We speak every day, we stay over at each other’s houses two nights a week, we go on holiday together (short breaks 2-5 days) we have met each other’s friends and family. This has been happening for 2 years. He has grown up DC and I have teenagers.
He told me he loved me 6 months ago (Initiated it) for a period of two weeks, then stopped. He vacillates between being quite obsessive about me to being completely distant. At times he has swung from telling me he loves me and I am the love of his life to saying I “should not take the relationship too seriously.” He has also told me “I don’t feel a great need to be around you. It seems to be the connection is stronger from your side.” He will also compare me unfavourably with his exes out of the blue (“well Katherine would never have dreamed of doing something like that,”) and he has a habit of calling me a “normal person” when comparing me to other people, (“well she was like a film star... it was ridiculous. I mean a proper film star face and body, not a normal person like you.”)
When he says things like this I withdraw. As soon as I withdraw he gets very upset and bombards me with calls and messages and visits and says that I have misunderstood him and what he means. The resolution of the question of why he does it is always that he is not good at expressing himself, that things come out wrong, that he actually meant something different to what case across. There is also an element of him implying I am being sensitive but it’s not in an accusing “it’s your fault” way.
Whatever stage of the cycle we are at with his feelings he will - like clockwork - call me at 6pm every day and text/call me all evening on the nights we don’t see each other. I will always see him on average two nights a week. If we have ever broken away from that pattern it’s been when I have withdrawn due to his unbalancing comments and he has desperately scrabbled to get me back involved again.
The only conclusion I can seem to reach is that he is deeply insecure and must enjoy imbalance or the thrill of almost losing me and then getting me back again. I was very upset by it in the first part of our relationship but now it’s so predictable I will put the phone down on a hurtful comment and cut him off and wait for the bombardment of apologies and corrections.
I don’t need anyone to tell me it’s unhealthy (I can see that!) but I’m wondering why you think he does it. Is this a type? What usually happens? Ultimately even if he recorrects these comments and says he doesn’t really mean them, it takes a toll on my self esteem and wears it down over time because even if they are retracted I still remember them. Is that his purpose?