Hi Anita

Good to hear from you too!

“In regard to “(I) agree with what you said about no man/person being able to help me“- what I said was that no man “could have possibly given me what I needed… There was simply TOO MUCH that I was missing: a sense of self-esteem”,  “… you need more than any man can give you, but you believe that he was able, if he chose to, to give you what you need, and that he is still able to.” — Yes, I didn’t feel too much for him. I saw he was capable and willing to meet my needs and expectations from the get-go until something changed his mind about us. Knowing SOMETHING changed feels personal as he was super into us before. And this is why I do feel I was too much for him. So you’re saying that even if I finally got with someone who was a healthy fit for me, it still wouldn’t work out until I became securely attached in myself?

I keep getting reminded lately of when he admitted to me early on that he was struggling about his ex and that when they had broken up, he written her a long and scathing good riddance paragraph, how she was a cruel person with no regard for anyone’s feelings, and that he realized it was pointless so he just deleted the paragraph instead and blocked her. He said he felt anger and shame for being cheated on – as I’ve mentioned here before, and he told me he was struggling with getting over those feelings and he was worried about it affecting us. I know that anger is just unaddressed pain and sadness. Yet when he broke up with ME, he was indifferent and wouldn’t even allow me to fight for us. There was no fight for us or passion or pain in losing me that night and since then in him. I see he’s capable of feeling pain and loss for people as he showed me with his ex. Does this mean he actually didn’t feel strongly towards me in the first place like he did her as I feared all along? Maybe. It’s been really bothering me and making me feel jealous though. I’m bitter that I wasn’t fought for but someone he didn’t even get to date over the span of two months who cheated on him can cause him so much distress. It’s insulting that our year together didn’t seem to mean anything to him. I think now that he was so eager to stay friends when I asked him so that he could feel less guilt and shame for hurting me. Actions since then have shown he does not want to be friends either.

“And this is why, post breakup, you still follow him on social media, and why you’ve been reading about his attachment style, trying to understand him better, so to .. somehow bring him back to your life and give you what you need.” — I think it’s also just an attempt to try to separate any issues from me and hoping that maybe it wasn’t that I was too much for him or anything I did to cause him to bail, but that he really isn’t equipped or willing to show up for anyone. I hear often that an avoidant and an anxiously attached couple are essentially doomed because they trigger each other and they require thorough and thoughtful understanding of themselves and each other in order for it to work.

– “It’s not that I feel safe, it’s that I feel more courage than I ever did before.” — That makes sense. Also, thank you for this poem, it’s very nice. I do hope to find power in my heart and the power to carry on because every single day is such a struggle to have any hope. I appreciate your encouragement.

Hi Anita

“I think that this was a false belief on your part, and that in reality he was not capable of meeting your needs, not from the get go, and not at any time during the relationship (or after).” — Perhaps the trials we didn’t actually get the chance to experience together were already piling up in his mind, but he should have told me, just as he told me at the beginning of our relationship that he was still struggling with the drama from his ex. I really appreciated that transparency and expected him to keep being emotionally open and checking in with me like this, but he stopped. After he stopped bringing things to me, I assumed he was content.

“…whatever changed in his mind, in reality, is not the difference between your needs being met AND your needs not being met.” — I have read this sentence over and over today, at work and at home. I don’t know how to believe it because when two people are emotionally invested, it motivates them to want to work together. I wish I had met him at a more healed stage. I’m bitter that he told me after the breakup that he was “eternally grateful for me for showing him he is worthy of love.” My emotional mind wants to say, “Great! Glad I could be your ego boost for a year while you have no desire in how this will affect me moving forward.” It’s also insulting to learn that somewhere along the line, he just decided to himself that our relationship would inevitably end at a certain point so he stopped future planning with me in mind. It’s just that something in me doesn’t get it.

