Hit a wall

[Heartbroken187]

Relationship of 5 yrs ended last weekend, after weeks of ‘drifting’ following a fall-out over something that had raised q’s about our future…. He’d had enough of the repeat cycle of him not being able to “do” feelings = me feeling insecure = upset & occasional blow-up = things die down = rinse & repeat.
We were best friends, soulmates, lived day-to-day so well together, helped each other through so much….

Hes been away on hol since we split, and I’ve been on autopilot in order to survive the week alone (working, exercise, speaking to friends)… but now he’s due back (lives v near me) it’s starting to hit me, and I actually feel like I can’t breathe with grief, loss and longing.

And I’m pathetic as I’m late-30’s and have 3 children (who are currently not here), so I should really be over this sort of abject heartbreak.

Im alone again tonight, and feeling so unbelievably low. Don’t know what I’m hoping for from posting this. Some kind words would be so pathetically appreciated 😞 🙏🏻 x

OP you’re doing so well by getting back to you and your hobbies. Running, and in the outdoors too, will be such good meditation to work through all the feeling and thoughts and random hormones and chemicals floating around.

I would be upset if my partner fulfilled a lifelong dream with someone who isn’t me. Most people would as it’s a special moment. It doesn’t even matter how f the friend is a man or a woman. so you aren’t going mad and you aren’t overreacting.

Focus on you and your children now. It may be easier to block him for a while. It’ll remove the ‘waiting’ and expectation and disappointment for having open channels of communication. If he can’t contact you, he’ll take up less headspace.

He sounds so enormously insensitive just from your description of him here.

Please get professional help. Your dc need you. No man is worth ending your life for.

OP if you have broken up them please don't give him the satisfaction of messaging him, however nonchalant you might think your text is (it isn't !)

So he messaged a short while ago. Slightly confusing text but seemed to be saying he thinks he’s been too hasty, and has reflected and thinks it should be up to me to decide if I’ve had enough (I think that’s what he was saying? 🤷‍♀️).
Hes asked to talk, but acknowledged it might be too late down the line for me.

Im shocked rigid. I’ve spent a week grappling with having no control over the outcome, and now suddenly hes got in touch and wants to talk, and now I have to make decisions.

Make the decision to say no thank you and block.

That's some head fuck @Heartbroken187 . It would be a absolute no from me at this point.
He can't give you what you want, which is a relationship where you can be yourself.

hey @Heartbroken187 how are you doing?

What do you want to do?

Think very carefully about what you want to do. In your gut, did you feel like the relationship wasn't right before you split up? Can you answer that honestly? Do you feel that things could improve? Are you able to be alright with his Himalaya plans?

Its absolutely awful the feeling of breaking up, but it shouldn't be a reason to get back together to stop the pain. I did that once and actually the relationship was never the same and had already broken down, and I broke it off again not long after for good that time. I wish I had just stayed strong at the time of the first breakup and let myself heal, as it was harder the second time.

Thanks everyone for you kind comments, support and advice. I’m sorry that I didn’t think to come back - in my fog I’d forgotten that I’d even posted here (I was in a real bad way mentally).
So after he texted, I agreed to meet to talk. I couldn’t bare the intensity of another long walk / talk so suggested the pub (outside, so not hugely overheard).
It was very stilted, wooden & humourless. I said I just needed to hear him say he loves me first, and this would mean I’d be happy to work on things… but he felt this would be too hasty to say such things as then the focus would be on the feelings not the practicalities (not in so many words, but this was the gist). I cried a bit (in front of the revellers), we walked back, he invited me in but I just had this overwhelming need to get home to be in my own home on my own. I guess it’s all less ambiguous and stressful.

In doing so I passed up the final opportunity to ever watch tv together or sleep together or have sex. He basically ended things for good after that (by text)… I can’t really remembered the timeline tbh. He then went away that Friday with his female friend (who’s lovely, and has a partner & young child) on an outdoors adventure weekend just the 2 of them… on what was in the diary as my belated bday weekend which he & I had been planning to have an outdoors weekend. I’d looked forward to it for months after we had to defer my annual bday weekend away together due to him seeing his other friend.

So on our weekend away together I had to watch him load up the car with his bikes etc and disappear off up there to “our” usual place with his stunningly attractive, lovely, clever and outdoorsy friend instead of me.

I sent him a cold and venomous text saying how tactless they both are, and blocked him for several days.

There was no contact for maybe 10days during which I lived on wine, sleeping pills, box-sets and phone calls with lovely friends. There’s been a small exchange of texts the last few days initially around a practical issue but started to expand into me trying to get him to see how confused and hurt I am by him finishing with me because we’re “too different emotionally” when he was utterly gushing, warm, affectionate etc when we met. Before he suddenly adopted a dismissive-avoidant attachment style overnight. 😵‍💫

I sent a really long text explaining the INJUSTICE I feel at this discrepancy in his behaviour and reasoning, and like I’ve been punished for having raised issue with it.

