Hi Eva

I’m really sorry to hear about the relationship difficulties that you have experienced. You truly deserve better.

Hmm I would say that the way forward is somewhat painful, so feel free to skip this paragraph. Acknowledge that he didn’t love you. Love is a two way street. While things were on his terms he was happy with the way things were. He didn’t care about how you felt. He never had any intention of having a future with you, he was just looking for someone to patiently tolerate his awful behaviour. You want more than he wanted to offer, you deserve more than he wanted to offer.

I for one am glad that you pushed for what you deserve. Just because he couldn’t love you doesn’t mean that no one will. You are no longer having your time and energy wasted. You are free to pursue a meaningful relationship where you can experience the care and respect that you deserve. One that has a future.

I have experienced dealing with these kinds of men, it is all too common these days. If someone is unwilling to date you publicly I’d steer well clear of them in the future. Dating is a bit of a cesspool these days. Once you’ve taken your time to heal, wade through the frogs. Tell them to take a hike, look for a prince who treats you right. You deserve it! ❤️

He might eventually decide to date someone publicly, get engaged and married. But it will be when it serves his needs. And I pity those people, because he won’t magically become a different person. Every relationship has issues and he is unwilling to compromise.

Dear Eva:

What you’re feeling now (or 9 hours ago) is the weight of emotional neglect, confusion, and the exhausting strain of trying to be enough for someone who couldn’t meet you halfway. With deeper clarity and growing compassion for yourself, I truly believe peace will find its way to you.

My best understanding is that the two of you had:

1. Different Attachment Styles- You seem to have an anxious attachment style—you seek closeness, reassurance, and emotional depth. He shows signs of avoidant attachment—he withdraws from intimacy, avoids emotional openness, and keeps connection at a distance, even after years.

This creates a push-pull dynamic: you reach for connection, he pulls away, which makes you reach harder—and leads to more pain.

2. Different Levels of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)- You express your feelings clearly, strive for communication, and feel with depth—that reflects high emotional awareness and empathy. He struggles to empathize, rarely opens up, avoids hard conversations, and doesn’t acknowledge your pain. That reflects low EQ.

He may rationalize his choices, but he lacks insight into how his behavior affects others.

3. Different Behavioral Patterns- You compromise, adapt, and try every possible approach—kindness, patience, assertiveness. You bend, even when it hurts. He avoids conflict, hides the relationship, deflects blame, and shuts you down. He gaslights and shifts responsibility away from himself.

His pattern suggests emotional detachment and a power imbalance: he controls the narrative, while you absorb the impact.

4. Different Goals in the Relationship- You wanted emotional connection, public acknowledgment, mutual respect, healing, and a future. He wanted comfort on his own terms, connection hidden from view, and freedom from social judgment.

You both may have felt “love,” but you were seeking different kinds of love—and operating from very different emotional worlds.

As for your questions, here’s what I see:

“How can someone be so dehuman and do what he wants even though I say it hurts?”- He may be emotionally blocked. That doesn’t mean he lacks feeling—it means he struggles to access or process emotions in healthy ways. Perhaps when he was a child, his vulnerability was met with shame or rejection. In response, he built emotional armor—and still hides behind it.

This distance from his own emotions makes even simple intimacy feel unsafe to him: “He… never wants to hug or kiss in public because he sees it as ‘cringey’.”

The ego is our inner sense of self—how we see ourselves, and how we want to be seen. When toxic shame infects the ego, it becomes fragile. A deeply fragile ego can’t distinguish between “I did something wrong” and “I am something wrong.” So it defends itself at all costs. To protect itself, it builds defenses: withdrawal, denial, blame: “He’s always been emotionally unavailable… Every time, he finds a way to twist it so that I’m the problem. He’s never once apologized. Never taken responsibility. Just blames me for my reactions to his actions.”

Vulnerability is the openness to being emotionally exposed—it’s the willingness to show our true thoughts, feelings, and needs. It’s the doorway to intimacy, trust, healing, and authentic relationships. But when vulnerability—at an early age—is repeatedly shamed or harshly criticized, it creates a severe emotional injury, a core wound. And over time, a person builds emotional scar tissue around that wound, blocking vulnerability from ever being exposed again.

This emotional scar tissue becomes a defense mechanism. It might look like emotional detachment, perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-control, shifting blame, or never accepting responsibility for hurting another person—but underneath is a deeply guarded part of the self that fears being seen and hurt again.

Within the relationship—when you cried, sought affection, or expressed pain—you weren’t just exposing your own vulnerability, you were activating his. And his reaction was to push it (and you) away.

You weren’t wrong for showing up emotionally. In fact, every time you allowed yourself to be seen in your sadness or longing, it was an act of courage. Vulnerability, in that sense, is strength—the strength to risk connection, even when the response is uncertain. That’s a strength he didn’t possess, or didn’t know how to access. And in his world, defending against discomfort took priority over opening to intimacy.

“How can someone claim they love you, yet be so emotionally blind to your pain?”- He may have loved you in the way he was capable—but shame, in his world, may be more powerful than love.

“Who will he be with next?”- Even if he’s with someone else, he still carries the same emotional limitations. That pain you felt in the relationship came from his unhealed shame, not from anything lacking in you. Whoever comes next will likely meet the same guarded heart—until he chooses to face it.

