Dear Sarah:

I had the time and interest to re-read your three threads Dec 2019- Jan 2020 and see if I come up with anything new that may be helpful to you:

You have a work colleague with whom you were friends for a year. During most of that year you felt some in-love feelings for him. Part of this year he had a girlfriend. By Nov 2019, they broke up, and the two of you “admitted that we both liked each other since we first met”, and “being in “the initial stages of getting together” with him, that is, dating and spending a lot of time together. He told you that he wanted a long term relationship with you, and he told his family and colleagues about how much he liked you.

At that time, Nov 2019, you booked a holiday for yourself for January 2020, figuring the relationship will end by then  and you will need to recover from it (Jan 20120, you wrote: “I even booked a holiday next week in November because I thought our ‘relationship’ would combust by now and that I’d need a break.. which is exactly what happened”).

You asked him about his exes during that year “too many questions because I’m curious/ jealous”, and you got so much information that you were “getting paranoid“, feeling “like just another name on a long list of exes”. You also “kept being paranoid that he’d goof me since basically I think he is too good for me”.

You felt overwhelmed at times, wanting to take it slow,  and he was aware of it, telling you that “he was deliberately being less intense than usual so as not to freak me out, because he was worried I’d run off and disappear from his life completely (he knows that’s my natural tendency if things go wrong)”.

When you prepared for a date with him, you placed a toothbrush in your purse in case you stay at his place for the night after the date. The date proceeded: the two of you and a few friends were at a bar. Your toothbrush fell off your purse. He noticed that it fell, picked it up discreetly, and handed it to you, so that you can put it back in your purse. While this was happening, you forgot that it was you who brought the toothbrush to the bar. You thought that he brought it to the bar, that he took it from his home to the bar and dropped it to the floor intentionally “as a hint that he didn’t want me staying there anymore”.

Next, you “stormed off home without saying goodbye”. Next, you messaged him: “sorry for the crazy behavior- to be honest I really like you and I don’t know how to handle it- but I also thought it was a dick move with the toothbrush”. Next, he explained to you what really happened, you apologized, tried to make a joke about it. He seemed off and you asked him if the two of you were okay, and he answered: “we’re fine.. until I do something else wrong”. That evening you went to his place, he was ill but affectionate, and you left his place the morning after.

You didn’t hear from him for a while so you messaged him and received “only a short reply and no suggestion of plans to meet”. You then “freaked out” and sent him the following message: “Hey, look- I obviously feel like something is different here. Maybe this is jumping the gun but I’m gonna trust my gut and give ‘this’ some space… and will assume we’re gonna leave whatever ‘this’ was… Probably best you replace me on (x) .. permanently if you want to.. I think you’re so great. Even if it really sucks when someone changes their mind like this. . I think you had me on a bit of a pedestal and in real life I could never live up to it”. Next you sent “no need to reply. It’s fine, honestly”.

Next, he didn’t reply and your reaction: “I’m totally gutted that things have ended and I’m going crazy wondering what happened”. You considered that maybe your “insecurities were too much for him to handle”, that maybe he was “playing me all along and just ran for the hills when he realized I actually liked him too”, and that maybe “he just liked the fantasy version of me”, and later you wrote, “I feel like I have been forced to instigate my own dumping, again”.

Next, you messaged him and the two of you “exchanged a few messages”. He told you that “he didn’t stop liking me but had thought it may not be a healthy thing for us to be together”. You then met in person and he told you “essentially that I really was just too crazy and insecure (in a nicer way than that, but thereabouts)”. Following that meeting, you felt that “he never really cared, like the last year meant nothing to him and like we can’t even be friends now because maybe our friendship wasn’t real… I now just feel empty, am dreading having to try and sleep and waking up remembering all this.. sad and lost. I just can’t believe his feelings, which he said were so strong and which had built up over a year, changed within a week or so.. my worst fears were proved right (that he was too good for me and he would leave me”.

Your last expressed understanding of what happened: “I guess he just must not have been that into it. I definitely will try and be more trusting and stop visualizing he end if I ever find another relationship”.

You are probably having that holiday as I type this. Maybe you will be reading this at some time in the near future, and if you do, I hope you post back to me.

Here is my understanding today: you’ve been very responsive, interactive and gracious in your interactions with members here, and I imagine that your social skills are excellent at your work place and with your friends, just as they are here on your thread.

The crazy (your word, which I italicized above) is probably limited to romantic relationships with men, and it is the reason you don’t have a history of any significant long term relationship. The very short romantic relationship with this man, was probably a representative of prior such relationships. This recent man, from all that you shared, did nothing wrong. You imagined and assumed a whole lot of what was not real. The toothbrush incident- it is you who brought it to the bar, not him. You only imagined an elaborate story that didn’t exist: that he had an intent before getting to the bar to end the beginning relationship with you, and that for this purpose he formed a plan: to take your toothbrush from his home, hide it somewhere on his person, take it to the bar where he met you, drop it to the floor with an unspoken but clear message that he doesn’t want you back to his home and that the relationship is over.

You mentioned twice being paranoid, your word, italicized be me. Here is what Wikipedia states in its entry on paranoia: “Paranoia is an instinct or thought process which is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat toward oneself.. false accusations and general distrust of other people also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, an incident most people would view as an accident or coincidence, a paranoid person might believe was intentional… A paranoid person may view someone else’s accidental behavior as though  it is with intent or threatening”-

– so far what I quoted fits perfectly to your behavior with this man, a behavior you termed yourself paranoid. Regarding the toothbrush incidence, all he did was pick up a toothbrush that fell from your purse. That is all he did, doing what anyone would do in his place, no intention to hurt you, no elaborate plan involved.

Back to Wikipedia: “Due to the suspicious and troublesome personality traits of paranoia, it is unlikely that someone with paranoia will thrive in interpersonal relationships. Most commonly paranoid individuals tend to be of a single status”.

I am not a medical doctor or another type of professional qualified to diagnose you, and even if I was, this medium wouldn’t be appropriate to make such a diagnosis. It is you who brought up the word and there is no doubt in my mind, that even if you don’t qualify for the diagnosis, you exhibit strong paranoid behaviors in the context of romantic relationships, because you mentioned that you didn’t have significant long term relationships and you booked a holiday right at the very beginning of dating him, planning for a break that you will need following an anticipated breakup.

If you want to have a future romantic relationship, you have to see a professional psychotherapist qualified to help you. This type of behavior cannot be resolved otherwise. On one hand you referred to your behavior as crazy and paranoid, and on the other hand you expressed doubts that it is indeed so, figuring he didn’t love you, he played with you and so forth, so there is a conflict, you are not sure that you are indeed paranoid in this context.

You didn’t share anything at all about your childhood, but it is clear to me that your paranoid cognition and behavior in the context of romantic relationships was born in your childhood relationship/s with whomever was your care takers, usually it is the parents, most often primarily the mother. You were deeply hurt, betrayed by a parent and that brought about lots of anxiety which gets activated in the context of a romantic relationship. You imagine that the betrayal will happen again and you freak out. So you make the betrayal happen sooner than later so to get it over with.

No man can love you enough to .. cure you of this dynamic. Like he told you right after the toothbrush incident: “we’re fine.. until I do something else wrong”. The dynamic is such that you watch everything he does, including his facial expressions, and interpret them to mean that he wants to break up with you. So how can a man have any peace of mind being scrutinized this way, being repeatedly accused, this is a walking-on-eggshells in enemy territory type of a “love” relationship.

In psychotherapy, with competent, high quality professional help, look into your childhood, into that terrible betrayal that you experienced there. When you find it there and process it, you will no longer see that betrayal where it is not.

anita