Dear Sierra:

I am re-reading your posts. Following are quotes from your posts and my comments:

In your original post you wrote: “One night, on our first date, he asked: ‘are you ready to date? Because I can’t get hurt, I’ve been hurt too many times.” And I said ‘yes'”- He offered to you  dating with a warning: do not hurt me! He put you on that kind of alert.

“I was scared of letting go of the single life, and I wasn’t completely over my sad insecure phase”- being issued that Warning may have been part of what scared you. It couldn’t have helped with that insecure phase.

“I’ve never been so broken by hearing (him) cry. It breaks me to think I’m the reason”- his message to you is: you are hurting me! You feel guilty.

“he’s been telling me he loves me, I haven’t said it back… because my mind is so clouded”- his Warning, guilt-tripping you with the message that you are hurting you, those emotions are draining and do cloud the brain.

“that night, I said it back… it doesn’t feel like I lied”- reads by the beginning of your original post that you really did like him. Problem is he can’t believe it is possible for him to be loved so he is trying to… guilt you into loving him. Unfortunately for him, he has been destroying your genuine love feelings for him with his guilt manipulation.

“I woke up… feeling as if I’m making everyone around me sad and angry… I knew he was breaking and I can’t take it any longer. So this morning, I told him I need time”- his manipulation succeeded in that you felt guilty (first part of this quote) but backfired on him (second part of this quote: you are taking a break from him instead of increasing your efforts to please him, to make up for… hurting him).

“He called me, not even sad anymore, just angry. He told me ‘I hate you’…”- his plan backfired, failed and he is angry. Angry not with himself for destroying the authentic loving feelings you originally had for him with his warning and guilt manipulation, but angry at you.

“The thing is, he’s the sweetest guy ever!”- how much of that sweetness is authentic to him, sincere and honest and how much of it is manipulative, as in sending the message: it is wrong to hurt the sweetest-guy-ever!

“His whole life, he’s been swept under the rug, and I truly want to be that difference that shows him how special he is”- you already genuinely liked him but he did not absorb it, didn’t believe it, because he has a different belief deeply rooted in his brain, that he is not lovable. So he couldn’t take in the genuine loving feelings that you did have for him at the beginning.

“I genuinely see a future with him… kids…”- unless he heals and over a long, long time work intently through therapy on his core beliefs (not being lovable), the future I see is you continuing to suffer from guilt while he points to you again and again how you fail him. Sadder than that, the future I see includes him manipulating the kids you mentioned in a similar way.

Notice he is very angry. Underneath the sweetest-guy-ever there is a very angry man.

“I’m scared to commit”- I too would be scared to commit to him.

In a following post you wrote: “When I wouldn’t be able to make plans or hang out, he’d tell me that he cares more and that I never make an effort and that he has a breaking points at the nice guy can only take so much”- notice that all the efforts you did make, starting maybe with taking photos of him in high school, all your efforts are discounted.

This means that any and all your efforts in the future to make him feel special, lovable, to make it up to him… will all be discounted as well.

Notice also the angry man inside the “nice guy”. Again, unless he heals, the best you can expect either nice guy turning into mean guy turning into nice guy etc.

You wrote: “I feel like… I didn’t feel as much as he did, so that’s why he did those things. If my feelings were more strong, his gut would have felt differently and Ben wouldn’t have manipulated me”- I strongly believe that your thinking here is incorrect. His feelings and behaviors have nothing to do with you and with how you feel for him. His feelings and behaviors were formed and were in place before he met you. You are taking responsibility here for what you are not responsible for, much encouraged in doing so by his manipulation.

“I feel like I failed him”- his manipulation succeeded. “The timing was not ours”- and will never be unless and until he heals, with help, in psychotherapy.

“My mom said that nothing is set in stone”- that core belief he has, that he is unlovable, and the manipulative behaviors on his part, to get love through guilt, those are pretty much set in stone.

“I also became paranoid and stressed with him”- if you do get back together with him, your mental health will deteriorate. How can it not.

anita