Sorry this is long, but I really need to understand what I am feeling so I can decide what to do.
There's a lovely man who I have been with on and off for the last few years. He is perfect in every way. Gorgeous, my age, kind, reliable, loyal, funny and there's no one on the planet I like better or want to be with more than him. I know it makes me a better person being around him. I am really in love with him, always have been, can't imagine ever not being. I fancy the pants off him, think about him at breakfast, lunch, dinner and lots of times in between and the thought of living without him permanently is actual agony.
We have had an on-again / off-again relationship though, because I would not really commit to him. This is down to my own attachment issues. Terrible childhood, a lot of self-loathing, fear of being hurt and he says I avoid really living, which is probably accurate. I want him and to be with him, but at the same time I have no idea why someone like him wants to be with me in the first place. I never really felt secure with him (although he has always behaved in ways to try and make me feel so) and I have behaved in countless ways to sabotage the relationship.
One of the many things I have done to sabotage our relationship was to accept a job really far away. We've been split up for a year due to being long-distance and me not committing to a joint future together. He said he loved me, but if I made choices not to include him in my life, he would have to let me go. Fair enough, I didn't blame him.
A few months after we split, I had a fairly brief (six month) but ultimately extremely toxic situation-ship with someone else. He took me under his wing when I felt really vulnerable. It was never a romantic boyfriend / girlfriend setup because I was always in love with my ex, but he sort of filled a void I had for company and caring and we got very close. There was no kissing, no dates and I have never felt or thought I was in love with him but we got very close.
He flattered me and was nice to me and was really good company and met all my emotional and physical needs. He made me part of his group of friends (they were great and I have never had a group of friends before) and he arranged lots of things to do together and I enjoyed it. I never saw any kind of future with him and balked if he tried to kiss me, but I liked the way it made me feel having someone caring about me as very few people have done that.
With hindsight and a bit of counselling, what I can see happened is that with my ex - who I was in love with and saw a future with - I never let him myself become enmeshed with him because I found it too scary. So the relationship always moved very slowly to the point of him being very frustrated, whereas this one moved at a million miles an hour. I let that happen because this other guy didn't feel risky to me. No feelings, no risk. What happened though, over time, is that I got very attached to him and dependent on him.
For example with my ex, I didn't let him sleep over at my house ever despite being together a couple of years, whereas this other guy practically slept over every night. So the result, really, was that I got attached and dependent and built more of a "shared life" with the person I didn't want to be with, rather than the person I did want to be with. Sick, I know but I formed this close attachment with the wrong person and I feel so sad about that.
The situation quickly turned toxic when he started saying he loved me and I explained I loved someone else. I said I just wanted casual but he didn't seem to want to accept that and nor did he want to stop seeing me. He kept telling me he loved me so much and why could I not see how right we were together. My counsellor said it was limerence and not love but it felt like he loved me and I liked the way that felt.
When I wouldn't give him what he wanted, there was emotional blackmail, controlling behavior and so on. A few times he got a bit violent (not hitting me but just scary) and told me it was because he loved me so much and couldn't take me stringing him along.
I felt really, really stressed and trapped by this because while I really hated a lot of his behavior I was also very attached to him because we did practically everything together and he had more or less moved in with me by then and controlled every aspect of my life and social life. By then I was having panic attacks too. In the end there was one really explosive incident where he really frightened me and I decided to walk away.
Shortly after that, I went home for Christmas and saw my ex for the first time in a year, and we went for a drink. He told me he still loved me and still wanted to be with me. I said I felt the same and apologised for sabotaging our relationship and explained I really regretted losing him. We got back together and made plans for me to move home when I got a new job and I promised him I would take steps to make myself a healthy partner to him because I loved him and really wanted our life back and to have a second chance at getting it right.
With his encouragement, I started counselling and have been unravelling all my painful childhood trauma and learning to understand that the people who were supposed to love and look after me never did, so I have trouble feeling lovable or relying on others. I have a lot of problems, that will take a while to solve but he says he knows this and he will support me through it.
This period of a few months was the happiest time of my life, because I stopped being afraid of loving my ex and just decided to give it my all and not be scared. I felt excited and hopeful for the first time in my life and things were fantastic. It was such a great time and I was so happy and thought everything was going to be okay, but then I just seemed to fall off the wagon.
Being alone for the first time in my life, still away from my ex, and now cut off from my group of friends and the person I relied on I started to get depressed and lonely. Then I started to panic about what life would be like when I moved home. He wanted to get married and buy a house, I wanted to do that too, but it was hard to picture myself in this wonderful story because I have only ever had miserable, horrible stories before.
So I began sabotaging, starting with picking random fights by saying mean and irrational things and so and and then by saying I wasn't going to move. He told me I was pushing him away, and I would apologise and then start doing it again. I put him through hell emotionally, and in the end he said he was going to have to walk away. When he rejected me (which I deserved) I went immediately back to my toxic FWB who had been begging for me to come back for the entire time.
This really, really, hurt my boyfriend so badly and I hate myself for doing that. I don't know why I did it. I more or less immediately told my FWB I didn't want to see him anymore because I realise the relationship is toxic, I don't love him and I really don't understand why I was drawn back to him. Shortly after, he met and fell in love with someone else (equally lightening fast like a milllion miles an hour) within a couple of weeks and dropped me like a hot potato and acted like he hated me.
I strangely felt incredibly sad about that, like a terrible sense of grief. My boyfriend said he could not understand why I felt grief over someone who was a toxic ex FWB that I didn't want, but it's hard even for me to understand. I think I struggle with understanding that while he made me feel loved and cared for, that wasn't real love.
I feel sad that this woman is now getting all that caring and attention and that she now gets to enjoy his group of friends while I am alone again. I even started wondering if I made a mistake letting him go, and if maybe his toxicity and scary behavior was just because i wouldn't commit and maybe if I asked him to take me back that he would just be kind and caring again.
I got very sad and down and was then diagnosed with a major depressive episode and now everything feels bleak and awful and I just feel so hopeless for the future. I can't understand how or why I have hurt someone I love so badly or why I did it or why I ruined everything.
My boyfriend says he thinks I am seeing things through the negative lens of depression, and I am just attached to this FWB because I am alone in a place with no one and he has asked me to come home. He says we will work through it together, and he will support me while I get better and that we love each other and nothing is unfixable.
I love him too, but just feel like I can't bear the idea of coming home because I have so many miserable memories from the past and my childhood and running away from it all felt safe. Can anyone please help explain what I am feeling? I know if / when my boyfriend walks away from me permanently that I will regret it for the rest of my life but I still find myself hedging my bets by wondering about my FWB and I feel like I am destroying the most lovely man in the world.