Dear Ssleeping:

You are welcome. It is admirable that you intend to keep your promise to him

“Do you think we just need time and his feelings will return?“- maybe but like I wrote in my first reply, fear is a very powerful emotion

“How would I broach the topic of avoidant attachment? I don’t want to push him further away“- you can copy and paste for him about the topic, send it to him and ask him what he thinks about it.

anita

One more thing: you are always welcome to post again in your tread. I grew positively attached to you and your thread!

anita

Dear me aka Pete:

I am thrilled to read from you again. I wanted to let you know that I returned to the forums months ago, but given that you deleted your account back then, I figured that you will not be reading a message from me. I want to read your post more attentively and reply later today (I am so tired right now). Again: feels good to read from you again!!!

anita

Dear Ssleeping:

You’ve been in a romantic relationship with your boyfriend for 3 years and living together for the past year. I am trying to separate how you currently feel about him and the relationship with him from his words and actions.

How you feel: “I know he’s my soulmate… Our souls have connected, I feel like I’ve always known him… I know he’s the one… I  keep going through phases of being destroyed and hopeful… I know we are meant to be together, I feel it. I feel hopeful that we will come back – he’s my person. I’m just so scared“.

His words and actions: Before: “We’ve talked about getting married, have given each other jewelry short of engagement rings…we’ve named future children“.

Recently: “He said he started thinking about moving into a house together… He then started feeling anxious when thinking about it…  over the coming days he said he doesn’t want this anymore and needs to be alone..  he said things feel different… He said that he feels like we’re just friends, that it doesn’t feel romantic anymore, we are very intimate often, even after this has happened. He said I’m still the most special person in his life and always will be, that we are the most connected, that he could never love anyone more than he loves me. He said we are still our own word that we use for soulmates… He said he doesn’t want other people, he just wants to be alone.  He said he doesn’t know what he wants in the future and just knows right now he doesn’t want this… He said he thought of the word and idea of a break, but he can’t say if it’s just time that’s needed or if we’ll get back together. He’s said the thought of that if it’s meant to be, it will happen again is keeping him from breaking down completely. That it gives him hope“.

About his childhood+, you wrote: “He was abused and abandoned as a child and teenager and has always been very independent because he’s had to be, he’s also based self worth on others and never coped well alone… I should mention that he is very impulsive“.

You asked: “Do you think we just need time? It gives me so much hope to think this, so much hope that I feel it so deeply… I feel an urge to bring the anxious avoidant attachment style to his attention and see what he thinks, does he need to come to this realisation himself? I really think this might have been what has happened here. Does he need time and therapy to see this?”

My thoughts and attempted answers: it is very common for children who grew up abused and abandoned (this has been true in my case for many years) to associate love with hurt, and therefore we fear being trapped in this combo of love and hurt, and we want OUT.

This is very much what the term  anxious avoidant attachment style is about. But if you tell him about this attachment style (I don’t see the harm in telling him), the information will not make his fear go away. It’s a guttural fear, and once it takes hold, it’s hard to reverse it.

Once in his mind, the idea and fear of being trapped with you (by moving to a house together and cementing the relationship further) was cemented, it’s hard to dissolve this cement. The more you pursue him by being emotionally and physically intimate with him, the more persistent his fear will be. This is so because fear is stronger and more urgent than any other emotion.

Your best bet to get to a point where he loves you more than he fears you, I believe, is to end all intimate talk with him, as well as physical intimacy because that will play into another fear of his: that of being left alone (“never coped well alone“, you wrote about him). It is only if you remove the threat (your love!) from him, that he might feel safe enough to.. want you back as a partner in life.

Quality therapy will be great for him and for you (separately and/ or together, at one time or another). Also: be careful to not let your hope and longing for him to distort your view of what is happening, including the probability that he feels guilty for wanting out and therefore he may be saying nice things to you to ease your pain (and possible anger) at being rejected by him.

