Whirling D

I guess there is still part of the discussion that I haven’t really heard a lot about from you guys… You know that I noticed her behavior begin to change fairly dramatically the weekend that she told me she was reducing her medication amount. She said she had been feeling depressive an angry since then. It was probably the next time I saw her that we were up at the beach house and she had her crying episode. Laying in bed. She seemed to be a bit better on my birthday weekend at the beginning of September, and somehow she mentioned that she had gone back up to the original dosage, but was only taking it twice a week, which I think may have been half the amount of dosages? I forget. I don’t remember if she said she was feeling any better, but she seemed better. So, I can’t help but think or wonder whether side effects from her medication could have been messing with her emotions, a bit, which may have been why she was feeling, perhaps like she needed to isolate? I know I have felt that way before, like I do right now, really. I want no part of anyone. I am on a couple of Facebook, pages for people on Prozac and Zoloft, and on both pages there are tons, and tons of people who complain that when they try to go on, or off a med, or change the dosage, it messes with their brain, big time, and can really have an effect on how they feel and act. It’s pretty profound to read many of the stories. So I guess, I’m just really wondering if perhaps her medication could have something to do with what happened with her? Why would she be so quick to completely eradicate someone that she would probably agree was her best friend? We spoke twice a day, and there was no indication she wasn’t thoroughly enjoying the interaction. Why would somebody want to basically erase that, unless they were feeling somewhat isolationist or self-destructive? I can’t imagine it, really. It just boggles my mind.

I’m not so sure. I am agreeing with some of this, Bat. If I look at things like… How she likes to spend her time… Sitting in front of the TV… I guess I do have a little bit of an attitude about that, but not as much that it ever came out as demeaning toward her. I sat with her and watched programs on a couple of occasions, and I enjoyed it, and so did she. Typically, I would prefer to find something else to do, but when the time came, I wasn’t making a big deal out of it, or making her feel badly for wanting to do it. Ever. Most of the time, I didn’t even think about her being a doctor. We were mostly best friends. We talked about what was going on in each others lives, and what might be bothering us, or what we were happy about. It was a beautiful friendship. We were awesome lovers for the first 2/3 of knowing her. I wouldn’t have predicted in 1 million years that her brain would just switch off like that. It almost felt like I was a drug to her, and I wouldn’t have ever thought she would let it go like this. Unless something else was at play that I may not ever know. I also don’t feel that I look down my nose that much at people with money and status. It really depends what they do with it. For example, if you recall, I was really uncomfortable when I first went up to her Beachhouse, because I looked all around and saw nothing but three to $5 million houses, and I felt like I just didn’t fit in. She helped make me feel welcomed up there, and so did her neighbors. I learned to appreciate what they had up there, and even envy it a bit. I can’t say that I didn’t feel a little bit of jealousy or condescension, regarding that way of life, because it seemed a little entitled and excessive, but I envied the people up there that had the capacity to do that. I wasn’t all bent out of shape about it, though. I always loved her Beachhouse, how could I not? And I always respected everything that she tried to do up there. I tried hard to follow all of her rules and traditions up there… I helped her nonstop keep the place organized and clean, because I know that that’s what I would probably want if I had a house like that. I enjoyed, helping her, keep it clean, and helping her around the house, and I know she really appreciated that. I remember the first thing I did at her house was fix loose hinges on this big heavy door leading to the downstairs bathroom. It has been coming off the hinges for quite a while, and she was quite upset that the contractor that came into the house was supposed to fix it, but it didn’t really work, and it was falling off the hinges again, and the door was in operable. She helped me for the first bunch of minutes until I got it stable, and seemed very appreciative that I helped her with that… And even said that when she had company the following weekend that she was proud that the door was fixed, and that I had helped her do it. I don’t know what my point is for saying all of that, but it’s hard for me to imagine that she’s not going to go to that beach house and at some point be thinking about all of the things that I helped her do there. And the attitude of helping and generosity that I offered while I was there, if I can toot my own horn a little bit. As far as her Beachhouse, being spotless and well organized, I would even have my house like that, but I can’t keep up with it. I kind of throw my hands up in the air and just let it be what it is, cause I don’t have the energy or resources to make it as nice as she would certainly want it. Again, I don’t even really know what my point is for all of this.

You are probably right that I have no way of knowing what she was actually struggling with. She certainly wasn’t giving many clues to the negative, and if anything, right up until about the last month, most of our interactions were really strong, except for the things that I’ve mentioned here. it’s not at all like we were clashing all the time. It wasn’t even close. Most of the time we had a really good time and worked really well together. At least it seemed that way to me. Even the last time that I saw her for my birthday, there was no indication that we weren’t going to continue. In mid September, we even negotiated to buy tickets for the city ballet’s version of the Nutcracker in December. I had to wonder if I was still going to know her then, but she seemed all in. That was really only a couple of weeks ago. It did start to turn around quite a bit after her bed sobbing thing, and I think I started to lose emotional confidence in the relationship. I may have gone through all of that already. I just started to become much less assertive in almost every area. I don’t know if she noticed that and started to lose attraction. I still say the car talk freaked her out. Maybe not even on a conscious level. I think that was very poor judgment on my part. I was triggered, and it just came out of me fast and earnestly. I just don’t think that she was emotionally secure enough to be able to wanna deal with that. I think that’s why I’m out. I will probably wonder for a long time, just like I did the borderline girl, what she was really thinking and why it exploded like it did, seemingly out of nowhere. I think the doctor lady and I were much stronger together in many ways than the borderline lady, but I still have such a hole in my heart from her. I’ll probably go to my grave wondering what happened to each of those girls, but probably more for the doctor lady. I think she represented my future in a much more realistic way. i’ve been having a hard time sleeping, mostly because I will have these little images flashing through my brain just as I start to fall asleep, and one that seemed to be prevalent today were these colorful images of the bike ride that her and I took around 1 August. it was a fabulous day up at her beach house, and we brought the bikes out and we rode about 6 miles along the ocean side, amongst all the beautiful houses and rocky coastline, and beaches. It was a fantastic day for me. she was a little hard to manage that day, because she was constantly complaining that she wasn’t comfortable riding where there were cars, even though the average car was only going about 5 miles an hour, and then her butt hurt and she complained about that fairly incessantly, and then she almost went off the road and I tried to grab her and she yelled at me to let her go in an angry way. I was triggered by that and didn’t speak to her until we got home, which was only a mile. Then she apologized for barking at me, and things got back to normal. That was probably my favorite day that I have known her, despite the hiccups. In my dreams, I envision riding on the little street that runs upside the ocean, and her there with me. It’s literally traumatic, because I wake up traumatized from thinking of that scene. I often told her that I was not with her because of money or status or her fantastic Beachhouse, but after I got used to going up there, I now find it really traumatizing to think that I’ll probably never go up there again, and I will actively likely avoid going up into that area again, because I know it will be very triggering. I think my heartbreak is slowly turning to anger. I thought I was getting past a lot of this anger, but this is bringing it back and I feel like I’m going to turn into this disgruntled senior citizen that is pissed off at the world and has a victim mentality. I think it would be reasonable to almost feel like a victim in this case. I treated that lady really well, and was a very dear friend and confidant to her. I don’t think I did one single thing that deserved to be blown off like that. even the relationship experts made comments about people that break up perfectly good relationships for seemingly weak reasons. Of course, that’s just my interpretation that they are weak reasons. They are her reasons, and I guess she has a right to them. I just don’t get it, but then again there were a lot of things about her that I didn’t get. I certainly wouldn’t have made them deal breakers, but I would often not get it.

Thanks wise. It’s totally sad. My heart is completely shattered. she is such a nice human being, but she is so wrapped up in stress and anxiety, and it’s really hard to not be triggered by that, particularly when it was starting to be aimed in my direction. Some of my studies regarding attachment disorders is quite clear in it’s pedagogy that those of us that have a disorganized attachment disorder, and I think I have elements of that as well, “create“ reasons in their head that something can’t work, and those are the tools they use to prevent getting too close to someone who they subconsciously believe will leave them anyway once they discover their flaws. it’s my guess that the car talk really emphasized that possibility for her, and I just don’t think she wanted to put herself emotionally through that. I think she sensed that it was going to go downhill, based on what seemed like my accusations regarding her behavior and her negative energy. There is almost no doubt that part of this is what had to have happened. This is the only thing that explains how a girl a month earlier would be planning with me how to make love out on her balcony overlooking the ocean before the cold weather came, and me joking with her that we would get eaten by mosquitoes… And then a month later helping me with my gig as if she expected to do that many times… And then the next time I see her, after the car talk, she ends it. i’m just not seeing it. It’s just too weird. if you really care for someone, like I know she has for me, then why wouldn’t you discuss the issues and see if you could come to some new plan and resolution, rather than just breaking it off? That seems really extreme, based on how close that lady and I were over there three months prior to that. It just boggles my mind and makes me feel a lot less confident in the stability of human emotional nature. That’s for sure.

