Is reconciliation possible in this scenario?

[Chloee1988]

I think you are trying to find something within you to blame for the way things unfolded. I guess it’s easier to rationalize things this way and to absorb some of the blame in order to avoid the real truth. The real truth being that this wasn’t a healthy relationship. The reality is that you were a willing participant in a vicious cycle of highs and lows. If you truly had genuine moments with her, I don’t believe you’d end up where you are today. Genuine people don’t act this way.

Please learn to alter your mindset from the current one which is that you feel your self involvement may have been the cause of all this. The truth is, you must learn to focus on you, your needs, and why you’re drawn to certain people. Stop being preoccupied with “could haves”, “would haves” and “should haves”. You’re in the way of your own progress.

[bluecastle]

This situation really brought to light how self-involved I've been because of my own headspace. I'm working to correct that.

Boom—that's the gold, right there. Or at least a little glimpse at the nugget awaiting some mining, if you're up for grabbing a pickaxe and getting a little dirty.

What I'd say, or at least what I can't help but see, is that you don't really have "commitment issues." That's the easy out. Makes this all about poor you and your pathology: another wonderful thing "ruined" by your "commitment issues." Another corroded dude walking the planet. More self-absorption. As long as that's how you see yourself you'll keep making choices that affirm that identity.

How I'd look at it—and I've had to go here, in my own journey, a craggy but worthwhile self-excavation—is that what you may have "issues" with is the type of women you repeatedly flirt with committing to and invest your emotional capital in: women you don't quite trust, can't quite respect, aren't totally into as you sit across the table, don't consider an equal, and/or come with such serious risks (workplace drama) that you can't help but stay on the fence.

What's up with that? That's where you'll start mining the gold, I think. Do you not think you're deserving of someone capable of loving you? Do you not believe someone capable of seeing the whole you would love what they see? Or has something from your past—past loves, family, who knows—encoded in you a definition of "love" as something to extract, work for, be tortured by? Are you scared to stand face to face with a woman who is an equal? Those are just sample questions, really. Things to contemplate instead of becoming an amateur expert in bipolar disorder.

Point being, the writing was on the wall, early, that the odds were stacked high against you here. Workplace, huge age gap, a woman you knew was hardly keeping it together—not so different than meeting a great woman and learning, dang it, she's married. Your own gut was responding to those odds, yet you kept overriding the gut, and in ways you continue to. Rather than just see all that for what it was—wrong time, wrong person, such is life—it becomes something more emotionally fraught, the thing you may still be more compelled to seek than commitment: a verdict on you confirming your guilt.

In other words, there is no "issue" in not wanting to commit to someone you know, in your core, is bad for you. That is called being healthy. Less than healthy is not seeing it that way, so you can keep replaying the same dynamic with similar people, hoping for different results and, when they don't come, raking yourself over the familiar coals.

As Chloe said, there is a big difference between "genuine" and what you're describing here. Yeah, I get it, you had fun, connected, were intimate, emotionally and physically. But all that happened only—or at least in part—because you tried to drown out those internal alarm bells. Yet all they did is ring and ring, creating static. Static is the opposite of genuine, like watching a genuinely good movie on a flickering screen. It's a completely different experience than watching a genuinely good movie; to do that you need a functioning screen.

[TimeToGrowUp]

She kind of lashed out at me the other night regarding where I was hanging out in my IG video. Now apparently she unfollowed me. A friend of mine said she unfollowed him too. I gave her just a little bit of space over the last week and this is the net result.

[bluecastle]

This is not the net result of you giving her space, or anything to do with you. It is the net result of who she is, and how you two operate, which is not very well. Make it about that, instead of about you, and it'll be clearer, less painful, less mysterious.

Sorry for the confusion, truly. But what you are describing as this up and that down looks, from the sidelines, like one thing that has been roughly the same thing for a good long time.

[boltnrun]

She'll "re-follow" you and the cycle will start again.

I know of couples who have done this for years and years and years. Some situations got very, very unhealthy. One couple, the woman burned the man's house down. Another couple, the woman accused the man of abuse and he accused her of being an unfit mother. They took each other to court over custody of the kids. They're still married to this day. A woman I know is days away from giving birth to her third child with her partner. They go back and forth on social media, one week denigrating one another and the next week declaring their love and devotion.

It's up to you what kind of relationship you want.

[TimeToGrowUp]

This is not the net result of you giving her space, or anything to do with you. It is the net result of who she is, and how you two operate, which is not very well. Make it about that, instead of about you, and it'll be clearer, less painful, less mysterious.

Sorry for the confusion, truly. But what you are describing as this up and that down looks, from the sidelines, like one thing that has been roughly the same thing for a good long time.

It really bothers me that she is trying too hard to turn me into some kind of trigger. It's a helpless feeling.

[bluecastle]

But you are trying just as hard to be a "trigger," and finding some kind of identity in that. Why?

Chalk it all up to whatever you want, this is just immature and unhealthy on both sides and you know that. It's Instagram. Know what this back and forth did? It made Mark Zuckerberg some more money and sold some kambocha to someone. That's the concrete part. The rest is noise.

When you are relying on a medium that thin and transactional to feel anything of substance or understand who you are to someone—well, I think it's worth asking if those are the kind of bricks you want to use to build a home.

[TimeToGrowUp]

It's been a full week now since any contact as I try to get my self-respect back. Our office is still the hardest part because reminders of her are everywhere, especially since she's still just a short walking distance away on the other side of this floor.

In the last text exchange we had last Monday I confronted her about the way she's been picking at me about my social life, where I hang out, who I hang out with. She claimed there's no resentment on her part that she moved on from it and apologized for making me feel that way. She even re-followed me (I didn't even ask for her too), but what she says vs. what I can sense just doesn't jive. It's become increasingly clear to me that she's bear hugging this suddenly judgmental/hostile opinion of my city as a means to make herself feel better about things. It really bothers me.

I'm by no means a party guy or anything like that, I'm just trying to keep busy and be social. I do regret though that I haven't completely shifted away from the night life or going out for drinks. Time would've been better spent working on us - even if it was doomed anyways.

[ThatwasThen]

Time would've been better spent working on us - even if it was doomed anyways.

Uhm, no... no it wouldn't have been better spent. That is your codependency rearing its head again. Time would have been better spent going zero contact (not just no contact) from the minute you stopped seeing her romantically. You would be practically over her by now if you had done that.

One does not continue working on a short relationship wherein it is quickly discovered that you need to "work on" the relationship within the honeymoon period. You quickly back away from those situations, heal from the disappointment that it didn't work out and you then get on with looking for someone that you get alone with/gel with without having to work on it within said honeymoon periord.

[TimeToGrowUp]

Uhm, no... no it wouldn't have been better spent. That is your codependency rearing its head again. Time would have been better spent going zero contact (not just no contact) from the minute you stopped seeing her romantically. You would be practically over her by now if you had done that.

One does not continue working on a short relationship wherein it is quickly discovered that you need to "work on" the relationship within the honeymoon period. You quickly back away from those situations, heal from the disappointment that it didn't work out and you then get on with looking for someone that you get alone with/gel with without having to work on it within said honeymoon periord.

I was referring to when we dated. I'm only being honest my priorities even when things were good were not quite where they should've been. I was still spending too much alone time and when I wasn't doing that the ratio of going out with my friends vs. quality time with her was off.