“Will he treat the next girl better?”- Maybe. But if he does, it won’t be because she’s better or more deserving. It’ll only happen if he feels safer, less exposed, or chooses to grow. And if he doesn’t confront the toxic shame beneath his ego, the same patterns will repeat.

“Why does it feel like I was never enough?”- Because you kept giving love to someone who couldn’t fully receive it. His fragile ego, shaped by deep shame, made it hard for him to accept closeness without feeling threatened.

“How can someone switch in a day with such bad behavior?”- He didn’t switch in a day. Emotionally blocked people often begin leaving internally long before they say goodbye. When the breakup came, it felt sudden—but in his mind, he was simply following the escape route he’d been building.

“Why didn’t anything I say matter?”- Because he wasn’t ready to hear it—not because it wasn’t true. Your words held weight, tenderness, and truth. But when someone carries toxic shame, even gentle feedback feels like an attack. Instead of responding, he defended. Instead of listening, he rewrote your pain as paranoia or drama. It mattered—you just spoke to a heart that wasn’t ready to be open.

“Why did he never apologize?”- Because apology requires emotional humility. To say “I’m sorry”—and mean it—would take coming in contact with that core wound within him. And that would be too painful for him.

“Why did he keep acting like I’m the problem?”- Because blaming you was easier than facing himself. He needed a target for his discomfort—and you became that target. Shifting blame was how he kept his fragile self intact.

Eva, none of this means you were unlovable. It means you loved someone whose emotional world was too guarded, too wounded, too locked down to receive it. That’s heartbreaking—but it’s also clarifying. You didn’t fail. You felt. You reached. You tried. And now, you get to heal.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, Eva—what resonated, what didn’t, or what you still carry unanswered. I’m here.

With care, Anita

Dear Eva,

I’m really sorry for how you were treated throughout your relationship and the way he finally left you. I feel your pain. And I’ll start at the end:

I really cannot accept the situation as it is and say okay, BYE now. I keep fighting and fighting, and still everything is worse.

I feel your frustration. You want him to understand how much he has hurt you and how little he has given you. Now that he has broken up with you so suddenly, you’re fighting for an admission and a recognition on his part that he has done you wrong.

But I’m afraid you won’t be able to get it from him, because he sounds to me like someone with narcissistic traits: selfishness, lack of empathy, lack of remorse, and shifting the blame on you every time you expressed your concerns.

You say that in the beginning, your relationship was good:

Even though it was a complicated situation, we continued to see each other for years because it felt good — there was chemistry, understanding, and a genuine connection.

I guess “good” is a relative term, since he kept your relationship secret for quite some time (actually for the entire span of your relationship, if I understood well?). But perhaps in the beginning you were more tolerant because it was a somewhat delicate situation, since he was your ex’s friend. He felt he would be judged by not only your ex but his whole friend group (at least that’s what he’s told you as his excuse), and so I guess you had understanding for him and were patient at first.

But I can imagine that as the time went by, you felt increasingly unhappy about this arrangement and started voicing your concerns. No wonder, since you wanted a real relationship, not to be kept in secret from the world: not only from his friends group but from everyone (He hides me from everyone, even people not connected to my ex (friends, relatives…)).

You were in a rather humiliating situation, and you had every right to protest. But each time you spoke up, he flipped it back on you:

He always manages to flip it back on me — my reaction, my emotions, my tears, the way I speak or write… Every time, he finds a way to twist it so that I’m the problem. He’s never once apologized. Never taken responsibility. Just blames me for my reactions to his actions.

He never took responsibility for his actions, his selfishness, his constant rejection of you and your love. Instead, he blamed you. That’s a typical narcissistic tactic: accusing the victim of being the abuser. This tactic is called DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. So he was the abuser – he was emotionally abusing you – but he portrayed himself as the victim of your abuse. He flipped things on their head.

And I haven’t done anything, only fighting for me to feel better, and addressing those feelings. And still, even with that, he proceeds to act like I am the problem, so much paranoia, constant fighting, constant whining, etc.

You only wanted to be treated with minimum respect. However, he denied you that and accused you of being paranoid, constantly whining, fighting etc.

I really cannot accept the situation as it is and say okay, BYE now. I keep fighting and fighting, and still everything is worse.

Unfortunately, with people with narcissistic traits, which he seems to fit pretty well, fighting them never yield results. You will never manage to get an apology from him or an admission that he did something wrong. A narcissist can never admit they are wrong. They have to defend their fragile ego. And so the more you fight, the more he will accuse you, and the more mean he will get. And you will end up getting even more hurt.

I’m afraid you can only start healing when you stop expecting anything from him – any kind of apology, empathy or understanding. You won’t be able to make it right with him. But you can heal and make it right in your own life – separately from him – when you discover your own worth and how much more you deserve than the breadcrumbs he was giving you.

He was telling you he loved you (in the beginning of the relationship, later not even that), but those were just empty words, because his actions didn’t follow suit. What he gave you wasn’t love – but as Anita said, none of that was your fault, but his own abusive personality.

You do need healing, but the silver lining in all this is that you don’t need anything from him to heal. It is in your own hands. Your happiness is in your own hands.