I was completely ,totally and loyally in love for 25 years with my husband and then I met someone else and wasn’t. I am still in the marriage and am so confused how I could have gone from all these years of love and not imagining him next to me forever and beyond to me wanting to be with someone else. We were inseparable , two peas in a pod and I still love hanging out with him but I don’t love him like that anymore and do not feel loved the way he other person make me feel loved. And if I leave will it just happen again ?

Me and my boyfriend broke up on Monday. For the past two weeks we have had been talking solely just as friends, and he would play some mind games with me that was really screwing up my mental health. On monday we talked and decided to end it and then he started to say somethings that I honestly don’t believe because if he was that unhappy then he should have spoke up sooner.

I’m as sad, as I am mad, as I am confused. I think I got over the giant hump of being so heartbroken two weeks ago when this whole thing started. He one day would go “i miss you, I miss us.” and then the next day say “I feel nothing towards you right now.” and then say “I want a hug.” He would say things like “my pretty girl” or “I won the jackpot” meanwhile he claimed he felt nothing towards me.  When we finally talked on the phone this past Monday he said “I don’t think I was every satisfied in our relationship in terms of reassurance, I didn’t like how you were pessimistic, and midway through the relationship I got tired of what we would always do the same thing.” I honestly don’t believe this really at all because all the time dozens of times a day I would say I love him, compliment him, etc. Also I have always been pessimistic since the day we started talking so if he didn’t like it at all then why did he wait to tell me sooner nor talk to me at all about it. All the time when we were together, I would ask him “what do you want to do?” He would answer with pretty much the same answer every-time so that’s what we did. Then when the phone call came to the end he said basically “I have no feelings for you but I don’t want you to date anyone else.” Basically all these things kept replaying in my head and it really wasn’t doing my mental health any good

Dear kaia:

On June 28, a bit over two weeks ago, you shared that you dated your boyfriend for almost 8 months (Dec 2021-June 2022), and then the visit-from-hell (as I call it) happened: his flight to you got delayed, he couldn’t get a connecting flight, he cancelled his flight and got a new one, the new flight got cancelled, he waited for 4 hours in line to book yet another flight, and overall he was delayed 12 hours at the airport. He finally got on a plane and you picked him up at the airport. The next day he was sick with covid, and quarantined in your room, had a panic attack, shaking, couldn’t catch his breath, throwing up, said he wanted to go back home.

He told you “I have these thoughts, that I don’t like about us breaking up, but we are okay”, “I think I a falling out f love with you”, “I love us and I never wanted to break your heart”, “I feel empty, nothing feels good right now, and my brain doesn’t feel like my own”, “I want to feel normal again”. On the way to the airport to go back home, he got a text that his flight was cancelled. He then sobbed and told you: “I want to break up… no, idk what I want”. He finally got on a plane and was gone.

Today, two weeks later, you posted an update, more of what he recently told you: “I miss you, I miss us”, “I feel nothing towards you right now”, I want a hug”, “my pretty girl”, “I won the jackpot”, and the day before yesterday, he told you: “I don’t think I was every satisfied in our relationship in terms of reassurance”, etc.

When I replied to you earlier today, before I reviewed your June 28 post, I suggested that he was cruel to you at times. Now I think that he has been mentally unwell for a while, particularly since the bad, bad visit. I think that he is so emotionally unstable that he is not able to be in a relationship. I am sorry for your hurt. I think you lost him due to mental illness.

anita

Hello. If you think about the fact that the campaign broke the guy – then it is so. It is sad to realize, but sometimes you understand for yourself that you no longer love a person and you don’t see him next to you. I advise you to read more about the psychology of relationships here – https://toplovehacks.com/physical-signs-of-infidelity/. And about the advice, then be with him for a while and if nothing changes in your soul – I personally see no other option than to leave, because this way you will not torment your soul either myself or a boyfriend.

Dear Owen:

You shared that before going to college, “Everything was great” between your girlfriend and you. While in college, apart from each other, you felt like you were “falling more in love with her“. She flew to visit you and the two of you spent the weekend together.  The weekend felt amazing, and you “felt so in love with her“. You cried a lot when she left and the day after.

Two days after the visit ended, she called you and you felt “absolutely disgusted by her.. hated her..  wanted nothing to do with her“. For two weeks you felt this way and “became obsessed with the idea of breaking up“, you finally told her that (a part of you) you wanted to break up with her, and she was devastated.

“I just could understand how this could happen. The pain was unbearable… when I started texting her, it was like I was talking to an entirely different person, someone I had never met, even though I knew it was her. Then, it’s like my brain picked up on the fact that it was her and I started feeling disgust and hatred for her. It’s been 2 months and nothing has really changed. All day, every day, all I can think about is telling her I never want to talk to her again, but at the same time I can’t imagine losing her. I don’t want to give up on our relationship but it’s taking such a huge toll on me and I don’t know what to do.”-

– You were very emotionally attached to your girlfriend for some time. Then college happened and the two of you were physically separated (living far enough from each other to require flying to physically be together). Her visit with you followed a time when the two of you were physically separated, and was followed by more time of being physically separated.

