Dear Tom:

I don’t think it matters much if you place your thread under “Relationships”.

I think it is best for you to not have contact with your ex girlfriend. Assuming you are attending quality psychotherapy, such contact can interfere with your healing in therapy. Of course, talking to your therapist about it (did you?) is probably a good idea.

She is engaged in a relationship with another man. For that reason alone, it is best for her and for you to not be in contact.  She wanted to see your therapist alone. I hope she sees a therapist alone, for individual therapy.

She told you that you “only one that understands who she is and can comfort her”- problem is that didn’t stop the fighting in the relationship, fighting that was mutual. She was not comforted enough to not fight, not comforted enough to not be anxious (“I think we are both anxiously avoidant attached”).

Maybe I should ask: do you believe the anxiety and fighting in the relationship was mutual, that is, that she is responsible for her part in it?

anita

Dear Tom:

You asked what I meant by her not having been comforted enough to not fight. In your original post you wrote: “we are both alike emotionally. We rather get angry than to express what we really feel so there were a lot of fights”- meaning that the two of you were responsible for fighting. So when she recently told you that you are the ““only one that understands who she is and can comfort her”- was she not saying that during the relationship you comforted her? And that you still do?

If she meant that during the relationship you comforted her (not only after), then she was not calm enough to not contribute her part to the fighting.

You asked how you can regain her trust if you break contact: I hope your priority is for you to make the best use of your psychotherapy and I hope she attends therapy herself. Regaining trust- perhaps after therapy, after a long enough period of individual therapy, separately by the two of you, is what I am thinking.

anita

Dear Tom:

I don’t understand your last post: did you read my last post to you, right before your last?

If so, can you clarify your question, restate it more clearly?

anita

Dear Tom:

Correct, but note: an anxious person cannot be permanently comforted by another. It takes a long time and a lot of individual work- as well as a safe, loving relationship- to heal from and manage anxiety.

And so, when she told you that only you comfort her, it means to me, that you comforted her well temporarily. If you got back together she would still need to heal and manage her anxiety.

Did I clarify my input to you?

anita

* again, didn’t submit correctly…

Dear Tom:

Yes, she reads to me like an anxious person (lots and lots of people are!) . Regarding the push and pull, yes it is not good for you, increases your anxiety, just like you wrote.

I believe it is a good choice, on your part, congruent with your own healing. Keeping contact with her, I believe, will be to your disadvantage, and will be of no advantage to her.

anita