Whirling D

OK, I think this will be my last post about the specific topic, of stubbornness, or condescension, or controlling behavior. You guys aren’t part of the relationship, haven’t been there, and haven’t experienced what went on between the doctor lady and me. No differently than you discourage me from not paying too much attention to online therapists, it’s almost inappropriate for you to assume you know what has happened, what will happen, why I did what I did, why she did what she did. I’m not really on here for that kind of debate or scrutiny. Ultimately, I came on here for support, and perhaps to purge, but not really to be at the hands of armchair therapists to think they know what’s going on, and what each of us are thinking, not to mention come up with flaky opinions of who I am, whether I’m condescending or not, or whether I’m controlling. If anything, I think that sounds hugely controlling from many of you. Not all of you. I’ve often enjoyed coming on here to tell this story and to get feedback. Once again, it’s wearing thin. And as far as online therapists, I’ve never said that they said the doctor lady and I will get back together. They almost all say, there is a strong likelihood that she will reach out, likely confused, but definitely still wondering if she made the right decision. She did reach out, and I do believe they are correct. My biggest priority right now is what to do about that. nobody here seems to want to talk about that. They just want to make judgments about how controlling I am or how bad my behavior was. OK, suit your own narrative. As for my own therapist. She is a PhD psychologist with a background in addiction and trauma. I’ve been seeing her for over two years. There are things that I believe are lacking, but her judgment is not one of them. She picks up on things pretty closely, and I believe I do a pretty good job telling her both sides of every story. I try to tell her clearly what I said, and did, supported by why I think I did those things, and then I tell her what the doctor lady said, and I try to look at both sides of why I believe she did and said those things. Then my therapist gives me feedback. She doesn’t tell me it’s perfect. She doesn’t tell me I did all the right things. She’s very honest and doesn’t take well If she thinks I’m trying to spin something toward my own narrative. But she is pretty clear that she thinks that a lot of my perspective on things are pretty spot on and pretty well thought out. Unlike what many of you say. She almost always says that my perspectives on situations are thoughtful And show a relative amount of clarity and introspection, both on what I believe my behavior was, and what I think perhaps my partner’s was. She almost always encourages me to use my own gut and intuition, which she almost always believes is fairly accurate. She is a PhD psychologist from a major US university. If you think you can come up with stronger a valuations, go get your own credentials. I can tell you the things that she doesn’t think I do well, but I’ve already told those on here at some point, not that many of you actually validated when I did that. Maybe you did maybe you didn’t. It just seems like many of you would rather put down what you think are my invalid characteristics, rather than support, when I believe I do well, which is what my therapist seems more eager to do. Why might that be? Only you will know that. She was quite happy with how things were going with the doctor lady, right up until the time it ended. She was impressed with how well her and I were talking about things and trying to come to understandings with our different styles of interacting in the world. She felt a fair amount of Hope, as did I. She doesn’t really get involved in the notion of attachment styles. That isn’t an area she has a lot of background in, so we don’t really discuss that much. I tell her what I’ve learned, and why I think it’s relevant, but it doesn’t really go much further than that. She likes to concentrate on why I did what I did and how do I move forward. she has never indicated that anything that I’ve said, or done with the doctor lady has ever been “controlling” or “manipulating”, at least any more than what anyone might be in a typical relationship. Yes, I feel defensive about this. I don’t like to have to defend myself when I feel like I’ve worked hard to be able to not be controlling or manipulative. Has it been perfect with the doctor lady, of course not. But some of you make these general assumptions that are hurtful, but they’re not based in fact or reality. I’ll trust my therapist in those regards. You should lose that angle. I’ll repeat, and I’m going to say this for the last time, I don’t believe I’ve done nearly anything hugely controlling and manipulative with the doctor lady. Virtually nothing. You can spin it whatever way you want, yeah, I had some underlying motivation for going 39 rather than 35. That’s ridiculous. I already told you my reasoning, it wasn’t a big deal. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But it was. I’m not gonna lose sleep over it. That’s not the hill That relationship should die on. Nor should be how I used a product on her deck. Or how long my hair is. Or whether I’m religious. Or whether I have enough money for vacations, which was arguable, despite us never really getting past the initial parts of those conversations. I do get that the doctor lady’s values and may not align perfectly. I also believe that there are plenty of successful couples that have the same kind of deficits, they learn to interact in a positive way, through hard work, and through dedication, and they put a plan into action that makes each of them happy, you know why? Because they care about each other enough to do that. I think I think we were on our way to perhaps being able to come to some of those conclusions… Until we weren’t. Attachment disorders. Many of you seem to not want to believe what they are or how they affect how we respond in relationships. This theory is based on scientific study. It’s not conjecture. It’s not armchair psychology. It is a relatively new field of study, and there is strong validity in my argument that