GUILT/SHAME: Will FA Return to a Strong Bond Situationship?

    I agree that she's right and I admire her approach. I just don't know what it means to her.. she has said before that "letting your trauma affect you" is weak, and has said that her siblings ought to "get over it" regarding theirs. I just don't know what it means to have these "tough love" sentiments and idk, I just. I agree that we should at least pump the brakes by a LOT but if we can learn to communicate really well as friends and develop Security there first, i think we'd stand a much better chance..

I'm going to be direct.

This girl has made it obvious that she doesn't want anything serious with you. You keep trying to analyze and control her, and it's huge enmeshment for you to be trying to get in her head and influence her. You say you're secure but you've known this person a wet month and are really pushing the limits with the intensity and deep connection. It's a month and it fell apart very quickly and you're here trying to talk about her attachment in ways she doesn't want to even explore... it's very manipulative on your part.

This is absolutely not secure behavior and you need to go back to the drawing board. This isn't about her, it really isn't. You've got some wires crossed in your own anxious attachment.

Here another perspective:

What you are viewing as "drunk vulnerability" is essentially lowered inhibitions with a relative stranger, and poor boundaries possibl resulting in regret and an awareness that her behavior has got her into a situation she doesn't want to be in. (She's made that clear by saying it out loud that she doesn't want to be close with you. Stop twisting her words to mean what you want them to mean.

She's so uncomfortable (perhaps has overridden her own boundaries by getting all emotionally intense while drunk) that she stepped WAY back and she's told you that in so many ways. Reaching out with a "hey" doesn't indicate she wants to go deep with you, but you went wayyy deep and her response was to tell you it's a lot and she basically shut it down. Telling you she doesn't want to be close means she doesn't want to be close. Any confusion on your part is an issue to take a good hard look at in yourself, but you're convinced you're secure, so you and she are a bit similar in terms of not wanting to do the deep dive into your own psychology.

Instead of seeing all this emotional boundary crossing as a red flag, you're wanting to go with it and step right into a codependent, fixing role, with your entire focus on deepening this premature, unhealthy connection in spite of her resistance.

You asked somewhere in there if you might be too much? Yes, you are too much here. Why do I say that? Simply because you're pursuing a connection with someone who is resisting, and justifying that instead of seeing it as a huge red flag in yourself.

Don't get me wrong, every one of us has biffed in the relationship arena. We've all been insecure and unhealthy and looked for excuses outside ourselves. You're biffing here and doing no favors to yourself or anyone else to focus on her internal world. You don't get to curate her experience, anticipating feelings she hasn't shared with you and trying to shape her experience. She's said she wants to work through things as a grown woman and that means, back off of this caretaking and mind reading. She doesn't want to do this and that's totally appropriate, actually. She's young and it's going to be her own journey, for a long time. You're way too invested for a flash in the pan situationship. She went there with you and then ran into her own red flags... it's not realistic to try to make a happily every after out of a precipitous entanglement like this. You're mentioning a year of working on yourselves, with hope for a better outcome? You've known each other a little over a month! That's putting the cart way before the horse.

I would recommend the blog Baggage Reclaim, the author has a lot of great material for people who pursue relationships with unavailable targets.

I have found personally that when feelings are incredibly strong without a lot of time getting to know the other person, that is usually a result of an overactive nervous system versus a true love of the other person and should be viewed as an opportunity to slow down, ask questions (both to myself and of the other person). What I have found is that when these feelings take over…I am chasing after what has been familiar to me….which is an insecure dynamic….including a fantasy of potential without any indication of whether it matches reality. I do hope you are able to turn your focus from her to you and take the opportunity to be curious why you fell so fast for someone who wasn’t matching your level of engagement. Seeing the good in someone who is clearly struggling with addiction is a very nice trait…but can turn into a codependency situationship very quickly.

that's a fair assessment but i really think it's absurd that people feel the need to be in "true" or "mature" love before they can tell someone that they love them, lol. APs are very attuned to their emotions, familiar with what it is like to feel. we tend to also be pretty good at verbally expressing those emotions.

sorry but love takes many forms and evolves through different phases. i would tell a friend that i love them after 5-6 weeks, so why is it so uncouth to tell a romantic interest the same?
i already apologized for saying it when i did, but reinforced that i meant it and i still hold to that notion.
people hear "love" and decide to immediately invalidate it, lol. which is honestly super wack when validating others' emotions is a big part of the whole concept of insecure attachment. maybe instead of invalidating someone's love, we can ask Why they love someone or How they define love ?

i hold firmly to this conviction. i love her unconditionally, actually, because there isn't anything she could do to take away the compassion, patience, and emotional bandwidth i have for her and it is not contingent on reciprocation. she can fuck whoever she wants, she can be mean to me, she can ignore me, whatever she thinks will help her get her confirmation bias that i will reject her eventually. she can block me for years and come back just to catch up and be friends, and i'd still hold space for her and be supportive.
i feel like people put more weight behind the word "love" because everyone's been traumatized by people who've claimed to love them. that's fine. but just as it is unfair for me to say, "i know you better than you know yourself," to someone else, it is unfair for anybody else to tell me that they know how i feel more than i do. that they can determine the legitimacy of my claims to love another person based on a period of time, or on their own idea of love.

if i'm honest i think the love i have for her is a bit more authentic than some of the love i've shared with actual partners. because when i'm not with this girl, i usually don't get anxious or sad nor do i hyperfixate. i miss her, and can get anxious depending on context, but overall i just think of her occasionally and smile. she inspires me to write and to draw but i don't need her approval on the content created.
i genuinely want what's best for her, even if it's not me. after i wrote this poem, (which i'll be posting shortly), i reached out and said that i was sorry for implying that the side of her that was most convenient for me was the only side of her, and that it was very dismissive of me to imply that the other side of her does not exist; that it deserves a place in this world just as much as the rest of her does. but this side of her is, ultimately, a coping mechanism. it's up to her to determine that and, even if she doesn't, it won't change my capacity to hold space, provide care and support, nor accept whoever she happens to be in a given moment or phase of life.

that is the very essence of love. love is actions that can be easily confirmed or denied based on those actions and the intent behind them. yet everybody puts so much stress on the words; invalidating it based on time and familiarity alone, rather than looking to see if actions and intentions corroborate the claim.

she also seems completely unaware of how much she has revealed of herself to me. she tells me a lot of the same things more than once, even trauma stories--and even when they don't match up. so when i tell her i love her, she thinks i don't know her. but it's because she actually doesn't know me. she shares a lot and trauma dumps and all these things, but she very rarely asks or allows for me to do the same. in fact, she gets very upset with me even just for saying "wow, that's a really hurtful thing to experience. i've definitely done that before. i know that doesn't feel good, and i'm sorry you went through that." 
last night she called me drunk, i said this exact thing (in response to her saying she lost herself in her last relationship) and she got irritated and said "uh, yeah, this isn't like a feedback sort of conversation."
she talked at me for an hour straight and abruptly ended the call to "go to sleep," but then stayed awake for another 3 hours actively online, lol.
mind games don't make me love her less. they might make me see her as a less viable romantic partner, sure. but they actually only serve to make me love her more; because the more i know her, the more i love her. radical acceptance means gratitude to know someone, not to have something they can offer you.

where did i try to control her..?