Hi, Anita.

I am doing very badly, much the same as the last time we talked. Yesterday marked our one year anniversary and also the first day since knowing him that he did not message me. He told me Friday night he would send me updates about his dad on Saturday, but nothing. I thought that maybe it’s just a lot of stressful stuff going on for him but it is NOT LIKE him to ever do this. I cannot process that a whole day passed and he didn’t speak to me. I know he is no longer obligated to reach out daily, even weekly, but it’s incredibly painful. I worry he may ghost me. I was going to try to work up the nerve to stop the communication myself, but it looks like he may be doing that first.

I am sick to think that the reason for him leaving me was because he devalued me as soon as I valued him as I mentioned earlier. You said you think I’m onto something with this, and unfortunately it makes sense and hurts a lot to wonder WHEN he decided I wasn’t special to him after this realization. The chase was over for him to prove his worth to me after I accepted him, and it’s like the rest of the relationship was him being bored/unchallenged with me. I mentioned earlier about him often trying to get me to be more mean to him/tease him more, and how his sexual fantasies revolved around him being shamed. I realized at a certain point how all of these things seemed too closely related and I was getting hurt by all of this because I am not a mean person and it was looking like I wasn’t satisfying this ongoing pattern/need for him. I would flat out tell him, “But I am not a mean person! I am nice and you should accept me for who I am without trying to change me.” He would laugh it off and say, “I’m not trying to change you, I just think it would be funny to see you do that sometimes.” But get this – it started turning into him even saying stuff like, “You’re too easy.” He would say that in reference to the fact that I let him go down on me on our first date. I would scoff at this and say, “Pardon me for having been that into you and not having sex in two years until that night.” We even joked when we first met that we were both touch and love starved and appreciated how open and safe we felt with each other and how irresistible we were to each other. (But I still made us wait 3 months before we had sex because I wasn’t ready for that yet). Anyway, for him to joke that I was “too easy” to win over was insulting even though it SEEMED like he was joking. He’d also say it in context to me laughing at all of his jokes and thinking everything he does is awesome. Forgive me for being massively attracted to someone who was reciprocating for once? That offended me too because it made me worry he was actually put off by me being so into him. But he was dating me and seemed into me… until it was over. Even on our second date he was joking about me laughing at everything he said and he said it was great because finally a girl finds his sense of humor attractive but it seems like he grew to be bored by it. Last night, I think I also just realized that him harping on the “you’re too easy” assessment of me could be him literally saying, “You’re too easy for me to chase. I got you too easily so I don’t respect you now. I need to feel like I have to prove my worth to someone and I am resentful that you accepted me too easily.” I bet this also accounted for the boredom he started to feel with me. This is the most painful realization if I’m anywhere close to being right.

Or that he gave up because it was easier to not have someone making him accountable for things he didn’t want to deal with. That’s the blame I definitely carry because he has actually been in therapy for his problems and he loves therapy. He thinks it’s a great tool and is an advocate for it because of his parents. He previously spoke about being disappointed in his friend for NOT wanting therapy. I thought it was safe for him to discuss himself. Plus, that growing up in a much more emotionally and mentally stable home than me was safe by default. But who am I to stand here and tell him what he’s doing wrong? He never did that to me and my trust and paranoia issues definitely wore on him, I’m sure. I feel sick over it. He never threw my therapy issues in my face until the night of the breakup. I know I have to have boundaries and I was trying to use what I’ve been taught in therapy – to finally stand up and speak when something bothers me. I think a part of the guilt in me is also STILL NOT KNOWING if me being offended by these thirst trap photos and him being out late with the trans person was actually warranted, or wrong of him. Did he flat out lie about their gender solely to look less guilty or was he truly protecting pronouns? It’s so confusing to me. He has to know I would have eventually found their social media. It was easy when he was only following a handful of people. I don’t want to be controlling and he can do what he wants, but I guess once you’re in a seemingly committed relationship, where does the discernment start and end? Was I being too overbearing with those boundaries?

