Dear Connie:

My thoughts, developed as I type (I needed your verification that my understanding is correct before thinking further):

In the beginning of July he wrote to you that he “will not be responding to you at all, as a way to help you, as you requested”- but ten days after that statement, he did respond to you.

There are a couple of suspect elements here, for me: his willingness to suffer is one (” I will willfully continue to suffer”)- being willing to suffer, the concept of it is suspect to me. Is this guilt-tripping you, as if saying: I am suffering because of you! Or his message to you or to himself can be: I suffer, therefore I am a good person.

Continuing with that statement: ” I will willfully continue to suffer, knowing that this is for the best and what you ultimately want, and will not be responding to you at all, as a way to help you, as you requested”- he is giving you all the responsibility for the breakup of the relationship, presenting himself as a passive reactant to the active actor of the relationship: you. He is only kindly accommodating you is his message.

Regarding the long email he sent you: ““…These last couple weeks have been so hellish…I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t work, I can’t focus…I think of you literally every moment of every hour, every day, literally.”- I feel uncomfortable about his statement that he thinks of you literally every moment. He wrote “literally” twice. It is a lie. It is impossible to be literally the truth. Why did he lie, I ask myself.

He wrote: “I feel like I’m in prison, in a way, and the only freedom is being close to you, but I know that can’t happen and it is killing me”- I … sense the unpleasant scent of dishonest manipulation here: here is a man experiencing hell, a prison that is killing him, but he has no choice but to stay in hell/ prison because… hell/ prison is what you chose for him, where you want him to be… and he is only to kind to accommodate you.

anita