I am FA & struggling with break up with FA

I didn’t deactivate. I decided I wasn’t going to tolerate the cyclical FA behaviour any more. I conducted myself in a reasonable way. I communicated, tried to sort out the logistics that go with shared things while respecting our dignity, but not succumbing to every effort to reel me back in. A deactivation is very different. This wasn’t out of fear, this was because the situation was deteriorating and just hurting everyone. She was acting in her attachment and it was the first time I was able to make a healthy decision for myself.

I lived in your city for quite a while before coming to the dry side some years ago. It’s a very different place to when I left.

One of the special aspects of this forum is that we do share what’s really going on. This is a life changing place. Check out my initial posts 6 years ago to see an FA in full flight.

Ah, thanks for answering my muddle-headed query mrob. I have been conflating deactivation and blocking from my recent experience, and of course, sometimes blocking is something entirely different. Indeed, I think R had already deactivated in our spiral text exchange, triggering anxious in me, leading to the missent text and then blocking.

I woke at 3am, checked my phone, saw your comment on this thread and have now spent three plus hours reading your old posts - I so relate to how attachment theory has been the huge light bulb for you. It's very early days for me, & I know I sound ridiculous to my friends - one came around last night, and she could not believe the language, deactivation, limerance, yada yada. It was my therapist who suggested I was FA in the context of me seeing her as my 7 year relationship was ending (which spookily also sounds like yours - no kids, but I was somewhat passive and resentful in it then blew it up with an affair). And I was very intrigued and wanted her to explore it with me but she was also reluctant to do so. Taking my cues from her, I did not explore further, other than to occasionally google FA. Then came a painful rebound relationship where we stupidly moved in together and I was triggered almost daily by his anxious ways and I would flee to my room and read FA posts on the secured relationship instagram page to calm down. I even showed my then partner the information in the hope he could understand my turmoil but he would not have a bar of it.

Then fast forward a year and I try online dating and walk almost-blind into an FA-FA situation which has me spiralling anxious. There is so much helpful information and hard won knowledge on this site, it is blowing my mind. Thanks for engaging. (And now it is 7am on this side of the country and I have to get up to prepare to teach an online class at 9!)

Thanks mrob and also tnr9 for the reminders of how fresh this all is, and how grieving is not a linear process. Maybe it's the lack of sleep on top of it, but I'm just all over the shop today. I experienced a kind of elated high immersing myself in this site in the middle of the night, but I've not been able to focus on work properly today and just completely missed an online meeting because I was backtracking over threads about cycling and deactivation blah blah blah. I feel very stuck and immobilised, perhaps because grief is also too familiar a state for me, having lost both my parents, a close friend, an ex...it seems to be the story of my life really.

I'm struggling to differentiate between missing him and mourning the end, and my anxiety - it's still hard to accept it's over, given how sudden it was. Last night I drank half a bottle of wine and started writing him a text, and thankfully deleted it before sending - which felt like a huge achievement, pathetic really. FA with FA is such a cluster-fk, I must say! including because I now entertain a fantasy that if only I could tell him about FA, we'd get through it. I'm writing to expel I guess, as a way of confronting all the desperate feelings and to prevent myself from acting on them.

My friend reminded me last night that when I started to see R I was ambivalent, and had various reservations - including that he'd only last year experienced the end of a 15 year relationship (where she sent him on his way, because as he put it, he struggled to 'do family stuff'), the pot smoking, our vastly different lives (he seems very isolated, despite having kids - who he sees every third weekend). I took it slow and when I started to feel stronger feelings, I decided to not talk much about him to friends while I settled into the relationship...I thought I was making all of these sensible moves, and truth be told, I think I felt I had the upper hand...it almost makes me sick to write that. Then came the 'I love you' and I decided to amp up my demands, which at the time genuinely felt like a 'sensible' or secure thing to do - it's laughable really, looking back. I think I've given myself a good fright, and I just want the yearning to stop.

“…..consumed with thoughts of reaching out….”

If you feel you just have to text or reach out : STOP!
Feel where in the body you feel the urge to text/reach out. Put your hand on that bodypart and tell the feeling, that the feeling is allowed to be here right now, but you are in charge and you are the one deciding, what is going to happen.

The rubberband method:
Use the rubberband method and put a rubberband around your wrist:.Every time you think of the other person, you easily pull out the rubberband - you can change the wrist. This method gives your brain a micro shock. This method Will help you to become present in the precent moment. 

If you can´t hold back, you can write the text and then send it to your best friend instead.

You can also make a list of what you can do instead of texting, and keep it in your purse/your pocket/ on your phone and then look at the list and choose another thing to do, when you want to text/reach out.

I choose to exercise:

Stop the thought as soon as it approaches ... do something physical or read something, sometimes it may be helpful to get the nervous system to land - also by using the watertank exercise or other regulating tools.

You can start doing this immediately. Type it down:
Many times daily - that's every time there's something you're reacting to either because of others or your own internal state - say to yourself: I choose to ...
Put yellow post-it notes around in your home and at your workplace, where it says" I choose to ..." - so that you remember this.
Then you train that muscle to put an active choice, so that others do not have as much control over you.
(Stephen Covey's book 7 good habits.)

