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Taylor2992

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Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • #438232
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    The thank you was in regard to your last post 😊!

    #438230
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    Thank you, Anita ❤️. I know this thread is something I will come back to whenever I feel confused and anxious.

    #438217
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    Hi Anita,

    I can see that all clearly now, this was really helpful! I know that I am very sensitive to the prospect of rejection – I guess that’s how anxiety works, you just want the answer. I get impatient to know if someone is going to work for me or not, but it’s obviously not that black and white.

    I do struggle with what the “appropriate” response is as you say. I feel like I can’t trust myself to know what behaviors will lead me to a healthier place, or will be digestible by the person on the receiving end. It could be that you’re right in this case I should have just ignored him – problem was he was still contacting me, and I don’t feel comfortable ghosting people but it also felt fake to just chat with him like nothing was wrong. I guess this comes back to boundary-setting – do you suggest just asking people to stop contacting you when you start seeing evidence that are “a little bit interested, but not that much”?

    This brings things back to the original title of my post which is how to know if it’s my own insecurity with normal fluctuations in interest, and it scares me that I’m pushing away good people who really are interested. But based on your insight, it probably doesn’t matter since healing myself is the first priority, and I can always reconnect with people if I decide later I made the wrong decision.

    Your insight about my relationship with my mom is super eye opening and makes more and more sense the more I talk through this.

     

    Helcat,

    Thank you so much for your advice to just match the other person’s level of interest and effort, that feels like a really simple thing to try. I am also going to try writing the list of what I like and don’t like based on past relationships. And you make a lot of good points about how different men and women often show up in relationships and their comfort level with certain things.

    Thank you both so so much, this was beyond insightful and helpful for me. ❤️

    #438193
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    Hey Helcat,

    Thank you for the responses! I definitely agree with all of that. For this particular recent relationship though, are you suggesting that I should not have asked for clarity and just taken his hot and cold behavior as a sign he wasn’t interested and moved on (without a conversation)? Or maybe you’re suggesting I should have given him more open-ended time and space to see if he started showing interest in seeing me in person again?
    <p style=”text-align: left;”>I am in therapy and boundaries is an area I’m working on a ton. One of those boundaries is not participating in relationships that don’t serve me. Determining what is “enough” information to know it’s the right time to cut it off is difficult for me, so I wanted to have an open conversation with him about what isn’t working for me as well as hear his perspective. In this, I get more data on whether this is a person I want to continue to get to know or not. Do you have suggestions for other ways to know? Maybe my behavior comes from a place of impatience, but in past relationships I have stuck around for many years feeling in limbo with inconsistent connection.</p>
    Or perhaps…it doesn’t really matter what I decide on any given relationship – if I can’t heal myself a relationship won’t feel good regardless. Curious what you think!

    Anyways I’ve made up my mind for now on this particular relationship that I don’t want to invest more. He’s messaged me a few times since then looking for my attention on unrelated things, which to me speaks volumes – I’d like to think that in a healthy partnership, when I initiate a difficult conversation I won’t be blown off.

    #438183
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    Anita,
    <p style=”text-align: left;”>I think you are right because when I read your words I feel really emotional in a way of feeling understood. I wish I could remember more from my childhood to validate this but I guess hard evidence isn’t really necessary to know what is true.</p>
    To answer your question, yes I do think that accurately describes the pattern! I am always thinking about how I can make the men I date comfortable and happy enough to eventually support my needs. This is also I think why I used to stay in relationships too long, waiting.  Now I’ve gotten better at recognizing what doesn’t serve me and moving past these relationships. In fact the one guy I felt this pattern with a few years ago, I ended things amicably after about 3 months and he is now one of my absolute dearest friends. Once the expectation of a romantic relationship is gone, I can appreciate people for the things they offer outside of emotional support. It’s scary to imagine never having a healthy romantic relationship but is also something I can probably find peace with, worst case 🙂

    Last question – when you recognized the source of your pattern, what work did you do to make peace with it?

    THANK YOU <3

    #438175
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    Hi Helcat,

    That’s a good point! I think you are right about the impact of the relationship on my emotional state certainly feels much more weighty than it should for the length of the relationship. However I think the is the main point – how do I break this pattern?

    In my behaviors I don’t believe I overly invested. We saw each other about once a week and talked maybe around once a day which felt like a reasonable pace. Sure I had sex with him but I don’t feel like it was a game changer in how I felt about him. Only after I sensed him distancing did I start thinking about the relationship a lot and craving more closeness. This is consistent with my pattern. The idea of “feeling” less invested in these kind of people is exactly the “problem” I’m trying to solve.

    #438174
    Taylor2992
    Participant

    Anita – wow thank you so much for your thoughtful response, you are amazing!

    I came to the same conclusion – all I can do is keep working at it and know that the work is never really finished.

    But you make a good point about the childhood stuff – I do still feel very at a loss about the source. I really appreciate you sharing your personal experience and it sounds really difficult, I’m sorry to hear that you went through that. On the surface my relationship with my mom looks quite different but the more I think about it the more I wonder if there are underlying similarities. My mom is a very anxious person and I’d describe her as codependent (for lack of a better term, I don’t want to paint her in a negative way). She has described her relationship with my dad as him “saving” her. She sought approval from her abusive father despite him rejecting her over and over, literally until the day he died. Often I think this must be part of where my issues come from, but I can’t recall any specific emotional trauma directly in my relationship with either of my parents. I have had this pattern in romantic relationships since high school – my first boyfriend cheated on me after 3 years together, my second boyfriend was a verbally abusive situationship in college, and my third boyfriend was a 6 year relationship where we lived together and he blindsided me with a breakup after his parents’ divorce. These experiences were quite traumatic for me but I have read that usually these unhealthy patterns start with childhood, not with adult relationships. I guess maybe I’m still blocked in figuring this out and I don’t really know the steps to get there.

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