If you would like to post again and communicate with me on the topic, you are welcomed to do so.

anita

Dear David:

Welcome to your forum! I am not sure I understand: do you mean that you want this forum to be your personal wellbeing journal, as in journaling your “path to transformation”, as you called it?

And when you ask for others’ experiences in this journey, do you have more specific questions?

anita

Dear Caroline:

“Now I know I agreed to this city she picked but I can’t help thinking: Am I again doing something she picked? I think I kind of am. But I won’t say anything anymore because she tried and she asked and I couldn’t say. And I said okay it’s the best choice. Now I keep thinking I did this again to myself and I won’t enjoy this trip because again it was something she wants to do…  I just agreed on vacation I am not excited about. Again.“-

– Everything is difficult when you don’t own your .. own life: all relationships are difficult, at work and personally, there’s so much self-doubt and heightened anxiety when your life is owned (in your mind) by someone else, someone more powerful than you… and there is always someone more powerful than you… when you feel powerless.

From psychology today on powerlessness: “It is the feeling that we have had to, or must seriously, compromise ourselves or something we hold dear due to external forces seemingly beyond our control”, “Power exists in all relationships. Having power means to have a sense of control, to have choices and the ability to influence our environment and others. It’s a natural and healthy instinct to exert our power to get our wants and needs met…

“Impaired Power: In contrast, many of us may feel powerless and victims of outside forces. We can feel like our destiny is out of our hands. Some of us voluntarily give up our power to others. We may feel uncomfortable with exercising our own power, and believe that we will alienate others. Instead, we might react to others, defer to their wants and need, and have trouble making decisions and initiating independent action. We might feel like we’re being mean or raising our voice when we merely state what we want or don’t like.

“This impaired sense of power is common and stems from: 1. A habitual external focus 2. Shame and low self-esteem- not feeling worthy. 3. Dependence and lack of autonomy– excessive need for a relationship 4. Lack of assertiveness and deference to others’ decisions 5. Discomfort with power and a belief that it harms relationships. 6. Fear of rejection and abandonment…

“Power Imbalances in Relationships: Many relationships have power imbalances. If we’ve denied our power and don’t express ourselves for any of the above reasons, it’s natural for someone else to fill the vacuum.”

Remember how you started your first thread on tb back in Sept 2022? “I have a male friend“- he, a coworker at the time, was more powerful than you and he took over your life back then, he filled in that Personal Power Vacuum (PPV, if you will).

Back to psychology today/ do you feel controlled in your relationship: “Growing up in a dysfunctional family can result in an impaired relationship to power. Generally, this occurs if we grow up in families where power was exercised over others in a dominant-submissive pattern. Our needs and feelings were ignored or criticized. When personal power and self-worth aren’t encouraged we come to believe that power and love can’t coexist. Power gets a bad rep. We’re afraid of our own power or can only get our needs met by being indirect. We might learn to feel safe and be loved through accommodating others, by and people-pleasing… We may be unable to know and assert our wants and needs or make decisions, often even for ourselves. We relinquish control over ourselves and often defer to others or don’t act at all…

“How to Become Empowered: Love and power are not incongruous. In fact, love doesn’t mean giving up oneself, which eventually leads to resentment. Love actually requires the exercise of power. To claim our power means learning to live consciously, taking responsibility for ourselves and choices, building self-esteem, and asking directly for our needs and wants. As we learn to express ourselves honestly and set boundaries and say no, we create safety and mutual respect, allowing our partner to do the same”-

– to this day, Caroline, I have some trouble knowing what I want and/ or asserting what I want. When asked what I want, I commonly say: whatever you want. I grew up very much in a dominant (my mother)- submissive (myself) pattern of relationship. The way to please my mother when she was angry at me, raging at me with words that hurt so much (and some physical violence) was to lower my head and look at the ground. I remember her saying to me during a pause in beating me: “the only thing I like about you is that you are looking down and you don’t say anything back to me“.

