Ex wants to meet - instead, I imposed a communication break until 2018. Right thing to do?

[MrsCumberbatch]

My ex broke up with me 2 1/2 months ago and it was a very tough one for me. He has a history of on and off relationships, acknowledges he has some deep underlying issue which causes him to react with a flight response if things do not go perfect. He is 36, musician, extremely talented, deeply romantic but also emotionally very closed - he is very scared of failing, his brother is a bad example for him and his two nephews have suffered for years from a terrible divorce war. The entire family still suffers from it. Our relationship was a bumpy one but very serious at the same time - he broke up with me before, we got back together. The past 2 months were the happiest we have ever had - he even took me on a holiday to where he grew up and we visited his parents and family - I was the first girl he ever took home. He told his friends he felt so happy that this dark phase of wrecked relationships was finally over - I know that he genuinely believed that.

 

But we broke up again and the breakup did not go quite like a normal one. We had a fight about something minor on one of our happiest days, he is very sensitive so normally takes him a few days to get over it. A few days later we had our one year anniversary and we had made plans to do something special - it was even his idea! The night before he had a gig and came back late and he didn’t set an alarm - when I called him the next day he sounded tired and distant and said maybe we needed to change plans because he needed some time to sort himself out first. I made a slightly annoyed remark about his lie-in (‚why can’y you once in a year set an alarm if we made plans..‘) and things happened from there. He just burst out and told me that now I had all these expectations around this special day he felt it was doomed and we would just end up fighting, I reacted angrily and said he couldn’t go through this whole doubts thing again and after a year he had to know where he stands. We fought on the phone and did not see each other that day.

 

The next day I received a text. He told me he wanted to deeply apologize for his bad behavior and that he really wanted to break this cycle (the on and off one) and he wanted to make it work. And that he needed some time and hoped we could talk soon.

 

Things went all wrong from there and I won’t ever understand why I did not just act, drive to his house and insist we had to talk. I guess I was hurt in my pride. He went into hiding, made music all night, drank too much (we have common friends so some things I know), I sent angry messages, at some point he said „I do not know what’s best“. After a while I sent him a long email which was basically telling him that he had to deal with his issues - possibly get professional help - and acknowledge that this was all within him and not due to the relationship, and he could not keep throwing every relationship away because of such a minor fight and he had to stop blaming the relationship rather than realizing this was all caused by issues within himself. And that every relationship meant work and was sometimes a bit bumpy. He broke up with me via text message a few days later (I had to push for a reply) saying that he know he needed to work on his issues but as he didn’t feel moved to change he concluded that this relationship wasn’t the one.

 

He still had some of my things and the next three weeks was all pure emotional chaos because of that… I wanted my stuff back and told him he could drop it at a cafe nearby my house, he made some vague attempts to meet …. sent me a few confusing, random texts… in the end I insisted he’d drop my things off while I wasn’t around, told him that after this mess of a breakup I felt so disrespected I could not normally talk to him right now and that maybe before the years’ end we could meet simply because I doubted my judgment of him so heavily that I could not look back positively and I didn’t want to end the year looking back onto our relationship as a big mistake. I thought once I had my stuff back things would dry out. I was wrong. He started reaching out to me.

 

In the past weeks he increasingly sought contact. He would ask me how I was, share things about his life and his music, trouble with his brother. He told me he wanted to meet but had his mum & dad around for a while. When they were over he texted me and said „I know you were right, I want to become more mature and grow up - my parents are telling me the same“. Sometimes I replied, sometimes I didn’t. If I didn’t reply he would follow up with „hope I didn’t say something wrong“ or similar. One night I was at a party and had a few drinks and he messaged me again and I felt sassy and replied „miss you too (sometimes)“ - just as a joke about his daily messaging. Two days later he told me he missed me. Three days ago he asked me whether I thought we could meet sometime soon and that it would be really lovely to see me.

 

I sent him a long, warm response back. Told him it was good he finally wanted to grow up („Peter Pan“) and that it would be lovely to meet some time but that I felt there was a lot of turmoil right now and that the Christmas period wasn’t helping to see things clearly. I did not want to meet up now because it probably throw us back without any new insights. If he wanted to work on himself then maybe what he needed was a time out to focus on himself rather than daily dealings with the ex and as these things don’t happen over night and that it’s hard to understand emotions if you are in a constant turmoil. We had broken up but never had a real time out and that I really needed that. I told him we had to stop messaging and that I wanted to use the rest of the year to focus on myself and hopefully in the New Year we could talk. He reacted very well to it, thanked me for the lovely message and said that he understands and knows I am a very wise woman. And that he would think about my words.

 

I felt that it was the right thing to do, to finally make a decision rather than to continue playing a passive part in this process. And it was probably the right point in time to do so. It is going to be very very hard to spend Christmas and New Year’s without any communication. Obviously, just three days in, I miss him like hell and I will miss him even more over Christmas. Last night he shared a cover version of one of our favorite songs on his artist page - he is really trying to not make this easy for me.

 

I am trying to continue living my life and spend time with friends, I went on a few dates, I am getting on ok. But there still is this picture in my head that maybe one day he will finally grow up and get his act together… he’s a boy in so many ways, but inside the boy I am seeing the man I want to grow old with. I never had this feeling with anyone else.

 

Advice anyone?

[charity]

All I will say is, I've had this situation with the man child musician. A lovely, clever, fun, considerate man. 7 years together and two children. He has never 'grown up'. Breaking up over every little thing, always put himself first. This is who he is. Not who is is NOW, but who he is full stop. And I've made excuses for how he is, his family life- a tough time etc etc. But eventually you realise that it doesn't go away and he will always be this way. Now I am a single parent to two children and he is still the same. He recently got engaged and a few weeks later he finished it with her. Same old thing, I've seen it all with him. Now I have pity for any women that gets involved with him.

My advice, don't be with someone in the hope that they'll change.