Dear Michelle:

I didn’t think that you broke up when I posted to you last. I knew you were upset about going back to square one, meaning that he told you the same as before, that he doesn’t see you as a life partner, etc.

I know this is painful for you to hear yet again.

You wrote that he is messed up, and it seems like he is, but he is not messed up as in not knowing what he wants with you, he knows that he wants: “to continue things the way they’re going”. And by “going” he means, going from one day to the next, as is.

But so far, you have not been okay with as-is, not for long.

anita

Dear Michelle:

You are welcome. It seems to me that you have a good understanding of the situation: he suffers from OCD, including ROCD, and like teaK said so well, OCD “limits him extremely.. He’s confined by his fear… he cannot step out of his own prison, so even if (he) feels good with you, his fear is stronger”.

Like you wrote, the relationship with him, for you “eases a larger anxiety, a fear of being without him”.

And I add: you are very attached to him, emotionally, perhaps as strongly as a baby is attached to her mother or father. You are drawn to him, and your thinking is secondary to your emotional need to be with him. It is an early, raw need.

anita

Dear Michelle,

you mentioned that your wound might be rather related to your mother than to your father. In one of your older posts you said this about your mother:

“I just don’t know if I have a pattern of seeking emotionally unavailable people because maybe I too, am emotionally unavailable people. My mother was anxious avoidant in childhood and this was due to her upbringing. She sought out love from her children to fill her voids.”

I’ve checked the characteristics of the anxious-avoidant pattern, and am copy-pasting them here:

“Anxious-avoidant attachment types (also known as the “fearful or disorganized type”) bring together the worst of both worlds. Anxious-avoidants are not only afraid of intimacy and commitment, but they distrust and lash out emotionally at anyone who tries to get close to them. Anxious-avoidants often spend much of their time alone and miserable, or in abusive or dysfunctional relationships.

Anxious-avoidants are low in confidence and less likely to express emotions, preferring to suppress them. However, they can have intense emotional outbursts when under stress. They also don’t tend to seek help when in need due to a distrust of others. This sucks because they are also incapable of sorting through their own issues.

Anxious-avoidants really get the worst of both worlds. They avoid intimacy not because they prefer to be alone like avoidants. Rather, they avoid intimacy because they are so terrified of its potential to hurt them.”

It seems your boyfriend fits this description pretty well. This sentence: “They also don’t tend to seek help when in need due to a distrust of others.” – would explain why he doesn’t want to go to therapy.

If your mother was similar, it could very well be that you’re seeking to get love from her, through your boyfriend…

What do you think?

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Tee.
• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Tee.

Dear Michelle:

You received excellent input by teaK and by Luz (Rosalia). The reason I am posting today is not because I think you need to receive more input. You already received the best input possible, enough to keep you busy processing for a long time, if you are able and willing.

The reason I am posting today is to develop my own understanding of what you presented here, in your current thread, and in previous threads, and to share it with any interested member who may be reading this. It will be a very long post, based on many hours of study, and of course, you are welcome, Michelle, to read it- or not. I believe that this medium here can not be helpful enough for you, if at all, and that you need professional, quality psychotherapy as soon possible.

Your first post on another thread was on January 6, 2020. You were then 32, the guy was 35 and the relationship was four months old (beginning September 2019). The relationship included dates to restaurants, museums, trips, shows, etc., he “paid quite a bit”, showed you affection and the best sex you ever had. You were with his family at Christmas and he was with yours. But you were concerned because he didn’t yet introduce you to his friends, whom he didn’t meet often (“It makes me anxious because I think that a lot of articles preach that meeting the friends is a sign that he’s serious and if you’re not it’s a red flag”), and because you felt that he did not adequately express his emotions verbally.

Twenty days later, January 26, 2020, the two of you (temporarily) broke up, after he told you the following: “he doesn’t see (marriage) for himself… He said he felt that we were having a good relationship but if he was going to be honest he doesn’t see it long-term… He says he doesn’t likely see himself with anyone long-term and marriage has always just been a fantasy”.

He also told you on that day, that the two of you were “too different”. When you asked him to elaborate, he told you/ suggested that he finishes his coffee but you don’t, he finishes the food on his plate but you don’t. He does not use plastic bags but you do, etc. You then judged his reasons for thinking that the two of you are too different as petty and ridiculous: “He says we’re too different, but the ways he described were not true values, they were just more petty things… ridiculous things”, and so, you rejected his assertion that the two of you were too different as untrue.

