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 Caroline:

This is the most beautiful message, I am so grateful to you for this message, not just because of how well it’s written, and because  of what you wrote about me, but because of what it tells me about you, about the beauty within you. I am having my first smile of the day this very moment. (I will be back to the computer Sat morning).

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:

Your first thread- where we communicated extensively over 7 pages)- almost five years ago, was about the same guy you shared about in this thread. Back on Oct 10, 2018, you started your thread with: “I had a long term relationship with a lovely guy. But various issues, relational, geographical, visa-related etc. kept us apart. To a certain extent maturity did too, and a fear of committing. We had met just a couple times, but had strong feelings that were more than just ‘a fling’ or a ‘short-time’ thing”.

As I read your original post almost five years later, the first words that came to my mind were something like.. what a lovely love story. Later the term limerence and limerent object replaced my first thought.

Limerence, dictionary: “The state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.”

From Wikipedia, on Limerence: “an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object (LO) involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation”.

What do you think about the term in regard to what this guy means to you?

anita

It just occurred to me (as I went back to bed, thinking that-  if it is night time where you are at you may not be relaxed enough to sleep) that it doesn’t have to be that complicated: if there are jobs available to you in your preferred hours of the day,  then refuse this job and go for a job in your preferred hours. (I will be back to the computer in about eight hours).

anita

Dear Caroline:

You are welcome.

“Do you think I see it way worse than it would be?“- yes, I do.

“Is it not that bad as I imagine it?“- no, it is not as bad as you imagine it. In a calm, positive state of mind, you will be able to imagine it differently: seeing opportunities and possibilities you didn’t see when panicking.

“This whole idea of changing job exhausts me. I hate it about myself!“- self-hate is exhausting and otherwise bad for your health! Love yourself instead, be kind to yourself and your life will be better for it in every way.

anita

Dear Stacy:

I hope that you are okay this Thursday afternoon. My thoughts below are for you to evaluate as true to you (and/ or him), or untrue, thoughts for you to accept or reject:

“He has never had a real relationship/girlfriend until me, all his others were failed situationships and hookups“- you were, or hoped you were, a FIRST in his life, someone SPECIAL. That was something you needed to feel, something you didn’t feel growing up. A craving of an unloved child.

“He expressed on many occasions how thankful he was and lucky to have me in his life because he had never before met someone so loving and accepting of him“- you felt positively special in his life, a first, and what made you special? being “so loving and accepting of him“- something that you did not experience growing up; something he didn’t either.

You were invested in accepting him just the way he is, lovingly- almost unconditionally- so to maintain your specialness in his life. When that feeling was taken away from you (when he kind-of broke up with you), you felt very badly and you were willing to fight to get this feeling back. You chased him for it: “Two days later, after maybe 3 hours of sleep in total and no solid food, I couldn’t take it anymore and I reached out to him to apologize… I then asked him if there were any chance to fix us… I told him I’d still like to be in his life if he were open to that“.

And he did (temporarily) give you that feeling back when he “said he honestly didn’t know what he would do without me in his life and that I was his best friend“- Special: not only a friend, a good friend, but BEST friend.

Continued quote from above: “He thanked me so much for showing him he was capable and worthy of love and that he was eternally grateful for me for showing him all of this“- a little girl’s dream, when growing up unloved, is to make her parents capable of loving her, to make herself worthy of their love. He made your dream come true by proxy (him being a substitute for an unloving parent)- although temporarily.

2nd post: “I’m just so confused because I saw a person who… appreciated our deep connection, something he said he never thought he could have“- as I read this, I “hear” a little girl Stacy saying something like: I thought that I was finally Special enough/ worthy enough for someone to have a deep connection with me.

Continued from above:  “He told me at the beginning that he had so much love to give and was so ready to give it to someone (who’d) finally make his life have meaning over hookups and surface level conversations“- I hear a little girl Stacy saying something like: I didn’t give meaning to my parents’ lives, therefore, they didn’t have love to give me, only surface level interactions.

Continued: “I had hoped that my love and care would have been enough for him and we could help heal parts of each other. He was healing me by never shaming me for coming to him with insecurities. Until… he gave up“- little girl Stacy did her best to love and care for her parents, hoping that they will love her back. But they didn’t. And maybe they shamed her. Little girl Stacy saw herself in this boyfriend, seeing the same need he had to be deeply loved for the first time.

“His parents are both very successful and retired psychologists with PhDs… I was born and am still poverty level, he was born upper middle class“- reads like you were both born into emotionally poverty… a lower-class type of (non) love.

“I feel like a blip on his map of grand adventures. I know some of these things are chips on my shoulders from childhood insecurities playing out“- growing up un-special, a blip on your parents’ map..?

“I grew up in a drug filled home“- drug filled,  not love filled.

Back to your recent experience: “A day after this… I go looking for the Tik Tok person’s profile again….  Sure enough, this person is big. They have (this one person has) a Patreon, they have a massive following on all platforms.. they are his walking fantasy.. their talent is really impressive.. Yeah, I’m threatened“- this one person, special on Tik Tok, kinky on Tik Tok, threatened to take your Special away. And you were willing to compete with her, to fight for your Special: “I told him that I COULD be open to this kink… I just needed some more time“.

“What is true for me is that despite all of this, I love him so much and this has been the best and I THOUGHT most open and mature relationship I’ve ever had“- I think that in this relationship you projected yourself into him (seeing yourself in him) more than in previous relationships, and therefore, at times, you felt Special more than ever before…?

“Apparently I broke him, or maybe it had nothing to do with me“- you definitely did not break him. His brokenness- as yours- (as mine)  happened before you came into his life, way before.

“If I knew this guy was just leading me on this whole time“- I do not believe that he was leading you on the whole time. Sometimes he did, but often he didn’t. What led you on, I believe, is that he told you at times just what you desperately needed to hear for a long, long time: that you are uniquely special in his life and that he is ready to love the one special person in his life.

“Do I give up all hope for the future of us? Or do I take these SEEMINGLY serious sexual issues to heart and not try to hold on?“- If I was you, the way I understand you, him and the situation, I would undo my projection into him. I’d grow to understand that with all the similarities considered, he is not even close to being like you.

You are both thirsty for love but you went about trying to quench that thirst directly by loving him thoroughly, unconditionally, and exclusively, the way you wished that you would be loved. His way has been mostly to distract himself from this thirst for love via kinky sexual fantasies, porn and thirst traps. He is trying to quench his sexual fantasies, not his quench for love. The way I see it, if you try to quench his sexual fantasies, you would be part of his distraction, that would be all.

What do you think/ feel?

anita