this break up had very little to do with how I did or didn’t treat the doctor lady, how she did, or didn’t treat me… But was based on subconscious fears of intimacy, and abandonment. You can have your doubts all day long, and say that this is denial with me, and you may or may not be right. That’s your opinion and you can think what you want. There is validity to that theory, and I guess only time will tell. Maybe the doctor and I will get together again, maybe we won’t. You have no way of knowing, no more than I do. Also, for many of you to say that we were incompatible lacks facts. Just because somebody breaks up with you doesn’t mean that we are inherently incompatible. Look back on the attachment disorder perspective. That is one very possible if not likely theory. Only time will tell. You can theorize all you want. You weren’t there. You didn’t experience what we did, therefore, you’re not in a great position to speculate. I didn’t come on here for you to speculate. I came on here for support and suggestions moving forward. As for me, being controlling, and manipulating… I’ll finish it off by saying this… I don’t feel overly opinionated or stubborn. I feel like I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I have my own perspectives on things. I don’t force them down peoples throats, but I am going to have opinions on things, and I’m going to say them. For example. I didn’t really give much of my opinion when I talked to the doctor lady about her prescribing psych meds. It wasn’t a long conversation at all. All I did was tell her that my general practitioner does not prescribe, and that I was surprised that her practice did, and wondered what the differences in perspective might be,. You could theorize that what I said was condescending, or judgmental, you’re welcome to those opinions. To me, it was a simple conversation comparing situations. No greater motivation or outcome needs to be assigned to it. Some of you seem really intent on poking holes in anything that I say that supports an opinion. Why don’t you ask yourself why that might be? Is it because you don’t like it when somebody states an opinion that differs from your own? Might you feel insecure that someone actually has an opinion that might deflate something that you thought on your own? two people should be able to have a conversation, and just because you don’t like what someone else says, doesn’t mean that the person offering the opinion is condescending or judgemental. It’s a friggin conversation with two people having different perspectives on it. If you don’t like what the person is saying, it doesn’t mean that it is condescending or judgmental or even manipulative that they are saying it. In fact, I would suggest the opposite. If someone gets annoyed or offended that one has offered an opinion that seems to differ from what they believe or understand, and then they get upset about it and call the other person judgmental or stubborn or condescending, I think that reflects more on the supposed victim than it does on the person who simply offers a perspective on something that may differ than yours. I don’t have a lot of interest in that kind debate. I’m going to ignore it from here on in. my focus, and my responses moving forward are going to be limited to what to do moving forward. For example, I heard from the doctor lady a couple of days ago. We exchanged two messages, but it didn’t go anywhere. Theory suggests that she is still likely reconsidering the break up. That’s pretty much universally agreed-upon. What to do next is the real question, or if to do anything. Many of the resources suggest to let her leave the conversation and not try to force it. Her last text to me did not ask a question. It answered my question. Now I have to figure out whether I should text her back and ask her another question, or wait it out until she notices, my absence, and feels the strength to say something to me. Lots of theory suggests waiting for her to reach back out, but with the strong likelihood that she is a fearful avoidant, she may be thinking that she has already hurt me, and perhaps doesn’t want to hurt me more, or she may be just too anxious about the whole situation and can’t bring her self to do it, despite feeling that she probably does want to talk more and reconnect. As I said 1 million times, I don’t necessarily believe that her and I are destined for destruction. We care about each other deeply, I have no doubt of that. If she fell out of love with me, which is possible, but I’m not even thinking this to be true, then I know what the outcome will be. I don’t believe that. I do believe that she is struggling with something internally, and perhaps even biologically. I don’t know what to do about that, so I’m doing what all of the therapists online, and yes, they are therapist, suggest, from years of study and experience in such matters… Give the situation time. That is what I’m trying to do, but I’m not really sure about strategy. They say there are strategies that will increase the chance that reattraction might occur. That’s what I’m trying to maximize, along with evaluating whether or not, this is the right fit for me, which it may very well not be. I believe her need to control is exponentially higher than mine. That could be problematic, but I’m also willing to try to come to a balance with her that could be mutually satisfying. I’m pretty confident The doctor lady doesn’t wanna break up with me. You can say or believe what you want. You weren’t there. Could I be delusional? Maybe. But I don’t think I am. I think she’s struggling with mental health issues, and I get it, I have my own. Do I think that’s a dealbreaker with either of us, I don’t. Could this be the wrong thing for me to move toward? It might be. But I think there may still be chapters unwritten. I’m not gonna put my life on hold to find out, i’ve already had brief chats with other ladies online that I’m considering pursuing… but I am going to continue to take steps forward to see where those paths might lead with the doctor lady. I hope those of you who are in my corner, so to speak, will wish me luck and hope for the best on my behalf. My little baby soul could use it.