Hi all, just updating my own thread here at the four week point since the sudden break up with my (presumably) FA ex. I have found this site so helpful, and have read a lot on here as part of processing what happened. I'm still in the thick of it, so I may not have sufficient distant on it yet, but currently it feels like the worst break up I've ever had in 30 years of relationships - despite being the shortest relationship - and I know that's a classic thing to say in the midst of it.

Part of the pain is coming to terms with my own insecure attachment. This has been a huge wake up call, and I am re-evaluating every relationship I've ever had. All were positive in lots of ways, and I definitely don't see them ending as a failure. I do, however, more clearly see how my own fears and insecurities ran the show. I have found myself having regrets - not about the relationships ending, but about what I could have done while in them to make them a more fulfilling and mutually rewarding experience for both of us (at the same time, I know it takes two and I have more compassion for my exes also). I am also questioning which relationships endured because of attachment, and which didn't get a chance because of my FA tendencies. I really wish I had tried to deal with 'my issues' years ago. I can now clearly see all the stories I told about those relationships - either to stay in them, or to get out. I never thought any would last - which I told myself was realistic, but in practice meant I also held back. I didn't understand my own needs, or didn't think I deserved better. All of my exes are wonderful people - this is no shade on them, and that I ended up with them gives me some solace that my romantic life has not been a complete disaster! I (mostly) chose well. What I regret is how I was in those relationships - each brought out different FA aspects, but if there was a consistent thread it was me at some point snapping and screaming 'you don't listen to me!' and the other person being completely befuddled because they weren't sure what they were supposed to be paying attention to. In my mind, I had communicated - but I know I hadn't, not properly anyway, because I had such inner turmoil inside.

Tangentially, I wonder if anyone here has ever had the urge to talk to a distant ex after beginning to work on themselves? I still speak regularly to two of them, but not deeply anymore. Now that time has passed, I'd welcome their perspective but I know it could also be a very selfish thing to ask, and I'm probably too fragile to absorb in any case. At the moment, I'm trying to be curious about the urge to do this.

With this break up, I feel cracked open. I went into it with more awareness of being FA, but can see how *some* awareness can be worse than none - ha! I approached it like declaring I have an STD or something, rather than closely observing my own behaviour and working on my attachment issues in therapy and elsewhere. I can see now that what provoked me to issue a series of demands to my ex (R) - which would have appeared to him to have come from nowhere - was the recent declaration of 'I love you' and me having had dinner with an old boyfriend who still stirs up emotions in me. Now I've come far enough to not entirely blame myself, or even to use the language of blame. But I can painfully and clearly see how our insecure attachment played out - I went into a panic he was going to leave me, and R got defensive and took everything I was asking as criticism, and boom! Just like that it was over - he deactivated and we haven't talked since.

A pathetically large part of the post-break up period has been devoted to trying to understand him, mainlining FA content of all descriptions. I've read so much of it, including all the crap get your FA back sites, that the other day I had to pause and laugh because ...what if he isn't even FA?!! My therapist brutally but very helpfully cut to the chase this week - she said your ex and what he may be going through is now none of your business. Instead she asked me to think about what drew me to him, and that was so helpful, and also painful. I was very attracted to him, and he has lovely qualities including a kind, gentle manner, but I saw every red flag (depression, pot addiction, isolation, not long out of a long relationship) and took them as signs I would be safe (ha!) insofar as could not possibly want to leave me - if anything it would be the other way around. Clearly not a securely attached mindset in action.

I've now read so much more about attachment, I've ended up in the impasse - was it love, or was it attachment? What was projection, and what was real? My heightened anxious state over these past few weeks is definitely insecure attachment let loose - I still have moments each day when I think getting back together with him would be the only thing that could make me feel better.

And on that note, I did give in to that feeling last weekend and sent him a text. I'd never been sure whether he had blocked me on his phone or not, but by chance I noticed on the imessage function on my laptop that he had read the apology I'd sent in the days after. So ...rather than take that as a sign I should keep my distance, I decided instead to reach out and ask him whether he'd see any value in talking about what happened with us and that I'd welcome any communication, whatever he is comfortable with. Of course, silence (and he did read it, at least according to imessage), and despite telling myself, I would be okay with no response, I wasn't, and I have a new way to beat myself up: I violated his boundaries and I undermined my own recovery.

The bigger picture here is me finally dealing with all the trauma which got me here, as well as the trauma I am experiencing now. On my bad days, I've reverted to what I used to do as a teenager in the months/ years after my dad died - sit and listen and rock to music for hours on end, self-soothing I guess. My therapist says this break up has hit my fault line, and it was bound to happen sometime. I can't hide from it anymore, and that is something. Thanks to anyone who read this far and who has shared their experiences and knowledge, and solidarity to all dealing with similar.

All the best to you rykus9 - life is so hard sometimes isn't it?! But it helps to try and express it, and to know it's not always like this. Sending all good thoughts and wishes your way.