Is my DA ex starting to process the breakup 7 months on?

I don't think there's anything you can do to fix this, as it doesn't sound like you did anything to cause this. His issues are his issues, and you should see his new behaviors as an indication of how little he's doing to work through them. He's 44 years old, yet his go-to coping mechanism to dealing with difficult feelings is to literally run away. As hard and painful as it is to hear this, if you want a supportive husband one day who can be a good father, this is not your person.

Four years of not moving forward when someone's in their 30s or 40s, despite saying lots of pretty words about wanting to have all these things with you, means the actions are the relationship he truly wants and the words are an idealized version that he doesn't actually want or he'd have given some follow through on making them happen. When actions and words and feelings don't line up with each other and there's inconsistency, you need to listen to whichever one is the "worst" and the least you want to hear, because that's where the truth actually is.

Connection is great, but if there's no supportive commitment and follow-through substance behind it, then it makes for a stressful, tumultuous, and chaotic relationship in the long-term. Often that happens when one or both partners are not fully emotionally available enough to be open, transparent, vulnerable, consistent, etc. In this situation, the longer you stay stuck on him and why he's doing whatever he's doing, the longer it takes you to process the breakup and become emotionally available for someone who can meet your needs, whom you can trust can be in a relationship with you without having one foot out the door or potentially running away. Mourning and acceptance are the best thing you can possibly do for yourself here. Running into him is difficult, but it's easier if you see his immaturity for what it is and skip the analysis if you do see him, instead continuing on with your day. You deserve better.

Been there, sorry you're going through that.

I read a couple books that explained this phenomenon quite well. Namely, EXAHOLICS by Lisa Marie Bobby and The Passion Trap by Dean C. Delis.

Apparently, when the breaker-upper feels like they have to get out of the relationship, they'll find all kinds of reasons to back up the feeling. The harder you try to "fix things," they more they see your behavior as proof that they can do better, you're too "needy," and they're right to move on.

I have felt that shift you're talking about, with my last FA relationship. He was unrecognizable to me at the end, totally obnoxious, unsupportive, and the more I bent over backwards, the more he seemed to want me gone. It did a number on my self-esteem and ability to trust.

Your best bet is to stay as far away from him as humanly possible. Don't talk to him, about him (to anyone that knows him) and definitely don't look at his social media. Best to realize the boyfriend you had is gone, and this person is your EX now, and should only ever be thought of and treated as such. Even if he does start to "miss you," if you actually take him back, it's almost certain to happen again unless he's doing serious work on himself in the meantime, which it doesn't sound like is the case.

I'm so sorry, 4 years is a long time. You have some healing to do now.

I've also been through a few iterations of what you're going through, and had those, what did I do and how could I be so awful that I lost the love of someone once obsessed with me, thoughts. The last time it happened several years ago, it was so devastating that I had to fully rebuild my self-esteem from scratch which ended up becoming breaking the bad relationship cycle I was in (I only dated avoidants) and earning secure lol. So there may be a silver lining for you at the end.

There's a couple hard things to consider. First, that guy you knew and the alien now are the same person. Both bits were always there, but he was masking how much of each bit there actually was. It's a foreign concept to people who don't have these issues to not just be your authentic self from the start, but there's usually a couple things going on.

When there are insecure attachment styles at play, there are periods earlier on where the new relationship energy and excitement can override trauma responses and nervous systems that get overwhelmed by relationships. Someone can seem to be all in until their attachment system starts to register you as a long term attachment figure that's going to stick around. Then, the person panics and flips but doesn't even realize what's going on because they have feelings they don't understand and just react to them. They now feel their feelings shut down, and that's all they understand. Something is wrong (all their unprocessed issues they're avoiding) and they can't explain it so it must be that you are the wrong partner and that's that. Even if it turns out that there's a pattern of them doing this over and over in the past with different people. This is their problem, which you can't do anything about, but they can't or don't want to deal with it so they're going to keep finding new people to get excited about, hope the next one will be different and perfect, and not do any work on themselves so it will fall apart again eventually.

Second, the connection and love were real, certainly to the extent your ex was capable. However, and this one is going to be really tough. When there's an enduring spark magical finishing each other's sentences connection... this is very often because someone is reflecting you back at yourself, without providing their own substance to back it up. Someone with mental health and identity issues doesn't know who they are, but they want to feel good and hope someone else will complete them. They may get very excited projecting all over a new person who ticks off some boxes about what is attractive, and it feels amazing. They want to know everything about you, they support you, they understand you, you're going to SAVE them from their loneliness. Eventually, at the end of the day, you're just a human being, and you fall off this pedestal because there was always a people-pleasing fantasy element on their side. Their own self-esteem and identity issues make it so they think if you know the real them you'll reject them, so they try to be whatever they think you want them to be (likely repeating a dynamic they learned to get adults to meet some of their needs in childhood). When this doesn't fix all their problems, reality seeps back in, and they get resentful because they no longer feel good. But maybe they don't understand why and try to stick around, neither communicating their real needs nor rocking the boat, because they think they should feel a certain way and hope it will just happen. Fake it till you make it.

If that happens, it has everything to do with their trauma and mental health issues and nothing to do with your value, your worth, or losing their love.