Well, believe what you will, because I believe you are biased and have some sort of agenda that I will never understand.

Thank you. I suffered a warning for calling this person out for this rubbish.

The get your ex back videos that I watch are produced by trained mental health professionals that know why people interact in certain ways, and suddenly distance in ways similar to the doctor lady. they are licensed mental health professionals, most of them have years of experience with this kind of dilemma. also, I never asked her or expected her to conform to anything. I would have liked if she allowed me to be who I am without putting any pressure on me to be different.

I don’t feel like I am bashing her at all. I am telling stories. True stories that are fact. There’s very little opinion to the stories. I tell you what I said, I tell you what she said. Is that really bashing?

Traffic was fairly heavy most of the time during this drive, and cars were speeding up and slowing down because of volume. There were plenty of cars doing the same speed I was, if I remember correctly.

I already know what my part was… And my therapist constantly says that I lead with an open heart, a gentle soul, and a thoughtful disposition. She doesn’t pull any punches, so, if she really thought I was out of control, at least, in terms of the doctor lady, she would certainly tell me. Don’t forget, what I am talking about on here is mostly the negatives. To gush over her positives doesn’t really seem to meet the purpose of been on here. Also, we are not that incompatible. We have tons that are aligned, and we enjoy hanging out with each other… But there are the occasional times, like the ones I’ve described, where I drive her crazy, and she gets kind of annoying. And then the times that she spends greater amount of time being unhappy and crabby, which gets on my nerves. Out of the three days that we typically spent together, it was usually the third day, almost always. That seemed to be a pattern, and I could follow its origin, I’m sure. I don’t feel I did tons wrong. I think I was probably more skillful with how I interacted with her than I have been with any of my previous relationships. Open. More honest. Less likely to get bent out of shape about things. More likely to not confront when I’m feeling triggered. There is a lot to be thankful for regarding this relationship. And clearly, I didn’t see what was coming, which means I didn’t fully understand what was happening with her. I still don’t. But I do know that she cares for me deeply, and she believes that I am a wonderful person, and I still believe that it is likely as much her avoidant fear that got the best of her this time around, for a myriad of reasons, and likely had little to do with me as a person.

Not at all insensitive.

I should add that me going 55 mph was mostly a result of cars in front of me going slower (but probably not always), and I just wasn’t noticing the slow down. I don’t believe I was causing danger, but who knows for sure. I do feel pretty sure it wasn’t because I was a danger that she was barking at me. It wouldn’t surprise me if she has a bit of OCD going on, and whenever she notices something is out of the norm, it makes her anxious. She once say that she wanted to get to her destination faster and was getting anxious. to me, 15 mph (sometimes not that much) on a relatively short trip isn’t going to make that much of a difference. I think it was largely because of her anxiety.

In her case, she’s prepared to get nasty pretty quickly… She looses control and starts getting verbally assaultive. I had to intervene and tell her I would handle a delivery guy once, since it was clear she was going to go to battle. Doesn’t seem necessary to me.

Thank you rainbow. Always nice to hear from you… 😊 I think the Dr. Lady has a much greater need to control her environment than I do… Also has a streak of entitlement, which I saw with how she would get upset with service people, should things not go exactly as she thought they should. So, often, I think I was merely in the way of that negative energy. Plus, the more I showed independence in the way I make decisions… I think it made her feel a bit of insecurity. After all… she’s the doctor Lady. Think, deck job…, driving 39 mph. That was all power struggle stuff. I got sucked into it, merely because I continuously wanted to explain why I choose what I did… and that’s a no no with lady’s like her. I should have learned that from the borderline lady, but the doctor lady always seemed to appreciate that kind of discussion, although i suspect she eventually believed I wasn’t listening to her… same as many others. I don’t have that problem with my other friends. We love comparing details about things, and going back and forth about the best way of doing things. We don’t care who’s right or wrong… we just want to figure out what’s best in each situation. Not sure the doctor lady liked being outdone like that…never though… if at worst, my intent was to show her how capable I was at being helpful and skillful… awful, isn’t it? As for the car driving thing… I don’t believe I was intending to be controlling or manipulative in the traditional sense… I think it was an attempt to shown her I was hearing what she was saying, and was perfectly willing and capable of doing what would her happy. If anything, that’s submissive, not controlling. The speed reduction thing came out of a discussion… I may have asked her not to bark at me when I lost focus on 70 mph speed. She then wanted to know what suggestions I might have for her to feel better about that. I told her how my brain manages those kinds of situations. I thought the discussion was fairly proactive and engaged. I’m just not sure she was following the pedagogy… She felt if she didn’t “tell” me I was going too slow, she would continue to get annoyed. She couldn’t fathom how there could be value in allowing somebody to make their own mistakes, and learn to manage them. Ughh…

You are full of crap. You don’t know what you are talking about. Controlling, manipulating… Where do you come up with this crap? I tell my own therapist these stories, with the exact same narrative, and she tells me differently. I will defer to her instincts over your armchair negativity, thanks. But no thanks. lastly, yes, you can TRY hard to be kind and thoughtful… You might try that before writing rubbish like this that isn’t based in being there, or knowing the participants. Geesh.

Yeah, she was trying to insist on driving the last time we went up there, but I really wanted to drive… I know she doesn’t like to drive, and I really enjoy it, and me insisting on driving was my way of showing her that I was hearing what she was saying, and was trying to be more accommodating. I’m not sure if she was buying it, though.

Well, it’s almost hard for me to imagine why it was an issue in the first place. If it were me, I might joke with my partner about them going 15 miles an hour below the speed limit, but I wouldn’t be giving it much more energy than that. The last time we had that confrontation, I think I said to her “one strategy would be if you don’t like the way that your partner is doing something, you could just take over and do it yourself“. She wanted to do that the next time we drove somewhere, and I pretty much talked her out of it, telling her I wanted to be able to redeem myself and show that I could focus on driving and accomplish what she was trying to coerce me to do… Which was drive the speed limit. She was having a hard time even coming to terms with that. I think it annoyed her, because I don’t think she was understanding the intent of why I was interested in driving that day.

