Dear Connie:

I want to understand a bit what happened here: you met a man recently, and “we agreed to be exclusive really early on”. Mid September he asked you to be his girlfriend and you gladly said yes. Within a week, “things changed drastically”, he shut down and became “really cold”.

He then told you that even though he “fell really hard for” you, he “needed some space to think”, that “he was scared of everything”. He asked you “why I liked him”. Soon after, you texted him “that I really missed him and even though we are both scared, I am determined to go through everything with him”.

Hours later he replied to you that he loved you and “asked to spend time together”. When you met he was apologetic and told you that “he collapsed sometimes and needed time to be alone and isolate himself”. You asked him then to let you know next time when he wants to be alone, so that you “would know what’s going on and how to help him”. He told you then that “it would  never happen again and he would make sure to let me know if otherwise”.

He then told you that “he loved me and wanted to marry me… to move in together, have kids with me.. Everything seemed so wonderful”.

Two days later, the two of you arranged a two-night sleep- over at his place. Right before you headed to his house, he texted a cancellation to you, “because he was sweaty and gross”. A little later he texted you that “he had dinner ready and wanted me to come”, asked you if you loved him and the two of you did get together. “That night we also talked a lot and he was really affectionate”.

Two days later he shut down again, “He got mad over something that’s really small”, then twice hung up the phone on you. Later he told you that “everything happened too fast and too much”, and that “he couldn’t do this anymore”.

During this short relationship you “gave him a lot of patience and warmth.. stayed cool and collected when he first disappeared.. didn’t blame him at all… I was calm and tried to communicate with him in a rational sense”.

My thoughts: that he was scared, that is a n0-brainer, isn’t it? He rushed into intimacy and then rushed out of  it, ran toward love and then ran away from  it. Problem is that this kind of behavior on his part, that cannot be something new for him. He has been in this kind of a situation before, maybe every time. Why didn’t he share that with you then, is my thought.

If I was you I would  have asked him at the time to tell me about his previous relationships with women- is this rushing toward and then rushing away, if that has been a pattern for him. I would have shared with him a bit about my relationship history, so it is not a matter of you fixing him but the two of you helping each other.

Did you ask him about his relationship  history when he first shut down and became cold?

anita