I am with Anita on this one. This is not how one should feel in a loving and nurturing relationship: “I began to monitor my actions and words to prevent this from happening…it began to drive me insane… the amount of stress/anxiety I was feeling became overwhelming for me… I was walking on eggshells.. I couldn’t take it anymore”. Actually if you were a woman and physically weaker (if the roles were reversed), you would feel scared, not just uncomfortable. And walking on eggshells is a definition taken straight out of an abusive relationship characteristics.

Did you ever tell her how her outbursts made you feel? If you did, what was her response?

Now when she is gone, you are no longer uncomfortable and remember only good things about her.

Having said all that… If you feel so strongly about her, you can try and talk to her over a cup of coffee. Inky is right – she may tell you to get lost and even get angry . Or she will agree to meet with you, hear you out and want to work things out. Either way you will get a result and hopefully will stop questioning your decision.

Richie,

From where I stand you did nothing wrong. It is not about you at all. She is not interested for whatever reason – still in love with ex, not ready, full moon… Doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does not want to be your girlfriend. I would advise to cut your losses and move on. There will be a girl out there who is happy to see you and your text messages. I know it’s easier said than done but this is how I see it.

Good luck!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Xenia.

Something else I want to share with you, Servio, and others who are suffering right now. I came to my therapist this morning feeling pretty low and anxious and soooo very tired from this roller coaster emotional ride. I brought in my journal which is half full at this point, I opened it in front of her and said half angrily and half in despair “So how can this relationship or this man be good for me if it causes me so much pain??! There are people out there who meet each other and everything goes smoothly. I am sure they don’t spend their days writing about their relationships! They are just living their lives and enjoying it! How come I am the one who has to work so hard and suffer??!”. She listened to me and told me that she is seeing at least 5 other people who are going through the exact same thing right now. And it only means something great wants to come out and I would learn something and grow in the process. And that I am not doing it for him or for the relationship but for me. If I stick with it and push through the pain, it will get better and I will have something wonderful at the end.

I left her feeling much better so maybe this will help you too.

I know I will have my bad days and I will feel worse and better and worse again before it completely goes away but I am making this commitment to myself for myself. Wish me luck, strength and patience. You guys know how unbelievably hard this is…

Servio,

Not sure if you ever visited conscious transitions website (it helps me reading some of the articles there) but here is a quote from there:
Anxiety can hang its hat on almost any hook. It can focus on relationships, fertility, parenting, health, the world, money, career, death. Within each of these topics, there are endless sub-topics that lure anxiety into its lair. If we’re talking about relationship anxiety, for example, the hook can be: lack of physical attraction, lack of sexual attraction, focusing in any area of perceived lack (education, intelligence, social fluency, humor, wit, height, ambition), religious differences, we never had an infatuation stage, or just a pervasive sense that the relationship is “wrong”.

So I think Inky is right – anxiety has nothing to do with who we are with. As for me, I never had an anxiety with unavailable or distant partners because I was too busy worrying whether or not they were still there for me 🙂 Anxiety came out with a reliable and consistent guy. It’s like my inner child feels safe to come out and voice her fears and anger finally.

I am doing a lot of journaling these days and even have some a-ha moments but the work is not over.  Guess I still have to go deep inside and uncover my issues layer after layer.

Hang in there and write back if you want to talk.

Saya, how are you feeling? I am going through the same thing and there are days when I think I can’t just take it anymore. I don’t want to leave him but I want a relief. This is a torture.