I remember that sentence because it made me feel like a good girl, that there is something likeable about me, something that draws approval: to be submissive, to display powerlessness for someone powerful.. hence the birth of my own PPV (Personal Power Vacuum).

I still experience the euphoria of feeling approved of, of feeling liked- sometimes- by being submissive, as in saying to another: you’re in control, whatever you want. But then, I suffered a WHOLE LOT for giving my power away, bringing me to practical life circumstances that are hurting me now, and which I cannot reverse.

Back to your post, you wrote in regard to my suggestion that you try guided meditations: “Ok, I will do this today. In what way is it going to help?“- I hope that it will help you to slow down, to calm down, which is an emotion regulation skill required for you to think effectively when needed, and come up with real solutions to real problems, instead of drowning in self-doubt and overthinking.

anita

Dear Caroline:

Yesterday, Sunday at 1:54 pm (my time) I submitted a post to you ending with: “After you do a little research emotion regulation skills (part of DBT), CBT, and assertiveness skills, let me know what you think about what you read and we can talk about it further.“.  At 2:42 pm, you submitted this post: “Okay, reading about this right now, Anita.”

TWELVE MINUTES LATER, at 2:54 pm, you submitted this post: “Anita, it sounds really good. But I wonder if it’s easy to find a quality therapist. I may need to ask on fb pages or do some research“, and EIGHT MINUTES LATER, at 3:02 pm, you submitted this post: “I found interesting article on assertiveness. There are some exercises and examples how to talk to people. I don’t know if I can do this.. I would like to. But I also feel exhausted. And I am trying since last year. I thought I changed so much already. Why is it so hard.“.

Back to what I suggested to you: I suggested that you do a little research on “emotion regulation skills (part of DBT), CBT and assertiveness skills“, and after your little research, I asked that you will let me know what you think about these three topics.

By little research, I didn’t mean a total of twenty minutes which included you typing the last 2 posts. Maybe you rushed so much because you were anxious and exhausted. You have to be calm enough to be able to patiently read and process information.

Here is from positive psychology. com/ emotion regulation(it includes the mention of the relevant CBT and DBT; I am adding the boldface feature to the quote to emphasize what I believe that you need to do): “Most Useful Emotional Regulation Skills for Adults: Self-regulation is all about pausing between feeling and reactions – it encourages us to slow down for a bit and act after objectively evaluating a situation… With proper regulation and self-control, we gain the power to stay calm under pressure… Here are some skills that can help in cultivating emotional regulation and sustaining it during challenging times in life. 1. Self-awareness: Noticing what we feel and naming it is a great step toward emotional regulation. For example, when you feel bad, ask yourself – Am I feeling sad, hopeless, ashamed, or anxious?…

“2. Mindful awareness:… Simple mindful exercises such as breath control or sensory relaxation can calm the storm inside and guide our actions in the right way. 3. Cognitive reappraisal: Cognitive reappraisal includes altering the way we think. It is an essential component of psychotherapies like CBT, DBT, and Anger Management, and calls for greater acceptance and flexibility… where we try to look into a stressful situation from a whole new perspective. For example, we can replace thoughts like ‘My boss hates me’, ‘I am no longer needed here’, etc. with alternatives such as, ‘My boss is upset at this moment… I know I am hard working and honest, let me give it another try’, etc.. By doing so, we gain a broader and better perception of our problems and react to them with more positivity…..”.

You can’t heal, Caroline, if you don’t do the work such as attentively reading and calmly considering what you are reading. If you do take a few days off work, I hope that you will be able to do this…?

anita

Dear Caroline:

I will reply further in the morning, but for now, in regard to: “Ok. But what if I can’t say what I want?“- you can say: I don’t know what I want right now. Let’s talk about it again late, after I think about it for awhile. This way, you are assertive and you are taking a timeout, so to figure out- when you are away from her and from the conversation, when you are alone- what it is that you want.

anita