Hi Anita,

I will start a therapy soon, I finally feel ready to do and go until the end of the process. I think it is more than about time for me. I have so many issues I need to fix with the help of a professional. I can’t keep overthinking about the same things again and again. I need to move forward in my life, I need to health from the past. This is why I think this message will more or less conclude this thread. I am not sure if I will repost here or not someday.

Anyway, thank you a lot for everything you did for me, your words and your kindness mean a lot, taking all this time to analyze and think with me, I couldn’t expect a better start towards my healing. I wish you the best in the future.

I see, I think I’m starting to understand many things which happened during summer then. Once, we spent one week talking everyday in average 6/7h per day. We were getting very closes (sending to each others videos of us playing music especially for the other and so) and the week after, all of sudden he.. “disappeared”. Well, not disappearing but we talked much less and when I did references to the week before he seemed less comfortable I’d say, I don’t know how to correctly express the feeling I had from him at this moment. Point is, I was kinda confused, jumping from getting closes to almost strangers.. And he did the same many times through the past few months actually. Most part of my confusion comes from that behavior towards me. I mean, again, I think that if the person you talk with make you feel completely indifferent (pure friendship feelings), aren’t you supposed to be more.. constant? Also, it shouldn’t trigger his anxiety, you shouldn’t be scared about the person mostly when you both have made your positions. He insisted a lot to keep in touch after he decided to stop everything. I made my positions towards him, I told him I didn’t expect anything from him and that I was ok to keep talking to him so technically nothing was supposed to trigger him anymore right?

Now it’s a bit different, we have less time to talk as we have both started university again and he has a very busy schedule. Plus, according to himself, “I like socializing with people in the class but oh god, it drains so much energy from me, i’m feeling so exhausted”.

So I don’t know, I have this inner guts that it’s not over with him but we need space and distance, we can’t continue like this and I can’t force destiny. I’m accepting the fact that he’s not ready yet and that he won’t before a longtime. I just wished he would have been direct with me about what I was for him the same way he was when he decided to stop.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Lea.

Until today I had the hope she had changed a bit, that she would be more comprehensive regarding my mental health, how the incoming online semester is already affecting my moral. You were right. She won’t never, ever change.

I called her a few hours ago. She asked me if I had started my courses. Yes I did since last monday. “Oh well, it’s going to be easy right”. No it won’t be easy, because online studies mean no on-campus classes and it means 80% of my social life gone. It also means that my ADHD will kick harder and I don’t even talk about my anxiety. “Oh c’mon, it’s your choice, you know why you do that so don’t even start like that”. Yeah, ok, thanks again for your empathy and your kind words, “mother”, I guess.

It’s hard to realize that your own mother refuses to see and understand that she’s the main reason of your sufferings. I’m glad that at 25 I’ve already matured enough to step back and stop taking everything she says too much at heart. Still, I can find comfort along other people as much as I want but all those words, I would need to hear them from her and not from someone else in order to stop being anxious. Well, I thought for a longtime it was the only solution. However now it’s a bit different from before, I can stand for my own opinions and the more I realize I’m detaching myself from her ideas the less she actually affects me. And I also I understand she won’t never change and I’ve decided to stop trying to make her see how I see life. I don’t have the time for that.

“Solution: don’t spend much time with her. Best would be (if you are to have contact with her) is to see her once a month or so, in the presence of other people (never alone!)  In the presence of other people (extended family, friends, strangers), she is likely to stop her “continuous flow of negativity” because she cares what the other people think of her. Here is another idea: bring someone with you when you visit her, so that she is not comfortable to be her negative, critical self in the presence of your companion.” => This is extremely tricky here. To start off since I’m 18 I try to avoid as much as possible the long stays at her place (in average 2/3 weeks during summer, 1 week for Christmas, autumn and spring break). It’s been 3 years now I go back only for summer and for Christmas (and it’s not even for her, it’s mostly for my grandmother who has to constantly fight against her as well..). Can you imagine, Anita, she sees her daughter TWICE per year for a very short period and STILL, she successes to be extremely conflictual/negative and so? It’s unbelievable, I live abroad, we can’t talk on the phone that much due to my schedule and she always find a way to ignite conflicts about so many superficial things?