I do believe you’re absolutely correct about taking on my parents’ shame. When I was in therapy, I learned that I had feelings of inadequacy because of this, so I have been made aware of it but it is INCREDIBLY hard to break out of. You’re right – my parents used alcohol when I was a child and my neighbor best friend’s mom almost threatened to call the cops on my parents a time or two for the loud music they were playing late at night while partying. I was always so embarrassed of my parents but also felt terrible for them and wanted to defend them. At school, I would find myself covering for them and lying about how they parent me and behave so my friends wouldn’t think badly of them. I had a boy once tell me I smelled like an ashtray because my parents smoked. One of my best friends also told me in kindergarten that my parents smoking would kill them and I was shocked to quickly learn that a lot of other parents in my grade were not smokers, and they had office jobs and were much younger than my parents. My dad was a sheetmetal worker and my mom was stay at home. My brother is also special needs/autistic and can’t speak, and when he was living with us before moving into a group home, we lived in fear because he ripped up our carpet and toilet from the floor, busted a hole in our bathtub, pulled out and smashed the drawers in my kitchen, etc. I had to go hide in cabinets or lock my bedroom door with my sister when he’d have an episode. So just going to a friend’s house and seeing carpet or a kitchen drawer was enough to make me jealous. A bathtub with no hole in it that has been covered with sheetmetal because we can’t afford any repairs? Absolute bitterness. I understand other people have had it MUCH harder than me though so I try very hard to not wallow. It’s hard though to date someone with an upbringing and life experiences from another galaxy.

I know logically I must remove myself from my parents’ shame because that is not mine to hold. But it doesn’t help when my dad passed away when I was 20 JUST as he was finally getting financial compensation for his injuries from being in combat. I am mad that he didn’t get to enjoy his youth and have anything, and that my mom was widowed and every single day I can see her completely crippled still by the loss of him. She doesn’t go out, she has no friends, no family she wants to connect with, she depends fully on my sister and I for everything she needs. She doesn’t want to do any hobbies, her only hobbies are working in the garden and decorating and these require physical mobility and money. And we help her out of love but also because we are indebted to her – she has graciously let us live with her while we also financially struggle. I try to remove myself from my mom’s issues when she vents and tell myself she keeps herself stuck. But I also see that she is physically and financially incapable of a lot of things she wants to do and it suffocates me. It makes me feel hopeless for her and for me. My therapist said years ago that I do indeed struggle with family enmeshment and I try to work through this but living here I think hinders me from separating at all.

And you’re right, I absolutely think that I found refuge in my ex, and even his parents when they met me and accepted and loved me. It’s not as simple as, “oh I want to marry into this rich family.” It’s, “Oh this rich family accepts me and thinks I’m good enough for them, and this guy from this impressive upbringing and who has had a really impressive life with a ton of experiences with travel and other people, who claims to love me so much thinks I’M impressive? Then I’ve won. As soon as he dumped me and I found those tagged photos of him from other countries and having all these other experiences without me, I felt like I was just abandoned not only by him but by someone saying I’m not good enough for them to do those adventures with.

The negative self-talk is definitely an issue too. I can’t help but blame myself for nagging him so much. He had tried to work this stuff out in therapy and I was still bringing stuff up and accusing him constantly. About two months ago, we had a day where he was ignoring me and I kind of took it out on him by saying that he’d eventually leave me because he was gonna get sick of me. He usually responded with love and joking but that time in particular, he snapped and confronted me. He said, “Look, I love you but it’s not fair to me for you to put these hypothetical scenarios and stuff onto me.” I told him I was so sorry and that I hated to make him feel that way because he was a very good person to me and it was stuff I struggled with in therapy from feeling that I was too much. I then asked him if he was feeling like this often. He said, “No, it hardly ever happens and it doesn’t really bother me much but sometimes I just worry that you think I’m inherently this bad guy with bad intentions. My intentions are good and I never want to hurt you.” I don’t see how he could go from that and reassuring me that we were still a team to two months or so later telling me he is struggling with other stuff.

Hi, Anita.