She has tons of people already coming over to the house to do services… Regular landscapers… Etc. She also suffers from having very little liquid asset, because most of her money is tied up in the beach house and her own house. Her family gives her no relief, but the beach house is all equally owned, yet she funds the whole thing herself. And yes, I like to portray myself as a handyman, I guess, because culturally, a lot of ladies seem to look up to that, I guess. I do like to be helpful, and if I can help her with stuff to lower her burden and stress level, I’m more than happy to do that. But, there is thread of thought that would say that people who are too eager to please, like I probably have been most of the time I’ve known her, often get left behind because the attraction level diminishes eventually. That could be what has happened here. There is also the idea that perhaps not being able to see each other for three weeks in August and four weeks in September was enough to really just flip her switch off, because she probably feels she needs more than that, and she may have started to feel a bit of a sense of abandonment, because of that lengthy period of time. Her saying that I just live too far away Kind of indicates that. she did say something like that on our first or second date, that she thought that the distance might make it tough for her, because she would wanna spend more time with whoever she is dating. I would have been more than happy to go up there a lot more than I was, but it had to be on her terms, and she wouldn’t extend the invite. I thought back in September she had decided that Mondays and Thursdays would be nights that I could come up, but then she just never offered the invite, and it never happened. Not once. I wasn’t very aggressive with getting together with her, because I know she is an avoidant, and a self-described introvert, so I was just being very patient and letting her have her own space. That may have backfired, who knows.

Thank you, cat, for the support, and the questions… Yes, I guess you could look at it that way. Land mines. I keep going over and over in my head how a break up talk came out of the time I spent over there the other day. As many of you have said, this couldn’t have been something that was just impulsive. as far as me helping her around the house that day… I asked her if there were any tasks I could help her with around the house while I was there, and at first she said no, but after we ate, she did remember that she had a fire detector that needed to be connected that she couldn’t reach easily, and it took me a few minutes to climb up on the step ladder that she went to get for me. There was nothing really odd about our interaction. She did make some suggestions, and I did what I could. I took a look at a couple of other small things, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. There was no conflict at all. when I was making dinner, which was a nice ravioli, with two different kinds of sauce, marinara for me and Alfredo for her, she looked at the package and said that the manufacturer said to scoop them out after they had been floating for three minutes. I responded by saying that I usually do them for 15 minutes because I like them to be much softer. That might be the kind of thing that she could find annoying, but she didn’t. As we ate, I asked her how she like the ravioli, and she said they were excellent. Then I asked her if she thought they were too soft, and if they had been done too long, and she said no, they were great. So, that would be the kind of conversation that I might normally be wary of, but it went just fine. I think I overreacted a lot of the times, expecting, she might be annoyed by something that I wouldn’t be doing, like not following package directions. I think the picture of the hairstyle may have come as we were cleaning up the kitchen after our meal. I liked the hairstyle, but I jokingly pointed out that the fellow in the picture had a lot more hair on top than I do… I tried to make light of it. I had even said that I was considering having her take three or 4 inches off while I was there that day, and she basically talked me out of it, saying that I should shouldn’t change just because I think other people want that from me. She was right. Then she added, when you go to your nieces wedding next weekend. If you feel self-conscious about it, you could just put your hair in a ponytail or something. So there was zero contention about that as well. It does strike me a peculiar that she would be talking to be about my hair styles and show me a picture of something I might like, and then, 15 minutes later, maybe less, she tells me she needs to end it. There is part of me that thinks that she thought I might not react the way I did to her telling me she was ending it. I think that she may have believed that I was going to say, “oh, that’s OK, I was kind of feeling a lot of the same things. Maybe we can just be friends?” There is a strong chance she was thinking that’s how I was going to respond. Possible? I am still completely disabled from this ending. I can’t think straight. I’m not sleeping well. I was awake at 3:30 AM this morning. I’m not eating. I just can’t fathom how someone that I felt so connected with fell so hard so quickly. I just talked with my therapist, and she seems to think there’s been a lot of progress in the way I’ve handled things under the circumstance. There’s no answer as to what to do and where to go. Last week she did say she didn’t think it would hurt if I reached out to her again, just to make sure that her mind hadn’t changed, but this week she kind of backpedaled on that. She seem to like the theory of the online therapists that said that this is her mess to clean up. If she ever decides she needs to clean it up. Part of me really hopes I hear from her over the next few months. The good part of her I love so deeply. Maybe it’s codependency. Maybe it’s a trauma bond. I couldn’t say. Things just really felt perfect when she was in a good space and I was as well. I also looked forward to challenging a lot of my preconceived behaviors and ways of doing things in order to make things go more smoothly between her and I. I so wish I had the chance to tell her that I wished I hadn’t had that “big“ conversation with her in the car. I so wish I would’ve presented what I was feeling differently and less judgy. Maybe someday I’ll have a chance to tell her that, but I’m not betting on it. I remember the girl that I dated for seven months last year. I knew it wasn’t the right match for me early on, but I tried hard to make it work. She eventually could sense that it wasn’t the right match for me and broke it off. She did contact me for several days afterward, in an attempt to likely see if she had done the right thing. I didn’t really give her anything to go on, and I let her go. I haven’t spoken with her since, even though I do miss her, but only as a friend. maybe that’s how the doctor lady feels for me. Although, it could be said that I think the doctor lady and I had so much more in common, even just in as much as our basic belief system, and way we communicated. My last lady friend had very different beliefs, and I often had a hard time reconciling that. I guess it could be said that the doctor lady’s beliefs are what made her separate… She wants a better life than I could probably offer. She doesn’t want to be bickering all the time, even though she says it’s been that way with everyone that she’s been with. My heart just aches right now, and I long for that connection again, and don’t feel it coming anytime soon. but then again, all it took was one like from her on a dating site to open up that whole avenue of connection. I should also add. She was the only one that liked my profile and almost the entire year. I was single this last time around. I can’t even look at online dating profiles right now. I just don’t see the happiness in the faces of the ladies who are on there. I miss that.

Thank you, that is a heartwarming story. If you know what I mean… 🙂 What do you believe changed in the years in between, that left you feeling more confident that you could make things work?

Thank you for your nice post, DTYF. I do think she loves me. That was always part of the problem. She loved me, but couldn’t reconcile my somewhat nontraditional presentation and philosophies. At the risk of seeming a little bold, I don’t think she had ever spent any time with someone like me. I think she said that early on. Not just from my visual presentation, which I don’t think is that far outside the box, but that’s debatable… My hair is long… So what? But, she was having a hard time fully grasping some opinions I had, on interactions that we had experienced… Like, why it would probably be better to try to let go of her need to control how I drove her car. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time trying to understand that it is more of a ME problem if somebody else is doing something that might irritate me that they have a full right to be able to do. Here’s another example, just for my own personal validation… There were times that people would do something that would get on my nerves… And I was too shy to often say something about it. Eventually, I came to realize, that it was a me problem. that person had every right to be able to do whatever it was that they were doing, if they had a valid reason for doing it, and just because it annoyed me, it shouldn’t be a reason for me to invade their right to be able to engage in the activity that they felt was necessary. It feels selfish for me to think that I should speak up when someone is doing some thing that is annoying to me, because I have every right to make another choice. Ignore the behavior and try to concentrate on something else. That would cause me a little bit of discomfort, but it would respect the rights of the other person to do what they see fit. I have found that to be a very proactive and liberating choice. It has allowed me to let go of a lot of things that might irritate me that somebody could be doing. It shifts the focus from my discomfort to their needs a value that theory. That’s a fairly complicated change for someone to have to make. But I feel that it is empathic. It allows others to be who they are, without trying to assert our Will into their actions. But then, again, I wasn’t really that great at doing that with her. I asserted my will towards her, when I expected her to allow me to clean her deck whichever way I felt was best, or drive her car in which way I felt was best. So, it’s a slippery slope. I wanted so much for that lady to respect me and care for me, which might be one of the reasons that I held onto those philosophies so tightly, and tried to “teach“ her new and different ways of thinking about things. I think that was a greater part of my downfall, as well. I tried so hard to be a mentor to her, if you will, and I think that she appreciated that up to a point. But when it began to infringe on her right to be who she is… Which is often cranky and demanding, I think that’s where things fell through. Similarly to my marriage, and with the doctor lady, I couldn’t allow them to be who they were without trying to change them. The only way it could have worked with the doctor lady is if I had allowed her to be who she is and not try to change her behavior, the same way, I was hoping she would allow me to be who I was, and not change me, while I drove her car, and while I cleaned her deck. So, I guess it could be said I wasn’t practicing what I preached. But then, again, it could be said that it’s a little different to bark at someone because they aren’t paying attention to how fast they are going, and to be disillusioned by somebody when they do bark at you for stuff that really doesn’t have much relevance in the greater scheme of things. I think the weight of those two disagreements are vastly different. I digress.