Here’s my recent update: I encountered what was likely the worst week I have had in memory. I wasn’t sleeping much. I was eating crappy food and drinking lots of coffee which makes me sick. All I could accomplish was watching videos to try to understand what went wrong with a woman that I adored, but could not understand. Thankfully, I had a gig on Saturday, and my best friend from Canada came down that day and stayed overnight, so I was able to extract a little bit of friendship and peace, which really helped alleviate the absolute darkness I was feeling. Most of the videos were related to attachment disorders, relationship difficulties, and how to re-attract exes under similar circumstances. That’s almost all I was capable of doing for the entire week. I decided to go completely no contact. Most all of the online therapists that seem to be experts in relationship theory believe that no contact is the best way to perhaps limit collateral damage. I may have mentioned this before, but going no contact when someone breaks up with you allows the dumper to begin the grieving process. Almost all of the online theorists believe that most of the time break ups are not because someone doesn’t care for you, it’s usually because they start to feel less secure for some reason. That adds up. They say that when you go no contact, the person who did the breaking up goes through stages of grief, and after an undetermined amount of time, they begin to start questioning whether or not they made the right decision, and they tend to start thinking about the positive things that went on in the relationship. Pretty much all of the therapists say, and these are licensed mental health practitioners, that if your relationship was mostly loving, and there weren’t any major faux pas, there is a high probability that the ex will reach out at some point, just to see if they can validate whether they made the right decision. Sure enough, after one full week of absolutely no contact, out of the blue, and unexpectedly, I get a text from the doctor lady. I was shocked. I thought that maybe I would hear from her, but not after only a week. I couldn’t imagine what that meant. All she said was “hi Dervish, I hope you are well, and I hope you have a nice time with family at the wedding this weekend up in Canada. Dr. lady“. That’s all she said. I texted her about six hours later, which was recommended, and just simply said “so, is this your way of gloating that you are in Florida right now?” She responded by saying “well, it’s raining here, but warm“ my next text to her asked her simple question about her family members where she is, but it was left on read. That was a bit disappointing, but I’ve experienced that from her before. She eventually answered that question today and followed up by telling me that her nephew came to visit where she is staying in Florida and they went out to the aquarium, which was nice” I didn’t respond yet today, and I am wondering if I will. The online therapists say that there is definitely a strong chance that her and I could reconcile… But I would have to be willing to confront my own part in it, which I’m trying to, but also ask myself a question as to whether or not this is what’s right for me. That I can’t yet answer. My kid thinks it may be a pity text… Just a way for her to be kind and check in and make sure I’m OK. Online therapists suggest that it could be a way for her to subtly show that she’s thinking of me, maybe she misses me. I think that may be true. I miss her, as well. I am not one that believes that her and I are completely incompatible. I think we would have our work cut out for us, but I think that trying to understand our attachment needs, and trying to come up with strategies to prevent us getting on each other’s nerves is within the realm of possibility, knowing that we both care for each other fairly profoundly. I also don’t think the money thing is quite as a dire as some of you may think it is… Particularly when we had a conversation about that probably back in June, and she seemed OK with some of the things that we talked about. I had said to her back then that whoever I partner with is going to make it much easier for me to come up with more on hand cash to do nice things like vacations. I think that’s typical of many families, when one of the partners could not do much on their own, but once they split finances with somebody, it becomes a bit easier. I don’t think my situation would be much different. Multiple online therapists also suggested that the reasons that people say that they are breaking up with you are often not really what’s going on. Most of the time the partner has something else going on. They also say that even if the partner does reach out, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are immediately trying to get back together, although they say that it is often a first potential step, and that the other partner should develop a plan to proceed slowly, in an effort not to scare the ex away once again. I am not entirely sure what I’m going to do, but I do care for her greatly, and I think I will take steps to see if maybe we can try to re-attract each other and try to take steps forward. It could end up in the same spot, which is what everyone says will happen if one and likely, both partners are not willing to do the work. So, that’s where things are at.