Thank you for your kind words. I feel for you that you had that kind of struggle in childhood too with your mother. I have had this feeling since I was old enough to start seeing people around me having more than me. It follows me everywhere and at 31, almost 32 soon… I am scared I cannot heal from this. I don’t know what I can do to brush off these feelings. It doesn’t help that being poverty level makes it feel like every man with even a middle class upbringing does not understand you at your core. I thought that being with a man who finally understands and acknowledges privilege and doesn’t throw up the fact that I’m “not doing enough to better myself” and shaming my family for being poor was a great sign he was a safe partner. I hate I lost that.

I am so glad that you have been able to work through it and I hope someday to be where you are at in your healing. I don’t know how to heal from a relationship that felt genuine and reciprocal and transparent until the moment I was dumped. The trust issues I brought into this relationship that inevitably might have partially ruined it for him are nothing compared to the new trust issues I have now. I just wish we could have communicated more and he wouldn’t have bailed the moment life and our situation got to be too much for him. I know avoidants will end things to protect themselves, but I can’t help but feel like if the love was truly mutual, he wouldn’t have been able to do this to me/us. And what I hate is that this guy knows not one bit of how much I am hurting.

I’ve been worried the whole time that as soon as I started showing him love and acceptance, I lost value and worthiness to him because he thinks someone who sees him as worthy is not a high value person. This would explain why he never embraced my compliments and even admitted at the beginning that he was hung up on being cheated on and rejected. I always worried he had that girl on a pedestal because he only believes what she confirms to be true for himself. I can’t win with someone like this if this is true. He even would say, “why do you like me? Why are you with me?” Jokingly. I always chalked it up to him not feeling good enough for me, but maybe it was that he felt too good for me.

You are probably right about him being able to distract himself constantly from his troubles. He self-admittedly told me at the beginning of our relationship when we had to weed discussion that he respected anyone who can “raw dog life” (referring to me because I told him I didn’t use any drugs or prescription drugs for my mental struggles). And he can easily go from one thing to another basically just from getting distracted easily in general with his ADHD. I am absolutely stuck and drowning in my sorrows right now. I’ve cried all day. He hasn’t reached out to me today yet, which has been his standard since the breakup. He usually messages me later in the evening but with it being Saturday, my mind is racing that he’s already numbing himself with someone else. He told me last night that he would give me an update about his dad’s heart attack today when he got the info together. I go back and forth so hard trying to figure out if I should go no contact and when and how. I know that I need to at least not see his stuff on social media anymore and we really can’t talk because getting any updates about his life I’m no longer a part of is torture. But I also don’t want to cut it off either because I know deep down he’ll never reach back out to me after this. I will probably never hear from him again and I can’t face that thought right now.

Also in response to Anita’s post:

Where you said, “I “hear” a little girl Stacy saying something like: I thought that I was finally Special enough/ worthy enough for someone to have a deep connection with me.” I definitely agree with the entirety of your post connecting that this relationship made me feel seen and special, and it was what I desperately wanted from my parents. However, I have had many guys try to give me attention and tell me I’m special/I’m worthy, etc. but I wasn’t attracted to them or in love with them. I’ve dated many guys and have never felt such safety as I did in this one. For me to get those unmet needs fulfilled finally by a guy I was genuinely attracted to and who claimed it was completely mutual and they seemed so self-aware and emotionally safe as a person because they were always willing to talk things out and take accountability AND be so calm and understanding to me? I just can’t shake the loss and it does seem like it was a once in a lifetime type of connection. And that I sabotaged it by being too paranoid and projecting trust issues on him. And by being really negative about my life in July.