“I didn’t know there was such a thing as cheating in the situationship or hookup that he had with this particular woman you refer to as his ex.” — That’s a good point. He claimed they never made anything official but that she was hooking up with someone who wouldn’t date her, so she was using my ex as a rebound and to make this other guy jealous. I found it confusing and a little worrisome that my ex referred to it as a situationship, yet also seemed like they were in a commitment. I still feel like he might have used me as a rebound to get back at her in his mind, even unknowingly.(I know, I’m doing it again. I think I make a lot of fatalistic conclusions so as to try to gain control).

Also, in reference to the part where you said he didn’t seem to fight for her either, I was more so referring to the fact that he even HAD the energy and fire in him to keep going with her in conversation, to “prove” his point to her. It shows he cared. When he dumped me, he had nothing else to explain and was done – he tried to wrap it up poetically by quoting our first Hinge conversation, hoping it would appease me. If there is one thing I wish I would have said that night, it’s that THAT is such a hurtful and ridiculous way to end a relationship with someone.

The Emily Dickinson poem was very nice, thank you. I haven’t read much of her work since high school, I should start again. The visuals remind me of the 2007 Sweeney Todd film with the character of Johanna being locked in her bedroom, singing to a bird in a cage and looking wistfully outside her window seeing people going about their lives below. She sings through her pain and it gives her hope, even if it’s all she has. I always really resonated with the idea of being JUST out of reach for what you long for and feeling powerless to your surroundings.

Hi Anita

“If it was his genuine experience that he felt worthy of love because of you.. he’d still be in a relationship with you.” — that is what has been hurting me so much this whole time. If he loved me like he said he did, I don’t think he would have even thought of wanting to end us, and this breakup would be heartbreaking to him. Knowing that everything he said to me at the breakup and after was all an act of appeasement just keeps me sick to my stomach daily. It feels like a cinderblock on my heart.

“He claimed they never made anything official but that she…”- what he claimed was not necessarily true.” – Yes, speaking of his ex, something hit me the other night and I’m confused as to why I’ve not yet put this together. Our third weekend together/date was on October 8th of last year. We planned to hang out again the next weekend after that but he had to cancel on me. I only know this because I documented this in my period tracker app… of all things. I was looking through that app the other night and saw all of this. I documented on Thursday and Friday leading up to that next planned weekend in October that he seemed to be a little “distant with me and in a bad mood.” Then that Friday, he cancelled on me. I don’t know why he did, I don’t even remember this now. Anyway, that following Monday as I was getting ready for work, he texted me THE text… the stuff I’ve mentioned here about him being worried about his problems from his ex affecting our relationship. He told me that he had blocked her on everything, and that he didn’t want her in his life anymore. I’m assuming now in retrospect that he literally meant he had JUST messaged her this that weekend… and that this wasn’t something he was referencing happening months prior to meeting me. I think now that they were STILL in contact when we were already dating and he felt bad about it, and was bothered with her being still wishy washy with him, so he finally shut it down. I think he cancelled on me the few days before this because they were still arguing and perhaps he didn’t want me there to physically see this play out, however it did. Not only that, but I then got even more curious and started digging through our old messages from around when we first started talking. The first week of us talking, he said, “last weekend I was heartbroken and depressed. Now I feel amazing and all I think about is what cheesy line I can say to you next to make you smile.” —  This further supports my new notion that he lied to me about when things officially ended with his ex. He told me it had been two months before we met. Yet here, he claimed LAST WEEKEND (as in the weekend prior to us meeting) he was heartbroken??? At the time, I just assumed he was still going through pain from two months ago. He tried to move on with me, it didn’t work. The distraction was nice for awhile and once he realized he wasn’t actually in love with me caught up with him, guilt consumed him and he bounced the moment he got his chance. I think this is why the night he broke up with me, he said, “I know I SHOULD be happy, but I’m just not. I’ve been so frustrated with myself, I hate myself for it!” He hates that he still can’t get over someone who cheated on him with someone who would never.

It has been killing me because it proves he didn’t love me. It shows to me that he had REAL feelings for this girl, they DID have a relationship, she cheated, and she wouldn’t make up her mind about him so he had to end it and it kept him hung up on her. I don’t sense one part of him being remotely in turmoil or “heartbroken” over ME.