Although I appreciate your input and much of what you said, I have to say, I am a bit annoyed by some of the things that you mention… Much are said without proper context, and without proper information. I should ignore it, because, as you say, I am hypersensitive. First, for about the first three months, I didn’t say a word to the doctor lady about her repeated snarky comments about how fast I was driving. Not a peep. It took a while for me to put together a way of addressing it, that I thought was proactive and nonconfrontational. I believe I did that. I’m not sure if she was buying it. I think I went over that, but not sure. So let me get this straight, you find it odd that I was doing 55 in a 70 mile an hour zone, because I was concentrating on conversations I was having, and also I am used to driving my own car which has adaptive cruise control, which controls the speed automatically based on speeds in front of you? That’s odd to you? Good thing I don’t have to drive with you then… Clearly you are also willing to judge people for that. Nice of you. Probably happened about four times in the six or so round-trip drives that we did going up to her Beach house. Was not something that was happening each and every time. And yes, I do have a hard time multitasking when I have somebody else in the car. If you think that’s odd, that’s a you problem. As far as talking to the doctor lady about what my doctor does for psych meds. It was a conversation. I didn’t say anything condescending to her about it, I used it as a comparison, that I was surprised that she prescribes meds, because mine won’t. There are quite a few things that her practice does differently than the one I go to does, and they were brought up in conversation. I didn’t argue with her about it. I didn’t see it in a condescending manner. It was just a fact I pointed out. That’s a conversations often involve. And truthfully, I have every right to think what I want, and I do think it is unusual that a primary care would be prescribing psych meds, without an in-depth knowledge of psych meds. Would you want your primary care treating cancer if you had it? Really? that’s what specialties are for. At least that’s how my primary care practice, handles, specialties, and I have a lot of regard for that. lastly, I barely said a controlling thing to the doctor lady the whole five months that I knew her, other than sticking up for myself, and trying to find proactive ways to not be triggered by poor behavior. In the instances where she was getting after me about something, it was not subtle, and it wasn’t particularly kind. Maybe many people would not be bothered by that kind of interaction. I’m not one of them. I work hard to not bark at people, and I try hard to treat people kindly at all times. The only times I ever said anything derogatory or heated with her are the times that I told you about. Second lastly, you and many other people presume that the whole relationship seemed to resolve around the negative things that I’ve told you, but that’s far from the truth. There are so many wonderful things that her and I did together, talked about together, and experienced together… But those seemed outside the scope of what I was on here to accomplish. Here’s my accountability for you. I’m too hyper sensitive. I have a right to be. I have a right to live my life the way I want, and if that means not having to deal with someone barking at me for stupid stuff, then I have a right to live my life that way. And I definitely have been thinking about how I approached the big talk on the way home that night. I was very triggered, because I spent pretty much an entire day with a lady that was triggered in her own way, barely smiled the whole day, everything was nitpicked and controlling. Would you not want to have some sort of conversation about that with someone you care about? The part that I regret is not thinking more about what her needs might’ve been in that particular moment in the car. I should’ve said something like, “Dr. lady, I love you, and I want our relationship to be built on positive interactions, and problem-solving, rather than us barking at each other“. Instead, I framed it almost as a quasi ultimatum… “Doctor lady, I won’t be able to survive this relationship if we can’t figure out how to stop the negativity”. Those are subtle differences, but they are enough to perhaps offset someone being triggered, who may be sensitive, and she is obviously sensitive. I wish I would have been less triggered and being able to frame the conversation a little more proactively. It shouldn’t have been a dealbreaker, one way or the other. A non-triggered person should have been able to hear exactly what I was saying, and own the behavior. She may have been in capable of doing that in that particular moment. I can’t say. That’s really it. I don’t have a huge a lot else that I feel I regret doing or saying. Most people here know the rest. I worked very hard to be good to the doctor lady. Tolerant. Patient. Kind. I think she knows that and I think it meant something to her. And truthfully, I’m not really sure that I buy that her nasty demeanor necessarily have anything to do with me. I’ve been doing a lot of research on disorganized avoidant attachment disorders, and nasty behaviors and nitpicking partners is a strong characteristic. I find myself having characteristics of disorganized attachment disorder as well, so I don’t say that without some introspection. I think the difference, at least, in this particular relationship, is that I was able to refrain from verbally nitpicking. She’s not quite there yet, and that’s triggering to me, being the ultra sensitive one that you accurately point out I am. You also make it sound like being ultra sensitive is like some sort of terrible quality that needs to be eradicated at all costs. The truth is, although it’s not great, it doesn’t just arrive on its own. It’s part of the condition that many people grow up with, often the result of experiences they’ve had growing up. It’s no different then somebody that has a physical disability. Would you say something condescending about a physical disability? Mental disabilities are not nasty habits. Your comments show a lack of empathy in those regards.

Thank you, Man… it’s good to hear from you… Hope all is going well in your pursuits… 😊😊

I know a considerable amount about BPD. What do you want to know?

Here is another excellent video from this fellow that describes the dynamics of both anxious and avoidant attachment disorders. I see myself in a lot of, but he’s describing, and I see the doctor lady, as well. If you are with somebody who is either anxious or avoidant, particularly avoidant, this video is also really illuminating.