Bat, thank you. Your postings are so poignant and thoughtful. I have no idea how you can manage the time to write as much as you do on here. I appreciate that. I guess I should define what I mean by mental health… During the night that she sobbed uncontrollably in bed, she said she has been miserable for years. She said she thought she had done everything that she was taught was expected of her, and she still could not find happiness. That was exacerbated by partnering with three different men that she described as being emotionally unavailable and at times verbally abusive. When I noticed her behavior start to change, and it was quite sudden, I don’t remember how it came up, but she described how she was trying to wean herself off of Prozac. She said it was messing with her head. She had become aloof, admittedly, depressive, also told me that she had depressive episodes for years, which is why she had been on Prozac for years, and occasionally snappy. I can relate to a lot of that, because I suffer from a lot of the same problems. Although, I seem to manifest the symptoms differently. I also get hugely depressive, like I am now, really, but I don’t really get outwardly snappy as much. Coffee will do that to me, but not so much depressive episodes. Although, I have no idea how I would be if I had somebody around me a lot while I was like this. So, when I say that I think mental health may factor into this is likely coming from two angles… One is that her behavior, and the fact could definitely have been swayed by her mental health, and the effects of her changing medication, dosages, and second, it could be possible that her withdrawal from me was a result of depressive episodes, and thinking, much of what I can relate to. That’s a stretch, but it’s plausible. My psychologist friend, who isn’t a psychiatrist, pretty much spelled out his thoughts on it right from when I describe what had happened. I hadn’t told him much about our history, or even her mental health history, but right away he said, it sounded like some sort of mental health debacle. I think she knew that her long term list shouldn’t have had priority over how she felt about someone, or how they treated her, and that’s part of what she was struggling with. After all, does one, really pick a partner based on whether they are going to be able to accompany them on expensive trips? I guess some might. I had never said to her that I would never be able to go on trips. I may not be able to go on ones that were worth $10,000, but what I did say to her is that I could foresee, much better vacations happening, since when I partner with someone, I will be splitting most of my expenses, which would likely leave more asset to do a good trip once a year, or so. Maybe more if I’m fully retired. That seemed to satisfy that confusion There would be one easy fix to that financial situation. I would have probably mentioned that before, and I think I did talk a little bit about this… If she would ever have considered moving into my house, she would have saved thousands of dollars in mortgages, taxes, and other expenses. How much would that leave for expensive vacations? Tons. Her commute to work would have been the same. But somehow, I think my house represented things to her that she couldn’t manage… It’s an older beat up house. Doesn’t represent status. Probably had more germs and bugs, but she can’t handle. She has so many hangups that she just can’t manage. I guess that’s an incompatibility right there, right? I was impressed the day I was talking with her about my house when she was down here the only time to stay over. If you recall, she said she could never live in my house, but said she needed time and patience to work her way into feeling comfortable there. I felt a little bit of victory there, and was willing to be patient, knowing how absolutely awesome it is here on my property, if you have any connections to nature. I was out there, looking around the other day and marveling how awesome it is, and how it’s almost unimaginable that anyone on the planet would not be able to see the beauty in being there. I still believe she may have eventually “got it” as to why I enjoyed being there, and maybe even valued some of that herself. Likely will never know. So, Bat, tell me again why you broke off your wedding back then? What was it that made you pull the plug? What made you think a month and a half later that maybe you had made a mistake? I’d be interested in hearing that story again. I’m sure you already told it… ☹️

I do love her, and the term “incompatibility” just seems to make me shake my head a bit. We have so much in common, as well, which I think comes down to the way we think about things. I think it’s really mental health that has gotten in the way here. But I guess that’s an incompatibility? I don’t know. I just don’t get it, really. Truth be told, there were times when we got together that her demeanor was so negative and domineering that I thought to myself, “would I really be able to sustain myself in this kind of situation over time?“ It’s hard to say, because she was all over the place. I don’t want to give you guys the impression that we fought all the time. We really didn’t. At all. Those particular instances are really the only times that we really had quantifiable disagreements. That’s why it’s really so surprising that her ending it came quite a bit out of the blue. She always said that she needs a lot of downtime, being a similar introvert, and I thought she was just busy and taking her own space. We would talk on the phone for hours and be completely in sync in so many ways. We just seem to speak a similar language, in that regard. I have to kind of feel that it was our “big talk“ in the car that night the kind of did things in. I think it may have freaked her out. I was fairly triggered, and the conversation lasted most of the hour ride home. I was fairly determined to make my point clear… I could not sustain a relationship that was filled with stress and anxiety. I don’t remember a lot of what I said, but she knew I was talking about her behavior. A lot of what I said, was meant to be proactive and positive, but later, she said that she felt like she was being attacked by the conversation, and I think I could see how that might feel for her. Another person hearing what I was saying might have not taken it quite so targeted, because it was meant as much to encourage change as it was to bark at her. I don’t think I really raised my voice or spoke in a demeaning fashion. But I guess when you say something to someone that draws strong attention to something that is not favorable, it will probably be taken as demeaning. Does it stand to reason that people have the right to behave the way that they naturally do, within limitations? It’s not like she was cursing and swearing at everybody that walked by, or giving me a hard time about everything I did. She just has a very dark personality when she goes about her day-to-day duties. She has a very negative perception of a lot of things, and it comes out a lot of the times. That was hard for me. But then it would just turn off when she was in a different space, and she was lovely. She was talking about the wedding when I was up there, and she was fairly upset about something that happened at the wedding that involved her niece’s stepdad and the father/daughter dance. She was getting quite worked up about it, and her conversation was relatively hostile. It wasn’t aimed at me, but I can’t really relate to getting hostile and upset about stuff like that. It’s just a different way of articulating what you’re thinking and feeling. If you were around to watch All in the Family, it felt a little bit like Archie Bunker and Edith. Archie Bunker conveyed things with a tone of hostility in most situations, while Edith just had a very soft demeanor. That’s an exaggeration, but it’s a fair comparison. The question is, could I have learned to navigate the Archie-like demeanor that she usually put forth? I believe that it may have been worth it, but I think it was way too soon to make that call, because we had three fabulous months, and then, because of a lot of logistics, we just weren’t able to see each other very much. When we did see each other, I thought it was great. I thought the first hour and a bit that I spent up there the other day, making a beautiful meal, helping her with things, I thought it was really nice. I thought we were headed back to a nice place. It was like having to get to know her all over again. I had said that to her before that, sometimes when I hadn’t seen her for a while, it was like having to get to know her all over again. She seemed to agree. This last month was almost entirely logistics, other than the fact that I do have every Monday and Thursday without my kid during the week, and she just didn’t seem to want to entertain the idea of me coming up there, although I constantly told her I would. I stopped asking. I waited for invitations, and most of the time she would get home late on those nights, at like 7 PM, and she’d be in bed by 9 PM, so the thought of me going up there didn’t really surface. I understood, but only because I figured things would continue to progress. Had I thought it was going to be problematic, I would’ve been a little bit more determined to make suggestions. Well, I think I burned her out during our big talk. And also burned her out by being determined to make up my own mind in the two or three situations that I’ve already described. She’s a tough lady in that regard, and thinks in a fairly rigid and inside the box kind of way. I thought we were kind of getting used to the ways each other managed things like that, but clearly not. I was hoping we would come to a plateau in those regards and realize that we both love each other deeply, but just have a different way of managing those emotions… I’m sure there are many people that figure out strategies to deal with that kind of thing. I think she kind of chickened out. Just lost attraction. I guess if she is disorganized avoidant like she said she was, she fits the profile like a glove. A lot of the more recent disorganized-avoidant attachment theory describes a lot of what I am talking about here. In some countries they call it fearful avoidant, but I’ve heard some clinicians say those two terms are different. Because of the way DA folks grew up in a chaotic environment, their brains are often wired to not trust people and not trust that people will be there to support their needs in difficult times. They’ve had to fend for themselves to get their needs met. They often become very independent and distrusting of others in their circle, and often become introverted and somewhat disenfranchised from society. That describes the doctor lady pretty closely. She even brought to me that she thought that she was DA. according to theory, all attachment style people really want closeness, and when they feel vulnerable, they crave closeness, in some cases almost in an addictive fashion. I could see that with her. When we got close, she would cling to me like glue paper. in most occasions, I thought that was really nice, because I have some of that characteristic as well, but there were other times it seemed really odd, that she just wanted to hold me tight and not let me go, almost as if she had never felt that kind of connection. That may be part of what I will miss most. It’s hard for me to imagine how she would just let something like that go without a fight. She needs and wants intimacy, just like I do. I remember a couple of times in June and July when I was up at her beach house, and she would just come over and lie across my lap and lay there in my arms for about 20 minutes. I don’t think I’ve had anybody that was willing to do that before, and in many ways it was lovely. Somehow, as things became more complicated, that seemed to fade away, somewhat, but I do think that she basically talked herself out of it. Somehow, I don’t think she could sustain the emotional trust with me. But I think that was a lot in her head. I think she kind of willed her self away from that kind of trust. If I needed to, I could probably have argued through each of her points as to why she felt she needed to end things. Each of her points would have likely had viable alternatives and viewpoints, but part of me didn’t feel the desire to do that the other day. If she doesn’t wanna be with me, I’m not going to argue with her about it. I think I was also just going by the script that many therapists suggest… Respect yourself, respect her decision, and allow time to determine what will happen next. Some of that theory suggests that people with DA could very easily start to realize that they really do need and want you, and their thinking could start to turn around with time. That happens with me within relationships, and I even felt that kind of up-and-down thinking at the doctor lady. Sometimes I liked her, sometimes I wasn’t sure. It’s been like that with every woman I have ever dated. I’m a little confused as to what I think I would feel should she start to turn her self around. It is said that once you bond with someone, it is not an easy transition to just break that bond, given that humans are wired for connection. She doesn’t connect easily with people, and neither do I, which is why I would not have thought that she would give up on us so quickly. Bonding for people like us does not come and go easily. Anyway, clearly, I could go on and on about it. I guess I’m going to be looking for answers for a long time.