He was fairly kind & conciliatory in response, admitting he didn’t give me time to air my thoughts by finally finishing with me via text, and apologised for that and offered an opportunity to meet and discuss things…..

I’ve drafted and deleted various responses to that . I go in & out of obsessing over it all, and then being able to stand above it and let it go.

He said he wants to be friends in time, and I do believe that. Whether it’ll end up feeling magnanimous enough is to be seen. Once I no longer love him it’ll go one of 2 ways:

• The scales will fall & I’ll be astounded at how badly I was treated… Or.
• I’ll not be so hurt & grieving so I’ll be able to sweat the small stuff less, and will be able to be more philosophical.

For now, I’m back at work (v v challenging job), only took 4 days off…. I’m exercising, doing my hobby, focussing on my lovely teens, enjoying time alone at home (totally novel), trying to make myself see people and ring people, catching up with family, getting time to do all my house & garden jobs that I never got round to as I was seeing DP or helping him with his house, probably drinking too much, I eradicated all signs of him so as to be less triggered, even changed my laundry liquid so it doesn’t evoke memories of what went before! I’m managing my long term mental health condition really well, which is usually triggered by stress. I’m amazed actually at how “well” I’ve stayed, despite the obvious sorrow & distress. I’m also dealing with lots of other family stress (a seriously ill family member) and work stress (suddenly line managing 2 people) on top of the usual trauma of the patients.

But yeah, in some ways, I’m kind of enjoying doing my own little quiet thing. 🌺

I’m finding it incredibly confusing the fact that on paper so much of this sounds like classic narcissistic abuse. But yet I can’t see him as an abuser (he’s incredibly benevolent and caring, and works in that field). It just doesn’t marry-up 😵‍💫 …… But I’m aware how the following sounds:

• bowled me over with passion, displays of emotional openness, high regard, tactile, praise, compliments, total transparency about how strongly he felt for me, this is it forever, cheesy excited texting and furtive phone calls from work etc….
• 4 months in, he retreated to what I now have learned is called a dismissive-avoidant attachment style…. Remote, no talk of feelings about anything, claims not to experience strong feelings about things and says doesn’t naturally discuss thoughts & feelings - despite his job role being the exact opposite…
• Suddenly stops me from touching him outside of some kisses (no tongues anymore) or sex. Told-off sharply for caressing his arm once after sex (this had previously been fine when we met). Claim has never been a tactile person & finds touch “irritating”.
• Abruptly stopped holding my hand at 4 months in.
• Became dismissive of me ever giving him a compliment - appeared to make him feel repelled and even more distant.
• Abruptly ceased giving me compliments at this point too. Never said a single nice thing about me after that. Claimed that compliments were “cringe” and unnecessary basically. Said that they foster neediness and we should only need our own esteem, not rely on the opinions of others. Said that because he doesn’t like compliments he doesn’t give them.
• Stopped saying “I love you” at this point (4 months in) and only after we’d had numerous periods of upset over this did he very occasionally say (text) this: “love you” (maybe once a quarter, usually in response to me having said it first).
• Talked regularly of me being “very emotional” - which was true at times as I had a catastrophic breakdown around a year into the relationship). Back-handed jokey “teasing” arounf my forgetfulness, haphazardness, disorganisation, lateness, propensity to exaggerate wildly as a turn of phrase blatantly comic effect - not getting my sense of humour, my emotional sensitivity, my autistic traits such as believing in fairness, justice and consistency (he teased that I was probably autistic & quite square - despite me having led a VERY rock n roll existence from 14-25 whilst he was married young & worked from being 18 - I think he was secretly a bit envious in hindsight.
• When all this withdrawal happened 4 months in after our incredible gushing initial period…, at first I was utterly blindsided by the sudden change to the terms & conditions. It didn’t make sense and didn’t feel fair. I desperately tried to get answers but couldn’t… I internalised it and in hindsight my self esteem plummeted. I was constantly seeing myself through his eyes and finding myself wanting.
• I desperately tried to get answers but none ever came. I was told it wasn’t true, there’d been no change, I was overly-emotional, I was unwell, we were too different, maybe we were just unsuited, maybe we should split up…… and each time I sobbed & begged and we talked about how we could each understand the other better.
• We did have some lovely times together, and our day to day life as a pair was great. I’d acclimatised to how things were, and that worked in general…. Until the Himalayas debacle…,
• His thoughtlessness around how he delivered the news of his unilateral plans to take off for a month with a woman from work as tho I were just an acquaintance not his partner of 5yrs…. It was too big for me to sit with… I tried for 2 weeks to be “cool girl” about it, but as soon as I raised it, I seemingly hammered the nail in the coffin. As soon as his utterly precious lifelong dream of the Himalayas was potentially threatened, that was his cue to leave.

