Dear canary:

In this post, I will read the very beginning part of what you shared, comment on it, then read the next part and so on. This way I will be.. thinking out loud, developing my thoughts as I go along, and finally offer you with concluding thoughts- what those will be, I do not know. It depends on what comes up as I keep going. So, here it is (I italicized your words):

On Dec 22, 2020, you started a thread titled “Grieving the loss of my soulmate“. Two members replied to you there, but you didn’t post a second time. Your original post was very well structured, organized, like a well-written, condensed and concise academic paper, starting with: “I was in a relationship with a man from August 2019-April 2020 (7 months)“, following with: “The reason for our breakup“.

The one and only reason you listed for the breakup was your “severe depression & anxiety“ (“it made me difficult to deal with.. I was becoming very difficult to be around”).

You then added: “he tried to be there for me, there wasn’t a lot he could do“.

You took 100% responsibility for the breakup, pointing to your severe mental un-wellness as the cause. No pointing to his mental health as having anything to do with the failure of the relationship/ the breakup.

You continued: after the breakup in April 2020, the two of you were friends, but you were “being clingy“, and two months later, in June 2020, “he started being a bit distant..  was losing patience for me“. At the same time (June-July 2020), he also told you that he loved you and the two of you “hooked up“. Yet, he told you that “he was not ready for a relationship and he thought he loved me like before, but he did not“. That hurt you, and you felt used: “I felt used even though I know he didn’t intend it to be that way“.

At this point, in July 2020, you still love him, clingy, wanting the relationship to resume, hoping, getting hurt, disappointed and angry- angry about being used. (You didn’t mention anger, but when we people feel used, we also feel angry about it). Yet, you knew (“I know“, a confident statement) that he didn’t intend to use you/ to hurt you.

“August 2020 I cut off all contact with him and distanced myself from him“- angry, I figure.

Still, August: “he was being very impatient with me and did not want to speak to me“- he is angry too. He did not want to speak to you: that indicates that you did not “cut off all contact with him” for long.

You shared nothing about September, I am assuming that he still didn’t want to speak with you in September, because you wrote in regard to October 2020, that he messaged you “out of the blue“, asking you “to delete all our previous messages from the chat“- I am guessing that at this point you are very hurt and very angry.

During the rest of October, through November and December 22, 2020, when you submitted your original post in your first thread, you “talked to him about once or twice.. the first time I did was when we were in the same video game“.

About the April breakup and what followed (April- December), you wrote: “I think it was a good idea for us to separate.. I think the breakup was a good idea“, and the reasons: “because I have been doing much better in terms of mental health.. because his absence taught me so many important lesson.. about love and life“. You added that he was your “first love/ soulmate“, that you still loved him but didn’t need him: “I still.. love him from the bottom of my heart but I now realize I do not need him“.

Reads like a clean breakup, by December, all is settled: he taught you important lessons about love and life, you love him and you don’t need him. Case closed.

But then, you added: “I am still grieving every day and it is still very painful. I am trying to let go of the attachment I have for him because I still miss him and wish he were with me.. I really thought it was him but it is not. He was simply in my life to teach me important and meaningful lessons“-

– Case not closed. It was wishful thinking to say “I don’t need him“, maybe it is something you felt for a moment, but it did not last. You try to talk sense to yourself, to use logic, comforting yourself with the thought (paraphrased): I need him so much to be my soulmate for life, but I am okay because he taught me lessons about love and life, and that’s good enough. I am satisfied.

Taking into consideration your organized well-structured writing and presentation of events and your thoughts, seems to me that Logic is strong in you, that you try to make sense of people and events using your best logic, but  your heart (emotions) and thoughts (logic) are in two separate playing fields.

Fast forward almost seven months, you posted your second thread titled “Letting go of hope for a person’ recovery” in July 19, 2021. You started this current thread with: “Things are so much clearer after I learned that my ex has ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder)“-

– Later you confirmed that you were talking about the same guy: your “first love/ soulmate“. That reads like a bombshell: Antisocial.. ? The same guy who you wrote earlier taught you important lessons about love and life, the same guy who was not at all the cause of the April breakup, a breakup that happened because you (not him) were difficult to deal with, because you (not him) was becoming very difficult to be around (“it made me difficult to deal with.. I was becoming very difficult to be around“)?