Just to clarify… I never did challenge her about prescribing psych meds to her patients. I thought about it to myself a few times, but never really said anything negative to her about it at all. I may have said that my GP doesn’t do that and will only refer to a psychiatrist. That’s all. I don’t think I really challenged her about much of anything at all. I didn’t deliberately go 39 in the 35 mile an hour zone. I think it just kind of happened by itself, because I was figuring 39 was pretty safe, or maybe even that I just didn’t get the car down to 35 mile an hour quickly enough. I don’t remember. I wasn’t challenging her deliberately at all. I’m trying to think if there were any times that I remember that I deliberately did some thing against what she was saying, and even with cleaning her deck… I don’t recall her ever saying definitively that she wanted me to follow the directions. I guess I figured that she wouldn’t care if I try to do something that might work out just as well, and not have to use chemicals, like she knew I would prefer not to do. I know a lot of you guys kind of see this as being kind of an adversarial relationship, but it really wasn’t. I guess it could be said that she must’ve found it more adversarial than I did, or she wouldn’t have broken up with me. Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance on my part. Hard to say. I was watching a video before I went to sleep from this therapist (an educated professional, like a lot of online therapists are these days), that I just found online, and he was talking about exactly what I have been experiencing, and he says he sees it in his practice all the time… That people that are disorganized attachment sufferers will very often create reasons in their head to separate from partners who treat them well, just because it gets too hard for them to maintain the closeness, because that’s the way their brains have become wired and accustomed with others. She is painfully shy and awkward with most other people. She will often avoid having to do things so she won’t contact other people because she feels so self-conscious. At least that’s what she would always say. She mistrusts almost everyone and has a very hard time connecting with almost anyone. Particularly former partners. I almost thought about posting this one particular video, because it was so profoundly familiar to what it feels like I experienced with the doctor lady, and it’s one of many videos like this by licensed professionals, who describe what people who are like this often do. Think about this. She was with a guy for 15 years that was emotionally unavailable, so she says, and another guy for three years that she only saw once every two weekends, that she also said was pretty much emotionally distant… Yet she’s with someone that takes up space in her life every single day, and seems to really do well with, but she breaks up with within a few months? There’s some thing that doesn’t add up here. I guess I could be just making up excuses to satisfy my own hurt, and ego. I’m not buying that, I don’t think. This lady and I have been BEST FRIENDS for months, talking pretty much twice a day. Every day. Yada yada yada. As the therapist in the video said, you know what you experienced, and you know that she loved you. Others will doubt you on that, but you were there and saw how she looked in your eyes and responded to your touch and spoke to you when you were close. you can’t fake that. I’m not imagining that. I know what I experienced. I know what I have seen. Lots of people are affected by intimate relationships like that. If you think about people that you know that have seemingly ended relationships out of the blue like that… it’s not hugely uncommon. It’s not unreasonable to believe that there are people out there that are too emotionally distraught to sustain, a close relationship, because their brains are just not wired to be able to deal with the day-to-day ups and downs that go along with being close to someone. The video hit on this almost exactly how I experienced her. Maybe I’ll go back and find it and post it on here, it’s really eerily familiar. Call me naïve and heartbroken, I don’t know. It’s just the only thing that makes sense in my puny brain. if you are interested in any of the kinds of things that I have been talking about, this guy is really good. He is really hard to understand, because he has a thick accent, but he has some really good points about people who have avoidant attachment disorders. I think I am a little bit like that myself, so I also relate to this video for my own perspective. The video says that people who are avoidantly attached will often focus on negative aspects of their partner and nitpick, in a sort of effort to break down the relationship, and find ways to create distance. That starts around the seven minute mark… He goes on, in multiple videos, to say that it’s very common that an avoidant might love you, and you know this, but then they break up with you for seemingly strange reasons… And that’s because their souls cannot manage the emotional expectations and emotional bandwidth, if you will, that comes along with that kind of closeness and intimacy. I’m telling you, I feel it in my bones that this is what has happened. I have absolutely no doubt that she loved and still loves me. None. I just don’t think she could deal with it. But at the end of the video, this therapist says something very important. He says: you want to be careful whether it’s prudent to actually want to get back together with this person. He says that there is a strong chance that you probably could rekindle the relationship, because avoidants experience push-pull emotions, and once they break off in the middle of their down cycle, if you will, they will quickly start to miss what they had, because, even as an avoidant, everybody wants connection and to be loved, and understood. They/we are no different. he says, that eventually avoidance may begin to fantasize about the past relationship and miss the connection, and therefore will start to feel a draw towards rekindling. And in one of his videos, he says this can happen many times. The borderline lady was way off the charts this way. I knew she loved me, as well, and painfully so, but she would break up with me about every 3 to 5 weeks for strange reason that she concocted in her own head. It was even more strange than this situation, and more debilitating in so many ways. So, despite watching many videos, that characterize disorganized attachment disorder, it doesn’t change the facts. In a sense, she told me she fell out of love with me, although she didn’t use those words. “Lost enthusiasm“. OK, I’m sure that happens. But I’m equally sure that many of these videos are describing pretty closely what I experienced from her. but it also doesn’t change the fact that I’m here by myself jilted and frail. Not even sure I have any gas left in my tank to move on. It’s hard for me to imagine, given how insecurely attached that I’ve been my whole life, to experience something like this, and be able to even emotionally survive it. People like me spend almost our whole lives, looking to find someone that we feel totally connected with, and feel like we actually have a future with. I always knew this situation wasn’t perfect, and I had my own capacity to nitpick, kind of like the video says. That’s because I think I have avoidant characteristics as well. All online therapists, including my own, will point out that people usually fall along a trajectory, in terms of characteristics like attachment wounds. Most people don’t necessarily fit clearly in one category or another. I am mostly an anxiously attached individual, which is pretty clear from my stories. She is mostly an avoidant, and, as I mentioned many times, I remember seeing her teary-eyed, I believe it was the second time we were up at her, Beachhouse, when she said she had done some research and found that she fit exactly in the profile of disorganized attachment. I was so proud of her when she was telling me about that, because I was happy that she was doing the research and trying to understand her emotional background like she was. I didn’t really know much about disorganized attachment back. I just knew it was part of the avoidant spectrum, and I sensed from what little that I knew that she was correct. It’s only been, since she broke up with me that I’ve been doing more research on disorganized attachment, and finding that she was right, and she fits pretty far into that category. It could also be argued that this was a long time coming, and I just wasn’t seeing the signs, or she wasn’t showing me the signs. Probably the latter, because I’m very perceptive, and she even said that. Right after she sat down at the table to break up with me, and she said something like… “You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been pulling away a little bit“ or something like that. And I agreed that I noticed that she had been a little more distant. And she said that, I am really perceptive and smart like that and could probably notice that she was struggling. I just thought she was kind of taking what avoidants need, which is space and time away to organize their emotional needs. I did think that maybe she was pulling away, but I never in my life would have expected it was because she felt she wanted to break up. Ever. But I guess everyone that’s ever been jilted, tries to find reasons why it happens, and tries to fit their former partner in a category that meets their own narrative. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here, maybe that’s what’s happening. Maybe I’ll find out in the next little while if she reaches out, which is what all of the resources seem to point to, or maybe I won’t, because no one will say that there are definitives. But everyone says, and I think I know intuitively, that I have to move on with my life. If I can even do that. I am in a stage where I’ve really lost a lot of hope, and this relationship ending is going to be really hard on my self-esteem and my belief that I can actually be partnered and be happy, or even find somebody that would be willing to partner with someone like me, which was part of what seemed so unbelievable about the doctor lady. It always felt like I had struck the Goldmine, when I thought about the fact that I was lucky enough to have her and know her. Despite what I might’ve been saying on here from time to time about having reservations. I did have reservations, and we did have conflict, but for the most part, I felt so incredibly fortunate to have found her. It was a struggle for me, and it hit up against really hard parts of me, mostly because it was imperfect. But I was able to get beyond a lot of those struggles and see that she was a lovely human being that had so much love inside of her to offer, and she wanted so badly to connect and needed to connect. It was so obvious. that’s why this strikes so hard. I know she loves me. It’s been obvious to me all along that she wants to connect and wants to love. I’m just not sure she is in the right headspace to do that, at least at this point right now. Who knows what the future will bring. But as this therapist very smartly, articulates… I have to be sure I know what I am up against and know what I want with her, because if I am doing the work to understand myself, and try to heal my attachment wounds, which I’ve always been trying to do, but my ex partner is not, even in the event that she does want to rekindle the friendship, we will likely, if not undoubtedly, end up in the exact same space, when she crashes again, and once again finds reasons to push away someone she loves. thank you for reading and thinking about all of this on my behalf. If anything, if even one person can relate to what has happened here, and find some sort of comfort or understanding in the cyclones of the emotional fall out that has resulted, then I guess it has been worth the time and effort I have spent researching this and talking about it on here.

