Dear Daisy:

You are very welcome. I enjoy opportunities to analyze people and situations, and so I am happy to try and answer your question “What happened?” I will look at the information in all your posts on this thread and come up with a possibility of what may have happened.

You met Alex and then spent time with him twice. After those two times you were “in 7th Heaven”, heaven with a capital H. One online definition of heaven is “a place or state of supreme happiness”. No doubt, once in heaven, in that state of mind, in that supreme happiness, you were invested in staying in it, in feeling happy on and on and on.

Following those two times you texted him that you “really like him” and his response was to ask you for a walk, then postpone it saying he was “super busy” and suggested to “postpone dating for several months. Your response was that you wanted “to try something more than just a friendship right now.”

-seems like you didn’t ask him why he wanted to postpone dating and you simply ignored his assertion.

A few weeks following the first two times, you saw each other about two hours per week, even though he only lives 20 minutes away, on foot. During those two hours per week, you talked about your mutual “future kids, marriage, our long-term plans”.

You wrote: “Honestly, I liked it. I had longed for a smart and driven boyfriend for so long”, again, you were in 7th Heaven and intended to keep it this way. You focused on the topics of conversation which fit being in 7th Heaven and ignored, best you could, the discrepancy between those topics and the short amount of time you spent together overall.

Just as you ignored the fact that he told you he wanted to postpone dating.

Later on he lied to you about the concert and such, but you ignored it best you could and had “dinner, watched a movie, made out – had a blast”. You had a blast, still 7th Heaven maintained best you could.

While you were invested in maintaining Heaven, he was displaying significant lack of assertiveness and a people-pleasing tendency. When he told you that he wants to postpone dating, and you asserted that you wanted to date “right now”, he sort-of complied and proceeded with getting together with you for about 20 minutes per week, talking about marriage and children. Later on he got resentful because he was not interested in dating and he felt you were pressuring him.

Instead of re-asserting himself, stating to you in no uncertain terms that he is not ready to date, he came up with excuses, aka lies as to why he can’t see you more often. He got angry and blamed you for threatening him and suggested you should see a shrink.

When you told him that you were “confused by his behavior”, his response was that “he had problems in communication”, and indeed he did: he was not assertive. Following asserting himself that one time, telling you he wants to postpone dating, and following your assertion to date anyway, he tried to accommodate you… a little.

Later he took you to a party. You wrote about that party: “It was lovely… I thought things were looking up”- you are still invested in that… Heaven, holding on to any positive thing and ignoring the negative best you could.

When you complained, later on, he “mentioned his mental condition”, instead of… re-asserting himself. Clearly, he is scared of asserting himself.

You wrote: “He told me I was the only one making him feel guilty and if his world didn’t revolve around me, sh** would happen. I just didn’t get it.”

– this is a very telling statement on his part. It suggests, in my understanding, that as a child he may have been made to feel guilty for asserting himself, he was afraid to displease a parent if he asserted himself. If he displeased a parent “sh** would happen” That is what he is still afraid of.

When you “lost it…called him a coward, a liar, told him that now I wanted him to feel like sh**” – his fear came true. His response was not one of intimidation though. He fought back, asserting himself and going a bit overboard into aggression when he suggested you needed professional help and insulting you otherwise.

On your next post you wrote: “even on good days he didn’t seem to be overly interested in spending a lot of time with me”- because he was not interested in dating, in a relationship, which is what he told you in the very begiYou wrote: “Also, he now goes hiking every weekend with my friends. Where are the headaches, the meds, the issues now?”- these were just excuses. He didn’t want to date you but he tried to accommodate you, a little, somewhat, fearing to displease you.

You wrote: “but he talked to me about our marriage, he told me he loved me in another language, he told me what he would name our first kid. This is not a person afraid of commitment, rather someone who wants to be in one so badly, but can’t.”- I believe that this is a person afraid, only not of commitment, but of asserting himself, fearing negative consequences that will follow if he asserts himself again.

This is my best understanding. In a nutshell: you pretended you had a boyfriend. You pretended you had a relationship. Your motivation: maintain Heaven. His motivation: avoid perceived negative consequences (punishment) for re-asserting himself and trying to accommodate you… a little, somewhat.

anita