I absolutely resonate with the baby elephant imagery you gave me. Also the part where you said that I look at his social media and see him going about his life wishing he had taken me with him – I think I really appreciated being chosen by him because he was the type of guy who didn’t go for the conventional types. I respect when a guy isn’t attracted to those types because I have never identified that way. I always knew I was the outcast with alternative quirks based on my upbringing and I pretty much had to reject some things and carve out my own unique interests and personality to make myself feel special and protect myself from bullies. I liked that he not only saw this as special in me, he resonated with it too and it made us feel like a team, us against the world. For him to inevitably choose and have “wandering eyes” for other women just crushed me.

Hi Anita

I hope you’ve had a good week – wherever you are and if you celebrated the holiday or not. I am thankful for your care in wanting to talk to me and for this forum.

“This entry on social isolation makes me understand myself better and it helps me understand you (and other people) better. I now understand your intense and prolonged sensitivity to rejection by him, why- as the title of your thread indicates- the breakup has been so “Extremely painful“.” — I am sorry you’ve had to face bullying and feeling that sense of isolation from others too. I know it’s definitely made me vulnerable to clinging to people easily as soon as they “choose” me. And yes, it feels so painful and also it’s just so insulting… a personal betrayal that he chose me because I was special (he voiced why I meant so much to him and why I was different than other girls he had dated frequently) to then dump me like I was nothing to him all along. And to admit to “wandering eyes” for other girls. Ugh.

“– you lived your whole life with your family, being in daily contact and interacting with family members.. but these interactions were not caring-enough for you: not enough to fulfil your unfulfilled fundamental human need for love and belongingness.” — Yes, and as we’ve discussed here, the emotional and supportive inconsistency is really hard to deal with. Especially since I’ve been experiencing the same pattern with my friends as well. It’s really hard to not believe I’m the problem when every single source is giving me the same feedback.

“…Without this team, you are back to being all alone, back to your prolonged and consistent experience of social isolation. …I now understand why every word he said, every emotion he expressed.. matters to you so much. From one point on, in your mind, he was the only person in the whole wide world who (you felt) satisfied that “need for love and belongingness“ ..No wonder you are still so emotionally attached to him, why you don’t let him go.” — Thank you for understanding. I know that focusing on him and replaying all of the good and bad memories so much keeps my brain trained to keep him most important, but the pain is too much to ignore. It feels unnatural and makes me physically sick to try to just ignore my grief and move on. I keep reading about how if you are just constantly crying and not forging new thought processes, then you’re just re-traumatizing yourself with every breakdown. I can’t help it. I miss him as a person so much, everything reminds me of him. Yesterday marked officially 3 months since he left me. I’m gonna be 32 in less than a month, I’ve been hurt over men before, I’ve been cheated on and lied to, yet I’ve never been this heartbroken before. It’s seriously scaring me as to how bad it is, I don’t even know what to do with all of this. The feelings of belonging and genuine adoration for the real me is something I have never had before.

“Question is: can you have this fundamental human motivation directed elsewhere..?” — I requested a consultation/appointment with the internship counseling program I mentioned before and I am waiting to hear back. However, I worry that I’m too thick in grief to “hear” and listen to a counselor. I’m still stuck in denial and wishing for him to give me another chance, yet also wanting to tell him off for lying to me. That’s not remotely at a place that’s ready to change or move on. I genuinely believe that my accusatory pressure over time, mixed with him still being in love with his ex made him panic and run. I beat myself up about this constantly –  I feel I deserve this because everyone in my life has expressed to me how difficult I can be. I don’t know what I could do to direct myself and my fundamental human motivations elsewhere. I thought that working these two jobs and just trying to focus on myself that way would help, but no. I thought that having some days off finally for Thanksgiving for me to rest would help, but no. I thought that getting a new hairstyle would help, no. I do feel like I’m boiling over with this crazy need to express this grief in some way, though. I am an artistic and emotional person but I have no way to channel it. Drawing and painting just frustrates me, so does poetry. I can feel that I NEED to express/channel this some way, but I also feel exhausted and have no drive.