– At that point, I figured that you came up with the diagnosis after the fact, sometime in between Dec 22 (your one and only post in your previous thread) and July 19 (your first post in your current thread). And I suspected that you came up with this diagnosis because it places him in the Bad/Villain category and you, in the Good/Victim category, and that makes you feel better.

But then, it is not that simple. You struggle to think of him as bad, and you insist that his intentions are not bad: he used you but did not intend to use you, he hurt you but he did not intend to hurt you (“I felt used even though I know he didn’t intend it to be that way“- Dec 2020, “he did all the hurtful things to me.. he never meant to hurt me“, July 19, 2021).

In your second post, you wrote: “a lot of his actions in the past make sense because of his diagnosis“- so, seems to me that you understand his behavior retroactively, using a diagnosis that you did not consider before.

You then wrote: “He is by no means an evil person..  He is a bad person, extremely arrogant only cares for himself… he would never empathize with me or understand my situation because he was too worried about himself“- bad but not evil.. a matter of degree, I suppose, is what you meant by it. This seems like a retroactive understanding of him because back in Dec 2020 there was no mention at all of him being bad or evil, arrogant or unempathetic.

Back in Dec 2020, it was your “severe depression & anxiety” that caused the breakup, not his (unmentioned then) Asocial Personality disorder. Back then you were the one “difficult to deal with… very difficult to be around”, not him. And back then “he tried to be there for me, there wasn’t a lot he could do“.

Later you added: “he had told me about his symptoms way before we even dated“- he may have told about his lack of empathy, etc., symptoms of ASPD, without mentioning the diagnosis, or he may have told you that he suspects the diagnosis itself. A few sentences after the quote right above, you wrote: “He told me he found out recently because he was seeing a therapist and did not tell anyone else because he feels no need to. I was the only person he told“- meaning as I understand it, that he told you about his ASPD symptoms before August 2020 when you first dated, and that he told you about his official diagnosis by a psychotherapist,  recently, sometime in later 2021.

“I no longer have any desire to be with him (his current self) but I notice that deep down inside I have hope that he’ll go back to being his best self“- I think that you do have a desire to be with him, and a strong desire at that. I understand that you intellectually separate his “current self” from his “best self”, but your heart desires him regardless of the distinctions that your intellect makes.

Next, you wrote: “To me, I think he was a genuinely good person even though he had lots of trouble being considerate. With his loved ones he was selfless and kind“- I understand that people are complex, some more than others, and that all people placed under one diagnosis are not all the same, but I would think that a person who was correctly diagnosed with an Asocial Personality Disorder cannot possibly be “genuinely good person.. selfless and kind“. So I figure either one of the following is true, but not both: he is either genuinely good, selfless and kind or he fits the ASPD diagnosis.

Next, “Right now, I don’t think of him as a good person“- I wonder if you don’t think about him as a good person right now  because right now he is not speaking to you even though you want to speak with him (“We also don’t speak anymore“, you wrote earlier).

Maybe you are struggling a lot with not speaking with him anymore. Maybe you’ve been trying to contact him repeatedly since you talked last, and he has been refusing any and all contact with you.

I wonder about the “severe depression & anxiety” that you mentioned in the beginning of this thread, we never discussed it: I wonder if you have been seeing a psychotherapist, if you’ve been taking psychiatric medications.

I have no other thoughts, following this long, time-consuming post. I don’t know how you felt reading it and how you feel now. I hope you are okay. You are welcome to respond to this post- or not. I wish you well regardless.

anita

Dear canary,

you’re welcome, and I am glad it feels freeing to you to still love him but not having expectations of him changing. This helps you be free from emotional attachment to him, from the hope and excitement that you feel if he shows signs of improvement, followed by disappointment and anger if he hurts you again. Basically, it frees you from the emotional roller-coaster, where you make your happiness and well-being dependent on his actions. I am sure you know all this, but I am still saying it out loud to make a stronger point 🙂

As for his disorder, there are people who love and care only about their immediate family, and would do anything for them – even lie, cheat and steal if necessary (i.e. behave in an antisocial manner). It seems your ex might belong to this category of people… When you were his friend and then girlfriend, he might have put you in the “loved ones” group and would behave kindly to you, or at least would try. Although you say that even then he lacked empathy, but perhaps he was willing to work on it and become “a better person” for your sake. Even after you broke up, up until April 2021, it seems he had remorse for leading you on and hurting your feelings. He even said he was a “shitty person”. He seems to have regretted that he’d hurt you.

