bluecastle

With respect, I don't think what you're describing here is "catering to her." That would imply that you sincerely cared about her needs and, as one does when they sincerely care about another's needs, did their best to meet to them. A more accurate description above, I think, might be "catering to myself." Or more specifically: "catering to my own deeply unhealthy habits." And if you can rephrase it like that—"I'm just not catering to my own deeply unhealthy habits anymore"—you may find the bitterness eroding, a sincere sense of self-empowerment taking root, and end up a few inches closer to a paradigm shift. Further explained: Your primary motivation in "catering to her" seems to have nothing to actually do with "her." It was about personal reward, you seeking the great and elusive elixir of appreciation. "OMG, Alex, these desserts are truly the BEST things I've ever eaten THANK YOU so much!" That was the drug being sought. When brother's gf failed to deliver this high, you became itchy, unnerved, upset. There is a glaring parallel here with your mother. Much of your life, including this moment, is constructed around "slaving away" to get her to appreciate you, to quench that thirst, fill the void. Sadly, she is not hardwired to dole this out. For emphasis, one way to think of all that would be: Planet earth is shaped like sphere, water turns to ice at 32 degrees, and your mother is not hardwired to dole out the love you crave. These are hard, implacable facts about the world you live in. And that third fact is hard to wrap the head and heart around. I get that. Hugs. I've got a parent, my dad, who, while possessed with many lovely qualities, is incapable of delivering the base-level emotional nourishment I crave. There will always be some hurt in me about that, as there will always be some hurt in my left shoulder connected to a nasty bicycle crash in 2010. Thing is, just like I've learned not to sleep on my left side (because it compounds hurt), I've long learned not to engage in magical thinking and back breaking to extract some salve from my father (ditto). I hope you can get there. You have a lot of life to live yet. While we have very little say in the agonies that befall us in childhood, the saving grace of adulthood is that we get to choose how we react to them.

I'd say this is pretty normal, one of the (many) things we now have to deal with in the age of social media. Most people flail a bit in the aftermath of a breakup—doubting their choice one moment, drinking too much the next, becoming ultra spiritual or nihilistic, craving attention, whatever. Before social media? You just didn't have a window into this unless you happened to, say, walk in on your ex at a bar with friends. Now, alas, we all live at that bar, in some amorphous pixelated way, though there is good news. It's easy enough to avoid either by (a) unfollowing or (b) deleting the app for a bit. I highly suggest one of those two routes for you. Having been in a version of your shoes—sifting over social media activity like an archeologist looking for some mythic symbol—I can't begin to express the sanity that followed simply by taking a break from the apps. And if what you'd like is to reconcile? I agree with the above: Ask her to meet up and tell her how you feel. Plenty of people get back together, and while it doesn't alway work out it's a lot better than trying to turn nothing into something, which is, at its core, all that social media is.

Was this for a specific night? Or a general "We should get a drink sometime?" I mean, from what you've offered here you've most likely collided with someone who is too flaky to really bother with. What I meant by "think of it as fun" was more about the total randomness of it all: some people flake, some don't; some people will be more intrigued by you than you are them; many message exchanges will go from momentarily fluttery to crickets. Nothing to sweat too heavily or think of as "playing games."

"Playing games" feels like an awfully harsh conclusion to reach, as does "gives an excuse" in the context of her not being able to go out. I may be reading things wrong—and feel free to supply some more specifics as to how you asked her out and what she said—but I can't help but think you may be looking a bit too closely for harbingers of toxicity rather than just accepting that dating is a big ol' crapshoot. Anyhow, all in all it just doesn't sound like she's super duper interested. Yeah, she exchanged numbers. Yeah, she poked you after seeing you at a party. But then she kind of fades out just as quickly. That's not game-playing. That's just the baseline—how all of this goes far more often than not. If you can think of it like that it's all a lot easier, and more fun.

There are things we invariably have to mourn when ending any relationship. Good sex, say, or a cozy human pillow alongside with to watch Netflix. And, quite often, pets. I get that it's heartbreaking, but I think you need to ask: Which is greater, the pain of no longer having a relationship with this puppy, or the pain of staying with her/having regular contact with her? Flash forward to 8 months from now, as a thought experiment: You're dating someone new, it's going well, and you have to explain how you have an occasionally temperamental relationship with an ex with whom you share a puppy. How do you think that lands, with a potential partner? Do you want that moment, or some version of it, for the next 10-15 years? All of which is a lot of words to say that, in your shoes, I would let this puppy go whenever you are ready to let the relationship go. I would focus on something beautiful but presently bittersweet—that one indisputably wonderful thing about the past year is that it let you know how much you love having a dog in your life. And then I would look into moving into a flat that allowed pets, and spend some time on adoption sites to find the companion that best suits my new, and much lighter, life.