Now, most part of the time when I’m at her place, my step-father is here (they aren’t married and he spends a lot of times in another house taking care of a garden and so). If at the beginning of their relationship (8 years ago) she didn’t really dare being too much negative, back in the days he was a kind of emotional wall between her and me, now she doesn’t even care. She spends a lot of time being negative towards him as well. I mean, he has his flaws, they are extremely different but she chooses to be with him. It’s even worst now, because well, he’s a very big coward. When she starts to get mad at some pointless stuffs, he doesn’t even try to argue with her, it’s always “yes darling you’re right” and obviously she stops being mad at him because he bows down. What he does is the perfect proof of his cowardliness, many times him and me we agreed about something which was wrong with her and ALWAYS he told me “yes you’re right, but, you tell her, I don’t want to get involved”.. ?????????????? are you her equal or a kind of mental slave??????? For this reason, he has never gained my total respect. Standing for what’s right for us is certainly the quality I respect the most and I expect from people who are closes to me to get this quality. I can’t deal with people who hide behind someone else when they can stand by themselves.

A few times, I brought some friends at home and believe me, she didn’t care to bother them with her attitude. I remember once, a former friend was here and she talked about her summer job. I never work during summer for the simple reason that it’s been 5 years I’m working along the year and I just need my two months holidays because I don’t take holidays otherwise. Again, she succeed to say “hm, that’s great, at least you do something useful during summer, you”. It was like she wanted to humiliate me in front of that friend. Obviously once my friend left, I started to reply back and again she started to play the victim. That was just an example. In general, when people are here and when she starts to act off limits, I can’t stop myself replying and of course she has to play the victim. Many times after she thought I was gone, I heard her saying to people “yes, sometimes it’s hard, she has a strong temper” and blablablabla. Once, I remember, I was extremely mad so I went in front of her and some people and I said “yeah well next time maybe think twice before and I won’t talk back”.

Overall, yes, she is worried about what people think about her and me as she wants me to be the perfect representation of her success so she doesn’t really “dare” being too negative. Although, many times I felt like when she was in a really bad mood, that she was just willing to “humiliate” me in front of people.

Also, she reproached me to talk to her only because she helps me to pay my rent. No of course I don’t want to talk only when I need to pay my rent. But does she let me the choice when she tells me things such as “yes I’m a bit infuriated, because you’ve been talking about this for a very longtime now and maybe it’s time to change of topics”, “euh.. if i talk about this maybe it’s because I NEED to talk about this and maybe it’s because it’s what currently make me feel sad and anxious..?”, “oh c’mon, shake yourself, ok, but you need to change your minds”. And after that she wonders why I’m closed to her? How comes after all I had already said, she still doesn’t understand that I need more emotional support rather than a financial one? I mean, it’s harsh what I’m going to write but I will stop considering her at 70% a wallet 30% a mother the day she will provide more emotional support, I don’t know..

She even successes to reproach me to ask sometimes for money while she told me “you can ask me money if you really need some, of course I will help you”. 1/I ask her once per year maybe for an extra-money in order to buy.. textbooks which are extremely expensive (equivalency of 80 USD in average) for a student. 2/ it’s not even her who gives me the money but my grandmother..

