feel distant, and all that’s in-between.

An anxious person (fitting the Anxious Attachment Style) is overly sensitive to nuances in the tone of voice, facial expressions, writing style, etc., of a romantic interest, seeing temporary/ normal distance as threatening, when it is not.

“Once again I am entering this with zero expectations, I expect nothing from him… I want to tell him life isn’t that simple, telling me that he misses me and we can have calls. Almost, how dare he have the audacity!? He knows why we aren’t talking by video call! But I’m done with anger, maybe I love him too much to hold onto resentment to him for long… I was indeed, as I had kept telling him in anger, ‘a fling’. Almost as if I made it easier for him, I suppose“-

– you mentioned here and before that you expect nothing from him, but you do (rightfully, deservedly) expect something from a man: a real-life, committed and monogamous love story. And he is that man and the hope (which you mentioned above), at this point, isn’t he?

anita