Interesting thoughts… Thank you. Conversely, she was constantly asking me opinions on how to do things, and if I would help her do things that she couldn’t take on… She was quite bright in that way, able to do fairly complex projects, but she would avoid doing so unless she absolutely had to, because her confidence doing more complicated physical tasks sometimes suffered. I don’t FEEL like I expect things to be done a certain way… I usually like to work as a team, where both people toss out ideas, and whichever one seems to make the most sense, we go with. The doctor lady and I actually worked really well on multiple projects in just that way. We worked hand-in-hand, and we both tossed ideas and thoughts into the fray, and neither one of us had a big problem accepting the others idea, if it makes sense. that’s why I kind of wonder if a lot of her problem comes from her medication. That would certainly explain her onset of moodiness and cantankerousness. I literally saw absolutely no evidence of that kind of thing right up until about the time she told me she changed her medication dosage, and that would have been after knowing her for at least two months. I feel it is strongly likely that I would have picked up on some evidence of that kind of thing, prior to her telling me about her medication.

You know, it really makes me profoundly sad to think that the doctor lady is probably sitting at home right now with a completely broken heart, feeling alone and lonely, despite the fact that it was her that put this into motion. there is the theory that the person that does the breaking up can often feel a sense of relief after they do it, because it takes away a lot of the confusion that they were feeling, but that could only last for a short while. given that she was crying when I left her yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me that she’s feeling a huge amount of remorse that she broke my heart like that. As she probably should, but I don’t feel angry about it, because I know she was doing whatever she felt was the right thing to do for herself. However shortsighted that might have been. The last thing I want her to feel is sad. I wonder if she is even really thinking about how I am doing. I do get the impression she is often out of sight out of mind kind of person.

I think my biggest problem with the relationship was not really her barking, it was this dark cloud overhead that made me wonder if the sky was gonna fall in at any time. I think that was much worse than her often poor demeanor. I often felt challenged by being pushed to learn a different way of dealing with things. Maybe we would both learn to grow together that way.

She hadn’t mentioned one of the incompatibilities since probably the end of July. I had hoped we had put all that stuff behind us, but I wasn’t convinced we did. so what do you guys think? Do you ever think I’ll hear from this lady again?

M Ironically, the last time I saw her I teased her about my hair, and she said… “I’m kind of getting used to it… :-)“ on the other hand, when I was up there yesterday, she handed me a page of a magazine, and said “here’s a picture of another hairstyle that I thought you might like“ it was a picture of some older actor with a wavy hairstyle. It looked good. Even that gesture at that particular time made me think… Did she really plan to break up with me yesterday? Or did it just come out impulsively? I may never know.

I didn’t catch that the Dr. lady actually had any specialized treatment for mental health meds, but I’m not completely sure. I know my doctor wouldn’t touch that subject with a 10 foot pole. there were times I wasn’t convinced that she was as knowledgeable in the medical field as you would think a doctor would typically be. But that might just be my own bias. I don’t feel very good saying that.

She had bought her ticket to the wedding, which was halfway across the country, after we had only been dating for about six or eight weeks, I believe. It only struck me as a little bit saddening that she didn’t invite me, considering we had only been dating a short while, and also considering the aforementioned biases of her family members.

You see, there wasn’t really that much arguing and disagreeing. For the most part, those interactions took up just a small amount of our time together. most of the time, we were going out on walks on the beach, or doing things around her houses, and when she came to my gig it was absolutely awesome. She helped me completely with my set up and teardown, and dragging all the equipment back to the car. She wanted to learn how to do it and do it properly. I could fall in love with that girl just for that. She was awesome. I do have to wonder about her medication, and whether that has been screwing with her head over the summer, and maybe has been a larger part of why she has been so disagreeable and mentally unstable. I remember she was a little testy when I first heard about that… And she was telling me a story how she was prescribing Zoloft to one of her patients, and I said to her… “Does your practice have a policy of sending mental health patients to psychiatrist for the medication management?” She said, “why would I do that? I know everything I need to know about medication, so I just prescribe whatever they need”. I think she may have thought I was challenging her prudence with that practice, and I kind of was. I don’t think my doctor would ever prescribe me SSRIs without first going through a psychiatrist. Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the changes in her medication were messing with her head. That may be a moot point now, though.

Interesting that you say that, because I wondered about that very possibility. I wondered whether maybe she had met someone that made her feel things she hadn’t been feeling with me. There is no way she would’ve cheated, because she had family around her the whole time. if I was a betting man, I wouldn’t bet that that’s what happened, but it’s entirely within range of possibility. I wasn’t invited to the wedding? I don’t know if I would’ve been able to go, because it’s the weekend I had my kid, and it would’ve been a crap load of money, but I’m guessing she was also not ready to present me to her whole family as her partner. when her mother was sick a month ago, and I drove them to the ER, I met her mom for the first time, and she had previously been clearly apprehensive about that, saying that her mother has biases against guys with long hair, and people who think liberally. I think the doctor lady was hesitant to put those combinations together. But when we went to the emergency room that night, I met her mother and escorted her by arm out of the house and got her settled into the car, and I think her mother thought I was very charming. There was no reason for her to feel otherwise. I never heard anything else regarding what her mother thought of me after that. There were a couple of opportunities a while back for me to go see the doctor lady when she was staying at her mother’s house, which is much closer to me, but the doctor lady didn’t even bring that up. They were either work nights or travel nights, So I stayed away from suggesting anything. if I had to guess, I think the doctor lady was worried about her image… And that maybe her family members might not understand why she was with me. That’s what my gut tells me from the hair conversation. No way to really know, though.

