Dear Stacy:

I am fine, thank you. I hope that you fully recover soon and get back to work and to a routine you are comfortable in. Thank you for letting me know. I will be looking forward to reading from you again!

anita

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