Dear cdylie:

I re-read and studied your three posts here in effort to be helpful. This is my understanding:

Your boyfriend is a very, very anxious person, very fearful. He is afraid that something bad will happen at any time. He expects bad things to happen. Each time he broke up with you, it was in effort to get rid of his fear about you being too far away from him. And every time, instead of calming down, he panicked and called you right back!

He is afraid that if you are far away from him, something bad will happen and he will lose you.

His pessimistic attitude, jumping to the worst conclusion first, seeing the worst in almost everything, having no joy, stuck, getting angry, all mean he is almost always scared, anxious (I define anxiety as ongoing, excess fear).

Notice how fearful, how anxious he is: “afraid of letting his cat went outside because he had a little problem with his landlord. He thought that his landlord will somehow hurt the cat.” He expects people to hurt him, to punish him, to make bad things happen.

“He wanted to shave his head so nobody will mess with him.”- he is scared. A lot.

Every (very) anxious person is sometimes calm, the brain must take a break from anxiety, and when he is calm, he is
“a loving, generous and understanding boyfriend.”

With my understanding now, I see the context of the pedophile comment he made: he is afraid to play with his future children!

His childhood must have been very unsafe and danger was everywhere, anytime. He needs competent psychotherapy to deal with his anxiety, to learn skills to endure his distress and manage it as well as to heal from his childhood trauma. He can manage and heal but it will take professional help, time and work.

You leaving for five months will be difficult for any boyfriend who is attached, but is especially difficult for him, maybe even impossible.

I don’t know how you can solve the five months absence problem; don’t see how he can handle it. Maybe if he learns that you do understand the depth of his fear, of his distress, maybe it will help.

Can you manage having a relationship with an extremely anxious person?

anita