I thank you guys for your encouragement. I do have to say, she may not be as bad as some of my stories portray. It is likely mostly because I am talking about the contentious stuff on here, but if I was on here to talk about her good things, you would hear a completely different story. she has a lot of goodness inside of her, and I love her dearly. I do. It’s just hard to manage the 20% of her that can kind of be a crap head. She even said at the beginning of that big conversation we had in the car… “I know sometimes I can be a jerk“. I wanted to say to her… “Well why don’t you just then choose not to be a jerk? That’s full within your range of decisions“. But I refrained from doing that. to give you some perspective and context… As you know, we would talk every morning on her way to work, which was often around a half an hour, and every night before bed, which was usually 45 minutes or an hour. We could talk nonstop about all kinds of things… And it was fun, and engaged, and validating. She would ask me about my day, and give me suggestions if I told her that something may not have gone the way I want it to. She would hear my stories about things that went well during the day, or things that didn’t. Occasionally her and I would laugh hysterically, when both of us are not really strong laughers. That kind of thing. We can both be very playful and light, and I found that very endearing about her. She brought me out of myself, which is something that very few ladies I have known were ever able to do. I profoundly will miss that. It got harder as time went on though, for reasons described previously Cont… I felt very appreciative that she went out of the way to re-search and order an appliance for my house that was fairly expensive… That was delivered the day before my birthday. it tickled my heart that she thought of me when she was away for the wedding this past weekend and brought home two little things. They were just puny little things, but I was so thankful that she did that and she was thinking about me. that’s why this whole break up strikes me is so strange… We sit at the table and have a nice meal, she gives me these two nice little gifts that are wrapped in party paper, and 10 minutes later she breaks up with me. does that sound oddly suspicious to you? I will never get it. That’s why I have to prepare for the possibility that she’s suddenly going to start thinking about it in the near future and be thinking, “what did I do?”

Interesting perspectives, I appreciate the thoughts. I was driving her car because she didn’t like to drive, so whenever we went somewhere I would drive. here in the US, it’s kind of an unwritten rule that you can get away with so many miles per hour above the speed limit. Everybody just intuitively knows that the cops won’t stop you until you go over a certain threshold. it didn’t feel like I was being passive aggressive when I went 39 in a 35 mile per hour zone, I just figured that’s what everybody would probably be doing there, and maybe even close to 45, before a cop would likely pull you over, unless it was mid day with lots of people around. I just thought that’s kind of what people would do. I suspect that very few people would actually go right on 35 miles an hour in that zone. Very few, I think. I didn’t even think much of it until she was barking at me about not going exactly 35 miles an hour. I thought she was being rather petty and extreme. Almost hostile. for most couples, a little barking back-and-forth like that would probably not be a big deal, but for three months in our relationship, it struck me as being very triggering, and devaluing. I knew I was going to have a hard time with that kind of barking. I had two other relationships where my partner would bark at me like that, and they did not end well, either. and yes, she was asking me and expecting me to help her in all kinds of different ways. She was even kind of looking up to me for help and guidance in those matters, which is why I was taking it upon myself to find the easiest and most effective solutions to some of her chores. I didn’t think that was stepping outside of the boundaries, but then she got a little snotty about it, which I didn’t really interpret as being anything other than her being a little snotty. She didn’t specifically tell me how to do something, she just saw that I didn’t do it per instruction on the bottle. would it not be equally relevant to say that if you ask somebody to do something, and you know they typically are pretty good at such matters, that you respect their experience in such matters and allow them to guide the project along in a way that they think may be more manageable? That’s the way I looked at it. I think I may have also been a little bit guilty with trying to impress her with how I could think outside the box and get things done quickly, as well. May be able to trying to score brownie points with being clever? I do see how from her perspective she could be annoyed. She takes pride in the fact that she follows every rule to the letter. I kind of look at interpretations of rules. She doesn’t validate my perspective, and I suppose I didn’t with hers, but I wasn’t really given a chance to, because I didn’t understand her expecting me to do it exactly the way the instructions were saying. She didn’t really make that clear until she was upset later. as far as battles and wars, I hear what you are saying. I was saying that a little bit figuratively, meaning that every couple has to get used to different styles, and I was fully trying to interpret her style, but also try to explain my style of thinking as well. I’m not sure that one was necessarily any better or worse than the other. They were just different styles of going about things. I would have no way to know that she was expecting for me to do things exactly the way that she wanted them to be done, but most of the time that’s what was happening, whether I liked it or not. I was learning to navigate that rigidity, and I think I was doing a fairly good job placating that. I was trying to pay more attention to what speed I was going in the car, and trying to minimize disruptions, so she wouldn’t have to get grumpy. in fact, in our final conversation about my driving her car, I said to her something like… “Can you see how by me asking you not to comment on this matter is a way of allowing me to correct what you weren’t liking and do it in a way that would make you happy?“ That was my way of trying to make good of the situation that had been cantankerous. it didn’t feel like she was really making an effort to truly understand that that’s what I was trying to do. I think she still stuck with her belief that I was just being annoying. So be it. if she wasn’t willing to try to truly be empathetic with different perspectives, and there’s really not a lot I can do about it, and thus, that’s why we are likely now over. but again, those are battles that I think couples have to learn to negotiate so they can understand each other’s styles a little more. I thought that those things were the kind of discussions that would help make people grow closer, not make them grow further apart.

Also, I truly wish that she had your negotiating skills, even internally, in matters like this. She’s just not that well developed in that way. She wants to be, and I think she’s probably going to be thinking of that in her alone time now that she’s single again. I think she’s just too busy and has too many hands on her time to want to manage any of this right now. I could have even been a casualty of her stressful existence. I was just one more stress. And given that we hadn’t really been physically together in a month, and then, three weeks prior to that, all I was really accomplishing was filling up space on her car rides, which may or may not have been something she even wanted, although it seemed to always be. Right up until the end she always seemed really happy to hear from me. and then out of the blue she tells me she’s going to end it. Another thing that struck me as hugely peculiar. It’s true that we hadn’t been texting much over the weekend. She did send me a whole bunch of nice photos. Then, she invited me up to her home the first moments she had when she got home… And when I went up there, she seemed perfectly fine… She allowed me to come into her house, help her with chores, put together a fairly complicated meal with a lot of dishes to take care of, sit and eat that nice meal… Present me with two nice little trinkets from her trip, allow me to kiss her nicely to thank her… 10 minutes later, she breaks up with me. You tell me how that makes any kind of sense. That’s where I think that her selfishness kind of comes in. I get the impression she’ll take whatever she can get if it has value to her, and when the value runs out, she’ll discard it. I don’t know how accurate that is, but that’s kind of a sense I get. I had value to her, because I made her feel good during her long car rides, and I did all kinds of things for her at her house and her beach house. I was basically like her right hand man in that way. We actually worked fairly well together as a team working on projects around her house. But she wouldn’t really extend that same courtesy to me. Only came to my house once. July 4. Actually, I do remember she drove down one rainy night to see my kids play in a theater production. That was a really great night, despite her having to drive back an hour home through thunderstorms. I was proud of her for taking out on. Then there was the night in early August, where she met my dear friend Larry, up near the town that she lives in, and we went to an outdoor concert up there. Her and I couldn’t get enough of each other that night. There was no way in purgatory that I could have predicted that within a few weeks we would be done. No way. We were so well-connected for those two occasions. Perfectly synced in almost every way. How does that goes so pathetically wrong so quickly? I’ll never know. Well, it was probably after lying in bed with her that night, when she was bawling that this seemed to turn around. I’ll never forget that night. A bigger man probably would have left that night and said there was no way he could continue after hearing her say the things she said.

