Dear Liz:

I will summarize your thread first and then comment on it.

You didn’t date for five years. During those five years you worked to better yourself and to love yourself and you went through healing from years of toxicity (italicized are your words). Early on in this relationship you figured that if you take the right action, the two of you will move in together. That was your plan, but you didn’t communicate that to  him.

You then decided to move to a big city, hoping the two of you will be living there together. He then told you that his plan was to join the Peace Corps and live far, far away from you. That triggered lots of hurt in you, lots of anger. What followed was a lot of fighting, initiated by you.  You then slept with another man.

My input: mutual plans of course, need to be mutual, that is, discussed and agreed upon. The right action on your part would have been to initiate such discussion, to ask him specific questions about his plans, about his feelings for you. Better not have your individual plan for the two  of you without his consent.

When he told you of his plans, which were different from yours, you got triggered. All that past hurt felt present and real. Anger came right after the hurt. It is that anger that caused the fighting and it is that anger, I believe, that led you to sleep with another man, anger and helplessness.

It  is natural for old hurts to get triggered, because old hurts exist in the brain and we don’t shed our brain. It takes a lot  of work and a lot of time during  times  of distress, to undo those old experiences, that is, to undo those connections formed  in the brain. And so, it is now. during this time of distress (more than during the more peaceful five years before) that you have the opportunity to start undoing those connections.

My suggestion is that you don’t focus on him as the … solution, to not focus on whether or not he will come back to you. But focus instead on you and your life. It is not about whether you are “the right person” for him: his future action will be about what motivates him, what he values. His motivations, his values preceded you. Just as your motivations and values preceded him.

You asked: “Did  I cheat?”- you were angry, is what I am thinking, angry and impulsive. And this relationship is ending. There may be a long distance relationship to come, but the relationship you had  already ended when you found out that too much of the relationship (the moving in together plan) existed  only in your mind.

I hope you post again with your thoughts and feelings.

anita