Well, I hear what you are saying, but some of that I’m not really buying. I don’t think the escalation in her behavior had much to do with me, really. I couldn’t say what it was necessarily due to, and she did indicate that she thought it was medication related. That being said, she was a bit cranky about my driving the whole time I knew her, so I was getting that from the very first time I went up to the beach house, and I think that was in early June. I have way more evidence that she was still clearly in the relationship right up through about the second week of August, than evidence that she wasn’t. And if she was starting to already deteriorate, then she kept it well hidden, and that would mean that she was basically just biding her time and using me to fill up space. That doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m not really buying that either, because she encouraged me to call her every morning and video every night. She was always happy to hear from me and we always had really nice talks. Always. Yes, I noticed her demeanor start to fade a bit in the last week. That was it. I do lean toward her being a disorganized avoidant attachment style, and she just got burned out. I think I was probably the only guy that she has been with in the last 30 years that paid any real attention to her and her needs. At least that’s what she said. Multiple times. I think that was hard for an avoidant introvert to handle. Too much emotional bandwidth for her, clearly. But yes, I could be creating my own narrative here. I’m not convinced I am, though. I know she cared about me deeply. I just don’t think she could handle that kind of intimacy. And also that kind of void when we weren’t able to see each other. Just too hard on her, I think.

Hey there… Thanks for the thoughts. Here are my thoughts on that… If anything, I think she may have mingled with somebody at the wedding, and maybe started to get some butterflies, and maybe they are even talking now, who knows. I spoke with her every single night, during each of those breaks, and most mornings when she was on her way to work. I saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in her behavior or affect. That’s what makes this sudden break up so weird. The three weeks in August that I didn’t see her was mostly due to me going on almost a two week vacation, and the bad placement of my weekends with my kid. We both had agreed that it was too soon for her to be coming down on weekends with my kid, unless for something specific, which wasn’t really the case. then I saw her all four days of Labor Day weekend… Which was pretty much awesome, but ended with the car talk, and the ER visit with her mother. The next morning, she seemed OK, and I even checked in with her and she said we would just have to keep working on things. The last month we saw coming long in advance and knew we weren’t going to have any real time for weeks. I had my kid the weekend after Labor Day, she had girls weekend up at the beach house and left Thursday night and didn’t get home until Sunday night of the next weekend. Then she stayed with her mother Monday and Tuesday and left for the wedding on Wednesday, and didn’t get back until this past Monday. We talked on the phone in a cheery way on Monday… she had Tuesday off as well, and we talked on Tuesday night and had a nice pleasant chat… That’s when she invited me up on Wednesday. Broke up with me at around 1 PM Wednesday afternoon. Her having positive interactions with someone else is certainly a realistic possibility. She’s really shy and awkward, though, and I’m not convinced that’s what happened. I think she got discouraged with all the time away… And just gave up on it. Although, she could’ve done a much better job of trying to negotiate a Way forward. I thought that’s what we had done before she even left. For example, she could have invited me up on the Thursday night before she went on girls weekend, but her sister was up and at her mothers. She could’ve usually told everyone she was gonna be there on Friday, and spent the night with me. I tend to know her as a creature of extreme habit, so I presumed, that was why she didn’t want me to come up for that Thursday. She was expected to go up with her sister that night. She also, right from the beginning, made it clear she wasn’t crazy about having sleepovers on work nights. Even though, she had said in September that she was starting to wrap her head around the idea that on weekends that I had my kid, that I could come up on Thursday night and spend the night and leave early with her on Friday mornings. I think there was only one opportunity to do that, and I didn’t get the invitation. She got home late. The last Thursday was the Thursday before going to the wedding, and we had plans since the beginning of the week that I would go up there, but she texted me on the way home from work, and said she was exhausted, and had so much packing to do for both girls weekend and her trip to the wedding. Something like that. I don’t know what that spells, but I was trying to be very patient and knowing that we had already discussed that it was gonna be a very difficult bunch of weeks. I also know that she hated the idea of driving the 1.25 hours to get to my house. I think that weight on her a lot as well. Too far for her. But you know, with the kind of connection that it seemed that we had for almost the whole time, I knew her, or seemed to know her, and she never seemed to show any kind of breaking point, and never did she tell me directly that she didn’t wanna drive down if I invited her. With the exception of times where she had to work and go home to take out the dogs, and that’s a whole other part of the equation. I think this girl just gave up. I don’t think it necessarily had anything to do with how much she did, or didn’t like me, or did, or didn’t want me. I think with all of the things I’ve talked about, the wind was just taken out of her sail. I just don’t think she could wait any longer, considering that would probably have been another few years before that situation would have changed much, at least, in terms of logistics. I am somewhat surprised that she hasn’t said anything over the last few days, even to say she was sorry for what happened. I’m not sure where that’s coming from, but it’s not hugely classy. I’m trying not to feel like I was just a blip on her radar, because it certainly didn’t feel like that at almost any point since I knew her. I always felt like she took me seriously and cared about what I needed. More or less.