It's also possible for someone to realize they don't think you're a compatible match together, but they're such bad communicators and immature about conflict resolution that they can't deal with it in a reasonable or respectful way. Or they do tell you in dribs and drabs, uncharacteristically mean or weird things get said, then they cover with, "I'm just joking!" and they go on acting cheerful while feeling resentful. So that may mean they have issues, but they also don't think you should be together, and they're not mutually exclusive (meaning the issues exist and may make them bad partners, but they're not driving the breakup, they also don't want to be in the relationship anymore -- the issues just drive how poorly they've handled the conflict).

When all is said and done, there's a huge aspect of like attracts like in relationships. Meaning, with more perspective, you may start to see where he wasn't giving you enough but you were still accepting things on his terms, trying to keep the peace so he stuck around. And that's nothing to be embarrassed of, because without having the experience, you aren't aware that any of this is happening until you're on the other side of it. Were you really happy that in 4 years, you'd moved into a rental together but... was there any other momentum? I certainly believe you weren't pressuring him for marriage or anything, but were your longer term needs actually being met in this situation? If you wanted something more committed, and he kept trying but wasn't going to get there because he's not right with himself, then he's going to feel shame and guilt, maybe act defensive or angry, push you away. So, what is your level of emotional availability if you accepted someone who was so unavailable?

Only you know if any of this resonates with your situation. I have very limited information here. The last thing I'll say is I dated an extraordinarily DA coworker for a month once upon a time. It was very intense and predictably completely blew up. I still had to see him, and there were a couple times he seemed to run away when he saw me, too. If he wasn't a colleague, I'd have just been no contact, but since I kept seeing him, I didn't want to feel anxious in my workplace. After a couple months, I ran into him and said we should talk. He panicked that I meant about us, and I just made normal colleague conversation, I was calm, I let him off the hook totally expecting nothing from him. He was instantly relieved, opened up enough to agree that we could keep things cordial in passing, and that was that. He was afraid I'd be emotional and he didn't have any tools to handle it. We weren't serious like you so it's different, but I think conceptually, wanting closure and comfort at work is going to be the same. Because he's not going to be able to give you closure or answers you seek. Even if he remains uncooperative if you decide to reach out with an olive branch and he keeps dodging you at work, it actually doesn't matter. Those are his problems. The answers that will actually help you move forward are going to be processing through what happened by taking the reigns back over your own identity and not letting him or anything he did or does in the future define you. That's why I let my coworker off the hook, because moving on was more important to my goals than dragging out an unhealthy dynamic with an emotionally unhealthy person.

If I were you, and I was sure I wanted a family, I'd start allowing myself to feel anger -- at him for wasting my time at that age -- and sadness and anger at myself for accepting his words as intermittent reinforcement and not requiring follow up action to back it up. He could say he was selling his place for both of you, but still be only selling it for himself without any intention of actually moving on to the next step with you. These are normal and reasonable emotions, and part of processing the breakup is feeling them. I know you've already felt considerable pain after the breakup, and possibly some anger, but I strongly suspect you're stuck and haven't felt these specific feelings much yet or you'd be a lot less inclined to want to keep wasting more time on him.

Have you done any therapy since this happened?

There still potentially some time for you to accomplish your family planning goals, but it does require moving on from this mess of a person and being emotionally available for someone else and recognizing if they're taking action or all talk. A couple terms it may be helpful for you to get familiar with are future faking, and intermittent reinforcement (this is what gets people hooked on all sorts of things, including gambling).

Feeling your pain, but in a way that is truly processing it and forcing you to focus on yourself and address any past trauma you may have that primed you to push down your own needs and prioritize the high of chemistry above your desire for finding someone who will seriously commit to you, is very difficult but may be difficult enough to have the impact of getting you unstuck. Being blindsided myself, though learning through that that I didn't properly recognize red flags or what someone truly serious looked like, and then turning all the focus onto addressing my own issues, is what got me out of the loop. It was not an overnight change, but I only started on the path a few years before you after an FA ex things seemed amazing with for a long time dumped me. It's doable, and at any age.

If you have a good therapist, especially one familiar with anxious attachment styles, it will absolutely help because you will be talking about yourself not about him. There's a reason you have a blockage from feeling anger, and it's not because you're pathetic. It is getting in your way, however, because I am a firm believer in needing to process through all the steps of grief (denial, anger, sadness/depression, bargaining) to get to acceptance. They may not be linear in order and may not last equal durations, but my experience over my life has been if you can't get to acceptance, it's because something keeps you stuck so you can't process through all the stages. (My conclusion after spending decades getting stuck myself due to having attachment issues in the past.) It's very useful information for you to have that you've struggled to feel anger, that helps you pinpoint where you may have a starting point to work with.

I would at least recommend Thais Gibson's attachment style videos, and of course Jeb who hosts this forum has his published bad boyfriends book, which may both complement Attached. But reading with an eye on the anxious point of view not just understanding avoidant will be more helpful to you.

Personally, this is not my favorite book due to the way they cover avoidant attachment, though if it's your first introduction to any reading on attachment styles, it's a decent place to start. For great info on anxious attachment, I highly recommend Rikki Cloos's The Anxious Hearts Guide, Diane Poole Heller's The Power of Attachment for its coverage of all attachment styles, and Michelle Skeen's Love Me Don't Leave Me. Julie Menanno's new Secure Love book is good, too, but it's specifically focused more on partner attachment dynamics than self.