Nice to hear from you, Bat… thank you for your kind words and your stories. I think you are spot on. She has an uncontrolled self-centered streak. I don’t want to be disparaging, because she has so many other wonderful qualities. She wants to be a good person. She wants to be affectionate. For the first three months, she was all about emotional sharing. She even said to me once probably in the middle of August, something like, “why couldn’t it just be like it was before when it was less complicated?” I knew exactly what she was talking about, but I couldn’t buy it. There was nothing complicated about it. I was the same person lying next to her. I wasn’t going anywhere. My hair hadn’t gotten any longer. Why did it need to be more complicated? That was almost completely concocted in her head. Likely the result of her disorganized attachment wounds. I completely think she created reasons to break up, because she couldn’t manage the conflicting thoughts in her head. I remember a girl I did this with who was my first adult relationship. She was the sweetest most decent girl that I may have ever known. But I found every reason in the world to turn my head against her. The biggest reason was I didn’t think she was attractive enough. Maybe that was valid, maybe it wasn’t, but my brain turned that into a big tool to push her away. I’ve done that many many times in my life. It’s a defense mechanism to prevent getting hurt, I guess. I remember when I was about 15… There was this young girl that was either a year or two younger than I am. She was the nicest, sweetest girl, and she followed me around like a puppy dog, and made no apologies for saying that she was in love with me. but, for some reason, I just couldn’t see it. I look back now and wonder what the heck I was thinking. I can remember her face clearly, and she was beautiful. Smart, sweet, everything that I would probably ever want in my life right now, but at 15 years old, I was scared to death of her. So I continuously rejected her. I remember, she even dared me to kiss her once, and I tried, and I just had the crap scared out of me. I couldn’t feel any attraction. That’s so far from what I would’ve likely felt a few years later. So, people convince themselves in and out of things, based on their own attachment wounds. I tend to think that the doctor lady created a lot of her confusion to put her out of her own misery, so to speak. Given that she would constantly belittle her own value and self-esteem, I think it was just easier for her to destroy the relationship, then to have to face the fact that her behavior was causing someone she loved discomfort and potential love ending pain. I can relate, but it gives me so much pain to think of this. It seems so useless. I know that’s a longshot, but that’s my take on it. That comes from me doing the same things many times, so I’m not trying to point the finger at anyone.

Yeah, I guess so… I guess I was fairly naïve to think that since we had a lot of similarities in very important areas, that those similarities would pull us through. I always got the impression she was pretty much all in. Until suddenly she wasn’t. I don’t even really know what to do with myself at this moment… My brain is just totally scrambled. I thought her and I would continue to fight the battles, but never would I have thought the war would be over so quickly. Never saw that coming. Didn’t think she had it in her, quite frankly. This is a girl that has repeatedly bemoaned spending 15 years with a guy that she said she never talked with, who never asked her what she liked, or didn’t like, and always asserted his will in matters. Then there was the guy until a few years ago that she was with for three years that she only saw once every second weekend, and also felt very little connection with. And then there was me… The guy for the first couple of months she said was the only guy she’s ever dated that she felt truly “got” her. So much for that. I will probably take my last breath wondering how something that has so much to offer turned so sour… But that seems to be my status quo. And despite a lot of my previous foibles, I think, in so many ways I did so much better with this lady than I have with almost any others in my adult life. I almost never pressured her into anything. Always thoughtful of her time and her space, always willing to give validation and encouragement. Was hugely consistent and positive. Always friendly and good-natured. Here’s where I think it likely started to go downhill. After the night that she laid in bed bawling, I think something in my self-confidence just snapped. Prior to that, maybe a little prior to that, maybe the hair conversation… I think I lost the confidence to be a leader in the relationship. Prior to that, I had a huge amount of confidence, because I felt valued, wanted and needed. I felt she actually kind of looked up to me and respected me somehow, which is not something I feel very often. It’s usually the opposite. prior to those two devaluing conversation, my confidence allowed me to take the lead, whether it meant being really funny and off the top, or aggressive in bed, or out in the community. I felt like I had the fuel to be the person I wanted to be. After we had the hair talk, and then a couple weeks later, her bawling in bed, when she said things that rattled my most significant dark neurosis, my confidence went way down, and I mean fast. I stopped being aggressive, pursuing her verbally, socially, and sexually. I became significantly disempowered and weakened. I became astronomically less assertive, and pretty much took on a submissive role. I suddenly became a serious Simp. I suspect that this alone is what made her lose attraction, or as she said, “lost enthusiasm” or something like that, despite the fact that we were still basically best friends, in most ways that were relevant. I was the first one she spoke with every day, and the last one she spoke with before she went to sleep. Every time she had free time, which wasn’t a lot, her and I made plans to get together, despite not seeing her for a month. It’s a little ironic how she said a lot of the things on the last day about why she needed to end it, and to know that most of what she said was at her own hands. I don’t think it has anything to do with distance, or going on vacations. I think those are just the cerebral tools that she used to distance herself from a situation that became too complicated for her to manage. So rather than trying to deal with the demons that were plaguing her, it was easier for her to just unplug. I guess everybody that loses a love interest like that tries to blame the other person for the failure. I guess my failures were that I lacked confidence to take the leadership role once things started to get complicated. That’s not likely attractive to partners. But I still can likely leave with the understanding that I did significantly better with the doctor lady that I have with the last three relationships I’ve had. Part of me thinks it will be hard to re-create the power that that relationship had as a potential… Knowing the goodness that lady has inside of her. And knowing the power that her and I had together when things were flowing in the right direction. For all I know I’ll get a text in a few weeks or a month or two months asking how I am. I have no idea what I will say. I’m sure she’s thinking she still wants to be friends. That’s what she said. No way I could go there right now. Hearing her cry, as I was leaving, was a soul crusher. She doesn’t deserve that. Neither do I. I almost wonder if I should have stayed there and negotiated with her and told her that I had every belief we could work things through and I saw a vision through the darkness. I have to wonder if my fear of her anger got in the way of me being able to do that. Couple of months earlier and that wouldn’t have been a problem. online social workers, who are “experts“ in breakups say to never send follow up letters or texts after someone breaks up with you. That’s my plan. You have to show your ex partner that you are willing to respect their needs and give them what they ask. There is still a part of me that looks at my phone about every 15 minutes and feels a stab going through my heart when I don’t see a text from her. Part of me still wants her in my life, and part of me still wants to fight for her. She has so much worth fighting for. General expert consensus is that the only way that could happen right now is for me to let her go. Maybe she’ll value the loss, maybe she won’t. Guess only time will tell. I’m not going to be spending a lot of time waiting it out. I’ll be on dating sites before too long, no doubt. I already reactivated my account, but it’s still too painful for me to even look at the faces of other ladies. I’m just having a hard time seeing anyone that makes me smile the way that her photos did, and I have so many photos of her smiling. That’s what I would likely remember from her.

