Hi Danielle

As a man who has gone through some challenging relationship issues in the past, your story sounds quite familiar. I can certainly relate to your tale from the other side, and I completely agree with Anita’s perceptive and sensible advice.

I can think of several times where I cared about someone so much, I felt I wasn’t worthy of her, and so tried to protect her (and me) by keeping my distance. I had the best of intentions. But, looking back, the effect was to hurt her, and any prospect of a relationship, by appearing cold and distant whilst she tried to be warm and loving. I was stupid, and it was my loss.

So I can fully believe that your partner may have seemed distant for a long time, particularly if he has had bad experiences. But the fact is, you both stuck it out. That in itself shows that there must be enough strength in the relationship, on both sides, for you to have made it through that phase.

That said, going through that time has left you with some concerns, which you have identified as a difficulty in letting go of the past. In other words, your past experience is affecting your present feelings. That is a completely natural and human reaction. It is a basic reaction that enabled human beings to survive. And in fact, it is the same reaction that your partner was going through earlier – his experience of his past affected his present feelings.

How do you fix it? Well, in the same way that it seems he did.

For whatever reason, he associated being in love with getting hurt. But each day with you started to re-program that association. Here was somebody he loved who didn’t hurt him. Someone who supported him. Someone who loved him back. Someone who would allow him to be himself. So after a time he associated being in love with being supported, being himself, being happy. So he asked you to be his girlfriend. Because those old associations aren’t there for him any more. He has beaten that phobia.

The problem is that now, quite understandably, you are the one who associates loving someone with the way that he was behaving towards you before you got together. (Love’s complicated, isn’t it!) Add that to any past experiences that you already had and, well, there is work to be done!

So now, you must both work to re-program those associations. For you, that means two things. First, you must forgive yourself for the feelings that you have – they are natural and sensible, and are there to stop you becoming involved in bad or harmful relationships. Secondly, it means focusing on the present. In other words, every day ask yourself, has he acted in the way that you fear today? The more times you draw a blank with that question (and from what you say, that seems to be the case), the easier it will be to move on.
Similarly for him, he needs to know and understand how you feel and why you feel it. The best way is to relate it to how he felt, because he knows what that was like, and also that the feeling passes in time.

You clearly want the relationship to work, because you have asked for advice on how to move it forward. He obviously wants the relationship to work, because he went through a complete U-turn to be there, and knows exactly what he is getting into. So it is worth investing the time and effort into a future that looks bright for you both.

Good luck to you both!