Coming out of the Fog

I am so sorry you are going through this. I sincerely understand your pain. But you are normal. This is the way you feel when something terrible like this happens. You didn't do anything wrong but you are grieving and you will have to be patient with yourself.

I'm a grown woman who does very well on her own, but even I needed to call home and talk about my situation with my Daddy because it hurt that much. My dad reminded me that wounds heal but they sometimes leave a scar. This situation is probably going to hurt for a long time and it is going to leave a scar but it will day by day start to get better.

Firstly, everything you wrote I could have easily have been reading my own story. Your story is not unique and that is SUCH a good thing! It means you have a lot of support. It's like when one feel ill and they don't know what's wrong but then thy get a diagnosis and it somehow calm them down. This illness we are dealing with has a name

I like you needed...demanded, to know WHY. Its what all of us here want to understand and you deserve to understand why. So I am here to tell you "why" You, like me and many other here, got involved with someone who is not well. Whatever is going on with them was there before you came along and will most likely be there until he is ready to do something about it and there is nothing you can do to make him want to change. And one has to WANT to change.

My ex did almost play by play the things your ex did. It just plain hurts to be allowed to believe that is is safe to love someone. Something happens chemically, I believe, when your brain starts to re-wire at the belief that your life is going to now include this other person. Then it is as if someone reaches in and tears out all of the wires! When it happened to me, my brain very literally short circuited and it has taken about a year for the connections to start working properly again.

You are not "needy" and so what if you were! People have needs and there is NOTHING wrong with that. You expressed your needs he didn't want to fulfill them. If people didn't have some kind of need then no one would be in a relationship. Need is at the core of relationships. True a person has to learn to be balanced, one human can't fill ALL of our needs, but there is nothing wrong with stating, "I need you to stop distancing." or "I need you to allow me to be a part of this relationship emotionally." You are not "needy" you are human. This individual just didn't or couldn't give you what you needed.

As I write this to you it is therapeutic for me. My ex told me "I'm not in love with you. It just didn't work out. Sometimes that happens. Learn what you can from the person and the situation and yourself. It is an experience for the future. It just didn't work out for no other reason than I just didn't feel love anymore." When I asked if he knew why he stopped feeling love for me he replied, "No, I don't".

Being told, in a very flippant manner, that your hopes and dreams and all the major adjustments you were planing to make together just poof! went away for no reason, and have been calked up to "experience" leaves one feeling empty, shattered...just plain hurt.

The thing is, I don't think they really do know why they stop feeling love all of the sudden. I think in some ways it is like they take a relationship to the peek, have an "emotional orgasm" and then they are done. Our initial rush of feeling "high" start to normal out. Normal to them is boring. They love the idea of being in love (infatuation) However, they are terrified of the reality of being in love. Loving someone means you have a responsibility to that person, they don't want the responsibility. They hate conflict and see ANY discussion to try and reach understanding or compromise as a hostile confrontation.

There is a reason everyone here tells there story and it is the same exact story over and over. We tell our story and what we are doing is describing symptoms, we research those symptoms and we learn about attachment theory, we research and we learn about insecurity and we learn about avoidant behavior and anxious behavior. We think AH HA! It's a "disease" so there must be a "cure" so we set out on a quest to fix it. The problem is some of us are willing to take the antidote and others are not.

I hate to sit here and say that there is something WRONG with avoidantly attached people any more than I would say there is something WRONG with an  anxiously attached person. What I would say is that all of us, even secures, just come with "stuff". We are individuals with individual needs. What is WRONG is seeing a pattern in ourselves that is hurtful to others and one's self and doing nothing to change it.

It is WRONG to tell someone you love them and want to make a life with them and then end things without a good reason. That is hurtful and painful. If you make a person feel it is safe to love you then they deserve to know the reasons why the should stop. "It just didn't work out" is not a reason. "I no longer feel it" is not a reason. They are excuses. "There are just some things that will never make sense, accept it" is not an acceptable answer. Those who say these things need to understand even MORE than the person they are saying them to. These people are hurting themselves by not taking the time to sort it out so that they CAN give a reasonable response to the person whose heart is breaking right in front of them.

But for you, my dear, you will have to process this all in your own time. Your brain is amazing and it will start to sort things out and file things away to where they need to be and throw out the things it no longer needs. It will be hard but keep reminding yourself that you didn't do anything to that man and he knows it. Now, you have to KNOW it for yourself.

I believe that for an avoidtant (and they can correct me if I am wrong) being with someone loving and secure "normal" is like looking into a mirror and seeing yourself for who you really are and you can't stand to see all the things you believe you need to change and the work it would take to change feels just too overwhelming. He's put distance between you and him because it isn't you he's trying to get away from, he wants to get away from himself.

I'v bought and read Jeb's book "How to love or leave and Avoidant" but a read I suggest everyone here check out is "Attached" by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I believe everyone should understand attachment theory from an early age. If I had children I would read it to them as a bedtime story!

You are going to be ok. And I know, I KNOW, you sincerely loved this man like no other because I believe at their core avoidants are amazing people who deserve love YOU just can't make them believe it. YOU can't make someone feel something they just don't feel, whatever their reason. YOU deserve to be allowed to express your reasonable, basic, needs and have them met. Sad thing is, when we are feeling anxious, we fail to realize that the Avoidant understands that even better than we do. They know they are not willing or maybe even capable of giving us what we need so they think we are better off without them and to be honest, until they are ready to want to do the work that relationships require, We are better off without that kind of negativity in our lives, no matter how much we truly love the person.

You are worth the effort. Don't forget that. Learn that or (as in my case) RE-LEARN that and never allow anyone to make you doubt that again. Know your own truth and it will safeguard you more than anything.