—-

“Regarding the guy, you wrote him a very long letter and he didn’t mention it to you during the 1.5 hour chat you had with him the other day- a very long letter is way more difficult to respond to than a short letter. Keep that in mind.” => Maybe I should have been more explicit here. I didn’t mention the letter either during our 1h30 chat and that wasn’t the main purpose to the chat anyway. I agree with you, it’s more difficult to respond to a long letter to than a shorter one. I didn’t mind because, I didn’t expect to see him and I just enjoyed the moment spent together. But, after, I sent to him a message and in that message, I told him that I panicked when I blocked him after sending him the letter, I didn’t want to get rid of him. I valued him and after our chat I realized again how it was easy and comfortable to talk with him. So after this message, I kind of expected from him, not a big message, but at least a hint. He didn’t say anything about my letter and I don’t get why.  => “ I am guessing this: the two of you are anxious people but your individual anxieties express themselves in different ways: you get into a topic directly and at great length, and he avoids it altogether.” => Isn’t he a bit the same tho? When he decided to stop or even before when he got his first panic-attack about him and I, he didn’t seem to mind to dig down with me the situation, actually he was the one who told me “if you have questions, please, don’t hesitate, I don’t want you to be left in a shallow situation”. And even after he decided to stop, I sent him a message where I explained my view about the situation, he replied. So why now avoiding this topic? For my male best friend, this is what he’s doing, avoiding the chat deliberately. I really don’t think that’s complicated to say to someone we don’t feel anything for her when we don’t, it cut off all hopes and in that case, saying something wouldn’t have been going out of blue because I was the one who raised the letter in my message.

“My guess is that he enjoys talking to you in casual settings, such as meeting you randomly, most recently), and in the casual setting of talking to you on the phone (where he is not with you in-person). In these settings, he is not anxious and therefore,. able to be in the flow of the conversation.” => And now I fully realize why after our first and last date he told me “yes I’d like to see you again but as friends if you don’t mind”. Because meeting me as “friend” and not official “love-interest” means a casual setting and therefore not an anxious situation. This is also why we talked that much during summer by messages, because as long as we don’t see each other IRL or at least set up a meeting, I can’t trigger his anxiety, right? Running into each other randomly didn’t give him time to awake his anxiety because he didn’t have time before to overthink about how it will go between us. I think I understand better now when he said “I’m not ready for a serious relationship” but “I value you”. Ehhhh..

Wait, so being interested in a romantic way to someone is a trigger to anxiety? And therefore withdrawing himself from a “relation”/”love-interest evolving into something serious” is a way to “stop” that trigger and so the anxiety? Can you stop yourself to feel something for someone if nothing negative has been done, even though you and this person keep talking and so? Is there a real distinction between stopping with someone because you’re just not ready for a relationship and stopping because you don’t feel the person? I mean, like I told him in the letter, despite the fact that I feel strongly for him, I’m not ready for a serious relationship and regarding all his issues since january and mine, like I told him, it wasn’t the best moment in our lives either..

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Lea.

I can’t agree more on everything you wrote in this post Anita.

You know, it’s been a few days I’m analyzing how I felt along this summer and every time I went back to my mother’s place for the last 7 years.

I’m realizing how wrong were a lot of her behaviors towards me. For instance, I have a cousin who is 2 years younger than me, she’s a jurist working in Asia now. Since we are kids, my mother always compared us “look at her, she’s beautiful, she successes her studies, she has never failed” and such. I’m not jealous of my cousin, actually I’m extremely proud of her because I know through what she went to be where she’s now and I did everything I could to help her and she did the same for me, honestly she has always been the sister I never had.

What’s really hurtful is the fact that my OWN mother NEVER acknowledges what I did/do, how I feel or even worst, who I am.

=> I feel stressed/anxious/sad? “then rest”, “oh c’mon, shake yourself and go, you have everything to success, you can’t fail”, “you feel that way towards someone? Move on”. Never she tried to understand WHAT brought me into that state of minds.

=> I got a grade below B or C? “.. oh.. ok.. I thought you were going to do better.. is this not what you said? That you were going to get a good grade?”. I failed an exam? “ah.. ok.. I thought you worked enough/I thought you had the capacities for/does that mean you waisted money?”, “ah.. ok.. so now.. what are your plans?”

=> Since I’m a child, when something isn’t going well in my life, instead of helping me to find a solution, she points out WHAT’s wrong. “What if?”, “Yes, but..”, “Have you considered that this could happen instead of that?”. Also, she tends to see me as emotional support, she talks about his issues with an aunt, my grand-mother and because I never reacted she once told me “yes but I told you that because you seemed not to care”. After that I became extremely angry and I told her “YES, I say NOTHING, because you OVERWHELM me with your issues and all your negativity so just STOP it”. And instead of saying sorry she spent the next week walking around the house like she was the victim here (eg: her voice changed, it became extremely acute and I could barely hear her).