This rejection was the first time, but not last, that you rejected what he told you as petty or untrue and overall unacceptable. You rejected not only his assertion that the two of you were too different, but everything else that he said that threatened you: that he did not see the relationship as long-term and does not see you as his life partner.

He told you more on that day: “He said he did love me in a way, but it’s not a one and only kind of love”. You rejected that assertion as well: “None of it makes sense based on his actions and the way he pursued things with me. He acted like a boyfriend.. He was extremely loving and affection and generous with time and everything else”-

– your reasoning here is faulty: (1) On Jan 27, 2020 (above quote), you wrote that he was extremely loving and affectionate with everything, but on Jan 6, you stated: “he is not vocal about declaring exactly what he wants, nor how he feels.. He seems emotionally reserved”, which is not congruent with being “extremely” loving and affectionate with everything, (2) It is possible and not uncommon that men who are not interested in a long-term relationship treat the woman generously and affectionately nonetheless.

These two points I just listed, having all the information I have now, more than a year later, lead me to conclude that you regularly display the following cognitive distortions & logical fallacies (errors in reasoning):

(1) Emotional Reasoning, meaning that when you don’t want something to be true because it feels badly, you reject it as untrue, and when you want something to be true because it feels good, you make-believe that it is true.

(2) Magnifications and Minimizations: you magnified him being loving and affectionate (“extremely loving and affectionate”), and minimized his statements that the two of you are too different and that he does not see the relationship long-term (“petty things… ridiculous things”).

(3) Confirmation bias, which is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one prior beliefs or values” (Wikipedia), and the practice of such, called Cherry picking: “the practice neglects, overlooks or directly suppresses evidence that could lead to a complete picture” (Wikipedia)

These and other common cognitive distortions and logical fallacies are forms of denial which is fueled by anxiety. Wikipedia on denial: “In psychoanalytic theory, denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.. Initial short-term denial can be a good thing, giving time to adjust to a painful or stressful issue.. But denial can also be harmful; if denial persists and prevents a person from taking appropriate action, it’s a harmful response” (Wikipedia).

Your denial includes denying to yourself (and to others) your state of mind, misrepresenting yourself as calm and collected, unattached and not at all desperate, zen-like, meditative, calm and serene: “I am okay with him not reciprocating and progressing at his own pace… I have made peace with the impermanence of relationships” (January 2020), “I don’t have any expectations or secret hopes… I don’t wish to win him back” (March 2020), “I feel something coming. I feel like I want to stick around for it and I don’t feel worried anymore. Even if it doesn’t, it’s been a lovely lovely ride” (November 2020), “I no longer wish for the loving in return, I just let what is, BE” (December 2020), “I have no desire to get him to fall in love with me. Being in love would not be the goal of my continued relationship with him… What I am looking for is what we currently have… Is this because I hope we will one day have a fairy tale romance and that I need for him to be the one? No. I don’t believe in fairy tales..  I just don’t see love as something to attain and hold onto desperately. I just feel that it is something fluid that slips in and out of our grasp, dancing around us, reflecting back what is already there” (March 2021).

The above represents what you may have felt momentarily, here and there, but it was not your dominant, ongoing experience. Here is your dominant, ongoing emotional experience and its origins, in your words: “I quite surely have an anxious attachment style… It’s so hard for me to believe that good could come for me. My life hasn’t played out that way… My mother was anxious avoidant in childhood… My dad.. was.. a highly depressed/ OCD sufferer… I am looking for love that my mother was not able to give at a young age”.

A clue to how your childhood has been for you is in what you wrote January 7, 2020: “in my past long-term relationships.. I wasn’t being true to myself and my needs. I was just allowing someone to decide what they needed with no real concern about me. Basically I want to be able to be me, without fear of breaking dating rules, or scaring someone off with my emotions”. I will translate this quote to what I imagine was true to your childhood experience (the following are my words): growing up, no one noticed what I needed and wanted. There was no concern for my needs, my wants, my emotions. There was no space for the true me in my parents’ lives.

This is more of what you wrote about your father: “My dad was very loving with me… was extremely emotionally available…I wanted to help my dad with his issues.. my dad was very kind”-

– I am sure that your father was at times kind in various ways, but he couldn’t have been “extremely emotionally available” to you, as in one who gave you adequate emotional validation and support, because there is no evidence of it in what you shared about your life experience so far. I believe that you magnified his moments of kindness (see Magnifications,  above), which is what children do because they need to feel safe and loved. If he was adequately emotionally resourceful and available to you, you wouldn’t have had the strong motivation to help him with his issues. Instead, he would have helped you with your issues.

