Post by Megan on Apr 26, 2017 0:37:17 GMT
Hello!
So, some back story::I realized, many moons ago, that my partner displayed a lot of fearful-avoidant tendencies. When we met, I felt very drawn to him, and sensed a kindred spirit in him; we aligned on so many levels, and had easy, tangential conversations. However, I began to feel really uncomfortable, really quickly, because he started the push/pull thing, and told me about his history of unrequited crushes and an ex who had left him 3 years ago that I didn't realize he still felt "crippled over." We hung out for two months before he finally initiated a physical relationship with me -after verbally telling me that he had a lot of confusion and anxiety around starting relationships (i was his second) and that he didn't know whether or not he was physically attracted to me even though he felt like i was the only person he had ever shared certain things with about his life (ever)- and i assumed that his confusion would dissipate now that we were involved. About a week into our relationship, after several proclamations of him feeling multiple types of chemistry with me, he answered my question of "how are you feeling about us" with this: "i feel overwhelmed and that i need to have sex with someone i'm 'primally' attracted to. i'm not sure if i'm going to be attracted to you in the future." needless to say, i was really hurt, and told him i couldn't continue with what we were doing. I'm polyamorous, and he said he wanted to explore polyamory, and I honestly didn't think I could continue in that type of relationship with him obviously valuing one body type above mine. I love that in polyamory, I can explore multiple, deep connections, many of them not at all romantic, and through the five years I've been poly, I've felt like I've been able to work on myself enough to become more of an earned secure. At any rate, the next day, he reacted to me detaching by telling me that he felt really uncomfortable and frantic by my distance, and said that he really cared, etc. He came to me and told me that he really wanted to be with me, that he realized he was wrong, and was going to stay in town to "grow our relationship." He did not, however, ever apologize for making those comments, and never understood how they hurt me. Instead, he fixated on how i wasn't "letting him be himself." He continued to have this anxiety of not being able to express his true feelings with me throughout. I often felt like he would dump his anxieties around intimacy onto us and constantly tell me that he felt bad about us/was questioning us. He would always say that that didn't mean he didn't want to be with me, but obviously, it brought out my anxious-preoccupied tendencies. We fought all the time. Me pushing him to be open and me being reactive whenever he would do some rejecting behavior.
Fast forward to now. we broke up and got back together in late Feb, and as the story usually goes, the same problems arose, and we broke up. this time, however, it got nasty. for about three weeks, we were peaceful, using a lot of non-violent communication, and not fighting at all. but looking back on it, that was mostly because i wasn't saying what i was feeling, lowered my expectations, and had finally realized that he would never be capable of giving me the intimacy i deserved/needed, so i, myself, became slightly more distant, but not in a power-trip kind of way. after three weeks of that, he suddenly started letting what would have been a normal conversation and negotiation of needs escalate into a full-blown conflict. throughout our time together, i slowly became more and more anxious, preoccupied with fixing us, empty inside, and very clingy. i knew that how i felt wasn't right, but i convinced myself that he would change, and that, moreover, if i just worked on being less pushy about him opening up, we would be ok. i can't tell you how many books i read on codependency! i really thought i was being controlling by feeling so anxious about him feeling bad about our relationship and not feeling safe to open up because of how i would react when he told me he was feeling terrible things about us.
after a week of him starting 3 conflicts, i was done. as a rule, he never took responsibility for his distancing behaviors, never apologized, and admitted to me that he had a lack of empathy towards me because he was too clouded by his own fears and needs. he didn't know himself well enough to see what he was doing, and even though he was in therapy and always, always talked about wanting to work on us and have a healthy connection, i didn't think that was possible when he couldn't see the underlying issues.