=> I’m 5″1 for 114,9 lbs (I’m not sure about this, I’m not used to that system, otherwise I’m 158cm for 52kg). Technically I’m FAR to be fat. However due to my studies, I can’t do sport as much as I would like to. So yes, I’m not really muscular. Thing is, until my 18/19 I was extremely skinny naturally, I ate a lot, I did sport and I didn’t thicken at all. When I was a kid I was also enrolled into an extremely famous global modeling agency (not for a long time hopefully but still). Well, we all know that our bodies change when we old up so after my 20 I started to get some shapes. I was very happy because being skinny and shapeless has always been a sort of complex for me. But this is when my dear mother started to criticize my weight. “You become fatter, you should do sport”, “look at you, you’re fat”, “I say this for you, for your health, I don’t want you to become obese” etc.. And that reached a pic a few years ago.

A few years ago I was in a prep class in a different town, at the same time I was pursuing my first bachelor and I worked 10h per week. I was in a terrible state. I was under a pressure and I really don’t know how I managed to stay alive. I slept 2/3h per night, I ate what I could find (so basically a lot of junk food). I didn’t have a social life outsides of my classmates. I remember calling my mother because that was too much for me, I told her I felt extremely bad, I couldn’t afford more efforts. What she said? “Ok but.. you took weight” and nothing more. I didn’t know what to say but I stopped talking to her for weeks after that.

When she asked me why I did that to her I exploded and told her that she acted like a “old frustrated bitch” and while I needed the most an emotional support she talked about my weight, my apparence. “Yeah but this is important because if you don’t eat correctly you won’t be able to focus and shapes aren’t pretties on you”. So basically after that I told her that unlike her and her shitty worldly society, I had more to offer than my ass. What her shitty friends thought about me I didn’t care at all, that their competition between their children was as mature as their IQs were low. And I ended up telling her that the fact that she was complexed by her apparence didn’t mean that I was supposed to have the same complex so thank you very much but no, she better had to stop doing that to me because again, she looked like a skeleton and if it suited to her to look like that it wasn’t my case. Also I was extremely upset so I added that if she thought that being pretty was the only way to please to someone then she should rethink about her achievements because if she was someone good and worthy then she would have known that we have more to offer than a pretty ass.

After that we didn’t talk for a few weeks. Then she came back and didn’t even apologize but like usual, she did like nothing happened. So for my own sake I decided to move on. She also knew I never bow down when I’m personally attacked so that was better for everyone to never talk about that again. On a positive note she became more “encouraging” about my studies.

I tried so many times to explain why her attitude was so negative to me, she always refused to listen to me. After a suicide attempt when I was 16, we had to go to a therapy together. The therapists were by my side, they tried to explain to my mother the same things I tried to explain but still, she refused to admit that something was wrong with her.

On a positive note, overall I had a nice childhood, I never missed of anything, I had plenty of friends, a loving family and my relation with my mother hasn’t always been like that. I think everything started to be extremely complicated the day I realized I was able to take my own decisions and that her decisions weren’t those which were better for me. So basically, everything has changed when she lost “control”, because I think she refused to accept that I’m a grow-up person, capable and living my life by my own. Technically, I don’t “need” her, in the sens that I can do everything myself, I think I’m smart and wise enough to distinguish what’s good or bad for me. She is the kind of person who needs people to need her. She admires people for what they represent (perfection reached according to her criterias and she seeks that for herself and for her closest ones). She wants me to be perfect but she also wants me to need her. But if I become perfect, then I won’t need her anymore.

