Partner just broke up with me - I’m angry

[Menora]

I know it’s an emotion that is understandable but I am so angry. I worry that I might not handle things in a dignified way and there is no way I want to let him play the victim in this. It’s not a competition but it wasn’t a mutual decision and I was sort of blindsided. This is HIS decision so he doesn’t get to cry about it and get sympathy

He has broken up with me 3 times now but the first 2 times in the past I was upset and we talked and tried to make it work - although I told him he could walk away at that point and be honest with me. He didn’t. The last couple of weeks he’s been really distant and avoidant of me, basically friendzoned me (still had sex with me if I initiated it though didn’t he) so I asked him outright on a number of occasions if he was losing feelings for me and to be honest with me. Since that last chat where I asked him he said he did love me and want to be with me but then we were not really able to talk much more and we carried on doing things together, I’ve seen him a number of times and he hasn’t said anything else and was making some effort.

This evening he decides now is the time to admit the feelings aren’t there, and I feel so bloody stupid and strung along. I went out multiple places with him since our last talk, bought clothes for our holiday and he didn’t say anything. It’s my birthday soon and our holiday was due in a few weeks and now he is still going and I am just getting the money back. I don’t have anyone else to holiday with at short notice so just sad old me on my own for a week while he is going on our lovely holiday.

I was so close to all his family and his DC and now it’s just all gone. I’m so mad at him, I feel like the honest kind person I thought he was isn’t real. I gave him so many chances to have a proper sit down chat and discuss our feelings and I would have respected his decision if he didn’t decide to go and ‘think’ about it without even telling me he was having more doubts and sharing nothing with me until I was actually being dumped. I fully understand everyone’s right to change their mind and leave a relationship but what I am angry about is just dallying around burying his head in the sand avoiding talking to me about ANYTHING when he knew I was feeling anxious as there had been a sense of change in him and I kept asking and getting the answer I do love you.

I told him to leave as I couldn’t stand seeing him so pitiful feeling sorry for himself, and he’s gone. He wanted ME to make him feel better about His decision instead of just owning up to it too.

Im sure I will calm down but right now I am fuming. Any helpful advice

This will completely out me which I kind of no longer care but it is my birthday over the weekend so I think this is what is making it feel far worse and more disheartening not to spend it with anyone. A normal weekend would probably not feel as awful but if I can get through this I can get through anything. I’ve spent Xmas alone before

I remember that feeling. I forced myself to drink complan drinks for the nutritional value, to keep my energy levels up until I could manage meals.

sorry to keep posting it’s quiet therapeutic!

I think I know what it is that I did wrong to finally put the nail into the coffin and it explains why SIL is being off with me. I got frustrated with him being wishy washy, faffing about, distant and his DC being rude to me. I think I was quiet and thoughtful which he took as moody because we could not talk and I felt pushed out and we were not connecting. Being moody is very usual for me but it’s one of his big triggers and makes him scared and uncomfortable - which I knew and tried my best to never be moody

Very UNUSUAL

Can anyone recommend books for kids about separation? They are 6 and 3. Or any tips on guiding them through a parent break up? Thank you

You might be better off starting a new thread about that @Lancaste12 xx

OP, I wonder if the SIL is being a bit cagey because she’s embarrassed. Maybe she knows something or feels badly about what he’s done?

Look: it doesn’t matter why he ended it. Its over. If he was insecure and couldn’t take care of himself and couldn’t handle you having “moods” he would have been a terrible boyfriend. Go to therapy and find out why you choose “fixer uppers” —tou will find that you are choosing difficult/shy/losers though you may think of them as diamonds in the rough. These guys don’t blossom into being great catches and they won’t feed your wounded ego for long. Oh for a while they do and their families do too but if you once start thinking of yourself as entitled to be the center of attention or you have an uncomfortable mood they dump you. You start out too fast with a helpmeet role and then they can’t tolerate you taking more space (like bride, btw)