Before reading your post, I re-read my replies to different members on this thread (same topic), beginning in August 2015, more than 8 years ago. I am having all those replies in mind, as I list a possibility to explain how this could happen (“I just could understand how this could happen“):

The visit with your girlfriend happened after the first time that you were  physical separated from her for long, and therefore, the intensity of your emotional attachment to her increased during the visit. The visit ended with another physical separation and that separation- while feeling intensely attached to her-   triggered an emotionally traumatic experience from your childhood, one in which you were separated from a parent (or close care taker), either physically or emotionally.

A child is naturally intensely emotionally attached to a parent.

An emotional separation from a parent/ being emotionally abandoned by a parent can take the form of a parent ignoring you, being otherwise occupied, too busy, or a parent repeatedly disapproving of and rejecting you. It may be an experience that lasted for years as you grew up, and if it happened, it was very painful. Understandably, you felt hurt by.. and angry at the parent for not being there for you in an accepting/ approving, attentively loving way.

Fast forward, while separated from your girlfriend, in the state of feeling more  intensely attached to her emotionally, you projected the abandoning parent into your girlfriend and felt the same pain (“The pain was unbearable“), and the same anger (“disgust and hatred“) toward her that you felt toward the abandoning parent. Fueled by that anger, you wanted to break up with her so to get rid of the pain of being abandoned.

“When I started texting her, it was like I was talking to an entirely different person, someone I had never met, even though I knew it was her“- this may be a re-experiencing of how you felt as a child about an abandoning parent: the love and closeness you naturally felt for the parent before the abandonment turned into a feeling of estrangement, as in feeling that the parent is a stranger.

What do you think, Owen?

anita

Dear Ssleeping:

You’ve been in a romantic relationship with your boyfriend for 3 years and living together for the past year. I am trying to separate how you currently feel about him and the relationship with him from his words and actions.

How you feel: “I know he’s my soulmate… Our souls have connected, I feel like I’ve always known him… I know he’s the one… I  keep going through phases of being destroyed and hopeful… I know we are meant to be together, I feel it. I feel hopeful that we will come back – he’s my person. I’m just so scared“.

His words and actions: Before: “We’ve talked about getting married, have given each other jewelry short of engagement rings…we’ve named future children“.

Recently: “He said he started thinking about moving into a house together… He then started feeling anxious when thinking about it…  over the coming days he said he doesn’t want this anymore and needs to be alone..  he said things feel different… He said that he feels like we’re just friends, that it doesn’t feel romantic anymore, we are very intimate often, even after this has happened. He said I’m still the most special person in his life and always will be, that we are the most connected, that he could never love anyone more than he loves me. He said we are still our own word that we use for soulmates… He said he doesn’t want other people, he just wants to be alone.  He said he doesn’t know what he wants in the future and just knows right now he doesn’t want this… He said he thought of the word and idea of a break, but he can’t say if it’s just time that’s needed or if we’ll get back together. He’s said the thought of that if it’s meant to be, it will happen again is keeping him from breaking down completely. That it gives him hope“.

About his childhood+, you wrote: “He was abused and abandoned as a child and teenager and has always been very independent because he’s had to be, he’s also based self worth on others and never coped well alone… I should mention that he is very impulsive“.

You asked: “Do you think we just need time? It gives me so much hope to think this, so much hope that I feel it so deeply… I feel an urge to bring the anxious avoidant attachment style to his attention and see what he thinks, does he need to come to this realisation himself? I really think this might have been what has happened here. Does he need time and therapy to see this?”

My thoughts and attempted answers: it is very common for children who grew up abused and abandoned (this has been true in my case for many years) to associate love with hurt, and therefore we fear being trapped in this combo of love and hurt, and we want OUT.

This is very much what the term  anxious avoidant attachment style is about. But if you tell him about this attachment style (I don’t see the harm in telling him), the information will not make his fear go away. It’s a guttural fear, and once it takes hold, it’s hard to reverse it.

Once in his mind, the idea and fear of being trapped with you (by moving to a house together and cementing the relationship further) was cemented, it’s hard to dissolve this cement. The more you pursue him by being emotionally and physically intimate with him, the more persistent his fear will be. This is so because fear is stronger and more urgent than any other emotion.

Your best bet to get to a point where he loves you more than he fears you, I believe, is to end all intimate talk with him, as well as physical intimacy because that will play into another fear of his: that of being left alone (“never coped well alone“, you wrote about him). It is only if you remove the threat (your love!) from him, that he might feel safe enough to.. want you back as a partner in life.

Quality therapy will be great for him and for you (separately and/ or together, at one time or another). Also: be careful to not let your hope and longing for him to distort your view of what is happening, including the probability that he feels guilty for wanting out and therefore he may be saying nice things to you to ease your pain (and possible anger) at being rejected by him.

If you would like to post again and communicate with me on the topic, you are welcomed to do so.

anita

Dear Ssleeping:

You are welcome. It is admirable that you intend to keep your promise to him

“Do you think we just need time and his feelings will return?“- maybe but like I wrote in my first reply, fear is a very powerful emotion

“How would I broach the topic of avoidant attachment? I don’t want to push him further away“- you can copy and paste for him about the topic, send it to him and ask him what he thinks about it.

anita