=> “* You need to no longer stay in your mother’s home for days or weeks, because any recovery and progress you make away from her (as far as getting to a calmer, more confident state of mind), will be undone when you live with her again.” => For a longtime I wondered why I felt so.. out of energy every times I went back to my hometown, why I never had the energy to realize all my plans. I understood that SHE drained everything from me, she needs my energy for herself, because she felt extremely low, stressed about her life which doesn’t correspond to what she wants, because my step-father isn’t as perfect as she would like. She can’t recharge her batteries by herself, she needs to find the energy into someone else.. My mental profil is also defined as highly sensitive/empathetic. I don’t only feel when someone doesn’t feel well, I feel what someone feels. The closest I’m with the person, the more sensitive I’m with her/his emotions. This is extremely exhausting when I have to deal with the kind of my mother. She doesn’t understand why I often need to stay away from her of from people in general. Feeling what other feel isn’t a gift.

=> “when you went back to your apartment far away from her, and then saw Him, it was like being outdoors in a cool, breezy evening, able to breathe again.” => I realized something recently. I knew since day 1 he was special for me, he was different and that was why I felt/feel strongly for him. He doesn’t take. He gives. This is the main difference between him and the others guys from my past and from many people I used to know actually. They took from me but they never gave. It’s not the case with him and this is why he’s my choice, because he gives as much as I do. He never takes advantages of me, he never tried to fool me, to use me as diary or so.

Hi Anita,

Many things happened since the last time I wrote here. The first and certainly most important one is that summer holidays are officially over, which means that I left my mother’s house to go back to my place where I live alone one week ago.

I didn’t realize that she was consuming that much energy from me until now. She is ALL the time angry/stressed/negative about something, someone, me. The slightest thing which doesn’t fit into her criterias makes her in that state (e.g: me not wiping the water in the shower, like, I cleaned the shower but I didn’t wipe the water which is CLEAN because I let it dry. For her it’s not clean, it’s dirty because of the presence of the water. Or when I wake up after 9:00am, it’s too late. Or if for once I let her cooking, she will get angry because for her I don’t participate enough at home while I do the laundry, I cook and we share the vacuuming task.).

I told her many times I wasn’t in a good mood during the whole summer, that my mental issues were kicking me extremely hard lately and therefore I wasn’t going to be good at anything as I needed to REST a LOT. Still, she succeed to blame me about me being apathetic towards everything and everyone. She even went through a small depression for two weeks because of my step-father who didn’t fit into her high expectations. And she basically expected me to help her to get better because I started to be myself a bit better. But I told her that wasn’t my role and that I started to feel alive again so that wasn’t the moment for her to mess with me and that she had to deal with her “issues” alone.

Honestly, I suspect her to be a sort of energetic vampire. She ALWAYS drains all my energy, many times since I’m a kid, she kind of transfers all her negativity/doubts on me, I’m not sure if I express this point correctly. I know I have a highly sensitive personality and with her kind, it’s really easy for me to feel stressed and anxious because even when she doesn’t express properly her negativity i can sens from miles away that something is wrong.

You asked me to develop “Usually people qualify me as the ‘perfect little daughter, wifey material”- can you elaborate on this sentence?”. Well, this is not complicated to explain, I was raised to be perfect, not to be myself. Having the best grades, playing music (piano, violin), being in special sections (since I was 11 and until my 17 I was in a class where I had 8h of language in addition in my schedule, it’s considered as the most elitist thing in my country for a child because our classes in mathematic/lit-terature/history/geography were in a foreign language), playing golf, being extremely well mannered, wearing fancy brands (Burberry, DKNY, Escada etc..). I’ve NEVER EVER been comfortable in this role. The only thing I got from all of that was a durable anxiety.

Anyway, since I’m back to my place, I feel so much more relaxed. I feel I can finally recover for real. Being myself again.

Secondly and that was clearly unexpected, I saw him today. Like, I was going to a café, I got lost and he appeared all of sudden, out of nowhere. Well, not really because apparently we were near to his new university and he had started his classes one week ago. But still, out of how many chances I could meet him today at this place?

It has been three weeks we haven’t talked since I blocked him after messaging him. I missed him a lot and I didn’t understand why. It was normally part of my process when I want to move on, sending one last message to sum up my thought and the situation and after erasing the presence of the person from everywhere. Not because I force myself to forget someone but simply because I think once I’m ready to move on, the person/memories/gifts take too much places and I like having my minds and my physical space cleaned, like keeping only what’s really necessary. I don’t know if I’m totally clear here.

