Hi Ericah89,

It seems your boyfriend has a conflict within himself. He does not know what he wants, there are few desires that pulls him in different ways, and they are quite balanced and do not make him able to move forward. As I understand, he lived a lot of his life with his family who promoted a peaceful lifestyle which is not oriented toward personal growth but more toward mutual support and availability. On the converse, you showed him something new, how to become a successful person for himself or for you as a couple. By doing so, you challenge his past and what he once was. By agreeing on the future projects, somehow you’ve been killing his past. But his past is always there inside him and it looks like he did not really move on completely. Unfortunately, this is not something he can easily discuss with you. After all the agreements, after all your efforts, after everything you’ve done and believed together, how can he show you his doubts, and start killing your own resolve? He tried his best to fight his past, but it is still there. Maybe he realized that it was too late to be really successful as you both like him to be. He tried to become oblivious of his conflict by getting drunk.

Now he does not want to pollute your beliefs with his own worry, with his own history that still makes him unable to lift up. He tried his best with you, he tried to overcome everything. He wanted to believe into what you showed him, he looked ahead into your eyes, far and far in a world that looked so shining. Now, after long investigations, work and hopes, he found the problems. And I’m sad to say that sometimes, there is no logical solution out of them, but a realization of one’s own feelings that drive a person to want opposite things. And when that happens, that person has to choose, and he chose. He will not stay there, to fight and make you see his contradictions, maybe because he does not want to turn your friendship into bitterness, maybe because he wants to spare you the headaches, maybe because he cannot clearly see with you at his side supporting so fiercely one of the parts of his mind.

There is a part of him, you will not accept easily. That’s because you both tried your best to dismantle it. Investigating it together will cost to you both sorrow and harm. Nobody assures that you will overcome it, and you may find yourself bitter and defeated along the way. Then you’ll realize you lost a great part of your life, energy and time. I understand you feel that now something is missing now, that a lot was for nothing, and that the source of your energies and inspiration has suddenly stopped. However, if you kept drinking from it, after the change, chances are you would get sick. Moreover, now you and he can still celebrate your travel, the challenges you fought happily together, even if it was a failure, it was a good journey, and you tried both your best with sincerity, understanding and mutual acceptance. If you keep going, while he does not trust that there will be success anymore, the journey itself may become bad and sad.
You will need to learn to go without that source of inspiration. This does not mean you should stop talking with him, but you should stop seeing into him those hopes, those quests, those dreams you once wanted to share. Do not make him or his goals, your goals, do not make you or your goals, his goals, make him your companion. Once you do this and really do this, you’ll have a clear mind to see once again who he is, and why he made this choice. Then, maybe you can start anew, or realize that after all he was not meant for you.

Hi Runedelavince,

I assure you it was nothing personal and I did not aim to cast a bad light on you, we are all in anonymity here.
Nevertheless, I did not say that you as a person needed a therapist, but I said that you two as a couple needed a therapist.
If you really can forgive and forget, and can trust him again, then it is really fine. Tough, it is not the best thing to remain with him no matter what he does.
So my advice is the following: try to send him a message and explain to him that you are sorry you walked away from him, explain that it was your reaction because of the previous disappointment. Tell him that you thought about it and you are willing to forgive and forget and start anew. Tell him you are going to handle your future anxious reactions a little better. Tough, try to not stay with him if he does not acknowledge his shortcomings as well. If he does not answer to your reply move on. If he disappoints you again, as you said, move on.

One further advice for handling your anxiety: think that he is a man, a creature of the world. He is driven by many instincts you have no power to control, he may some rationality, agree with you on something, but later he may change his mind. He is not a kid, so you cannot blame him, he is free in the constraints of the laws. Embrace his freedom, embrace his instincts, accept him for whatever he does. He cares for you one day? Be thankful and glad. He stays with somebody else the next day? Give him your blesses either hope he may return or move on. Love him for everything he is, as colorful blinking star in the ever-moving infinity of the sky.

Hi Balancedojo,

Maybe you can share with us a bit more details: what did she actually say? What things did change from good to bad according to her perspective? What was your behavior she qualified as manipulative?

Maybe you can also try to talk with friends who are close to her. You may get some more insights on the matter. But understand they may be loyal to her, so when you inquire try to be respectful and understand it may not be easy for them to tell you everything.

