Dear gamer:

You wrote that “He doesn’t show me at all that he loves me or cares”- I think that you greatly exaggerated in this sentence. He hasn’t show you as much love as you want him to show you, but he showed you some (not nothing).

“effort, time, affection and energy. I give so much of it and he knows it”- you give him so much effort, time, affection and animosity (the opposite of affection):

Let’s look at the SnapChat conversation of yesterday: he asked you how you were feeling, you said okay, how about you? He said: “I’m doing okay also”. Your response was: “That’s great to hear, good for you“- this is the animosity I am referring to. He said he was doing “okay”, not great. He didn’t mention anything great happening in his life, he just said that he was doing okay.

Your response: “That’s great to hear, good for you”- what’s so great or good? What it sounds like is that you were angry to read that he was doing okay, and that you wished he wasn’t okay.. because you are not okay, so you want him to be not okay.

Next, he says: “Do you want me to leave you alone?”- like I just did, he too noticed that you were angry at him, so he backed away from you. Later in that conversation, your anger is evident again: “Why are you asking me this? You said..”- angry and argumentative. Lastly in that conversation he said that he wants the two of you to be happy, and you didn’t answer (the silent angry response).

Some time after all that, you messaged him, he called you eventually at midnight, and after three hours on the phone, he broke up with you, saying “he wants to take time to himself to figure things out”.

You are heartbroken: “I still love him very much”- but gamer, you also hate him very much: affection and animosity, love and hate. As a matter of fact, in the SnapChat conversation- I detected no love on your part.

gamer, I think that you are confused about love vs hate. You feel love for him, but you show hate. No wonder he backed off from you. People do back off from hate.

I bet it is very unpleasant for you to read this, and I am sorry that you are hurting. I am not saying that he is a perfect young man, I am saying that you need to learn from this experience so that you can function better in the future, in the context of your next relationship, be it with him or with someone else.

Learn what you need to learn, perhaps the following: you can’t demand affection. Don’t make demands on people’s emotions. If a man misses you a lot one day, and the next day he misses you less, or not at all, don’t demand that he misses you just as much every day. Be content that a man likes you every day, appreciates you. No way a person can or should miss another every day at the same intensity- it is impossible and would make any person crazy!

When you get angry in the context of a relationship, take a time out to calm yourself and ask yourself: did he do something wrong, or am I angry because I am unrealistic (ex. expecting him to miss you one day just as much as the day before, or the year before, etc.)?

And then adjust your anger to reality, saying to yourself something like this: he didn’t miss me today and that’s okay, he still likes me, and I am okay. I don’t need him to miss me every day, etc.

anita