Dear Lady/ Ladybug:

In the following, I will quote what you shared here and in your previous threads, as Ladybug. The only changes I made to the quotes are capitalizing letters in the beginning of sentences and correcting some minor spelling and grammatical mistakes (ex., “hes” corrected to his or he’s). The bold letters and italicized features are my addition, not yours.

You met this man at a martial arts gym about February 2016 when the two of you were in your very early twenties. During the first two years of dating,  “We started arguing about stupid things… I used to be quite insecure and I didn’t give him much time to himself…I may have come across as a horrible woman… he did everything to keep me happy.. He at times became very distant and I became very insecure but we always made it through the difficult times”. Later you wrote about that time: “when we didn’t live together, I would only see him once a week which was challenging”, and “I may have suffocated him for some time“.

At one time during the two year dating relationship, he “took a week break from the relationship to figure things out and wasn’t sure if he was going to get back together with me, which by the end of that week he did”. This is what you wrote about your emotions and behavior during that one week break: “I was in so much pain and anxiety I couldn’t eat, I barely slept.. I locked myself in my room for days and barely came out. I sent him so many texts asking him to be there for me.. After the third day I wanted to take my life and I told him the pain is too much and that I felt sick”. He then rushed to you, and you “stopped texting him so much”, and “he started texting and checking up on me but I didn’t respond or if I did I responded very neutral.. I told him my friends suggest I speak to other guys.. and suddenly he wanted to talk more.. and I could tell he was trying to get close again”, and the relationship resumed.

*During that first break, if not before, you started this pattern of “hot and cold behavior towards him” (“I try a little hot and cold behavior towards him just so that he doesn’t get comfortable… I disappeared for a weekend and didn’t tell him anything of where I’m going and I refused to answer his calls or respond to his messages which led to him freaking out and calling my friends and family”, etc.)

A few months after that first week long break, your parents lost their home and their new place didn’t have space for you. The two of you then moved into his mother’s place. Next, she kicked the two of you out, and “he invested a lot of his money into us moving out on our own”.

May 2018, while living together, the arguments continued (“he was just being lazy and forgetful so we would always get into arguments trying to get him to take initiative… We are stubborn people so we would argue.. but none of our arguments have gotten to a breaking point”, “We both became emotionally drained because of the arguments.. He feels we have been arguing about meaningless stuff which only has made him bitter”). You mentioned that you threw at him a lot of emotional distress (“He would of run for the hills with all the emotional distress I threw at him last week”). You “kept sending him emotional texts”. At one point you sent him a long text about how unhappy and insecure you were feeling. Following that text he initiated the second break (“This break came after I had sent him a long text of how unhappy and insecure I was feeling“). He then “asked for a break and only this time he said he doesn’t know how long it will take or if he will get back together with me”. Your reaction: “I practically went into depression.. I completely broke down for 2 weeks crying non stop”.

You wrote about the second break: “He says he needs to be alone and can’t be in a relationship right now but no real action has been made to move out on both our sides… We gym together and haven’t told anyone about us being on a break… we still carry a normal life together. We agreed that we won’t mess with anyone else until we are clear of what’s happening between us… We don’t talk about the break or our relationship.. I have no idea how long this break is going to last. I work all day so he stays at home and currently has a knee injury”, June 2018.

The second break included no more arguments on one hand, and limited affection at times, and no affection or eye contact at other times:  “He has moments of loving nature but then he also has these cold moments”, “He still cuddles me at night, we laugh and talk, and we even have sex (we try to keep  it purely physical)… the intimate kisses, hugs and eye contact has stopped…we don’t hold hands or kiss.. Only time we kiss is when we have sex…He has completely disconnected from being emotionally intimate, he tries to not make too much eye contact and sometimes he accidentally speaks to me in his gentle baby voice which was our thing when we were a loving couple… He sometimes seems emotionally disconnected and then at times he says he’s a baby and wants me to hold him and play with his hair”.

You asked him June 2018, one month into the break, where you stand. His response: “he put up a cold front and said we are still  on a break and that if cuddling and being intimate is too much for me, he’ll back off”. The intimacy, minus “intimate kisses, hugs and eye contact” continued.

The month after, July 2018, you wrote: “There have been improvements. The eye contact is improving. He said that I could hold his hand at an event we went to. He put his arms around me and couldn’t stop smelling my fresh clean hair. He even plays with my hair and brushes my hair out of my face and curls it behind my ear. So there has been a change”. You then “told him to make a decision.. if he needs me to move out I’ll make a plan. And his response was ‘I don’t need you to go anywhere. I do feel like I want to be single though,  but we can work towards something better but for now we can keep things as they are'”.

The month after, August 2018, after he won a big fight, you wrote: “This break practically ended on its own. He calls me his girlfriend and speaks about us as if none of the break drama happened”, but no conversation about the break or the nature of the relationship has taken place: “I do want to speak to him about everything but I’m waiting for the right time.. having a serious conversation like this too soon can send him back to his anxiety”.

As things improved August, your anger at him went up (“He wanted to be reckless and free.. All that was left  was an arrogant, selfish, ruthless, heartless, emotionless, depressed, confused, and broken man… I unfortunately am dealing with a commitment phobe with childhood issues… He’s very lazy and he’s at home during the day as I am at work but everyday I come home to a messy house. It is tiring but I try and not feel resentment“), and his sex drive went down (He doesn’t seem to think about sex as often and doesn’t notice the signs that I’m turned on.. I told him how  I’m feeling a little frustrated from the lack of sex and he confessed that he struggles to get sexually excited. I told him it’s caused from lazy habits and it needs to change in order for your sex life to improve… Now that we are doing much better and our relationship is in a good place, I can’t understand why he has such a low sex drive… He used to be very big on sex and he always had a much higher sex drive than me but that seems to have just died down..  lucky if we have sex once a week”).