Hi Lars,

You are welcome. I’m just sorry I cannot relieve your pain any better.
I suppose that if you did not agree that things were actually wrong, your excuses did not look sincere. That may be exactly why she wanted to see you face to face: to look at that subtle clues in your eyes, that can allow her to determine whether you really thought you were wrong or not.

Hi Lars,

I’m not a woman, but I’ll try to give you as many insights as possible.

My guess is that she has been thinking over and over about why she felt ill with you at some point, why things degenerated and why you broke in the end. She found out some ‘reasons’ and she blamed you for them. However, she still had one hope, that after such a long time apart you actually acknowledged those reason and showed how sorry you were. She was smiling because she was happy she could finally speak her point to you, maybe she also started feeling relieved, because she had her confirmation: it was a good idea to leave, because you did not realize what you did wrong. She had her final proof. Maybe, she also come to assure herself that she did not have any more feelings for you. In a sense, she wanted to look at you in that very moment, push on your image all the disapprobation she could have thought about, so that the bitter feelings would erase the good memories and make it easier for her to forget you. She was pleased to look at you and feel nothing.

Now, I’m not saying you actually did something bad. You did something bad to her eyes. However, I believe a spider would also say that a fly did something bad when it escaped from the web. You did not tell us what she accused you of. Nevertheless, if you lost your job and experienced difficult moments, chances are you’ve been very stressed during that time. Maybe you were worried and scared and asked her to lend an emotional hand. She found herself unable to help you, as she started feel that emotional pain as well. A pain she may accuse you to be responsible of (just because you pushed that on her and you did not allow her to be happy as before). Asking for her support in a moment of need was not wrong, but it seems she perceived it as a wrong thing: like you caught her in a trap of unhappiness after giving her the hope of an eternal bliss. In other terms, she wants a man that handles alone his emotional pain, and share with her only the good things. She just realized you are not that man. Anyway, that also maker her a bad choice for you. After she was not there when you needed her.

If what I said up above looks wrong to you, please let us know what actually she accused you of.

Hi Popi,

Sometimes, I also took a look at the profile pictures of the girl I was in love with when I was in high school more than ten years ago. There are a lot of people who pray every day in front of the representation of their favorite god. So if you want to go on his profile and adore him, I don’t think that’s a bad hobby unless you become dependent and cannot do anything else but that.

Really, it would be healthy to forget about your ex, and the best way to do that is to not look at his profile. Why don’t you take a interest to some other man’s profile? They may actually reply to some of your messages.

Hi Regina,

The easiest thing to do is to reply “Yes, you are right” to whatever she says, and try to think about something else. For example, do not focus on her words, focus on the tone of voice and try to imgine a little child that begs for attention. She wants to play with her favourite toy: you, if you stay still like a robot long enough, that game will eventually be no longer fun. Use always the same set of answers “Oh sorry I forgot”, “Oh I’m absent-minded today I was thinking about something else”, “You are welcome to come at the family’s party”. Be boring, repetitive, lifeless and dead.
You’ve got everybody at your side, anything she may say about you to others will not affect them in any way. Feel safe.

If you want to help her break from that habit of her, after some training of the behavior above, you may start alternating between being kind when she is kind and ignoring her when she behaves bad.

When you are at home in private, teach your daugther you own values and how to defend herself against such aggressions. Sending your brother’s sister away from your daugther will not help her cope with other similar minded people she may find in life. What is someone starts acting like that at school? With such a training, your daughter will already know how to deal peacefully with the situation.

Hi Erin,

My answer is no if you want to keep things kind and nice for the parter at fault and you want the other to not be disappointed anymore. That person’s action has been done too many times, and now it has become an habit, and I suppose words and empathy were not enough to change it. You can break such an habit in two ways. You either apply randomly a strong action every time the bad behaviour happens and you make that punishment always more painful at every occurrence but not threatened in advance, or you give that person randomly some very nice reward when he actually does something good and this reward have to be always better but not agreed in advance. As you see, it is like you are training a dog, and personally it feels like depriving that person of his human dignity; not to count that punishment or rewards come at your own expenses; the older the person, the more time it will take. In my view, the easiest thing to do is to break the relationship (let’s say after at least 3 disappointments). If the partner at fault cared for the other, he/she will feel ill and that will be his/her punishment, a few months later one may try to re-establish the relationship and see whether that person learned the lesson. If the partner at fault did not care, then it was better the relationship actually ended.

Anyway, do not forget that one can still salvage the relationship by being a pious saint that forgives his/her partner every time.