But that’s IF the breakup was even due to him being annoyed by my self-sabotaging or negative behavior. If it was truly reduced down to sexual incompatibility, that’s even more humiliating. After the slapping request, nothing ever felt the same because deep down I started worrying he wasn’t being fulfilled. The moments where he started mentioning how something was sexy about a woman or a sexual scenario made me worry I wasn’t measuring up and keeping him interested. Most of the time, he would mention those scenarios and then say I would be hot as that person, or it would be hot for us to do this or that, and THAT didn’t bother me. I was flattered to be included in these fantasies. But some of the fantasies are not my cup of tea and I worried like you said earlier, that his dark side was coming out. I will say this and I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before or not but the last time we hung out and he said his deepest sexual fantasy was to bang a succubus, he said, “I don’t know what that says about me as a person” and laughed. I try to not judge because everyone has their preferences, and I just replied, “Well humans can have animalistic urges sometimes and I understand that it’s nothing personal against me” He responded with, “I just blame my past porn brain for that.” And I said, “well it’s only when these things AREN’T lined up with me and it makes me still worry.” And he said, “No I get it. You aren’t into that stuff because you’re a good girl. And that’s fine, I’m a good boy.” It was just incredibly weird to me for him to say that. Like I said, with the frequent seemingly harmless and light teasing about how he wished I were mean to him, and how I was a good girl/goodie two shoes, it’s hard to not take that personally and start dissecting if he really WAS bothered by me not being more “deviant” because then he’d turn around and acknowledge how much he likes me. Why did he say “I’m a good boy” after that, that day? Like you mentioned earlier, I do worry that he was perhaps always dealing with conflicting appetites here. I guess now he is free to have all the emotionally bankrupt sex he wants to have. If that’s what this boils down to. And I hate that I can’t hate him for that because I understand some people are much more sexually driven that I am. I don’t even really ever think about sex and that’s probably part of my problem. Connection comes first to me, sex is at the bottom of my priority list.

His ADHD was a big struggle for him and I’ve heard from others with ADHD that it’s truly an object permanence issue sometimes and if we are long distance, I can see him falling out of love due to this.

Also where you said that I may feel insignificant to him as a blip on his map like I was on my parent’s map? I do agree that I did not feel special to my parents, only in moments here and there. I know they loved me but I also don’t feel like I was a blip on their maps. What I was referring to

Hi, Anita.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I totally agree that shame seems to be ruling and ruining his life. I didn’t mention it in my original post but before the kink shame request even happened, he was already joking with me and seemingly trying to get me to be mean to him in various other ways early on. He’d say, “be mean to me” or “I just like to be teased, I wish you would be mean to me.” I laughed it off at first but then worried that he was still dealing with being hung up on the girl who cheated on him before he got with me. When he first brought up his ex situationship, he told me he wasn’t necessarily hung up on her, it was the shame he felt from allowing himself to be played and cheated on. I tried to believe him but for the rest of our relationship, I couldn’t help but worry that every time he wanted me to “be mean” to him, he was trying to work out getting over her rejection in some way. I have worried this whole time that I was the rebound from that situation and he just played me to get back at her and prove to himself he can keep attention, even if he doesn’t even really love or like me. I have worried this whole time too that this could be a running theme with him as I also started slowly noticing that every time I would try to initiate sexting, flirting with him, hitting on him, or just telling him I’d give him a massage or something soon when he’d complain about his feet hurting him from work that he would either deflect my advances or flat out ignore them and change the subject. This is an extremely sore spot for me as men have done this to me in the past as they were losing interest. Therefore, I started expressing to him that I was worried about him not actually liking me anymore, if there were any issues he was having that was blocking intimacy for him, etc. He always reassured me so earnestly that he loved me and that we were a team and he was happy with me but that he was awkward with compliments and gestures. I didn’t fully believe this as he seemed opened to receive this kind of attention at the beginning.