Yes. It all sounds incredibly like: love-bomb, retreat, devaluation, gas-light, ultimatum, dump.

I KNOW in my rational mind it’s a textbook case of psychological abuse, and it’s certainly done me some severe damage, but…. I can’t reconcile that with my situation as I genuinely don’t think he has a sinister or deliberate bone in his body, so if this wasn’t intentional, how did these behaviours occur and why????? And how the fuck to recover?

If you’ve somehow read this far - here’s a medal 🥇 x

Bump 🙏🏻

Dear OP, I hope you can see how horribly he has been treating you. Disgusting behaviour, truly unacceptable.

You say I genuinely don’t think he has a sinister or deliberate bone in his body, so if this wasn’t intentional, how did these behaviours occur and why?????

I can only say I don’t know the answer to that question either. But you don’t need to. It’s irrelevant. That is how he behaves. He knows he’s hurting you, and he’s not trying to change.

Sorry to say, the best thing to do is to
cut him out of your life and your mind. Don’t waste your energy trying to guess the reasons for his selfish, inadequate behaviour. Be kind to yourself and move on xx

Thank you so much @Hairyesterdaygonetoday for wading through my epically-long navel-gazing and waffle, in order to send me your advice and input - I really appreciate it.
I really need to hear this, as it’s so tempting to look for answers / excuses and to torture myself with second-guessing myself and trying to see the good in him / in the situation. I’m generally quite guilty of seeing the good in people and overlooking poor behaviour, so what I really need right now is this kind of advice: to just stop seeking ‘answers’ and cut it all off.

You speak total sense, and it’s really helped hearing your words of support. I feel like I need to hear this on loop until the spell is broken! Could you maybe continue to send me the same message daily for the next few months until it finally hammers home?! 🙏🏻

x

Exactly as the previous person said, you need to cut him off completely. He's no good for you, you've wasted enough time on him. It seems like it hurts you even more each time you try and talk to him, so please just leave it now.
No man is worth this, believe me.
Enjoy your life, there's so much to look forward to. New food to taste, new people to meet, new places to go visit!
Sending hugs.
💐

Thanks @Blossomingx - that’s very kind of you to post, and you’re right that I just need to leave it.
Its made slightly more complicated than it usually would be because of our domestic situation - we live extremely close to one another, so we share neighbours, park outside eachothers house, have shared friends and neighbours… So it’s quite hard to cut him out as completely as if he lived miles away, but given that I’m doing as well with that as I can. I do need to stop ruminating around his intentions / motives etc and holding out a glimmer of hope that he’ll recognise he still loves me etc etc 😣

Oh that is difficult, and I can see that you're really trying to move forward with this and build a wonderful and satisfying life for yourself doing fun things you love.

Hmm, that's a tough one, but you can't mind read for one, and then even if he does want you back I wonder - do you want someone who has caused you this much pain and hurt anyway? Your worth isn't defined by a man's feelings. You don't need anybody to validate you, even though i agree that it does feel nice.
You're strong and resilient and awesome all on your own and you have plenty of people around you who love and appreciate you.

❤

The questions to ask yourself is 'why didn't you dump him after 4 months?'.
I'd of been out of there. Perhaps you should consider why you let yourself fall so hard and fast, that after only 4 months when he changed ( the mask slipped), you couldn't end it.
His treatment was probably part of having a breakdown. But really, when dating, you need to have the will and strength to detach when necessary.
The best you can do for yourself is go no contact. Let his 'friend' deal with him. She'll find out what he's like soon enough, then she'll realise what a cock-up she's made if she's sacrificed her family. Dumping you for her on your birthday was a clear message. Most would of had nothing to do with him after that.

To be clear - we’d already split by then, and also she is genuinely (as we speak) just his friend. They’ve been friends for years, work together, she became a mutual friend of ours and she’s a very ethical, moral person. They’ve historically done trips away / sporting events together throughout both of their own relationship histories, so I don’t think their trip was motivated by a romantic intent. Having said that, I was just pissed off at his timing: saying we couldn’t go away for my bday weekend to work on trying to make it work / get back together but happily trundling off to the same part of the world for a mini-break with his friend (and I admit it smarted to think of him away with other female company instead of me).

Youre entirely right that I need to look inside myself as to why I put up with things once they changed. I do wonder if that’s because we hit this change the week that the first Covid lockdown hit…I put it down to that at first, and we were thrown together as eachothers’ safety blanket and later as a bubble as we live so close and were both living mostly alone. I do think that took its toll and probably hastened his retreat into his ‘natural’ modus operandi, and extinguished our previous giddy happiness. Whatever though, it turned chilly quickly, and I spent years craving a return and seeing the positives (of which there were many, including our domestic routine, caring acts and weekends away). I did love what we had, but I wanted more.