Hi Anita

I’m sorry for the delayed response, as I told Helcat, I’ve been sick.

In my past relationships before I knew I needed to speak up if something hurt me, I would just do reassurance check-ins, the classic anxious attachment behavior. I learned this pushed people away and made them stressed out. So I went silent, but when I learned that I needed to speak up for my feelings, I’m still kind of not knowing what to do with this once it’s announced. It’s almost just another form of reassurance seeking behavior. It’s “you’ve hurt my feelings by liking sexy photos of other women but I don’t feel like I have a right to be upset so I’m not gonna do anything about this or make a decision, I just need you to know I’m upset about it.” So you see, it really leaves the other person not knowing what I want from them. An apology, sure, but that doesn’t change what I know is true deep down for them – that they found this person sexually attractive. In my case, it was just simple “likes” but my ex admitted he was wandering off and losing interest and passion in me. So my paranoia was warranted, I’ve read about emotional cheating and I do think this is walking that line. But again, since I don’t trust myself – I pull back and feel irrational about speaking up and so any boundaries I make feel stupid to me. I just am so lost. I feel like I can only definitively set a boundary on things that are clear cheating and betrayal. I think until I can figure out how to actually set boundaries and mean them confidently, I’m just going to keep confusing men and pushing them away with my anxious check-ins for reassurance and my anxious confrontations. None of it is aggressive, but that’s only because I don’t have aggressiveness in my nature. So it’s nothing to be proud of, I’m still burning bridges accidentally.

I agree, I do feel a huge loss to have lost my ex and his family and I know I felt refuge in his acceptance and them for many reasons as I’ve mentioned here before. I know I have to move forward but this guilt is crippling me so hard right now. I feel worse about what happened and how I handled it every day.