the point of my post: i handled the breakup badly. i reactively broke up with him one night when i was really, really angry about him starting another fight (i can take responsibility for starting fights, and i've done that, many times in my life, but he never saw, even after the fight was over, his role in starting it). i had never been that angry with him. we were in bed, and i got up, turned on the light, grabbed his bag, put it on the bed, and told him to get out of my life. i was livid. he contacted me two days later telling me that he still felt raw from the scariness of that night, but would like to talk to me after a significant amount of time and processing. i was once again pissed at this. i was mad he didn't take any responsibility for us getting to that point, and mad he seemed to be blaming everything all of me again. i wasn't proud of angrily picking up his bag, but i didn't throw it at him, have never been remotely violent towards him, have never been outright angry like that, and have never, ever threatened him or called him names or put him down or picked on his personal insecurities. it just felt like another excuse, to me, for him to absolve himself of any blame for starting all the crap. i finally decided that i needed to burn the bridge, so i did what i have never done before with him: i told him exactly how i thought he was acting, called him out on all his hurtful avoidant crap, and told him, in a lot of words, that he was an a-hole for treating me like sh-t the entire time we were together. i couldn't stop myself from sending a string of 10 or so emails. i pride myself on not giving into my anxiety and sending a lot of texts/being frantic about hearing back from people. i've actually never let myself to this with anyone i've dated, and i think this is because i'm an anxious-avoidant; being with avoidants def brings out my anxious side, but the avoidant in me is still hesistant to come across as needy or crazy by over-doing it with messaging. but this time, it was different, bc i knew i had nothing to lose.
since then, i can't let it go, and i feel awful. i can't let go of all of my anger over him using me and distancing all the time. i'm obsessed, and it's not good. i know that it's not really about him. i know that he'll never apologize or see what he did, and i know that telling him how he wronged me is just a distraction to my own pain. i know that he's a symptom. that is my problem though: i know all this stuff, have read a lot about it, and yet still can't make the change. i don't know how to FEEL differently, despite knowing.
does anyone have any advice for dealing with uncontrollable anger (it's more indignation) and wanting someone to know exactly how they hurt you? i'm also having a hard time with him not responding and being cold; my intention behind sending the emails was to burn the bridge so badly between us that i wouldn't be tempted to go back, but now that i did it, i'm not happy i did. the last time we broke up, i went no contact, and didn't cave. any advice on how to avoid giving in to that feeling where you just want them to respond and say something remorseful so that you can ease that gnawing feeling of loneliness and abandonment? i feel so abandoned that it's hard to think about anything.
So, some back story::I realized, many moons ago, that my partner displayed a lot of fearful-avoidant tendencies. When we met, I felt very drawn to him, and sensed a kindred spirit in him; we aligned on so many levels, and had easy, tangential conversations. However, I began to feel really uncomfortable, really quickly, because he started the push/pull thing, and told me about his history of unrequited crushes and an ex who had left him 3 years ago that I didn't realize he still felt "crippled over." We hung out for two months before he finally initiated a physical relationship with me -after verbally telling me that he had a lot of confusion and anxiety around starting relationships (i was his second) and that he didn't know whether or not he was physically attracted to me even though he felt like i was the only person he had ever shared certain things with about his life (ever)- and i assumed that his confusion would dissipate now that we were involved. About a week into our relationship, after several proclamations of him feeling multiple types of chemistry with me, he answered my question of "how are you feeling about us" with this: "i feel overwhelmed and that i need to have sex with someone i'm 'primally' attracted to. i'm not sure if i'm going to be attracted to you in the future." needless to say, i was really hurt, and told him i couldn't continue with what we were doing. I'm polyamorous, and he said he wanted to explore polyamory, and I honestly didn't think I could continue in that type of relationship with him obviously valuing one body type above mine. I love that in polyamory, I can explore multiple, deep connections, many of them not at all romantic, and through the five years I've been poly, I've felt like I've been able to work on myself enough to become more of an earned secure. At any rate, the next day, he reacted to me detaching by telling me that he felt really uncomfortable and frantic by my distance, and said that he really cared, etc. He came to me and told me that he really wanted to be with me, that he realized he was wrong, and was going to stay in town to "grow our relationship." He did not, however, ever apologize for making those comments, and never understood how they hurt me. Instead, he fixated on how i wasn't "letting him be himself." He continued to have this anxiety of not being able to express his true feelings with me throughout. I often felt like he would dump his anxieties around intimacy onto us and constantly tell me that he felt bad about us/was questioning us. He would always say that that didn't mean he didn't want to be with me, but obviously, it brought out my anxious-preoccupied tendencies. We fought all the time. Me pushing him to be open and me being reactive whenever he would do some rejecting behavior.
