Dating stage as an FA

This forum is now one of my only outlets for sharing my dating journey. I have set limits with all my friends that I am not to talk about dating, psychology or self help. I don't want to hyper fixate on those things anymore. I recognize that I just use it as another tool to hide myself. My parents took zero interest in who I was so I feel uncomfortable sharing those parts of me. I remember after buying my house and getting engaged I ran into a friend and she asked what was new, I didn't mention either, said not much. The house came up later and she asked why I didn't mention it... it hadn't even occurred to me as something to talk about? When I do talk about things I like, I tend to keep them super short because I just assume no one wants to hear. Somehow my hobbies and interests are more vulnerable to me then my childhood trauma.

It isn't always easy but it has such a huge improvement on my friendships already. We are having fun conversations about TV shows, books, movies, etc. I love all these things but rarely scratched the surface. We are finding new things in common.

Mr. AP likes to skip over questions I text, and change the topic. He ignored my date invitation for the weekend so I set a boundary that I need him to reply to my questions. He didn't react well, he took it more of a demand then a boundary. Said he was out of town. I probably did word it too harshly because I was feeling hurt, so I apologized for my bluntness, rephrased it gentler, but he didn't reply. I am struggling with guilt. That this is a me problem, If I really wanted to know an answer I could have just texted him the question again. If it was any of my friends and they forgot a question I would just follow up, be he has done it enough it felt like a pattern. I think I struggle with validating that my perception of things is correct. And with my friends, none of them would do it on an on going basis, it would be a one off.

It's giving me mild anxiety to not reach out again. I know he left town to get away from things, and I want to respect he is going through a lot right. Ironic because I told him early on I need congruency from people I date. He said he is super consistent and always follows through and the women he dates are the ones who are inconsistent. Projection maybe? He didn't understand the difference between congruency vs consistency. I think I am struggling with him because emotional attunement, compassion and empathy are hard for me, so I want to do all those things for him. It's back to that belief that these parts of me are missing and broken and I don't deserve love if I can't offer them to my partner. If I had these things, I would just know how much space to give him, I would know when to message support, what to say and when to hold back. Classic AP trap.

I have had a huge breakthrough in why I feel "safe" around him. When my mom was dying she said "who is going to take care of you?" All I could say was, I'll be okay. But it still breaks my heart to think about, because while I don't expect anyone to take care of me, I also can't let me guard down anymore. When she was sick and even after she passed, my ex not only emotionally abandoned me, but made it clear he expected me to still take care of him. When my dad died suddenly, I called my best friend and she ghosted me. I think to me, emotional abandonment is worse then someone leaving my life. I also dragged my ex through the big moments in life. He was 5 years older but couldn't deal with the stress of moving, finding a new job, buying a house. Big decisions shut him down.

I don't quite think it is trauma bonding, but maybe it is. In Mr. AP, I see a man who is incredibly strong and resilient. Life has been pretty damn shitty to him, but he hasn't given up. He got himself into counselling, he meditates and reads self help books, he is working so hard to be a better person. He is also so damn accomplished, having a small business he runs on the side. So to me, it's here is a person who I could maybe let my guard down. Maybe for once I could lean on someone. I have never felt that with another person before. I've bonded with friends over depression, abuse, adhd, bpd, etc, but that resiliency and drive, this is different to me. I see my strength mirrored back at me. I also see our capacity to still care, and to still love, and that we both want to trust someone and just don't quite know how. With M when he brought up buying a house together I instantly felt so self protective, it felt threatening for him to even mention it... There was a power struggle from day 1 for me to stay in control and keep myself safe. I feel that a lot less here. Still struggling with control a bit, but I want to share it.  (but ultimately there is a fantasy here, if he won't meet me halfway and put in the same effort, then all it is, is that hope, and potential and we can't date potential)

I set a lot more boundaries with Mr. Situation, who has never reacted well to any limits I tried to place. I don't know if it's because things are less charged because it's been so long, or my increased transparency with why I am setting them, but he responded positively. It felt really empowering to stand up for my standards and take back power in a dynamic where I had given it all away. He asked if I wanted to meet up and I said maybe and set my ground rules. I don't want a relationship with him, but he is fun to spend time with and I could use a distraction right now. I've known him long enough to pull the plug if he doesn't play nice.

I went for a date with someone I'm going to call the Engineer. We met at a board game restaurant and had a blast. Not a single serious topic came up, which was nice. I realize now I used to feel almost an anxiety that I had to tell them all these things about me, or else I was being disingenuous, I was lying about who I was. I didn't view it as oversharing but telling the whole truth. But I am not my traumas those are just a part of me, and I have a right to only share those with who I want, when I am ready to share them.

He asked me out again before we left, I said I would have to get back to him because my birthday was on the day he suggested. He texted me later and asked to take me out for my birthday, any night this week, which was really sweet. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I felt the instinct to go into people pleasing mode. I felt uncomfortable naming my favorite restaurant, it's mid range, so some internal stories around be a cool girl, be easy, cheap, etc. But I threw it out there and he was happy to make reservations. I realized that his profile doesn't actually mention kids, and we had a quick what are you looking for primer over the app and he didn't say a family was in his goals, but I said it was in mine... Only item I'll need to work in there somewhere, so far 100% green flags. Even with me picking the place two dates in a row he was assertive and picked the time and made reservations.

