Hi Jess,

WOW! I admire your courage for sharing this. I also want to say how sorry I am for the pain you must be feeling right now.

First, I would like to offer you some insight into how we, as human beings, often deal with our feelings. When things are troubling us or we are struggling with our thoughts, our natural inclination is to try and avoid them or suppress them in the hope they will ‘go away’ or that we’ll perhaps figure it out ourselves.

The reason for this is two things; fear and vulnerability. We fear the consequence of what will happen when we face our thoughts and feelings. We are vulnerable when reaching out and asking for help or sharing what we feel.

It may have been that he was thinking and feeling something that he was scared to share with you, for fear of rejection, hurting you or hurting himself. There is a multitude of things we fear in this situation.

We are scared to feel our feelings because it’s painful, so we suppress them thinking that will help. Unfortunately, it dosen’t. All it does is make us angry, snappy, depressed and/or sad. This is what seems to be happening here.

We think that by not acknowledging our feelings we can move on from them, but we cant.

The first step here is to ask your partner what he’s really feeling? What has he been feeling? What is he scared of? What thoughts has he been having? Try to give him a safe and non-judgmental space for him to share these thoughts, no matter what.

The urge and inclination will be for you to get angry, feel ashamed, feel at fault etc. He might want to blame you, blame himself and/or get angry also. In short, this dialogue will not be pretty or easy, but it is absolutely necessary!

This is just the starting point to working through this situation and it will take a lot of time and commitment on both your parts, which is another reason why people walk away. They can’t cope with that.

I know I cannot advise you specifically and give you a solution, because that’s something you’ve got figure out. However, I hope my insights at least help.

I wish you much warmth and love. I hope you both find peace at some point soon.

Matt.

“Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.” – Virginia Woolf