Fast forward to now. we broke up and got back together in late Feb, and as the story usually goes, the same problems arose, and we broke up. this time, however, it got nasty. for about three weeks, we were peaceful, using a lot of non-violent communication, and not fighting at all. but looking back on it, that was mostly because i wasn't saying what i was feeling, lowered my expectations, and had finally realized that he would never be capable of giving me the intimacy i deserved/needed, so i, myself, became slightly more distant, but not in a power-trip kind of way. after three weeks of that, he suddenly started letting what would have been a normal conversation and negotiation of needs escalate into a full-blown conflict. throughout our time together, i slowly became more and more anxious, preoccupied with fixing us, empty inside, and very clingy. i knew that how i felt wasn't right, but i convinced myself that he would change, and that, moreover, if i just worked on being less pushy about him opening up, we would be ok. i can't tell you how many books i read on codependency! i really thought i was being controlling by feeling so anxious about him feeling bad about our relationship and not feeling safe to open up because of how i would react when he told me he was feeling terrible things about us.
after a week of him starting 3 conflicts, i was done. as a rule, he never took responsibility for his distancing behaviors, never apologized, and admitted to me that he had a lack of empathy towards me because he was too clouded by his own fears and needs. he didn't know himself well enough to see what he was doing, and even though he was in therapy and always, always talked about wanting to work on us and have a healthy connection, i didn't think that was possible when he couldn't see the underlying issues.
the point of my post: i handled the breakup badly. i reactively broke up with him one night when i was really, really angry about him starting another fight (i can take responsibility for starting fights, and i've done that, many times in my life, but he never saw, even after the fight was over, his role in starting it). i had never been that angry with him. we were in bed, and i got up, turned on the light, grabbed his bag, put it on the bed, and told him to get out of my life. i was livid. he contacted me two days later telling me that he still felt raw from the scariness of that night, but would like to talk to me after a significant amount of time and processing. i was once again pissed at this. i was mad he didn't take any responsibility for us getting to that point, and mad he seemed to be blaming everything all of me again. i wasn't proud of angrily picking up his bag, but i didn't throw it at him, have never been remotely violent towards him, have never been outright angry like that, and have never, ever threatened him or called him names or put him down or picked on his personal insecurities. it just felt like another excuse, to me, for him to absolve himself of any blame for starting all the crap. i finally decided that i needed to burn the bridge, so i did what i have never done before with him: i told him exactly how i thought he was acting, called him out on all his hurtful avoidant crap, and told him, in a lot of words, that he was an a-hole for treating me like sh-t the entire time we were together. i couldn't stop myself from sending a string of 10 or so emails. i pride myself on not giving into my anxiety and sending a lot of texts/being frantic about hearing back from people. i've actually never let myself to this with anyone i've dated, and i think this is because i'm an anxious-avoidant; being with avoidants def brings out my anxious side, but the avoidant in me is still hesistant to come across as needy or crazy by over-doing it with messaging. but this time, it was different, bc i knew i had nothing to lose.
since then, i can't let it go, and i feel awful. i can't let go of all of my anger over him using me and distancing all the time. i'm obsessed, and it's not good. i know that it's not really about him. i know that he'll never apologize or see what he did, and i know that telling him how he wronged me is just a distraction to my own pain. i know that he's a symptom. that is my problem though: i know all this stuff, have read a lot about it, and yet still can't make the change. i don't know how to FEEL differently, despite knowing.
does anyone have any advice for dealing with uncontrollable anger (it's more indignation) and wanting someone to know exactly how they hurt you? i'm also having a hard time with him not responding and being cold; my intention behind sending the emails was to burn the bridge so badly between us that i wouldn't be tempted to go back, but now that i did it, i'm not happy i did. the last time we broke up, i went no contact, and didn't cave. any advice on how to avoid giving in to that feeling where you just want them to respond and say something remorseful so that you can ease that gnawing feeling of loneliness and abandonment? i feel so abandoned that it's hard to think about anything.