He wants to get back together. We met up to talk things through and we said a lot of honest and open things that we hadn’t said before none of them were cruel or angry and I don’t think we had considered where the other person was coming from. I do not have great mental health at the moment (this doesn’t help) and I know that I have a lot of work to do with my emotional reactions to things. I have been selfish and self absorbed at times and he felt I was distant so he withdrew. He didn’t know how to help me and I rejected a lot of his support in self sabotage so the more alone I felt, the more I withdrew. I didn’t want him to fix me I just wanted to feel he understood me but it’s not his job to make me feel better I need to work on those things. He says he felt rejected by me and I felt rejected by him. We were not understanding each other very well. I don’t know if this is something that we can work on or not. I feel scared to trust him but we both feel a strong pull to each other and that’s hard to break. In a cringy movie way he does feel like home to me In all honesty I think I took him for granted and assumed he would just put up with me being moody. I was angry because I was so mad at him for not talking to me like this before it got this bad and he acknowledges this is a major problem. He’s aware I was too scared to be honest with him due to his dismissive reactions and thought he didn’t like me. He said he does like me but I don’t seem to like myself. We can’t only open up to each other during a crisis when it’s all gone to shit. We talked about what each of us needs in a relationship and what is a realistic expectation.

I make this sound like it was completely dreary but it wasn’t. We laughed (at ourselves and each other) and had so much fun and also cried and felt sad. I remembered all the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place.

We are both afraid it might go back to how it was before I think that’s a valid fear. For now nothing is back on how it was before we are just talking. I’m trying not to over think it.

His whole family told him he was mad to let me go which made him doubt his decision then when he saw me when we met it up, was like the first time he met me and how he felt when he saw me in person and that I was beautiful and when I smiled at him and he burst into tears and said he just was so sad I had stopped smiling at him he thought it was all his fault and he couldn’t make me happy.

Im not walking around on cloud 9 all deliriously happy like a teenager or anything I am appreciating getting to know him better and understand who he is as a person but more than that, I feel like I know myself better. Whatever happens between us I have come out of it with a new perspective about myself.

The big elephant in the room to address next is our holiday. He mentioned it and I found it hard to not sabotage it and just gave him lots of reasons why I can’t go with him and he should go without me. I need to stop doing this.

thank you for updating. I suggest serious therapy for you. DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) perhaps and if you plan to get back with him then regular couples therapy. You can’t be in a healthy relationship when neither of you can manage your own mood swings and fear of abandonment. There is nothing wrong with having moods but neither of you can afford to be so reactive. DBT will help you learn the skills needed to be less volatile. He needs it too,by the way. This guy needs seriously to work on himself. He may feel like home but he is nothing but a play house. He is not built in a strong foundation.

@pikkumyy77 thank you for your advice I am back in therapy but it’s not DBT. I’ve never really been a moody person I am very expressive, I don’t sulk but I had begun to do this as I felt I had to repress myself and didn’t know what language to use to express myself to him. We both seemed to have a fear of hurting each other not recognising a fear of being abandoned by the other person but they are much the same thing; if I hurt that person they might leave me, sometimes this is because we are almost being so mindful of the other person we look inwards ‘this must be me, because I love that person and they love me so what’s wrong with me’ and a lot of self blame. It’s easier to blame yourself a lot of the time and we were both brought up to be people pleasers but I had got my blinkers on lately and had no self awareness and completely blamed him for everything not seeing my own flaws.

I’m all for the examined life but all this “I’m so flawed” stuff seems unhealthy too. Your relationship should be able to tolerate s bit of imperfection. You both sound like you need help with distorted thinking patterns: black and white, all or nothing, mind reading, projection, catastrophizing, etc…

Sounds exhausting.

Greater self awareness and mutual understanding is brilliant if it informs change and healthy adjustments.
Sounds like you could both cautiously stay connected, at a level that you can both maintain without hurt, and maybe if you both do seek to heal these issues you could gradually become closer again until you are able to be involved as life partners without serious impediment from incompatible emotional responses (if you still want that then).

@pikkumyy77 absolutely correct you need a balance between knowing your flaws or mistakes and truly just accepting them to learn from them not punishing yourself. Just ruminating on them constantly is bad for you, they will eat away at you. I am actually ok with the feelings and idea that I am not perfect and might have made some mistakes, I am only human after all at the same time I am just making myself unhappy if I don’t examine them a bit. I did not mean to hurt anyone either so I don’t think I am a bad person. Also absolutely catastrophising and distorted thinking is going to lead to an unhappy life. I found this very good YouTube channel about managing your emotional responses when they are feeling intense and it’s been very helpful, not buying your thoughts and such like

At the end of the day we both just want a happy life for ourselves and each other it just might not be one we share together. I don’t want all this drama it’s exhausting.

So he has broken up with you three times and three times you've taken him back.

A recurring topic in your posts is a one week holiday which is not a factor grown adults take into account when making important life decisions.

What a carcrash.