Let me ask you guys this, then. It almost doesn’t matter what car you were driving in, but the person in the passenger seat is trying to micromanage how you are driving. Do you find that to be acceptable behavior, particularly when it was delivered in a somewhat snarky and condescending way? I don’t. That was happening repeatedly. That is certainly not what I want in my life. Here is another example that happened the same night as the miles per hour debacle… We were at a fairground along the ocean, and when we got there, we were looking for a parking space, and there seem to be a bunch of spaces open in one area that was just a little further back. So, I decided to swing back around and take one of the ones a little further back. As we started walking, we saw that there was an open space closer to the front, and she gave me a snarky remark like, “well, if you would have tried to get closer look what we would’ve found”. I didn’t say anything in response to that, but I could clearly sense her displeasure and her annoyance that I didn’t make the best decision on where to park. Truthfully, I didn’t mind walking a little farther and getting the exercise, but she didn’t seem to really care about that. It just wasn’t the best and closest parking spot. I see that is problematic behavior, whichever way you want a slice it. I was able to let that go that night. I think she kind of needed to keep score, though. I brought these things up to her in a very calm and proactive way, and suggested what I thought was a really good mechanism to alleviate the situation. She had a different opinion, and truthfully, I don’t think she could quite grasp but I was trying to say. So be it. I guess I had the opportunity to ignore it, and let her vent, but I couldn’t do that, I guess no differently then she couldn’t ignore me doing what I thought was best with the product on the deck, or with what I felt about my hair. I still believe that the only thing that makes sense is that I completely triggered her when I spent a better part of an hour preaching to her about how I could not do negative behavior, and it would be the death knell to the relationship if that’s what was going to continue. I suspect, like many of you probably do, that she found it very preachy and condescending. That’s a matter of perception, really, because I think down deep, she knows what my point was, and I think she feels powerless to address it. If I had to think deeply about it, and obviously I do, that’s where I’m thinking I could have done a lot better. truthfully, I think it was awful the way she broke up with me. She didn’t seem apologetic, or empathetic to my needs. It seemed like she was very cold and calculated and detached. I’ve read about that a lot in relation to break ups. The person breaking up feels they just need to get the job done and be finished with it. Then they can feel relief. But, all of the theory seems to suggest that if the person that was broken up with is a good person, and treated their partner with decency and respect, which I believe I mostly did, that there is a high probability that time will heal some of those wounds, and the person that broke up will start to remember the good things over the bad things, and then start to reconsider the wisdom of that decision. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but there still is a good chunk of my heart that hopes that happens. She deserves to be happy, and so do I. I was clearly able to make her happy in the honeymoon period, whatever that means, so I certainly know that I am capable of making her happy. That couldn’t have just been by chance. And there were no big masks of mine that were removed after the honeymoon phase. I think I was pretty consistent all along. Can’t say I think that she was. Why is the bigger question.

Thanks… I have no choice now but to recover and move on with my life. Just for conversation, online social workers suggest that there is a high probability that I will hear from the doctor lady at some point. They say it usually averages between three months and a year. They say that’s how long it often takes for someone to go through the grieving process, even as the one who did the breaking up. Never did hear back from the borderline lady, but she was extremely unstable. I don’t say that disparagingly, because obviously I am on the unstable as well, and the doctor lady is somewhere in between. I just wonder what will happen if I hear from her in a few months and she apologizes for what happened. Just don’t know how to manage that thought. I’m going to try to not wait for it, and I’m going to try to move on. Probably on dating sites pretty quickly.

Thank you for telling all of this. It is valuable to hear your experiences. I still don’t know what to think about all of this. Even if what has happened to her is due to medication anomalies, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around what that all means. Even if this is true, and she kind of comes back down to earth at some point and starts to think that maybe she was being self-destructive by breaking up, what does that really mean for me? Do I wanna be in that position again? She has such goodness inside of her. I was just speaking to a friend, and I don’t know if I said this on here… She’s probably 70 or 80% really great to be around, with about 20 or 30% scattered in there of anger and hostility, that just seems to come out at random times. I’m telling you, if she had been thinking about this for a long time, she certainly hid it well, and quite truthfully, that’s a red flag right there. There was no effort to indicate to me that there was some thing that she was concerned about or worried about. That would’ve gone along way in helping her and I try to negotiate what she was feeling and come to some sort of consensus. This in itself is problematic, and should probably be good reason for me to keep my distance. But my heart still is with her, because I see the goodness in there. Maybe that’s a trauma bond, maybe that’s codependency. Hard to say. I just feel so lost now. Like I’ve lost my best friend.