Hi everyone… It’s been a while. Lots going on, and I feel the need to tell my story on here. Lots to say. Buckle up. ☹️😵‍💫 Dr. lady and I are done. This will be a long posting. For those of you who followed my postings from earlier on, this will probably pick up from where that left off. For those of you that haven’t followed my saga, be prepared… This will be a long read. So… Where do I even begin? Well, she ended it with me yesterday. Out of the blue. With me having no idea it was coming, or thinking it would happen like that. Many of you guys would probably say that you would predict this outcome, and it’s hard to say whether or not I think that prediction should have been accurate. There has been a lot under the bridge since I’ve been last on here, some really turbulent times, but some really fantastic times, as well. It was my hope, that the fantastic times, and what we learned from them, would overcome the turbulent times. Little did I know how wrong I would be. So, last time I wrote on here was mid July, when I was going to go up to her Beachhouse for vacation, which I did. We had a pretty good time until the last night there… We had a very complicated event. We were lying in bed, and I don’t even remember how it started, but she began to ball uncontrollably… She started to say things like… “I’m so confused. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, but I feel that I don’t know what to do… I love you, but I’m confused based on all the things I was taught growing up… I was supposed to work hard and get a good job, and save so that I could retire, and do the things I wanted, and I’ve been miserable all these years, and yet now I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been, but I don’t know which way to go. I’ve always been told that I should meet someone who can take care of me, and grow old with, and I love you, but I just don’t know if love is enough”. I lied in the dark next to her and consoled her through about 45 minutes of this… thinking to myself, how do I come back from this? After a while, she was able to pull herself out of it, and she came to a resolution… She was going to talk to a therapist that she had a history with that she hadn’t spoken to for a while, and she should be able to talk to the therapist mid week and see what her therapist had to say about it. The next day, she woke up, as if nothing had happened… Happy and in a positive mood. I was in a complete funk for obvious reasons. It almost got to a point where I was so heavily triggered I was starting to think I would never be back to that beautiful place, and her and I would be broken up by the end of the weekend. Later that day, after her continuing on with her day, as if nothing happened, in kind of a cold, detached way, eventually, I started to break out of my funk, and I reached over and held her hand, and things just fell back into place, and we began connecting again. We had a great rest of the day, and that night we were about the most intimate that we could be. She ended up, talking to her therapist, I believe, but she didn’t mention anything about it, but later that week she seemed to be indicating that everything was in place, and she felt really good about her and I. She said she had resolve her conflict, and that she felt good about things. It seemed rather sudden and strange, but I was happy. She seemed to have turned a corner, but I also realized that that corner could likely take her in another direction at any moment in the future, so my guard was definitely put in place. She even said her neighbor up at the beach house said she really liked me, and that seem to be really meaningful to her as well. Apparently, although, unspoken, the therapist may have said things to her that made her rethink the notion that I needed to be a certain way for her to move forward with. She never mentioned that night again. August was hit and miss, because I was on vacation for 10 days with my kid, and she had family up, so I didn’t see her for three weeks until my birthday week in early September. I hadn’t seen her since about 10 August. Things had been going relatively well, overall. I may have mentioned to you that around the beginning of August, she began to change her dosage of SSRI medication, and she was telling me that she could feel her demeanor start to change. She was starting to become considerably more moody and angry. The world sucked. People sucked. It was hard to break through that at times. Some of that anger began being aimed in my direction, and I don’t do well with that. I tried to be supportive and understanding during that time, but there were episodes that stood out that I felt I had to address. I don’t know if I wrote about this before, but she had always been cantankerous when I drove her car. She’d be constantly bossing me around as to what to do, how fast to go, what lane to get in. I found that fairly triggering and annoying, so eventually, I thought it might be proactive to talk about that. I told her that it was triggering, and I don’t remember how the conversation began, but she thoughtfully asked me how her concerns about my driving could be different, but still be effective. I thought that was a great question. So I said to her what I believe. I thought that she would be better off not saying anything about my driving and just allow me to make the decisions that I thought were the best ones as I drove. For example, my car has a fairly effective cruise control, which I use all the time on highways. Her and I would be driving in her car, which does not have the same feature, and I would lose my concentration when we were gabbing away, and suddenly she would get a little cranky and point out that I was doing 15 miles an hour under the speed limit. This might happen several times over an hour long trip. So, during our conversation, I suggested to her that perhaps she would be better off just not saying anything during those moments and allow me to notice on my own, that I was going 15 miles an hour under the speed limit, and then correct it on my own, which I’m pretty confident I would have done within a few moments. Her response to that was that it seemed to go against good communication protocol, because if she didn’t say things that were irritating to her, that it would just build up in her and come out in other ways. She was unable to understand that the difficulty that was happening was more an issue of her anxiety and need to control situations rather than the mere fact that I was going 15 miles an hour under the speed limit. I didn’t see it in exactly those words, but I was hoping that she would come to that conclusion. I think it was that same weekend, we went out, and we had a great time at an amusement park in the evening. Coming home, around 10:30 PM, we were driving in a desolate stretch of highway for about 10 miles, with hardly a car anywhere, way out in the middle of nowhere. She pointed out we were coming across her former University campus, and she told me to slow down to 35 miles an hour because there’s always cops around and there could be university students crossing the road. This was 10:30 PM at night, and I knew that stretch of road, and there would be no people crossing there, since the campus is on one side of the road, and there’s nothing on the other side of the road. I thought she might have been a little panicky, so I slowed down, but only got to 39 mph. She got irritated when she noticed I wasn’t going 35 and said “why do you always have to break the rules?” And I said to her that I didn’t think I was doing that, that I saw that there was nobody around anywhere, and 39 would have been likely perfectly acceptable to any cop that was in the area. She didn’t take nicely to that response. The next day, we talked about that, and she reiterated the thought that I wasn’t listening to her, and I was disrespecting what she was asking. So I asked her gently for her to trust that I can make my own decisions in situations like that, and that I felt that I was perfectly reasonable and safe, and that if I got a ticket, it would be my ticket to take, and I would have to own it. eventually, she insisted that she was right, and that I wasn’t listening to her, and I responded by saying that there wasn’t necessarily one person that was right or wrong, but there was just two different opinions, and both were equally valid. I tried to validate her perspective, but also stood up for my own perception, which is that I was driving perfectly safe, and I should have a right to be able to drive the way I feel is reasonable without feeling like I’m being judged for it. She couldn’t seem to settle for the idea that neither one of us was perfectly more right than the other. I think she left that conversation feeling that she was more right than I was. So be it. I started to notice things change after that vacation week. I started to notice that even though we were still talking every morning, and she still seemed really happy to hear from me every morning, and we had video calls that lasted a better part of an hour every night, she started to become less demonstrative romantically. They were hardly any romantic emojis in her texts, which were always part of our dynamic. She started being considerably less complementary to me and hardly ever verbally validating. Back to my birthday weekend in early September. I hadn’t seen her in three weeks, and she came down to my house for the first gig of mine she had ever seen… We had a great day. She helped me set up and break down all of my equipment, and she got to know my band mates. She was awesome. later in the day, we went to my favorite restaurant, and I could tell she was a little stressed out at first, but after a while, she relaxed, and we had a great meal. We headed up to the beach house after that and had a beautiful night of intimacy after that. She even bought me a wonderful appliance that I needed for my house for my birthday. It was awesome. But still, even though we had a great weekend, it’s still felt like she was keeping me kind of at arms length. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and I knew she was trying hard to keep things moving forward, but I could sense there was a distance brewing. The last day of that Labor Day weekend, which would have been Monday, we were still up at the beach house, she was nasty all day. Everything sucked, people sucked. As mentioned, it started to kind of trickle toward my direction. I was hugely triggered. Here’s an example: One of the tasks that she wanted me to do, and I’ll tell you I had worked hard up at that beach house over the last bunch of times I was there to help her get it ready for the first ever rentals that she was embarking upon… She asked me if I could clean her deck. There were some rust stains from the furniture, and she had a gallon of this product that is meant to be put on a hose and sprayed onto the deck. I knew intuitively that just spraying something on those stains wasn’t going to get rid of them, so while she was off doing other things, I told her I was going to try spot cleaning some of the stains to see if I could prevent using the chemicals, and perhaps make short the order of the job. She was rummaging around doing other things, so I was out on the deck trying to spot clean a few areas, and it was working… She came by once, I believe, and kind of said, in a cranky voice… “Why don’t you just follow the directions, don’t you think they know what they are doing?