When I used online dating platforms I tended to have a very brief text exchange—enough to gauge a bit of wit and some semblance of humanity behind the profile—and then I'd say something like, "Hey—this is fun. How's about we continue this conversation in 3D? Coffee or a drink this week?" I don't think there's really any right or wrong way to go about all this, but personally I'm in the camp that most time spent trying to "get to know" another human being over screens, phone calls, etc., is far closer in actuality to staring in the mirror than anything else, so I avoided all that. All in all, I tried to treat the platforms in the exact same way I did when it came to meeting people in real life. You go to a dinner party, there's an intriguing stranger you'd never met, you exchange a bit of small talk, ask for a number, make a plan.

It’s always a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s just not that rare to have a brief period of “paradise” with another human. Rare is when it expands rather than contracts.

Well, her own mother explained it pretty directly: this is just how she is. Now, if you want a more highbrow explanation, one could say something to the effect that we all develop a way of being to cope with the daily challenge of existing in the world. Those who opt to be negative and snappish have found in that a certain comfort, maybe a version of the illusion of control we all seek in different ways. But here’s the thing: there is a super slippery slope that comes when we get obsessive about “understanding” a certain person. Very quickly it can become a way from hiding from ourselves or avoiding even more difficult questions along the lines of: What is it in me that continues to accept this? Sounds like, in the grand scheme of things, you two enjoyed a very short period where things were nice. Time has revealed that to have been the exception, not the rule, a very common (and always sad) place to land after a year with some. But perhaps even sadder (to say nothing of more hurtful) is to continue to imagine she may magically return to being the person you wish she would be as opposed to the person she truly is.

I think this is a case where "cultural norms and etiquette" is a synonym (or euphemism) for "antagonism." And while I in no way mean to point a finger at you here—I love your posts and vibe!—I do think part of the present friction stems from an unwillingness (mainly in men) to just call it like that. To say: Yeah, women have had the short end of the stick for millennia, been objectified and treated as lesser by men, that sucks, it leaves a mark, and so on. When that can't be common ground, grievances expand, get misdirected, and tensions are magnified. That said, I very much agree with the idea that we're in a moment of knee-jerk reactivity and black-and-white thinking. No text back in two hours? Ghosted! Don't agree with my point of view? Gaslighter! Forgot to empty the dishwasher? Covert narcissist! The default language has become increasingly incendiary, which doesn't bode well for sincere connectivity, since language is the tool we all use to make sense of the world around us.

Curious what you mean by this. As I see it, men being antagonistic toward women is hardly a new paradigm. Historically, it has been the norm: men viewing and treating women as inferior, lesser, as objects, and so on. The difference is that this is now unacceptable—and that many women will be more assertive (as men have long been) in demanding they get treated as they feel they deserve. But I do agree that there's a lot of heightened sensitivity, raw nerves, and timidity surrounding all this friction. Optimistic view is: growing pains, an adjustment, etc. Less optimistic view is: the age of social media distorts and magnifies in ways that makes everyone a little batty. Verdict is out, I suppose. One thing I've found myself thinking of with this thread: For all the pitfalls of dating—and pitfalls are hardly new to dating—there are signs that relationships are improving. The divorce rate is down in the US, for example, and some have commented that may be due to people being more intentional in relationships—and waiting longer to marry. So while the rites and rituals of courtship may be all sorts of discombobulated, perhaps actual relationships are evolving to be more equal and fulfilling?

What age group are you talking about here, out of curiosity? I feel like an outlier in that my experience with the apps was largely positive. Then again, minus a few exceptions, I spent next to zero time getting to know people over chat—largely because I don't think that's super possible. I generally asked people to meet up after a few sentences. To me I think a lot of the fatigue and disappointment comes with equating the activity on the apps as "dating."

