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Reply To: 7 months later…

HomeForumsRelationships7 months later…Reply To: 7 months later…

#371315
Anonymous
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Dear gamer:

Welcome back! It took me some time to read the pages of our communication May-June this year. Last that happened by June 21, was that he texted you and confessed about having lied to you regarding flirting with another girl (while on a break from the relationship with you), then “a few days later he seemed back to normal. Posting on social media, acting unbothered”, you then searched his profile, and he blocked you. Then you deleted him off social media, removed his siblings as well, so that you “don’t get any reminders of him”.

Fast forward, almost 6 months later, you updated on Dec 17: “A few months after strict no contact”, he reached out to you, the two of you met in person and talked for a few hours, and he explained “everything that happened.. you can call it closure”. Since then “things seemed better between us. We were on good terms and would text here and there.. any advice?”

To formulate some advice for you I want to summarize the information you shared and my messages to you earlier this year:

The two of you started a relationship when you were both 18. He was your “first relationship ever.. first everything.. first love”. At 20 he suggested a break from the relationship, which is when you started your May 2020 thread.

At the time (May 2020), the two of you were students on summer break. You lived with your parents and brother, and he lived with his parents and a sibling. Finances of  both families were tight because of Covid. You lost your job, and were having “a lot of time on (your) hands”, not being able to go anywhere because of the pandemic, usually alone in the house, sitting at home and in your backyard, drawing, calling your friends (none were close friends, except for one), organizing, cooking etc.

He lived with his parents, with whom he experienced a “childhood trauma and paranoia as well as anxiety”, and still “deals with (anxiety) everyday, with his mom”, being “always paranoid and high sprung all the time because of (his mother)”. He was “constantly overworking himself and being tired”, working on a business he just started, a business that involved “a lot of physical labor”.

Both sets of parents were strict, not believing in dating, so the two of you kept the relationship a secret from them. In accordance to conservative values, the two of you started as friends, proceeded to be best friends, building “that bond”- before you “did anything physical”,  and later,  you moved to the next step, “kissing.. touching etc.”, “both agreed to wait till marriage” before doing anything more, physically.

The relationship between you and him included lots of fighting (“we fought back and forth for hours”). You believed that fighting was a normal part of a love/ romantic relationship, and should not cause breakups (“We had fights.. as all couples do… We’ve had fights before and we worked through it together”).

But, to your surprise, he didn’t feel the same about fighting. At one point, he told you that all that repeating fighting was making him feel scared and anxious with you (he told you: “we aren’t getting along… I feel scared and can’t get over it”, “he says he believes we are always at odds against each other.. things keep repeating.. after our fight happened, he finally tells me that he is anxious with me”). You didn’t really believe that he was anxious because of all the fighting (“that anxiety he claims he has with me”).

You didn’t understand why he had a problem with the fighting- it was not a problem before (you thought), so why is it a problem this time?  (“All our past fights and disagreements, we decided to stick things through and work through it together but this time, it’s completely different”).

You didn’t understand that fighting destroys love, that fighting brings a loving relationship to an end, sooner or later.

After I suggested to you that you fighting with him was increasing the anxiety he already felt at home with his mother, exacerbating his childhood trauma, you wrote: “I can get angry and demand a lot and my confused/ hurt/ sadness is all masked through anger which turns into animosity.. After you mentioned that to me.. I have come to a realization that I give a lot of hostility towards people I am close to”.

You shared a piece of communication you had with him. He said: “it hurts me so much I can’t make you happy or have a positive impact on you”, and you responded with denying the reality of what he just said: “But u do make me happy“- but..  no, he did not make you happy. At times you were happy, but a whole lot of the time- you were not happy with him: a happy person does not complains and fights as much and as often as you did with him.

He told you what the problem was for him, and you denied it  That made it impossible to address the problem and work to solve it. You texted him: “but u do make me happy, why can’t we improve ourselves together”?- my answer: because you denied the problem. Without agreeing on a problem, you cannot resolve it, and therefore you cannot improve yourselves together.

I suggested to you that you have been argumentative, impulsive, impatient and selfish with him, and you agreed with me: “You are right. I am argumentative, wanting things, impulsive and impatient as well. I look for my own needs before anyone”.

I also suggested to you that you are inclined to blame him whenever you are unhappy with something and his inclination is to apologize profusely, “so the two of you are blaming him”, I wrote at the time.

You shared: “He always thought I was complaining every time I mentioned what was wrong and the complaints were every other day. Because of that, he was anxious and worried every time he would call or text because he thought I’d list out complaints and blame him and that drove him away… he was just always worried and anxious with me… He feels anxious and worried constantly and fears that we will fight all the time”-

– re-read his words, pay attention to what he told you.

You wrote May 3: “I’m just blown by the fact that my boyfriend has anxiety with me”- you will not be blown by this fact if you pay attention to what he told you.

I suggested to you back then: “if you want to get back with him, you have to stop complaining to him and fighting with him”.

You wrote: “if we’re still together working this out, I’ll always worry if I’m saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing”- we have to be mindful about what we say to other people. We don’t have the moral privilege to say whatever we feel like saying, to spit out words impulsively. If you want a love relationship- be mindful of what you say, learn to express yourself responsibly.

I suggested to you at the time: “If you want to resume a relationship with him, you need to learn a new way of communicating with him, a peaceful, positive, non confrontational way”, and I offered that you bring up to me an example of a topic you brought up to him in the past, which led to a fight, and I would suggest to you an alternative way to present the topic to him.

I  also suggested to you: “You can’t demand affection. Don’t make demands on people’s emotions”, which is something you did with him, and I suggested: “When you get angry in the context of a relationship, take a time out to  calm yourself.. and then adjust your anger to reality”.

In your many updates you told me a lot of what he told you, hanging onto his every word, looking for inconsistencies, red flags and whatnot. I wrote to you about this topic: “He has many thousands of thoughts in his brain every day, just like anyone else, and each one of his thoughts does not carry the weight that you think it does. Thoughts come and go.. appear and disappear. Don’t hang on to every word he says as if it was a rock”.

It is true that he contradicted himself many times, but he was anxious and confused, so it is understandable that an anxious and confused person will not be consistent with what he says. As a matter of fact, no human being is consistent with what he/she says 100% of the time. We all get tired, forgetful, pressured… If you want more consistency and truth from a person- do not pressure/ demand/ blame/ attack the person. Instead, make it possible for him to feel comfortable with you.

Back to your current update, you shared that in the past seven months, you made great success with your studies and career, “finished the academic levels effortlessly, made a ton of new friends.. but no matter what, who I was with, what I was doing, he is always in my mind.. somehow I am missing him always… I have this very strong feeling that he is meant to  be in my life.. my partner.. everyone tells me that it takes time and they are right but even after these many months, my feelings for him got stronger and stronger. any advice?”-

-First, congratulations for your great success academically and in your career! My advice: I suggest that you shift your focus from your feelings (“this very strong feeling.. my feelings for him got stronger and stronger”), to your words and actions- mindfully and responsibly choose what you say and do to others, particularly to a man you want to have a loving relationship with.

anita