Point is, I thought I was going to process in a similar way with him and that what I missed was simply the memories and the thought of someone therefore it would be easily forgettable. Mostly because we spent only a few weeks giving a try. Well, that wasn’t the case. Three weeks after blocking him and almost four months after he decided to stop, I really thought if I had to see him again I would feel neutral, indifferent and that would have proved my point that I wasn’t really attached to him. How wrong I was.

That will sound stupid what I write now but when I saw him today, I felt again it was like a love at first sight. I thought we would spend 5min together and nothing more. We spent 1h30 talking together and I felt that he made the conversation lasting as much as he could (he asked me if I would fancy a visit of his university while we were just talking about his new classmates).

I don’t know what will happen or not, what I’m sure is that I missed the person not the thought of someone. I somehow feel “reassured” in the sens that I know now I really value him and not the reflection of me I can see in someone else.

Those past few months with him have been extremely messy for me and I think I know why. You once wrote that for him “he is living with his mother, who is quite dangerous to him. He can be taking breaks from her (being physically close to her) by talking with you (being physically father away from him and overall less dangerous than his mother).”. This statement is totally true for me. I think everything got mixed, my feelings for him which are actually reals, my mental issues and my issues with my mother. I didn’t only overreacted towards him but towards everything. I was a vulcano erupting. Now it’s time for to get better, it’s going to be a long road but I will do it.

Again, thank you Anita, for your words, your patience and your wisdom.

Thank you again Anita. What I meant by mental breakdown is that, I found myself being over-emotional/thinking, I started to “suffocate” in my own head, literally. I reached a pic of negative energy on friday where I was extremely edgy and the second after down. And finally I ran out of juice on satursday where I was totally unable to do anything. It was totally impossible to properly organize my thoughts.

When I realized I reached that state, I decided it was time for me to do something. So I made a list of all the intrusive thoughts which came in my mind during that breakdown and I’m still currently trying to fix them once for all. This is why on sunday I prepared and sent to him that long message. Just like you stated, I think also I wrote to him to primarily improve my mental health. I had too many questions, too many thoughts about his attitude towards me, I was at this point where I wondered why he didn’t reply to me one week after I sent the last message (which didn’t require a formal response to start off and I know he was extremely busy during the last week). I started to think “ok so he doesn’t even bother to open nor read what I sent, it means he doesn’t care anymore, he moved on definitely, he talked to me during the whole summer because he didn’t have anything else to do and now that he finally started his classes he won’t never reply again because I was just a sort of hobby but now he meets many people and many girls so he got rid of me”. When I found myself blocked within this spiral, I realized I had to do something, I couldn’t let myself stuck into these thoughts and I knew I started to become dangerous for me.

I haven’t been diagnosed with OCD but I wouldn’t be surprised to have it. I realized I was getting into the same kind of spiral he went through about him and me. I don’t think I’m obsessed about him, because if so, I think I would have tried harder to talk to him more often, stalking him everywhere I could on a daily basis or so (we were only friends on facebook, not even on instagram nor twitter). And to be honest it didn’t bother me the fact that he took sometimes a few days to respond as I’m exactly the same. I totally understand that we can have busy schedules or we simply run out of juice, it doesn’t mean we don’t like the person. In my opinion it’s better to take more time to properly respond than quickly respond something which doesn’t make sens.

“I can’t stop having this constant thought about what is in his mind concerning me. Does he think about me? Did he move on? I try to find clues everywhere, over analyzing.. How come I’m unable to move on.. I know I’m being irrational but I can’t fight those thoughts” I said 5 days ago and that was when my mental breakdown started. I remember I was getting a serious panic-attack when I wrote that message and I started to find clues about his attitude on his social medias (which I normally don’t do honestly, I’m not a big fan of social medias and he’s not active on them anyway).

