Dear Anita and Mark and Abubin and others who have followed this thread, thank you for your presence and thoughts. I could go on a long time discussing these issues, as I have a strong belief that understanding the mind and relationships makes it possible to learn better relationship skills and hence have healthier relationships.

At this point, I am going to pause my posts on this thread (unless something significant materializes) so that this thread doesn’t keep going to the top and push other threads down. As I catch my breath, I would like to participate more in some of these other threads.

Funny thing, Anita – in other areas of her life, she seems to be quite a clear thinker and when she sets goals, usually attains them. She raised two very nice kids, has held professional jobs, and has navigated and learned her way around a culture that is very different from her own. But I have the opinion that her thinking about relationships, boundaries, feelings, who is responsible for what, often seems mixed up. This apparent disconnect – between her clarity about life skills and her relative troubles around relationships – well, there’s something sad about it. Even as my anger comes through in some of my posts, at the same time, I think very highly of her, love and like her.

But I want her to stop doing “destructive” things, like the silent treatment etc. That’s why my questions bubbled up a few posts ago, about when to work with a partner, and when to totally give up and flee. I used to give my partners the silent treatment, but I learned to behave differently. I wasn’t a lost cause. But, as long as she doesn’t want to work with me, it’s not a question I have to answer.

Anita,

A pattern, and my interpretation goes something like this: She will text me something that she thinks is a joke. I don’t realize that it is a joke and respond if it she just said something serious. She will then say “You are not funny” and “We don’t have the same sense of humor.” Then she does “withdrawing” behaviors such as cutting off the texting, saying good bye without the usual affectionate emoticons, and significantly reducing texting the next day.

These behaviors indeed seemed “angry” to me, and I guessed that they are driven by the fear that she will not be understood in a deep way that she wants. I’m not saying, of course, that her behaviors will get her what she wants. Probably her behaviors, unless she changes them, will make it very difficult for her to have a sustained, close, relationship where she feels deeply understood.

These are only my guesses. The collapse of the relationship seemed to happen so fast that we never got deeply into what was going on with her when she would withdraw.

Dear Anita, Thank you. I appreciate your mirror and your input greatly.

“Then she thought to herself (if her account is honest): maybe it is not over. She didn’t know. So she asked god to let her know and he (or she) has let her know. So now she knows. For now, she knows. ” (your words, my italics).

Ouch. I’ll have to brace myself for her possible return. I’d love it to be true that I’m so together and so detached that I won’t let myself be pulled back in. It may indeed be that I won’t let myself get pulled back in, but I expect I’ll have to get clear with myself how to respond if she reappears. I expect that she will. So that’s work that I have to do.

I often wonder how much one can work with one’s partner (and in complete fairness, how much can a partner work with me?). When do we leave somebody? When do we try to draw on compassion and patience and try to help a partner when we think their thinking is distorted, etc.?  I don’t think we ought to leave a relationship just because it hurts, because I think that there are painful times in healthy vibrant relationships too. Maybe the answer has something to do with there being an overall feeling of safety and reliability and good will. There may be some good will on my ex’s part (in my most generous appraisal), but I don’t feel safe (emotionally) around her – I was becoming increasingly nervous that she would get triggered into another silent treatment, or temper display. The word eggshells comes to mind.  Just my musings.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Craig.

Anita, this will be short, as I’m exhausted from what happened today. Last night I was texting with this woman. She told me unequivocally that she didn’t want to work it out with me. Twice she said it. I wished her well and told her I hoped she had much happiness in her life.

This morning I canceled my airline tickets. She and I had planned to go on a grand excursion to her home country in a couple weeks. But I had understood that she did not want to work it out with me. That’s what she said. Not an hour after cancelling the tickets, she texted and asked if I’d canceled my tickets. I said Yes. She said “You are not my destiny. Last night I had the thought that we should go on the trip together and try to work it out.” I said “Great, I’ll buy new tickets. Maybe I can even stop the cancellation. I just did it.” She said “No, God had given her a clear answer.” Basically, if we were meant to be together, I would not have cancelled the tickets even though she had said she didn’t want to work it out with me.

Maybe there’s a way to work it out with her. I don’t know. Right now I can’t even think about it. I just feel so tired and I want to breathe and rest.

Thank you for writing, Anita.

I understand how it could come across that way. Typically when I write to a forum (a “helping” forum) or talk with a therapist, I am thinking more about what are the obstacles to closeness rather than what is going well. That older thread was referring to the previous ex, not the most recent one. Regardless, in both cases, I loved them deeply. We had great times together and generally when we were together in person, we had lots of fun, communicated well, had emotional and physical closeness, tenderness, and worked together well (shopping, cooking, things like that). Strangely, and maybe coincidentally, the problems that arose in each relationships happened 95% of the time when we were physically apart, and thus it was profoundly difficult to work on the problems together. The first woman would refuse to see me for as long as a few months. The second woman limited our communication to texting only, on Monday through Friday, because she didn’t like to talk on the phone. My experience is, that when a couple doesn’t get together face to face to talk something over, fears and imaginings can escalate way beyond the reality.

Mark, sorry, I didn’t answer your question as to whether she reads my mind. No, she does not. As she gets to know me, she is better at learning how I think and predicting how I will act, but in the end she can’t read my mind.

I’m not sure how much anyone in reality can read anyone’s mind. I’m aware of some research on mirror neurons, but in the end, I just think people need to talk to each other and tell their stories of their inner worlds.