“ And I reiterated I’d like to try to spot clean first to see if it’s worth going the distance. While she was off doing other things, I finished the deck in about 15 minutes, and it looked pretty good. I didn’t have to use hardly any of the chemicals. Later, in the day, she told me she was irritated at me because she thought I was disrespecting what she was asking me to do by not following the directions of the product. She seemed kind of angry about it. I said to her that it didn’t seem clear to me that she was mandating that i use the product as intended, and we agreed that other situations like that that she would try to be more clear. She also said that she felt that I disrespected the work that she had done to research the product, and she said she put a lot of work into figuring out what the best way of cleaning the deck would be. How would I know that? We agreed that we would try to communicate more effectively in such matters. The rest of the day wasn’t great. She was moody and distant and cranky. I got it, she needed to get the place cleared out for renters coming in, and she was under a deadline. I was hugely triggered all day because of that, and the other conversations. So, on the ride home to her house that night, in the dark in the car, I asked her if she had anything on her mind that she wanted to talk about, and she said she didn’t. But I did. I unleashed a lion. I told her that I couldn’t function with that kind of stress and anger, and that if we couldn’t figure out a way forward that involved not barking at each other about stuff, that I could never sustain the relationship, and that I would eventually end up snapping and leaving. I unleashed a whole torrent of frustration, but the main thing that I try to get across is that I didn’t want to be in a relationship based on problems, and that I wanted to focus on solutions, and that I feel like I’m in a good place to be able to be in a relationship That doesn’t focus on stress and problems. She was surprisingly quiet and unresponsive. She seemed to have a hard time, really hearing what I was trying to say, and kept refocusing on her belief that it was because of the things that I was doing that irritated her that she was getting stressed out. Not following directions. Always wanting to do things my own way. That kind of thing. I also suggested that what was happening could beva classic power struggle, and that there was really no point to those kinds of disagreements, because they really meant nothing in the greater scheme of things, and my interest would be to avoid those kinds of disagreements, because I was hoping that her and I could be happy and cheerful, rather than crabby and stressed out all the time. That night we agreed to try hard to be better with each other, and communicate better, so it seemed that the conversation ended well. Bizarrely, when we got back to her house at 10 PM, her mother called and insisted we drive the hour into the city to pick her up and take her to the ER, because she wasn’t doing well. We went back-and-forth with how to manage that, and I agreed that I would drive her the hour to her mothers house, and escort them to the ER. We didn’t get to the ER until a better part of midnight, and I waited out in the waiting room all night, and then eventually went out to the car to sleep. She didn’t come out to the car until 5 AM, and explained that they were going to admit her mom for pneumonia. I was hoping that my commitment to sticking with her that night would be an indication that I was there for her. I felt really connected with her on the drive home, and when we went to bed. I felt maybe we were turning a corner? I helped her with more things in the morning at her house, and then I went on my way. I asked her before I left how she felt about the dark conversation, the big conversation we had the night before, and I was almost expecting her to maybe say that she had to think about where to go with it, but she seemed pretty convinced that we would work harder, trying to overcome such disagreements. I was happy for that. We knew we weren’t going to see each other hardly at all in September, because I had my kid the following weekend, she had girls weekend the weekend after that, and then she had a wedding to go to out of town last weekend when I was free. So we didn’t see each other for the entire month. We were supposed to see each other the Thursday before she left for the wedding, but she said she was too tired, and had too much to do to prepare for two trips in a row. So she canceled. I wasn’t getting a good feeling. We were still talking every morning and every night by video. She seemed OK. She always seemed happy to hear from me and we seemed to be doing OK. Little was I to know what was coming. So, I didn’t hear that much from her during her wedding trip, but she sent a whole bunch of photos, and told me what she had been doing. We didn’t talk on the phone. On the night she returned, She texted me and told me to call her, so I did. We had a nice chat, and she asked me what I was doing the next day, which she still had off. She invited me up to her house for a midday get together. I was happy to hear that. I got up there around 11 AM, I had brought ingredients for a nice meal, she seemed happy to see me, she seemed light hearted. We made a nice meal together and sat down and ate. She gave me two Little neat trinkets that she bought for me on her trip, which I thought was awesome. I thought that was a good sign. After the meal, I helped her do some things around the house that she couldn’t do on her own, things couldn’t have really been better I thought. Things seem to be going nicely. She seemed to be in a good space, we seem to be having a good time… I was hoping it would be a little bit of a new beginning. Then, out of nowhere, she sits down at the table, where I was sitting and starts to tell me she wants to talk to me about something, and that how I must’ve noticed that she was pulling away over the last while, and that she had decided she was “losing enthusiasm” about us, and she had decided she was going to end things. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She said that over the last month of being apart she was starting to see the negative things as much of the positive. I live too far away. We were just getting on each others nerves. I wasn’t going to be able to join her on expensive vacations. She seemed clear this is what she needed to do. This seems to come out of nowhere, with no evidence in the last hour and a half that she was even thinking about anything complicated. so, I didn’t spend too much time sitting listening to what she was saying. She said she was ending things. After about 30 seconds of her speaking, I got up and began gathering my things. She followed me to the kitchen and asked me if there was really anything that I wanted to add. All I could really say to her was that I was expecting her and I to continue working on things, as we had last said when we got together last… And that we hadn’t even talked much about vacation plans, even though she had asked if I wanted to go on a skidoo trip in early January. I had told her all along I had liked the idea and we were just have to figure out tricky logistics. We hadn’t even talked about it after that. I also told her that I would have invited her to Canada several times, but it’s because of her complicated work schedule that she wasn’t able to go, nor could she go up for the yank Thanksgiving or over Christmas. But then she was expecting that I would take the week after the holidays to go on a snowmobiling trip, which I told her was complicated, but I would try to figure something else out. That’s the last we spoke of it. I begin walking down the hall and down the stairs to get my shoes, and she began to cry, and say that she knew I was going to be mad and that I was such an important person in her life and that maybe we could continue to be friends after I got over being mad, and that she knew my interest was to find a partner, since I had said that I’m getting older, and I don’t have a lot of time to waste. I told her that wasn’t my interest to just be friends, and that I knew what I wanted, and that I had no shortage of love for her, and I was sorry that she felt the way she did. She followed me out to my car, I gave her a nice hug, and told and asked her one more time. If this is what she really felt she needed to do? I said to her that she didn’t need to do this and we could continue working on things, but she said, fairly clearly that she thought this was the best thing for her to do. So, I told her if she changed her mind to let me know, and she said she would… I wished her the best and I turned around and left. I could hear her crying in her garage. I was so brokenhearted, you guys. It came out of nowhere, kind of. Obviously, there were red flags, but I had every intention of trying to stick with this girl. Despite how complicated she was, I knew she had goodness, and I knew that I was capable of trying to work hard to get through these things, despite some errors on my part. I think having my big talk with her in the car riding home that night was a mistake. I do think I needed to convey that I was feeling triggered, but I think she started to feel that there was no way that she could live up to my expectations of not being angry and stressed out. She even said during that talk, “I know I can be a jerk sometimes, but I don’t know if I can be any other way”. I think something in her head snapped that night. And I don’t think she was able to get it back. My psychologist friend said that he thought that she has not fully healed from her other dysfunctional relationships, and she was not able to meet the needs that she felt that I needed from her. He may be right. I think I may have made that conversation a little bit more demanding, and an ultimatum rather than a negotiation as to how to communicate better and strategies to reduce stress. I should have been more empathetic with her levels of stress, and the demands placed on her from her family, her career, and the properties she owns. She has a lot going on, and I think she probably was starting to see me as more of part of that stress rather than some thing that was bringing her happiness. It’s only been 24 hours right about now since I left her house, but I’m still completely distraught and depressed. I just don’t get how something that seemed like it had so much promise and beauty turned so sour like that. I think many of you may have predicted it. I have gone no contact, and I will not be reaching out to her. Part of me desperately wants her to reach out and try to make sense of what has happened, but I’m not predicting it will happen. That lady has so much goodness in her, and her and I have so much goodness between his. I just don’t know how to get past this, or whether I want to. Should I be reaching out to her? Part of me thinks this might be for the best, though, because there is part of me that thinks that I was starting to be taken for granted… There were times where I feel like I was just taking up space for her… Keeping her company on her long rides… Helping her reduce stress at her Beachhouse… I do think she appreciated those things, but I tend to think that she began to rely on them and felt a little bit entitled to that kind of effort from me, based on what she brings to the table. That may be a bit of a stretch, but she does have a streak of entitlement, and does expect people to bend over backwards for her at times. That’s not a good fit for me either. If you’ve gotten this far, you can see how difficult this ride has been. I put a lot of effort into making that girl happy. Probably too much. Attraction probably diminishes when one partner tries too hard to appease the other. there are online therapists that believe that a little time and space could make a difference between her and I, and if she begins to believe that maybe she could lose me for good, that she could reach out. At the risk of being uncharacteristically bold, I was really good to her, and we had so much going for us. It’s hard to imagine that she lost sight of that, based on the things that she was saying. I guess I should stop for now. This is been a friggin long self indulgent post. I don’t know what my question would even be… - Should I even hope to hear from this girl again? This is a girl that I’ve spoken to at least twice every day for almost the last five months. How do you just let something like that go? How could she be able to just let something like that go without any kind of real negotiation? - Did me walking out fairly quickly after she told me she was going to end it perhaps send a wrong message? Is it possible she wanted to feel my passion, come back and try to beg her not to do it? She certainly knew I didn’t want her to leave. I made that pretty clear. I told her I had no shortage of love for her just before I walked out the door. I don’t know what more I could’ve done other than beg, and I wasn’t about to do that. I did say when I was gathering my things that I had no interest in trying to talk someone out of staying with me who wasn’t interested in staying with me. I think she would have known that was the perspective I was going to take. She had discovered back in July that she believed she was a disorganized attachment style, or anxious attachment… Same thing. She was quite amazed when she saw videos, and read about that attachment disorder, and how it applied to her. Some of the videos I have watched describe that attachment style as being one where the person that is suffering from it will often break off perfectly good relationships when they start to get a little more complicated, just because they can’t manage the internal conflict that comes along with it. After a while, those people will often try to rekindle the relationship, when they realize that they had made a mistake breaking it off, and that perhaps they did so out of internal conflict, and not because they didn’t love each other. I have no doubt that she loves me and is probably quite distraught right now. But as she said the night that I lied in bed with her, sometimes love just isn’t enough. That may be where the story ends, who knows. I probably loved her as much, if not more than anybody I have loved in my life. But I guess sometimes love is not enough. thanks for reading.