Dear Connie:

I re-read your posts on this thread and my replies to you. I am impressed by how thoughtful you were with him all along, how hard you tried and how you did everything right by him. Reads to me that you really did all you could to make him comfortable and to help this relationship get to a better place.

Often a failure of a relationship (be it a temporary or permanent failure) follows both sides harming the relationship. In your case, an exceptional case, reads to me that he is the one solely responsible for the current failure. I suggested to you before that he should seek professional help (medications, psychotherapy), and you wrote that he doesn’t want to do either one of these things, that he refuses to seek professional help.

This was a short, fast and troubled relationship that started when he asked you “to be his girlfriend” and you “gladly said yes”- that happened in mid September this year. Within a week and through the rest of September-October this year, he was at times affectionate with you, telling you that he loved you, that he wanted to marry you, “move in together, have kids”, and that “he wanted to get better with (you) by his side”.

But at other times during Sept-Oct,  he was anxious and depressed, telling you that “he was scared of everything”, that “he collapsed sometimes and needed time to be alone and isolate himself”, that “everything happened too fast and too  much”, that having strong feelings for you “was too overwhelming”, that “he needs to fun away from everything”, and he “also cried a lot”.

At yet other times, Sept- Oct, he was angry: “he got mad over something that’s really small… he hung up  on me a couple of times”, and by December, less than three months of this relationship, the two of you “have been having some arguments. Some I don’t really understand why they are issues. No  matter how hard I tried to comfort him, he just didn’t seem to be able to get over them. I am getting really tired about everything: the arguments..”-

– I think the reason he got angry over small, non-issue things is that he needed to withdraw from the relationship and anger accomplishes that. His anger is not about the issues, or non-issues; it is about his need to withdraw from the relationship.

“the more I tried, the worse things became”- because the more you tried, the more scared he got. “He admitted that he was building a wall around himself”, scared of you, as if you are a threat. More precisely, for him, a relationship is a threat.

“I just need the validation that I am doing the right thing”- taking a break is the right thing. I think breaking up altogether is the right thing for you because he is too scared and he refuses to seek professional help. You can’t be his professional help, and you already did all that you can do as a girlfriend. Nothing else for you to do.

His fear wasn’t born in the relationship with you, it took hold of him early on in his life, and maybe it got worse in this twenties and thirties. Fear is a powerful force, and it being so early and already established before you met him, there is nothing you can do.

anita