He made contact

Be honest with yourself with regards to the "just being friends" thing

Do you really just want to be friends? Could you bear hearing him talk about his new gf for instance? Do you want that sort of relationship with him without having the intimacy and deep emotional support you need?

Or are you secretly hoping that being friends may lead to something changing and you both having a proper bf/gf relationship again further down the line? Are you trying to fool yourself that this may happen?

Or perhaps you are still too afraid to cut the cord completely from somebody you care about deeply, and being friends is still your way of maintaining connection, even if deep down its not the type of connection that you really want?

Good on you Ms Bells. I think you have made the right call. Your decision is putting you first, not "you and him" first instead. This is a very healthy and positive step for you and is actually a very big one if you are really ready to take it. Good work

As for me, I'm a blimmin emotional mess to be honest x missing my ex tons and tons and am desperate to reach out to her. Argh. It's like a strong urge. Spent an hour crying to my therapist last night about my ex, and then we delved into more of my childhood trauma past stuff. Talking about that then made my therapist cry! lol. So yeah, it appears I'm massively f-ed up (my words not hers) 🤔😕

i truly don't mean to be insensitive, but wonder, because your attachment systems are activated by these personal interactions with former partners-
would it be helpful to recognize in the stark light of day that your attachment systems will cause you to romanticize your situation but the mechanics are impersonal-
if i understand it correctly, your attachment system has these individuals locked in as attachment objects and your obsession is to satisfy early attachment needs.

The person's you are attached to are irrevocably unavailable and so intensely desired, mirroring early attachment trauma.

i am not trying to be obtuse but for me, when i very briefly , early in the involvement, experienced anxiety with my previous partner (as a dismissive i wasn't familiar with this and shocked at the intensity of it) it caused me to do an internet search. when i read about the anxious preoccupied dynamic and how i was accessing a part of my nervous system triggered by early attachment wounding and therefore placing another individual in a position of supreme power over my state of mind, i said HELL TO THE NO and was able to view it in those strictly mechanical terms to eliminate the anxiety. I recognize that i was able to eliminate it because it is not my base attachment style, as a dismissive it's there but only a shred of it, it's not my natural m.o.

my point is, i think it is important to catch yourself in the act of romanticizing the person or relationship when activated by a mechanical process in your nervous system. focus on the mechanical process to perhaps deflate the romantic story, not to invalidate feelings but deal with the underlying attachment trap.

i could be way off base, as a DA- i am frequently surprised by how different my perspective is of situations lol.
sorry if i got this wrong!

i remember the horrible feeling that i had and it was completely consuming for a day or so.  I can't really "feel" the feeling any more, i experience very little anxiety at all once i got clear from the PTSD i suffered for decades.  So, i can empathize but mostly from memory.

It was absolutely intolerable, i do remember.  As a dismissive who relies on self reliance, it was an affront to my whole being,  and i was able to jettison the anxiety because i saw it was completely hijacking me and would eliminate my autonomy if i didn't.  I know it must be hard for you to understand how my logical mind could take over like that but it's a dismissive thing i guess.  

Anyway, i wonder if catching yourself in the fantasy and romanticizing and continually training the mind to willfully engage in  exercises that calm the nervous system would be helpful.

anne12 posts so many wonderful things.  

as a dismissive, my process to be emotionally available to myself (which you are NOT when you are activated, just like i am NOT when i am deactivated) involved continual effort with mindful meditation and sitting with actual feelings, to feel and be present to them. 

many of the exercises anne posts would have been helpful for my process but i did it on my own with meditation.  

I still do- yesterday in the middle of a great, connected day i felt a familiar heaviness in my chest that signals raw vulnerability and i recognized an immediate reflex to detach.   i had to breathe  through it to stay present and available to love and people.  it choked me up a little, the pain of it.  i still deal with deactivation but willfully push through it and it subsides.  

i know you're new and i empathize with that, it was an opposite but equally intense process for me to get to where i am am i guess i just want to encourage you do stay close to your tools and keep the faith. 

it's so amazing to me,
the difficulty you describe about letting go of your ex is the very same intensity i used to have (and can still be triggered into ) STAYING PRESENT to someone close to me in romantic relationship.
so i get the feeling of powerlessness even tho the mechanics are opposite.
i too felt hopeless at some points, especially early on when i learned what deactivation was and couldn't influence myself to a place of safety and being ok.
the feeling of deacrivation, once i became aware, and didn't want to go there, is one of such sad desolation it cannot be described but it feels like my chest and heart and lungs is being compressed , it's a feeling of dying and it's very sad, it is a feeling of alienating myself and others that just can't be understood unless one experienced it.

and it feels all powerful and unstoppable. or at least it used to.
the pain still stabs me in the hart but i have been able to make so much progress that it is like a hiccup instead of a several day's long gasping choking episode.

Helsbells we have equal but polar opposite reactions , i wrote through some of my horrible deactivations on this forum. just keep doing the work.

Juniper...I have a quick question...when you speak to the difficulty with being present with people you love and care about...was that something about the other person...or was that just something you noticed in general about you? The reason I ask is that I think as an AP we tend to take the deactivation strategies personally, but it sounds like (and please correct me if I am off base) that they are not personal.  Thank you for being so vunerable on these boards. ❤️