Dear Eva:

What you’re feeling now (or 9 hours ago) is the weight of emotional neglect, confusion, and the exhausting strain of trying to be enough for someone who couldn’t meet you halfway. With deeper clarity and growing compassion for yourself, I truly believe peace will find its way to you.

My best understanding is that the two of you had:

1. Different Attachment Styles- You seem to have an anxious attachment style—you seek closeness, reassurance, and emotional depth. He shows signs of avoidant attachment—he withdraws from intimacy, avoids emotional openness, and keeps connection at a distance, even after years.

This creates a push-pull dynamic: you reach for connection, he pulls away, which makes you reach harder—and leads to more pain.

2. Different Levels of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)- You express your feelings clearly, strive for communication, and feel with depth—that reflects high emotional awareness and empathy. He struggles to empathize, rarely opens up, avoids hard conversations, and doesn’t acknowledge your pain. That reflects low EQ.

He may rationalize his choices, but he lacks insight into how his behavior affects others.

3. Different Behavioral Patterns- You compromise, adapt, and try every possible approach—kindness, patience, assertiveness. You bend, even when it hurts. He avoids conflict, hides the relationship, deflects blame, and shuts you down. He gaslights and shifts responsibility away from himself.

His pattern suggests emotional detachment and a power imbalance: he controls the narrative, while you absorb the impact.

4. Different Goals in the Relationship- You wanted emotional connection, public acknowledgment, mutual respect, healing, and a future. He wanted comfort on his own terms, connection hidden from view, and freedom from social judgment.

You both may have felt “love,” but you were seeking different kinds of love—and operating from very different emotional worlds.

As for your questions, here’s what I see:

“How can someone be so dehuman and do what he wants even though I say it hurts?”- He may be emotionally blocked. That doesn’t mean he lacks feeling—it means he struggles to access or process emotions in healthy ways. Perhaps when he was a child, his vulnerability was met with shame or rejection. In response, he built emotional armor—and still hides behind it.

This distance from his own emotions makes even simple intimacy feel unsafe to him: “He… never wants to hug or kiss in public because he sees it as ‘cringey’.”

The ego is our inner sense of self—how we see ourselves, and how we want to be seen. When toxic shame infects the ego, it becomes fragile. A deeply fragile ego can’t distinguish between “I did something wrong” and “I am something wrong.” So it defends itself at all costs. To protect itself, it builds defenses: withdrawal, denial, blame: “He’s always been emotionally unavailable… Every time, he finds a way to twist it so that I’m the problem. He’s never once apologized. Never taken responsibility. Just blames me for my reactions to his actions.”

Vulnerability is the openness to being emotionally exposed—it’s the willingness to show our true thoughts, feelings, and needs. It’s the doorway to intimacy, trust, healing, and authentic relationships. But when vulnerability—at an early age—is repeatedly shamed or harshly criticized, it creates a severe emotional injury, a core wound. And over time, a person builds emotional scar tissue around that wound, blocking vulnerability from ever being exposed again.

This emotional scar tissue becomes a defense mechanism. It might look like emotional detachment, perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-control, shifting blame, or never accepting responsibility for hurting another person—but underneath is a deeply guarded part of the self that fears being seen and hurt again.

Within the relationship—when you cried, sought affection, or expressed pain—you weren’t just exposing your own vulnerability, you were activating his. And his reaction was to push it (and you) away.

You weren’t wrong for showing up emotionally. In fact, every time you allowed yourself to be seen in your sadness or longing, it was an act of courage. Vulnerability, in that sense, is strength—the strength to risk connection, even when the response is uncertain. That’s a strength he didn’t possess, or didn’t know how to access. And in his world, defending against discomfort took priority over opening to intimacy.

“How can someone claim they love you, yet be so emotionally blind to your pain?”- He may have loved you in the way he was capable—but shame, in his world, may be more powerful than love.

“Who will he be with next?”- Even if he’s with someone else, he still carries the same emotional limitations. That pain you felt in the relationship came from his unhealed shame, not from anything lacking in you. Whoever comes next will likely meet the same guarded heart—until he chooses to face it.

“Will he treat the next girl better?”- Maybe. But if he does, it won’t be because she’s better or more deserving. It’ll only happen if he feels safer, less exposed, or chooses to grow. And if he doesn’t confront the toxic shame beneath his ego, the same patterns will repeat.

“Why does it feel like I was never enough?”- Because you kept giving love to someone who couldn’t fully receive it. His fragile ego, shaped by deep shame, made it hard for him to accept closeness without feeling threatened.

“How can someone switch in a day with such bad behavior?”- He didn’t switch in a day. Emotionally blocked people often begin leaving internally long before they say goodbye. When the breakup came, it felt sudden—but in his mind, he was simply following the escape route he’d been building.

“Why didn’t anything I say matter?”- Because he wasn’t ready to hear it—not because it wasn’t true. Your words held weight, tenderness, and truth. But when someone carries toxic shame, even gentle feedback feels like an attack. Instead of responding, he defended. Instead of listening, he rewrote your pain as paranoia or drama. It mattered—you just spoke to a heart that wasn’t ready to be open.

“Why did he never apologize?”- Because apology requires emotional humility. To say “I’m sorry”—and mean it—would take coming in contact with that core wound within him. And that would be too painful for him.

“Why did he keep acting like I’m the problem?”- Because blaming you was easier than facing himself. He needed a target for his discomfort—and you became that target. Shifting blame was how he kept his fragile self intact.

Eva, none of this means you were unlovable. It means you loved someone whose emotional world was too guarded, too wounded, too locked down to receive it. That’s heartbreaking—but it’s also clarifying. You didn’t fail. You felt. You reached. You tried. And now, you get to heal.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, Eva—what resonated, what didn’t, or what you still carry unanswered. I’m here.

With care, Anita

Good to read back from you, S! I will reply further tomorrow morning (it’s Thurs eve here)

How are you, S?

How are you, Clara?

How are you, Lisa?