Dear Leah:

It helps me to understand and “live in the story” when I take the time to slowly re-write it , so I will do that and add lots of quotes. My reply to you will consist of two posts. The first is the retelling of your story and the second is my thoughts about it.

Your parents divorced, and as a result, you “did self harm a lot” as a teenager, men give you “bad anxiety” and you had “a horrible mistrust in men”. Over the years, you’ve “been developing an anxiety disorder, mainly social anxiety, feeling pretty lost in life”, more and  more confined to your house and computer. At 16, you broke off a month-long “awkward teenage romance” with a 16-year old boy with whom you had your “first ever kiss” because of your anxiety and mistrust. A few months later, you “became very, very close friends”. At 24, you started college: you moved out of your parents’ house, found interest in your classes and you made two friends, but after one semester, Covid hit, and you stayed at home all day, losing interest in your classes, socially isolated and anxious, and you saw a good psychologist.

He had three relationship over the years while you had none, and the two of you were “simply one of his best and closest friends”. But at one point on,  you “developed some romantic feelings” toward him. At 25, when you finished your first year of college, he moved close to where you lived and attended the same college you attended. At that point, you mustered all your courage and told him that you liked him “as more than just a friend”, and that the ball is in his court, that if he says No, “it’s okay and we’ll remain friends”, and if he says Yes, “then we’re gonna be in a relationship”. He didn’t say no or yes. Instead he asked to think about it. The day after, he came to your apartment and said Yes.

“I had 0 experience in romantic relationship and also 0 experience sexually. But he is a very gentle soul, and he knows me so well. He was patient with a lot of things and gradually, we worked our way to all of these things, which turned out to be great fun, amazing, and exciting.. We get on REALLY well, communication flows with ease, I make him laugh a lot, and he helped me gain self-confidence. He really is an amazing person, and anyone would be lucky to be around him”.

After a year of this wonderful relationship, the two of you were planning to move in together, checking out apartments, but you “got cold feet. Something didn’t sit right, I was too scared to not have my own personal space, worried I’d feel claustrophobic. So I called it off”.

Next, the relationship continued, he spent most nights at your place, spending a lot of time together, and five months after getting cold feet, you were okay with moving in together, “Nervous and excited”. The two of you found the perfect apartment sometime in late January of this year. Sometime in April, the two of you “hit a major bump” when your anxiety prevented you from attending dinner with his family. He was very disappointed, you fought after that, and he left for a few days to cool off, came back “saying that we need to really work on things, wanted to go to couple’s therapy”, but first, the two of you agreed to have a fun couple of weeks “to lighten things up a bit”. You didn’t attend therapy nor talked about what happened.

In mid-June, your anxiety hit really hard and you couldn’t attend dinner with him at your parents’ (on  Friday) or at his parents’ (on a Saturday). Either Fri or Sat., he came home, “disappointed and mad” at you, you felt that he didn’t care about you, that he didn’t accept you for who you are, “warts and all”, and you instigated a fight with him. It was “a big fight, during which my anxiety was brought up again and he accused me of not doing enough to work on it or make it better”.

The day or days after the big fight, he tried “to again lighten the mood”, but you “had a knot in my stomach. what happened that night was not okay in my eyes, and it was a position I never wanted to be put in”. Next, you told him that you thought that the two of you were not compatible, and sometime later, he told you that he agreed with you and that you should break up. The two of you were “very emotional, crying, hugging, and then he packed a bag and left”.

In the two weeks after he left, you feel horrible, regretting: “we never actually tried to work on things when we had a problem – and we never did, throughout the 2 year relationship. I finally saw that he was right – I wasn’t doing enough with my anxiety, and I went back to my psychologist immediately and I’ve also made plans to see a psychiatrist and plan on starting proper treatment to rid me of this horrible thing that’s been controlling my life”.

A week after the breakup, you met, “we were both a mess, crying. But we managed to laugh a little too”, you told him that you were having second thoughts, but he cut you off, telling you that “he can’t allow himself to think that. He needs certainty, or he’ll get completely lost”. He took more of his clothes out of the apartment you used to share, and “just being there made him cry and upset”.

“Very desperate for some clarity and peace… Tonight I couldn’t take it anymore and I called him. I was crying, I think he was a little too… At some point he said something like ‘I just want to remind you that you instigated this,’ or like that I initiated the breakup, which is true. But I don’t even remember why… I try telling myself that he doesn’t accept me as I am, which is true and he’s agreed with me about it, and that I deserve better… I also think we never learned how to fight in a good way… I can’t let him go. I want him in my life so badly… maybe we should actually break up. Maybe we are not compatible…  I’m just so confused, I miss him so much, I can’t find any peace in my heart… My heart just doesn’t understand how can it be that we both have such strong emotions for each other but we can’t be together? It doesn’t make sense”.

Second post to follow.

anita