September 2018, you wrote: “I do have some pain and anger for what he did.. we are still yet to talk about the break… that needs to happen in its right time.. to ensure this type of thing never happens again”. Your anger was still up: “he will never own up  to a stupid decision driven by stupid emotions.. He will try and justify and make it sound like he knows what he’s doing. Trying to get a head strong person to confess their wrong doings is like trying to move a mountain.. it still infuriates me that he is continuing our relationship innocently and has never apologized for the pain he caused me… I am less accepting of his lazy habits and instead of keeping quiet and picking up his slack, I make it known what standard I’m willing to accept from him”.

October 2018, “He has recently told me that we need to have more friends and that we need to get more away from each other. He said that he can’t miss me if he’s always spending time with me”.

Two months later, December 2018: “He has been feeling very suffocated and says he doesn’t feel like he makes his own decisions. I do have an issue with being over clingy at times and  … I tend to rely on him to take a lot of my emotional rants when I get overwhelmed... He is afraid of what the relationship does to him and he even told me he is no longer in love with me… He then opened up through heavy sobbing and crying that he is so confused and he doesn’t know what he’s doing… we both  sat on the edge of our bed and I asked him once again if he wants me to stop fighting for him and move on.. and (he) couldn’t answer me”. Next, he “suggested we get high and tipsy to relax us. So we did … and suddenly we both felt electricity between us ad we ended up kissing and had sex… The last thing I remember him saying he needed was to be alone”. You then suggested that he stays at his relatives and have no contact with you for a while. He then “asked how I am going to cope”, and you told him “I will have to suffer and deal with the pain”, and that you “wasted 3 years of my life and love”. The next evening he packed a small bag, and said “he will be back in the morning”, then left.

Eleven months later, November 2019, you wrote: “he just doesn’t do anything, goes into a dark place where he’s demotivated to train  and ends up hanging around the house and doesn’t clean up after himself…  he keeps looking for things to complain about like that he feels suffocated and he feels he can’t make his own decisions.. He does nothing and it’s like he doesn’t know what to do or what he wants… Still today he gets in the weird space where he isn’t being productive in his life.. He blames me for the way he’s feeling (trapped, not confident, inability to think and make individual decisions)… His confusion and ups and downs are really stressful… He tends to always find an issue in our relationship… I .. may have suffocated him for some time but I am really working on letting him have his space.. but he is always going through highs and lows… I’m at home all day and he also  is at home a lot more often, we tend to be in each other’s space a lot and do most things together which is now starting to bother him. But I try to make him understand that he needs to take time  out for himself to get back to his ambitious happy state but he doesn’t do  it because he procrastinates and ends up throwing undeserving resentment towards me for his lack of independence”.

You wrote about his mother: “He always told me that his mother used to shout and swear when he got homework wrong. She used to scream with so much anger that the saliva would come from her mouth… He has been programmed by his mother’s aggression at a young age… She pretends to be caring and giving but it’s  only her ammo to later use against you… One moment she’s praising him and being a proud mother and the next she’s passively insulting him and disregarding him. Also she has kicked him out of her house many times for no real reason”.

And now my input following hours of studying your threads over the last few days:

It is true that he has been emotionally damaged by his mother. But it is also true that he has been emotionally damaged by you. Your disapproval of him, dissatisfaction and disappointment with him, and your anger at him are evident throughout your relationship with him, beginning with you being upset with him for seeing you  only once a week, at the very beginning of the relationship.

During the second break (May-August 2018) you were very scared of losing him, so your anger was dormant for a while and you put on what you called the best version of yourself, no longer arguing with him, encouraging him and giving him some space. But the arguments that characterized the relationship before the second break, resumed when as soon as the second break relaxed. The worst version of yourself resumed once you felt safer in this dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship.

Like his mother,  you expressed your disapproval and disappointment with him. You initiated arguments, blamed him for your distress, burdened him with long emotional rants, turned hot and cold (being dishonestly manipulative this way). I imagine that unlike his mother, you didn’t scream at him and saliva didn’t come out of your mouth, but your many arguments, rants, multiple emotional texts, disappearing for the weekend/ pretending to be cold, complaining to him about what you perceive to be his laziness and lack of  initiative and on and  on and on-  all these are your version of aggression that you have perpetrated against him for years.

Because of his childhood trauma, he hasn’t been able to end this dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship with you. He has been drained and depressed because of your aggression and his inability to end this relationship.

Problem is, you are so intensely attached to him that you will not  do what is right for him (and for you) and end this relationship. If you really loved him, you would let him go, so that he has a chance to be free from a woman’s aggression for the first time in his young life. Give him that chance by either moving out or having him move out, so that the two  of you no longer live together and no longer have a relationship.

You are not emotionally healthier than him and by staying together the two of you do  not have the opportunity to heal from your  individual childhood experiences. The two of you by staying together, maintain your own and each other’s sickness.

You are not part of the solution for him. You are part of the problem. Will you love him enough to set him free from you (He is and has been suffocating for a long time, don’t you see?) and give him a chance for a better life, and then, make a better life for yourself?

anita