Let’s look at what you shared about this guy that your thread is about:

(1) Before you met him: “I remember how I felt before I even met him. I just saw his picture and I thought ‘that’s my one'”- you did not meet him yet, so your evaluation of him as The One was based on a gut feeling following seeing a photo or photos of him and reading his profile on the online dating site.

(2) When you met him in person: “when I met him in person. I felt safe, and at home”- again, a gut feeling, not based on evidence other than his looks/ sound of his voice, certain mannerisms perhaps.

(3) After the first date: “I’ve never had a first date where I felt like I was high after. Where I felt so calm and incredibly excited at the same time. And his words on that day matched mine. We both felt it, we both talked about the future”- this experience is described well under the term limerence. Basically, before and upon meeting him, during and after the first date, you were emotionally transported back to certain (infrequent) times in your childhood when you felt “safe, and at home”, feeling “calm and incredibly excited at the same time”, feeling connected to a parent, a parent whose thoughts and words matched yours.

you were hooked on the guy: “The more I look back on our story, the more fated it seems… I just feel like when I met him he was there all along, so it’s hard to picture a time where I won’t carry him in my heart…He is so woven in the fabric of my psyche, that it’s just too hard to unravel him”-

– he felt eternal, like a god: “he was there all along”. For a child, a parent is like god: eternal, all powerful, all loving. Having met this guy, you were transported back to your childhood state of mind.

On January 26, 2020, he told you for the first time that he didn’t see the relationship as long-term, that marriage is a fantasy, that the two of you are too different and that he loved you, “but it’s not a one and only kind of love”. Between February and August, the two of you spent a lot of time together. You wrote in August 2020: “every time I thought we were getting to a different place and that his feelings might be changing, he would tell me he still felt the same and that he didn’t see a future and we couldn’t be together… He keeps saying that he loves me, in a way, but I am not his one and only”.

In February 2021, you were most optimistic and elated : “We had a lovely Valentine’s Day together.. I also spent a second weekend in a row with his family… So, I decided on some questions I could ask… I came up with the courage and blurted ‘would you even consider living together?’ before I could chicken out. He seemed to respond rather quickly and said… he would think about it. MAJORRR progress. I feel, from him telling me he’d never be with me and didn’t see a future…  It just feels like one giant leap for womankind, everywhere, who deal with men and their commitment issues and have some patience”-

– but by March 2021, he told you that he doesn’t want to move in with you, and on March 31, 2021 he told you that he does not see you as his life-partner, nor does he see the relationship as long-term. You wrote on that day: “as soon as we make progress, things seem to retreat back to square one… he again told me that he doesn’t see me as a life partner and he thought the relationship would eventually end… he wants to be honest that he doesn’t really see it happening”.

In March 31, 2021, he told you the same as what he told you on January 26, 2020, and repeatedly in-between these two dates, a year and two months apart.

But that’s not all he told you on March 31: “He says he’s not looking for other women though and doesn’t expect to find someone else. He wants to continue things the way they’re going and says on one hand maybe he is just messed up in the head and needs to sort through that. He says he can’t see the future and doesn’t know for sure what he wants.  He says he would probably regret it if we ended things now”-

– he told you that “he wants to be honest” with you and that’s why he told you that he doesn’t see you as his life partner nor does he see the relationship as long-term. On the other hand, he has been encouraging you to hope that the two of you will end up being life partners by stating that (1) he is not looking for other women and does not expect to be with another woman- suggesting that even without a stated commitment, the two  of you might end up together long-term, (2) “he can’t see the future”- suggesting that in the future you may be his life-partner, (3)  “maybe he is just messed up in the head and needs to sort through that”- suggesting that he might undo his messed-up state of mind and see you as his life-partner once his thinking is straight, (4) “(he) doesn’t know for sure what he wants”- suggesting that he may want you as his life partner right now, but is not aware of it yet, and (5) “He says he would probably regret it if we ended things now”- suggesting that if he may not end the relationship now or later because if he would, he’ll regret it.

By telling you that he does not see you as his life-partner, he achieves the following: you can never complain to him that he led you on. By non-committedly suggesting 1-5 above, he is feeding your hope and serving his need to keep the relationship going as-is, on his terms.

So, you see, he is not honest after all.

You wrote a few days ago: “I come from a background of psychology, and I know how multi-dimensional people are”-

– the guy is multi-dimensional: he suffers from OCD and perhaps from depression, and he fears commitment and he is confined by his fear and he is dishonest, self-serving and selfish.

anita