Dear Michelle,

I read through your posts and, even though it’s been a while since your first post and I’m not sure if you’re looking for more advice or input into your situation, I feel compelled to comment because of how similar your attachment style and experiences with men are to mine.  Even the way you describe your mom’s parenting style sounds so similar to mine–she, too, was sometimes physically abusive, very strict/authoritarian, would subject me to the silent treatment and was generally someone with whom I had a love-hate relationship growing up.  Our relationship has become much, much better over time, but I still do find it hard to be emotionally open and vulnerable with her (which sometimes extends to other relationships/friendships…my fear of rejection and being vulnerable).

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I understand how difficult it is to be in a (semi? sorta?) relationship with someone who is scared of love and has a hard, impenetrable shell around him that prevents him from letting you in.  For about a year and a half, I was very much stuck on a guy that I believed was my “twin flame”–the person who mirrored and reflected my fears and insecurities back to me, who made me feel a sense of kinship and closeness and intimacy I had never before experienced.  I too believed our relationship was fated–there were two many weird synchronicities for it to be anything but, in my mind.  We were born a few days days apart, both November babies (11:11 is a huge thing in the twin flame world), kept running into each other despite living in a huge city, had similar outlooks on life despite how differently we raised and despite our different cultural and religious backgrounds.  I  convinced myself that because he had been through a lot of trauma, he was just a scared little boy who needed time to step out of his shell (even when he quite clearly told me he wasn’t looking for anything serious), and even though physically I checked out of our very short-lived fling, emotionally I was very, very hung up on him for a long time.

I’m not any more. I’m in a happy, committed relationship with someone I am very much in love with.  Looking back, I now question whether he was my “twin flame” after all and to be honest, I don’t even care if he is or not.   The thing is, once you start truly loving yourself and giving yourself the same time, attention, and care that you gave that person–the second you start prioritizing your needs and realizing that you have to communicate them in order for there to be a shot of those needs being met–the second you’ll realize that you won’t need to spend time journaling and posting and endlessly talking about a man who just doesn’t want something deeper. Plain and simple.  It doesn’t matter why he’s that way, or who made him that way, and whether he will one day change–all that matters is that right now, he’s not someone who has communicated to you that he’s in love with you.  While you can extrapolate and conjecture and imagine a scenario where one day, he says those words to you, the truth is, you don’t know if that scenario will take place, and there’s very little from his actions and words to indicate that that reality will come to be.  While uncertainty is something we all have to deal with in relationships from time to time, I’ve found–in my all too many experiences of dating avoidant men–that the type of man that is truly ready for a committed, loving relationship is someone that will minimize that feeling of uncertainty to the greatest extent possible.  It’s someone whose actions align with their words and indicates clearly and loudly that they’re into you.  It’s someone who doesn’t prowl dating apps just to “people watch” or who makes you wonder if they’re agreeing to move in just to save on rent.  It’s someone who has gone through enough self-growth and has enough insight and self-awareness that they don’t need someone to tear down their defenses for them–they’ve worked on doing that for themselves.  All your kindness and support towards him and eagerness to explore and understand his psyche and why he’s so scared to open up isn’t going to change him.  In the end, he has to take the leap himself.  Be willing to shed some of his old habits and behavioral patterns, difficult as that is.  You can’t do it for him.  And the longer you hang around in the hope that he’ll eventually come around, the longer you’ll be stuck in a place where you’re not truly happy, where there’s a little nagging voice inside that’s telling you that something’s not quite right.  That you deserve better.  You deserve someone that tells you in no uncertain terms that you ARE someone he does see or could see as “the one”,  and that you’re not just a stepping stone to whatever he truly desires (which I doubt he even knows).

Anyway, I do think it sounds like there’s so much growth and change that he’s igniting within you..that’s the beautiful thing about relationships and intense connections, no matter how fleeting.  They tend to force you to confront the ugly and uncomfortable aspects of yourself.  It sounds like you’re being forced, through your interactions with him, to realize how much YOU’RE now willing to lower your defenses and open up to someone to an extent that maybe you weren’t in the past.  So even if your relationship with him doesn’t work out, I think the upside is that you’re a stronger person for it.  You’re more ready now to plunge in to something deep and scary at times but incredibly satisfying.  Real love, based on trust and commitment and mutual understanding, is a beautiful thing that we all deserve to experience, and sometimes the road getting there is long and winding and messy but it seems like you’re on the way there.

Peace!

Rosalia