Dear Bee:

“They expressed irritation with me for needing constant reassurance saying, ‘Why do I need to keep reassuring you?’ … They told me they couldn’t focus on their mental health and fix this relationship. Even talking things out was too much of a strain for them… they described me as ‘manipulative’, ‘toxic’, and ‘smothering’…  I don’t feel right feeling angry about things they said and did because I was not a good partner either… There’s a sort of fog around our relationship” –

– this is my best understanding at this point, based on all that I read from you: like you said yourself, you suffer from an anxious attachment style (which means that you suffer from significant, elevated anxiety in the context of intimate relationships). This attachment style/ elevated anxiety, when gone wild (when uncontained) is very distressing for the person you are attached to, no matter how much they try to not take it personally (“it’s safe to say I have an anxious attachment and so need a partner who can handle anxiety without taking it personally“).

It is not fair to expect another person to handle this attachment style/ uncontained elevated anxiety. It is your responsibility to regulate your emotions and contain the expressions of your anxiety, that is, to control your behavior (behaviors that were at times manipulative and smothering, like A said).

Having said that, you are not a rapist, a sexual abuser, or any such thing, and A is not perfect. A took care of themselves when ending the relationship with you, removing the cause of their distress …. no damage lingers for A, as I see it. Your job is to learn emotion regulation skills, gain more insight into your childhood and relationships with your parents, and learn to control the expressions of your anxiety, so that your life quality improves, and the next intimate relationship is way better than the last.

anita