Anita,

A pattern, and my interpretation goes something like this: She will text me something that she thinks is a joke. I don’t realize that it is a joke and respond if it she just said something serious. She will then say “You are not funny” and “We don’t have the same sense of humor.” Then she does “withdrawing” behaviors such as cutting off the texting, saying good bye without the usual affectionate emoticons, and significantly reducing texting the next day.

These behaviors indeed seemed “angry” to me, and I guessed that they are driven by the fear that she will not be understood in a deep way that she wants. I’m not saying, of course, that her behaviors will get her what she wants. Probably her behaviors, unless she changes them, will make it very difficult for her to have a sustained, close, relationship where she feels deeply understood.

These are only my guesses. The collapse of the relationship seemed to happen so fast that we never got deeply into what was going on with her when she would withdraw.