I know why this is, it is because we do not live together and haven’t had a proper holiday in a long time. It was meant to be an exciting adventure we were doing together and took a lot of planning. It’s not really important otherwise in any grand scheme of life in general and wouldn’t be the basis of any decisions about something serious. He feels guilty if he goes without me and I don’t want him to feel guilty about it.

The other 2 times he’s broken up with me i didn’t take him back as much as he changed his mind after saying it, while I was still in the same room with him but I didn’t want to break up tbh. This time we have had time apart I asked him to leave this time and he’s come back to me. I don’t want this though it’s not healthy it breaks your trust and self esteem

OP I'm exhausted reading your posts so I can only imagine how you feel. All this is pointless though if as I suspect you will take him back.

@WildUnchartedWaters I want to but I don’t think I should take him back.

I know over post/share my running wild thoughts like some kind of mad thought diary so I understand it’s hard to follow and it’s exhausting. In reality I have still gone to work and lived my normal life and time has not stopped still and my life isn’t over cos he left me.

Well of course you've gone to work and not died...people don't generally take time off work or die because of a break up.

It's all so dramatic and cyclical. There are kids involved too...very sad.

You're a caring and thoughtful person but this is not bringing out the best in you and speaking as someone not dissimilar to you I think you are underestimating the strength of your boundaries and ability to own your emotions.

You repeatedly express a feeling but then backtrack on it or minimise it. You think both that your emotions are poorly managed and that they should be allowed. Guilt and shame linger because you're confused still by the difference between allowing yourself to feel an emotion and needing to act on that emotion.

If I could advise one thing it is this: don't let people who piss on your life back into your life. Even if you were hardwork or flawed or made mistakes...move forward with new relationships. You haven't and he hasn't in 2 weeks made the growth that will enable this to work. That would take a year or two but in reality won't happen because there's trauma bonding now and too much toxicity. Know when to cut your losses.

The worst thing about this sort of romance is that it really harms your relationships with friends and family and you end up feeling even worse.

I know it hurts but I'm not sure anyone reading this thinks it will last beyond the end of the holiday. You got your money back...use it. I've holidayed on my own 30 or 40 times all around the world. Adventure doesn't require company. Do something to make you proud of yourself.

You should never have accepted this unstable guy as some kind of partner .He does not have the emotional strength to be other than a boy toy. He doesn’t have object permanence for the relationship.

You can’t make someone else reliable by working on yourself. You can only learn to have higher standards for the people in your life.

It’s sunken costs isn’t it, you don’t want to throw away years of something that was once good and once had some potential. It would be easier if someone cheated or lied in some ways and that finality rather than clinging to this idealistic version of what you would like your relationship to be like and hope of it so close but still so far away! Maybe we love the idea of one another the most.

I’m at a weird point in my life where my children are grown up and now it’s time for me to go have my own adventures.

And we are never ever, ever...

OP this is exhausting. I know you feel like you have really connected over the latest break up-reconnect deep conversation but what has actually changed? What more do you know? What is this deeper relationship you now have?

You are in a constant state of high anxiety associated with this relationship. With that comes the relief of 'the second chance' (promise), please don't confuse this with actual change (actions).

Your description of recent events really sounds like you are being managed -
Look how it is working. It is back on again and you are planning the holiday again. Nothing has change - except your attitude has been adjusted for you.

Please think about where you want to be 1 year, 2 years from now. Do you want a rinse and repeat life?

@Acornsoup
I can only answer that due to his difficulty in opening up I had filled in a lot of the blanks myself with negative ideas about myself leading to what I think was some kind of self esteem implosion. I was rightly angry that it got that far, he must have known I was struggling without basic communication. But I tolerated it for too long and keep forgiving him for it and getting a redo. So yeah it’s a relief to know I wasn’t insane or any of the bad things I thought about myself. And he had all the same issues reversed apparently but is sorry for his part. I don’t know how that changes though. He seems to think he feels safer to open up and be vulnerable now and he’s had to accept that he needs to open up to people because it’s damaging otherwise. I am wary he can actually do it though, what’s different about now?

This also might sound big headed I’m sorry 😆 but I sometimes wonder if he is swayed by an intense attraction to me rather than my winning personality 😇. He finds me beautiful and sexy although he’s never ever been a creepy letch towards me I know he can get distracted by this feeling. When we went out to talk he was definitely distracted by this as I have lost a lot of weight, he isn’t really ever focused on my body though more my eyes/face

@Menora Di you see how his behaviour could be the cause of your low self esteem, rather than as a result of it? It's like a self fulfilling prophecy.