Happy birthday!I enjoy reading your journey so far and thank you for sharing! Very appreciative.

I am a male who recently discovered I am a DA and about attachment styles in general.
I will say you "AP" guy does some things I realize I do to kind of break people a bit and get them to share/commit without me having to do so... I also realize part of me thinks that I have shared even, when I have not in a clear manner.

Hope your day was amazing and I wish you all the best in re learning yourself.

Happy belated birthday!

Don't sell yourself short. I met my partner on a dating app a few days after my 37th birthday, and he is very age-appropriate.

"I want to be strong enough to not care." Also wanted to comment on this. It's not about being strong enough to not care. It's about being able to process things and feelings as they come. You can care and even feel negative about it, but if you can also process it, the negative and painful feelings pass in a couple days. Then everything doesn't feel like such a gigantic risk and it becomes easier to be vulnerable. So one way to address this is focusing on learning more about healthy emotional processing.

That is super interesting….I am an FA female who tends to lean anxious…ie…I tend to pick more avoidant leaning FA men…but I have had the exact same reaction you describe above whenever I sense an anxious man being attracted to me.  I tend to create all kinds of walls and barriers and distance myself.  Just something that you might want to explore…because avoidant leaning FA can sometimes look a lot like DA. 🙂

rykus9

Desorganised attatchment style vs. avoidant attatchment style:

People that are dealing with avoidant attachment shut down their attachment system due to neglect or active rejection if it's related to parenting styles. This can also occur if they've only been related to when learning a task so that they become overdeveloped in the left brain with less access to emotional availability or responsiveness.
They also dissociate into parallel attention or activities that don't involve other people as a defense against their stress related to connection. In this case, the therapist needs to help the client learn to identify their needs and reach out and find comfort and soothing in regulation with another person for co-regulation and to enjoy the emotional connection.

In disorganized, the attachment style is mixed with the threat response due to a parent being afraid of their own children or afraid from their own unresolved trauma or doing scary things to a child as they're raising them. There is a lot more fear involved and of course also dissociation related to unresolved relational trauma. The attachment system and the survival defensive responses can be over coupled and causing somatic, emotional and physiological confusion when a person is trying to connect more intimately in a relationship.

Diane Poole Heller

I'm starting to think that I am a cold person, and possibly have issues with pacing as well. A few friends have made comments that when I say goodbye I am super awkward and blunt with how I say bye and then walk away. But I always hug people goodbye, so I really don't know how to be any different? When people I'm romantically involved with give compliments or say something nice I'm always caught off guard, like right you say these things to people you like!  Even sometimes the questions they ask me to get to know me, it's like oh right... I should be asking more questions. 

Yet I also feel like when I give people compliments they are suspicious of them, and don't take them well? It feels like a catch 22.  When I started dating I was told I'm being clingy, texting too much, moving too fast. Now it feels like I am too slow to warm up, because I want to get to know someone before I go all in. Maybe I am keeping things too surface level and at friends? Touch is my love language, but when I started to date two years ago I realized how deficient I was in affectionate touch.  So now I am wondering, if maybe I am also deficient in other forms of affection. Flirting is VERY hard for me to do until I warm up to someone, or unless I have alcohol, but I don't like drinking. So I try to compensate by expressing I like someone, etc. 

Someone recently asked me how I was feeling about something and I was floored because this is not a question I ever ask anyone, and I'm not sure why not? Yet when I answered honestly, because I'm fairly good at expressing feelings now... There was no response or validation, just a change of topic. This feels like just one of those nuances I am missing about neurotypicals. Like the "how are you doing?" question that you are never really supposed to answer honestly.  

Dating just feels too hard, I wish I had asked the last date for feedback. I have been told that I am hard to read, but I'm forcing myself to share (without oversharing) and all it seems to do is push people away.  I think I am matching their effort, and I don't feel like things are ever one sided, but I rarely am the one who escalates it. Then because I'm FA I get spoked so easily I back off.  When I was young I may have been crazy, and did really dysfunctional things but at least I never second guessed myself.  People used to love how I would love with abandon, just all in and showing someone how much I wanted them. That feels too dangerous now and I don't want to be the crazy BPD stereotype.  For what it is worth, my counsellor told me of all the BPD people she has worked with, I have the best handle on it but I still feel that hanging over my head. 

I also feel like I have a different idea of what a romantic relationship is to other people. To me, it is being with your best friend, who you also want to sleep with.  That you care about, and make them a priority.  I guess I'm just missing what exactly is that romance or the passion part of it?  Makes me feel deficient in some way. 

This isn't exactly a neurotypical thing btw. It's more of a cultural thing. Some cultures will absolutely expect a real answer to this. Others who are more closed off won't. That's why it's important to gauge compatibility in a situation like that. If it's someone who doesn't want the actual answer, maybe they're not for you. But there's also someone out there who will actually want the answer, and they may be neurotypical or not.