I guess this is the personality that you liked – that he at least saw how some of his actions were hurtful and perhaps showed a willingness to change. But this April, it seems he stopped caring – you say he stopped caring how his actions affect you. I guess this is how he behaves with everybody outside of his “loved ones” group: he doesn’t care about them, doesn’t care if he hurts them or exploits them. This is probably the personality you detest and don’t want to have anything to do with.

It seems to me you saw a potential in him when he was open to change, when he would admit his mistakes and show some remorse. That was attractive to you and got you hooked, got you hopes up. Based on what you’ve written, he never was truly caring and supportive of you, but at least he was “trying”, or he saw that he “should be” more empathic, and this was what kept you hoping. You did say in your last post that you had “a great bond and connection”. But I wonder if that bond was rather around working on his “improvement” and his need to change, and not really a bond in terms of feeling respected and supported by him?

Dear canary:

You are welcome. You wrote: “In the beginning (5 months) of our relationship I was not anxiously attached to my partner. I.. was working on my treatment for depression & anxiety“-

– the anxiety you experienced in regard to your attachment to your ex five months into the relationship (“anxiously attached to my partner”) is not separate from the anxiety (“depression & anxiety”)  you experienced in the first 4 months of the relationship, for which you were receiving treatment.

“I’m not sure how to relieve the anxious attachment towards my ex”-

– because your anxiety regarding to your attachment to your ex is not separate from your anxiety in the first 4 months of the relationship (and before you met him), working on your overall anxiety is key. Can you tell me what treatment you receive for your anxiety (“I.. was working on my treatment for depression and anxiety”), and otherwise elaborate on your anxiety that is not related to your ex?

anita

Dear canary,

He did appreciate me in his own way

He shows his support and love to me in a very different way, at first I wasn’t used to it and I wholeheartedly believed he did not love me because he was not showing me love in a way that I understood it.

Could you give an example of how he was showing his support and love for you, which at first you didn’t register as love?

You say you needed him to show empathy because that’s how you feel loved. Can you give an example of a situation in which you expected more empathy but he failed to show it? And what was his reaction instead of empathy?

Dear canari:

You are welcome, as I understand it, you are a teenager, a high school student living at home. Am I correct? You received counseling at school for 4 years. At one point you had suicidal thoughts and asked a school counselor for help. The school, alarmed, arranged for you to be admitted to a hospital.

Therapy outside of school was short, expensive and not helpful. You were prescribed several medications by a psychiatrist Aug 2019- May 2021, but those were not helpful and you are still suffering from withdrawal symptoms from the last medication,  Effexor.

Effexor (brand name)/ Venlafaxine (generic name), is an antidepressant of the Serotonin Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor (SNRI) class, used to treat Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), panic disorder, and social phobia. Venlafaxine has a higher rate of moderate to severe discontinuation symptoms relative to other antidepressants, but way, way less than the anti-anxiety group of medications called benzodiazepines. In my personal experience, discontinuation of an anti-depressant (from the SSRI class, in my case) was nothing compared to my withdrawal from a benzodiazepine (Klonipin).

You wrote that Effexor is “known for having very long and horrible withdrawal symptoms“. It is the benzodiazepines that are known to have very long and horrible withdrawal symptoms. Effexor is known to have more discontinuation symptoms than other anti-depressants, but way less than benzodiazepines.

“I’d really like to try therapy but it’s so expensive. I’ve filled out forms for therapy that are low-cost or even free, but they never got back to me“- call/ message the people you sent the forms to, asking if your forms were received, if they need more information from you, and when can you expect help.

“I’m trying to fix my schedule and build a healthy routine.. I enjoy yoga, eating healthy, reading, etc. So I’ve been trying to take things slowly so I can build this routine that’ll benefit me“- this is in line with what I advised you in your first thread (“1. Get professional help..  psychotherapy with a quality therapist.. 2. A daily routine, including daily aerobic exercise.. as well as such practices such as yoga and listening to guided meditations. 3. Look  into Mindfulness, there are plenty of mindfulness exercises…4… you can learn emotional regulation skills and improve your interpersonal communication skills…).

I started this post with my understanding that you are a teenager living at home. How are the relationships between you and your parents/ siblings?

anita