Just like him found himself into a spiral due to intrusive thoughts which made him spit out everything which were in his minds and stopping everything because he sensed a danger, I did the same I think. It wasn’t an obsession about him but more about a thought, the thought of him being suddenly uninterested not only as potential/past-love-interest but also as friend. And that pushed me to spit out all I had in my minds about him and after blocking him. I blocked him because I withdrew myself from a situation I considered as dangerous (having a potential response about his own feelings about me, the fear he would reject me) while I told him I knew he wasn’t ready and neither I was a for serious relationship and it was just about expressing what I felt for him and nothing more and that I still wanted to talk to him for real without any expectations hidden behind my speech. I think I even rejected myself in my message (I told him “without any doubts you moved on a longtime ago”, “you won’t never feel the same way for me as I do for you”). I thought I was being 100% rational when I wrote what I sent to him but I don’t think I was, otherwise I wouldn’t have blocked him and I would have simply assumed my words. And I also think I really went through the same scheme of thoughts as he did, I found myself being more peaceful, not because we had a chat where we clarified the situation but because I spited out my thoughts. I don’t know if I’m being clear here, this is a bit complicated for me to express it correctly not only in English but even in my native language.

I’m glad I wrote and sent that message, but blocking him when I think about it, looked more like a form of pure form of withdrawing. I also know I’ll have issues to let him blocked, I’ll try to keep him blocked until thursday at least (in order to not look too much like someone playing hot and cold with what she says). To be honest when it comes to my emotions and feelings, I know I’m extremely messy, I’m so uncomfortable when it comes to expressing them properly. And I also realize he never really knew how I felt towards him all along the story. When I talked about our past situations with him, I was extremely academic and I don’t think he was comfortable with that because being academic when it comes to emotions/feelings don’t show the way we truly feel, actually it’s more the contrary. Indeed, being academic = being neutral over a situation so.. Well, i’m working on that point as well. I stated in my message for him that for the very first time I was trying to let myself expressing more how I felt and being less scholar. (Maybe that was why I also freaked out and decided to block him, as for me showing emotions/feelings is a kind of sign of weakness..)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Lea.

“if it is possible that through therapy he can “erase” the intrusion of his OCD into the cuddling and touching” => yes i was thinking about this but also about me in general. “But it is not a sure thing, that he will be spontaneous again.” gives already a part of the response tho. But i keep wondering, during our conversations he acted in a way which was more than friendly (sending to me covers of my favourite songs and pictures of him, complimenting me, etc..). But also the day after being like that, acting distant. He doesn’t play me, i think he’s just very spontaneous but when he realizes what he did, he panicked maybe?

“He can be taking breaks from her (being physically close to her) by talking with you (being physically father away from him and overall less dangerous than his mother).” => sounds like a possibility. Although, since he has started his courses, he haven’t replied to my last messages. I know he must be busy, getting in touch with his new classmates, getting used to his new environement etc. But i can’t stop myself to think “what if actually he talked to me through summer  because he was bored and now that he can meet new people he will just start not to care at all anymore?”. Which sounds pretty stupid even for me, because if it was the case, why would we have spent that much time talking and that often? Somehow i know if i’m in this state right now, it’s because we used to talk on almost a daily basis. It was a habit we had since the very first time we started to talk. The longest time we haven’t talked until now, was three days. I know the situation between us is different, I know he’s extremely busy and we, i need to get rid of this habit because just like it happens now, if i see we don’t talk for a week, i will overthink and pretty much having a sort of anxiety crisis.

I can’t stop having this constant thought about what is in his mind concerning me. Does he think about me? Did he move on? I try to find clues everywhere, over-analyzing is my way to cope the situation as well. I know if something is meant to happen between us it will come naturally. I know i can’t force life to move faster in order to see the future quicker. I know i can’t control everything around me, neither understand everyone. I have my life, i have my friends, my family, my studies, i could find someone else “easily”. But still, i’m here, writing on a forum a full thread about him. I can hide myself behind facts, analysis, theories but it won’t change the fact that i’m scared that he might moves away without me. I’m scared that the day he will start to feel better, i will be only for him a reminder of that period of his life when he felt down, unhappy and ashamed. We gave a try for one month, we didn’t meet each other that much and it’s been 2 months it’s over now. How comes i’m unable to move on? It’s not the first time i met a guy with who the “give a try” situation ended up quickly. So why with him it has to be different? I can’t blame the lack of activities, i’ve been extremely busy since june and my social life is very active.. I know i’m being irrational but i can’t fight those thoughts and it hurts.