Interesting conversation! Putting aside the nostalgia-inducing gauze that the word "courtship" carries, @Kwothe28 makes clear what it was always about: incentives. For the man, historically speaking, the incentives were many: sex, money (the dowries that paid back the initial investment and then some), child care, deference. For the woman, they were far fewer but essential, men being their only access to shelter and (some) money for centuries. Today all that's been shaken up, has been being shaken up for the better part of half century. In broad brushstrokes: women no longer need men in the same way for shelter and money, sex is no longer seen as sinful outside of marriage, marriage is no longer seen as essential for social respect, and so on. All that, I would argue, is wonderful stuff—and at its best it can remove the transaction/performative nature of courtship/relationships and ground it all a bit more in genuine human connection. At the same time, our expectations and rituals around romance are still largely connected to those ancient, gender-specific models, so there's some friction. Many women still want to be "courted" in some fashion, while some men feel the way @Kwothe28 articulated: annoyed that the investment is riskier in a less patriarchal world (while maybe not taking into account such matters like women spending much more on clothing/make-up than men pay for dinner). Other men, meanwhile, may be plagued by a kind of sensitivity paralysis—worried that, say, paying for a meal or some other gesture would come across as retrograde, offensive, or trigger a is-he-playing-me spiral. In both cases, for different reasons, such dudes may opt for the "hang out" route. All that said, in my experience, and in my age group—I'm 44 and my single friends range from 30-50ish—I wouldn't say there's an enormous lack of courtship. The single men I know still pay for the bulk of early outings, as I did when I was single. There are flowers, small gifts, cute notes, though also plenty of casual hangs and cocktails and sex had without clear definitions of what's what. If there's a difference it's that this all starts to go both ways a bit sooner and often settles in a way that's more reflective of income disparity than maintaining gender roles. Anyhow, per the questions of... ...I think in an ideal world we can dispense with the nonsense of a "honeymoon period" or "courtship period," at least in terms of a period of the man "trying to win" the affection of the woman, and instead just focus on connection, respect, curiosity, being yourself and seeing how successfully you can keep being that alongside someone else. Easier said than done, and lord knows everything moving to the screen doesn't help that. But the optimist in me sees the present—and the question here—as a kind of awkward phase of growing pains while we dispense with one set of rules and expectations and find ways to create new ones.

So, you still want to save her? Or is it that you think she would be wrong to blame herself? I'm confused, because you introduced this with a post that did put the blame squarely on her. She, the "malignant and covert narcissist" took aim at you, the "empath," deploying the jujitsu of "love bombing and sex bombing" to "lure" you in. While you did nothing but offer love and reassurance, she acted in spite, making you jealous and withholding sex and subversively emasculating you until it became too much. While I encourage you to challenge yourself on that narrative, for your own growth, I do not think sharing it with her is going to offer closure. Just the opposite, really. It is totally okay to miss and crave something or someone that you full-well know is not good for your health. Seems that's what's happening here, being that this is all still raw and fresh. Rather than thinking about how to alter her own feelings about things, take this time to tend to your own.

I agree with the above, in that you're leaning awfully hard into some highfalutin language to describe something that doesn't require the DSM to process. In short: You got tangled up with someone who was young and hot and volatile, you pressed each other's buttons to the point where both your mainframes went on the fritz, you were eventually able to stand down to all the inner urges that drew you to her enough to pull the plug, and now you're going through some withdrawal and are considering touching the burner one more time. Been there. A few times. But as for the question at hand: No, no reason to contact, especially under the presumptive and condescending notion of "giving her closure," which (to flirt with the language of diagnostics) has in it some treacly undertones of narcissism that you may want to explore and reflect on. On the other hand, if you are craving another spin around the drama-go-round—and no judgement if that's the case—then by all means reach out. But own the instinct, rather than couching it into something she needs to mend her feathers. After all, your desire to be a hero/helper—and to get that little high—is what got you tangled up in the first place.

This seems to be the dominant theme, what you come back to time and again, the frustration that your daughter is not "accountable." And it seems that, conscious or not, the thing that is most important to you right now—far more than seeing your grandchildren—is holding her accountable. In this I wonder if you see how similar you two are—how stubbornly you've each created a red line that ensures nothing changes unless the other person does X, Y, and Z. Hard and real as that line seems to both of you, to the outside, or at least to this outsider, it looks like a mirage, a thing that provides each of you with the same things: a sense of righteousness, a sense of power, the crown of victimhood. And unfortunately it seems you are both hardwired to seek these things in the same way a plant does sunlight, which is the backdrop to this stalemate. Anyhow, here is an idea to consider: the accountability you seek will never, ever, EVER come. Think about that for a quiet moment. Let it simmer, bloom, take root. For emphasis: the accountability you seek is something you will never, ever, EVER get. Think of that not in a moral vacuum but as a hard fact of the world, no different from the existence of an ocean or a mountain. Now, taking that notion into account—the Rocky Mountains cut through North America and your daughter will never be held accountable in the way you seek—ask yourself a simple question: Do you want to have a relationship with your daughter and grandchildren? If the answer is yes, then your work is: letting go of the whole accountability narrative, accepting it as a story at odds with reality, learning to live without it (and thus in actual reality), and creating a reservoir of grace and support to weather this and future moments of a similar shade without going into battle mode. If the answer is no, then your work is: letting go of your daughter and her family, mourning that loss the way one does a death, and embracing the life you and Joe are carving out together. There is sweetness and bitterness in both those choices, as there tends to be in most. You know your own appetite.