The explanation you gave about his shame kink was also something I considered. The night when we first FaceTimed about the slapping during sex suggestion, I told him I didn’t want to act it out with him sexually partially because I worried it was playing out his trauma. I even said I didn’t want to psychoanalyze him considering he’s lived his whole life with parents that do this, but that I worried it was because he wasn’t being fulfilled by me. He told me that wasn’t what it was, he just thought it could be something fun. I told him I could be open to it in the future, but apparently he couldn’t wait? I don’t know. Months later, we brought up his fantasies again and he said, “Okay so I have been thinking about why I like that.” (I always loved how self-aware he seemed and that he would ponder his behavior). He explained it’s not anything to do with shame kinks, that he doesn’t actually want me to call him stupid or a loser. He said it was more like the lowly pool boy scenario who somehow seduces the older rich woman into his sexual advances. It’s the thought of being a loser and being able to win someone better than you over sexually. I shook my head… as this sounded way too on the nose yet again with a callback to his feelings of inadequacy. Not only that, but all of his fantasies are never about women like me. I told him this. He said that he can be attracted to more than one type of woman, but it was still really was starting to wear on my confidence. I was born and am still poverty level, he was born upper middle class. I’m mostly loving and nice, but I tried to sprinkle in jokingly mean teases to please him. I forgot to mention that we talked about our sexual preferences early on, and there seemed to be no issues over our differences in sexual experience or preferences. I told him I was vanilla. He told me he wouldn’t call himself vanilla but that he had worked out and explored his sexuality in his 20’s. I believed him considering he had traveled the globe and admitted to casual hookups and even at least one orgy in another country I know of. I just feel perpetually insignificant to him with my lack of experience in all these areas. I have never traveled outside of my own state due to poverty issues. I have only been with a handful of men, and these were all serious and committed sexual relationships. I feel like a blip on his map of grand adventures. I know some of these things are chips on my shoulders from childhood insecurities playing out. I also worry that he’s experiencing FOMO through these Instagram girls… he’s getting distracted not only their bodies but also their lifestyles that he misses so much. The traveling Tinder girl from his past traveling the globe, and his new Tik Tok coworker traveling doing their cosplay. And he sees he will never have that kind of lifestyle with me because I am broke and have never traveled.

It’s interesting to me that you point out that this shame could be more from his childhood and less from the cheating ex or his f***boy past. He mentioned not only feeling inadequate to his family, but that he was also constantly trying to do better and prove to himself and people that he was a good person. He overextends himself a lot for people. “I just want to be a good employee” or “I just want to be a good person”  and “I just want to be the best boyfriend I can for you” are all regular phrases I heard from him. The night he broke up with me, he said, “I wanted to believe it and prove to myself so hard that I could make this work. I know I SHOULD be happy but…” I took from that statement that perhaps he KNOWS he SHOULD want the stability of me at this age, that he knows he SHOULD be attracted to the love I am willing to give him but for whatever reason he is just not open to receive it still? Or perhaps he was referring to the fact that he SHOULD be attracted to me or feel romantically for me, but that he does not and feels guilty. I even asked him in late June in person why he didn’t seem to let me love him because he had seemed to reject some of my flirty advances that night. He said, “I am doing that!” referring the fact he had driven to meet me, just attended a concert together, and we were on the couch cuddling.

I just assumed when he told me, “my past issues I thought I had worked out in therapy are eating me alive” were referring to the past issues of him being a “creep/bad person” to women. I never knew what else he struggled with and worked on in therapy. It could be a plethora of other unrelated mental demons and I’m focusing too much on sexual issues that he may not even be struggling with! He also mentioned to me on several occasions that his best friend from his hometown was still in his f***boy stage at 31 that HE had grown out of and he was frustrated with his friend for not doing the work he had done. He told me he had to work so hard on himself to not be a piece of crap to others and he hated seeing his friend still stuck. He was also super frustrated that he couldn’t seem to get any reciprocity from these childhood friends, that he had to always drive up 6 hours north to them and they never wanted to come south to see him. Not only that, but that he was sick and tired of being shamed for wanting to vent and have conversations beyond surface level with them and they weren’t open to therapy or vulnerability with him. Right after this, he grabbed my hand, kissed it, and told me that was why he appreciated me and was so grateful for me… because I was the first person in his life as a peer to provide this sense of comfort to him. I felt so good about that and it was yet another reassurance that his past red flags were worked through.

