Need some support- having serious talk with FA tonight

the crying is good not bad.
i’m crying because i am touched by your sincerity and i am sincere too and i don’t feel alone. i feel like i can cry and that’s good.

this is going to sound strange but i just realized i haven’t told anyone around me how sad this breakup made me except my oldest son.

and you. and apparently the whole internet which i forget sometimes.
i guess i do feel anonymous.

but anyway i am not sure what that’s about because i am very emotionally open about other things.
It’s the compartment of intimate relationship that i keep hidden.
I did EMDR once but i didn’t tell my therapist i was being violently abused in my current relationship. We were working on old trauma and i had my current relationship so compartmentalized i didn’t tell anyone. That came from being told i was a liar a lot by my mom i think. i just knew no one would believe me or they would expect me to do something about it. but i couldn’t so i was trying to figure out how to leave.

The EMDR crashed me instead of helping but subsequent work helped me tremendously.

Anyway. Do you talk to people around you about how sad you are? I am not sure I could do that yet. I don’t know why. So again, i am glad we are doing this together.

who woulda thunk it. 🙂

wow, the meet up!
I’ll be thinking of you!
we’ll pick it up later and i will check back to see how you’re doing!

how did it go?

I sent him an email. Its long, but basically i take responsibility for how I showed up tonight- and I told him that despite our talk, I'm finding it difficult to go from being intimate to trying to spend time under the knowledge that he didn't feel anything for me during the past 9 months. tgat he was in my bed just a week or so ago! at any rate, I told him that I'm betraying myself by acting like Im OK when all I am is hurt. i said if he is indeed ready to see others right now, i cannot be in his life anymore. I said i don't have answers for a way forward, I only know what i feel today and I'm trying to honor that.

I can only assume at this point, he will read it and we will no longer speak. it was so painful seeing him and just wishing it were the same as it were. I could barely hold back tears. Its not his fault for going, he didn't know how hard it would be, but i have to think in some ways how could he not? you basically get back together with someone for 9 months and then drop a bomb that you felt nothing for them- it still makes no sense. I am devastated, but, there is comfort in knowing i owned my feelings and stood for who i am, versus what made him comfortable.

Hi tgat,

Well we definitely did the push/pull but perhaps it wasn't garden variety. I don't know. Let me give you a quick history for more insight. By the way, I am 38 and he is 45 just for more context:

We met in June 2015 after texting back and forth for about a month. During our texts he was fairly guarded. We met up for a drink at our first meeting and I have to admit, it was a bit odd. Because we met on a dating website I started to ask him about his profile, he quickly snapped that we do not talk about our profiles, and I told him he was kinda blowing the date. He was touchy feely and grabbed my hand from across the table which I thought was odd given his formal style, but I found him to be quirky and very attractive. Something pulled me in almost instantly. He asked if I wanted to come back to his place to watch Netflix, I said no and that we just met. After that, we would hang out- we went to a movie, but he mostly wanted to hang at his place. He has 2 roommates and has lived in the same apartment for 15 years or so. He would rarely tell me things about himself, only that his longest relationship was 2 yrs and it occurred about 8 yrs ago, that most of his relationships were 6 months, that he has never married or lived with a woman because it was either, they bored him, timing or they wanted a commitment. I ignored all of this at the time because I was coming out of a divorce and wasn't really sure what I wanted in terms of getting serious.

However, after about 3 months of seeing him I asked if we could go on more dates. He said we needed to keep it "light" and that while he wasn't seeing others, he wasn't looking for anything more. I left his house and told him that would not work for me, that I wanted to date and see how things go. A few days later he sent a text asking if we could be friends and stated he cannot imagine life without me. strange thing to say in my opinion, but I told him I wanted to date, so went to his house and we agreed to go on dates. About a year in, he was still calling me his friend, even though we were exclusive and had discussed that. So I had to tell him that we are a couple, correct? He said ok and that was that. However, during those 2 years we were a couple, if we had a fight he would stonewall me for a week, then come back as if nothing happened. He would frequently state that we fought too much even though I felt that our fights were very fixable and sometimes very lame. He would be secretive about plans with friends and didn't start introducing me to his friends until we were dating almost 8 months and it was at my urging. He would rarely go with me to my friends events. He also would sometimes pick fights to get distance from me. Sometimes he would return texts and be chatty, sometimes not at all. Sometimes he would pull away and blame work without any reason. We would hang out friday to sunday, but rarely during the week, sometimes thursdays. He had us on a schedule of sorts. I have a chronic disease, he had trouble providing emotional support and would only do practical things for me. He has rules I didn't even know about. For instance we were not allowed to talk about "us" at dinner, that we needed to keep conversation light. I became close with his friends and he initially seemed to really like that, he encouraged it. I got close with his best friend of 20+ years and his wife (we are still very close to this day). He never once told me how he felt about me. He told his best friend that he "thinks he loves me"- but one night we got into an argument and while I had told him I loved him a few months prior, he told me that night that while he "likes me a lot"- we still fight too much. I asked if he loved me, he said no. We stayed together another 5 months, with him distancing himself even more, slowly over time. He stopped calling me cutie, he seemed annoyed with me most of the time, then finally he dumped me. His reasons? we fought too much and he didn't feel enough for me to fix things. I was devastated. I went no contact right after for about 2 months. During that time he contacted me first via text telling me he is here for me if I need help when Im sick, if I want to bring the dog around for a walk. I didn't answer. He donated to an organization I belong to, I didn't respond. He sent me a bday card telling me that my friends are so lucky to have me. He texted about the card. Finally he sent a long text saying that he was hurt too, that my ignoring him was making it worse. that I can make him a villain if i want, that he will stop reaching out .

Well, i went to his house to talk, we slept together. Then after that started regularly seeing each other for the past 9 months. In the beginning he magically had time to see me almost every day. We went to dinners, the movies, saw comedy shows, went away for a weekend. We even went to a concert with his best friend wife. everyone thought we were back together, but he would sometimes remind me we weren't. he would say things like "we don't need to plan our whole summer together! we are not together!" this would prompt a fight and he would declare that we do not see each other for a bit, take a break, then he would contact me a day or two later. This pattern has gone on for 9 months. Him telling me we are not together, i get upset and go lick my wounds, he texts a few days if not sooner asking to see me.

The final straw for me came in early dec he sent a text saying he felt we needed to "move on more"- that he felt stuck and was unhappy on some level but that he wasn't drawing any lines in the sand- to me this felt like a goodbye so i asked if we could talk. he refused saying he was busy with work and didn't want to add more stress to his week. So i went NC for 2 weeks because i was at a total loss. I finally texted and said i wasn't ignoring him to punish him, i just didn't know what to say and didn't want to text back and forth about us. He texted the next night and asked if he could come over- i said ok and we had the most passionate night we have ever had since i met him. After that, we ramped up our time together. Because of this, i decided to have that talk we had friday to finally just agree that we are together for now.

thats basically the whole story. Sorry so long!