FA reluctant of meeting in person (20 year long love story)

I once worked with someone who did this in a way that really creeped me out. No boundaries in trying to force you to accept help you didn't ask for. Seemed like he wanted you both to like and owe him in return. All my spidey senses tingled.

He's in jail now. He was clinically a sociopath (I'd imagine antisocial personality disorder?), and it turned out he had done heinous things far beyond what I could have imagined, even with the run-away-bad-vibes! I got from him solely based on exactly what your quote says.

thanks for this disclaimer serenity. I had an immediate reaction to the title and I didn't realize that the book was originally published in 1985. I looked it up on amazon and saw almost exclusively positive reviews.

serenity, thank you for seeing me as the secure person I feel like.

This book is old, but it is not about traditional gender roles or that the woman should not have equal power as the man.

It is more about not giving advices that wasn't asked for, that can feel like contol or manipulation on the receiving end. And maybe uncounscious it is.

My FA's remark about me making him my project woke me up. It wasn't my suggestion about a therapist that triggered him to say it, but because when we talked about relationship I talked most about his issues, and not so much addressing mine (I did in the last meeting, though).

He said earlier: "You can read about this stuff, but you don't have to tell me about it. When women start analyzing me and start telling me who I am and what I think, I quit."

Of course, as an FA, he is overly sensitive to critique and judgement as well. But noone likes being told who they are.

I have used an unbalanced approach, that I see is some kind of control behavior to get him into a relationship he might not be ready for.

I can relax now, and just see what he choose to do, let it develop organically. If you love somebody, set them free. If he is ready, he will come.

I see it as you expressing a boundary, then explaining the issues specifically. He may not have liked the boundary or hearing the issues, but consider that the man has a history with you of flakiness, unavailability and outright cheating/replacing you. That behaviour is serious enough to warrant some statement about your boundaries, and an explanation.  And wishing to stay just friends with an avoidant who is not actively seeking self awareness is a good one!  I kinda agree that the psychobabble is uneccessary and a bit obnoxious so early on. You would usually only need to explain what your boundaries are, if something romantic looked like it was on the cards IMO. But you still got your point across, which is fine. A lot of people talk about deal breakers on dating profiles and first dates, so its not abnormal at all. Its helps prevent wasting a lot of time.

Its understandable that you feel nervous because he has not received your boundary and explanation well. But renegging your boundaries and looking for reasons to call yourself too controlling/too this/too that sounds like normal anxious behaviour to me (been there). Boundaries are hard to set, the consequences can be hard to face too. They are there to protect you though. You really don't need to go through a repeat of some of what he's done to you before IMO.






 

Yes, right, lol.

He also said that I am the one who have come furthest...

It remains to see if this means closest to a relationship or longest before he runs

It's not always opposite-sex, and it may be another close adult who wasn't the parent. Like if a daughter is enmeshed by her mother, she may find male partners who personality-wise are similar to mom, as that's both what's familiar and what subconsciously seeks repetition and healing.

@bohemianraspberry I feel you on this on so many levels. I do.

For what it's worth (and if this helps you to feel stronger in your decision to move on) one my best friends is a therapist who works with both attachment issues and Complex PTSD (and other trauma related issues) and she told me it takes *years* of work for people to get to the place you desire (a consistent, defined relationship) and that is when they are coming to see her every single week and putting in the very hard, day to day work on their own (there are amazingly strong insecure attachment folks in this forum who are putting in that work and can attest to how long it takes and how devoted they are to making progress). As she told me "It's excruciatingly slow progress". In fact, I recently listened to an EXCELLENT podcast (i listened to the episode on disorganized attachment specifically but it's an entire series all on attachment and is extremely well done...i can link it if people are interested) and they said that because disorganized attachment is so chaotic for the sufferer, the new approach in therapy can just be to get them to initially move towards an organized (but still insecure) style, like DA. That at least then, it's organized for the patient themselves. And that's before they ever even get towards trying to earn secure.


If he does start to contact you with more fervor, I guess I don't think of it as him "blowing hot" to try to "keep you hanging in there" but rather as a symptom of this very real and serious issue he has (and I don't say that in ANY way to disparage other FAs on the boards or DAs or whoever...this is the type of language my own FA friend uses when he describes his attachment issues. They cause him to feel like an alien and create tremendous pain for him and those around him). For the FA in my life (and I suspect yours also) he rarely (if ever) sits in a peaceful "middle" but rather bounces back and forth between the extremes of fear (engulfment and then abandonment and then engulfment again) and that is regardless of how "patient, understanding, calm consistent and loving" I am, or his ex wife was, or the relationships before that...you see my point. And one of the things I have come to realize is just how integral *I* am, as a owner and orchestrator of my own pain in this dynamic. "One man does not make a team" and all that.

I am glad you feel ready to move on without him. No matter what, it's nice to know the people here understand the pain these dynamics cause (regardless of which side of the equations they have been on).