I just wish I knew what what made him just permanently give up on this. I worry that the timing of the new coworker Tik Tok star in his life was a little too convenient. (Also I forgot to mention but in your summary of my original post, he actually was liking the photos of the girl he had matched with on Tinder before me. The person who he went out late with the night before our weekend together was the Tik Tok new coworker. But he has recently liked one of their posts too, one of them bent over with their shorts creating a wedgie up their crack and you can literally see genitalia). I worry that almost 12 months was a good enough effort for someone who has never even had a relationship before. Plus, he might have been freaked out to think his first girlfriend might be his last and he wasn’t willing to give up his freedom just yet? It’s just sad because I feel like most people work out these things through their 20’s. I don’t even know if fear of commitment WAS the issue, or if it was that he simply lost love and attraction to me over time through the distance or because of his supposed inability to stay focused on just one female, or perhaps he never even truly felt it in the first place. Maybe he realized there was too much incompatibility for him. He does smoke weed and I cannot be around it because it aggravates my allergies and asthma, plus I just think it looks and smells gross and I grew up in a drug filled home, he did not. So it’s a childhood trigger too for me. He asked me very early on if this was a dealbreaker because he wanted to work with me to make me feel more comfortable if I was willing to. I said unfortunately yes unless I could not have to ever see it, smell it, or be around it. He agreed with no problem and he never once pressured me or held it against me. We checked in a few times in the relationship to see if he was feeling judged or anything and I told him I greatly appreciated how he was handling it with me. However, we ran into a sticky situation in mid July. One of his other childhood buddies from 6 hours up north was getting married on July 29th and he invited me to be his wedding date. When the date got closer, he told me he just wanted to let me know that weed would be at the apartment. I thought it was just gonna be in a reception hall, but no they moved the wedding to basically a more casual setting and decided they were gonna have a smoke session back at his friend’s apartment that night. I went from thinking I was just gonna tolerate being around it at a big event hall to being essentially hot boxed in a small living room for hours with 6 other pot smokers. I told him I was gonna have to decline going knowing this because I wanted him to have a good time and not feel uncomfortable with me being uncomfortable there. He respected my boundary and told me his only concern was just how I was ever gonna be able to meet his friends then because every time they met, they were exclusively smoking pot the whole time. I asked him if we could EVER compromise just once, that maybe one time I could go meet them and he could opt out of smoking that day. He agreed with no issues. Turns out, the Tik Tok coworker he’s now hanging out with ALSO smokes pot. I’m afraid this is just really not working in my favor here. I have never wanted him to feel unaccepted because I told him I don’t mind he does it, I just don’t want to be around the smoke of it. I asked him if they could just do edibles as that would not bother my issues. He said that edibles hurt his stomach. Maybe he started sensing compatibility issues he was not willing to work through because that wedding did in fact happen almost a month prior to the day when he claimed he started feeling unhappy. Maybe they warned him I was controlling or judging him.

I’m just so confused because I saw a person who was so loving and expressed how much they appreciated our deep connection, something he said he never thought he could have. He was the first to say “I love you” to me, and he posted an Instagram story the next day exclaiming how he was head over heels in love with me, with a video of me singing from the night before. He told me at the beginning that he had so much love to give and was so ready to give it to someone and share his life with someone and finally make his life have meaning over hookups and surface level conversations. I don’t understand how someone can be so willing to lose their supposed biggest comfort and support system while they are at their lowest… why can’t we just work through our problems as a team as he’s always wanted before? I had hoped that my love and care would have been enough for him and we could help heal parts of each other. He was healing me by never shaming me for coming to him with insecurities. Until… he gave up.

For my friends to feel like he’s simply boiled down to a creepy player addicted to porn and “deviant” kinks who doesn’t care about women and just used me greatly confuses me. I saw a completely different side to him this entire relationship and not at all what the definition from Jezebel states. My friends think he has a porn addiction, or is struggling with himself over a sexual addiction and is not being honest with himself as to how much it is still controlling him considering he has alluded at least three times to my memory of having struggled with “porn brain” in the past or watching too much porn as a teenager. He said he was past it though! I truly believed him. Once again, I don’t even know if this issue is the main issue he’s battling or not. The stuff that this Tik Tok coworker posts is definitely too sexual and dark for me. I worry that’s what he’s ACTUALLY into and he just was afraid to express that to me. I worry I wasn’t enough to keep him from straying away.