Sure i can add more about my diagnosis and my ex-boyfriend:

1) I’ve never taken medication for, i’ve always refused it. I tried a therapy for a while but it didn’t really work, i dropped out after a few months because i didn’t feel comfortable with the therapist and i’ve never started a new one after. However until the pandemic, i could control it pretty much. It didn’t affect “too much” my scholar work in the sens that i succeed to force myself to finish my works in time for example.  I had some “mental barriers” which are totally broken since at least june. That was how the lockdown affected me, it destroyed my protections i succeed to put within my brain against ADHD. Added to the fact that he decided to stop everything at the same time approximately, i literally gave up to fix up those barriers, the situation with him just drained the few mental and physical energy i had left. Now i’m getting a bit better but i know i will need much more time to fix myself and i really don’t want to take medicines as long as i can because i also know ADHD can’t be definitely cured and i don’t want to have a treatment for life.

2) Well, the situation was different with my ex-boyfriend. In the sens that before dating, we knew each other for one year, he was a friend before being a lover. When he went to hospital, it was primarily for the friend i was here. But to be honest, it quickly became a burden for me. I had my own issues (two friends killed themselves in a row, my grand-mother almost died and my own mother got sick, almost died as well and i had to take care of her for a few months). I don’t think i really tried to help him that much, mostly because he moved out from our city a few months after his mother’s death so it was hard to be present for each other physically talking, i’ve never felt the need to fix him, i was focused to fix myself first. However with the time, i wonder if he low-key didn’t expect it from me. “You’re never here for me”, “you never understand”, “stay talking with me instead of wasting time outside”, “you don’t show affection”, “do you even love me?”. I mean, he knew my own issues as well, that wasn’t my role to be a therapist for him, he knew i  also had a lot to deal with. We were just supposed to support each other nothing more..

I was 15/16, i was far to have the words i have now to reassure someone and dealing with my own problems took me a lot of time and energy. I think we stayed together not because we really loved each other (not during the whole last year we dated at least) but because we could lash out against someone. Actually when i think about it, looking at the situation we couldn’t develop real and strong feelings in a healthy way so i would say what i felt for him was definitely not love but it was him and me against the world which is also why we stayed together for that long.

The last year we dated, i started to feel better, my mother and grand-mother were fines and i felt i wanted to move forward in my life. Which wasn’t the case for him but he can’t be blamed. At 16 he had to start to live by himself and losing a parent isn’t something we can really heal, mostly when it happens at this early stage of life i think. And from that moment, the relation really felt like a burden for me. I didn’t dare breaking up but i didn’t feel nothing for him, he lashed out a lot and i didn’t really reply because i didn’t feel the need to be be mad against life anymore and i thought that because of everything he went through i couldn’t let myself hurting him more but he wasn’t even a friend anymore for me. I decided to break up a few months before the end of high school because i couldn’t handle more with him and i was going to move in another city to pursue my studies.

For a longtime i questioned myself if i was selfish during that period of our lives. If i could have done something more, what i could have said. Recently, i came up to the conclusion that at 15-17 i couldn’t handle in a better way the situation. We were way too young for these events, we weren’t ready to grow up that fast, we did our best and that was all we could do.

Honestly, since last january i finally ended up an old cycle of past traumas, i started to make peace with myself and to get over various issues. I was ready to move forward. I already said it and i will repeat it, my attraction toward this guy was the healthiest one i’ve never had. Everything was supposed to be fine. My two ex-boyfriends before him were clearly the results of my daddy’s issues and the one even before wasn’t someone i really considered as serious.

Also, i wonder if there could be a specific form of OCD which particularly affects relationships? I mean, i re-read the chat i had with him about his therapy and he told me he had a “form of OCD” not a “classical” one. I couldn’t find useful informations about the different forms of the OCD in its entirety, i only found things which are related to the compulsive part.