[Wendy]

Heidi,

Wow, thank you for checking in with me. I’ve been busy with work and so have not had a chance to update this thread nor to really sit with my feelings. Also, I’ve been watching some Aubrey Marcus and Rich Roll podcasts so that I can respond to your prior post. I need to watch one or two more podcasts — and in particular I’d like to watch podcasts that feature female guests — before I respond more fully.

Something else that’s preventing me from really processing this breakup: He continues to say sexually provocative things in his emails and we are planning to go biking tomorrow. As of this writing I’m not planning to get back together with him, but I do miss having him in my life and so I have no problem spending tomorrow afternoon with him as a friend.

Ok, more later.

W

[Wendy]

Well, everything we’ve been discussing has become moot. After I asked my ex yesterday to clarify his intent behind his recent emails that gave off the tone that he was hitting on me, he reiterated that he was letting me go. So we are really broken up this time, and I’m ok with that. (As I was three weeks ago when he initially broke up with me, although back then I thought he might unwind the breakup.)

I fetched my items from his house, and we finished our conscious uncoupling and are remaining friends. We already plan to celebrate my upcoming birthday with dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. The last several extended conversations I’ve had with him post-breakup have been so easy and enjoyable. With no expectations on either side, it’s very easy for me to appreciate our strong friendship and mutual respect.

I’ll continue to self-introspect to find deeper answers to the questions you asked, and I’ll hope to meet a better woman on the other side.

Thank you very much for this conversation, Heidi, and I’ll be reading your answers in other posts to see where I might add more tools to my emotional toolbox.

Be well,
W

[Wendy]

Heidi,

No, I’ve never been with an emotionally intelligent man, nor have I worked with one professionally (I’m a lawyer), nor had one as my client. If I really think about it, I would say that pretty much every man I’ve been exposed to has had some sort of maladaptive emotional/relational issue. From my limited time with him, my late uncle by marriage might have come closest to being emotionally intelligent, but I suspect he had some underlying emotional issue that was not on view given that he was married to my judgmental, paranoid victim of an aunt. I imagine he lost a part of himself being married to her. But, if I were to meet an emotionally intelligent man, would I want to jump his bones? Again, the physical attraction has to come first; otherwise, it’s a non-starter. Is there a man who is a non-religious public figure that you think comes close to being an emotionally intelligent man? I’m trying to figure out how this unicorn presents.

(A tangent: You know, I started reading the “Talk About Marriage” blog when I was trying to figure out my ex’s marriage. I still read it because it’s one of those “can’t look away” sites. Obviously most of the men who post there are highly dysfunctional. But the sprinkling who are not, the longtime posters, appear to have had to walk through fire — intense marital/individual counseling — to get to that level of emotional intelligence, and it was only because their marriages were on the line. Therefore, it seems that men have to be pushed HARD to reach an acceptable level of emotional intelligence, the kind of intelligence that leads to a healthy relationship with a woman but is not necessary for just living day-to-day life as a man. Dr. Gottman posited that only 35% of men have emotional intelligence, and I would imagine that a large percentage of those men had to walk through fire to develop it. What about the other 65%? Should we just leave them to their MGTOW or Incel movements because women can’t feel emotionally safe with them? 65% is a large number of men behaving … like men. So is the problem with men or with women?)

As to your second question: Recall that I was off the dating market for a very very long time (measured in multiples of 5 years). It wasn’t because I couldn’t get a date; it’s because I didn’t need one. While I had dated briefly prior to taking myself off the market, nothing wowed me about being coupled up (granted, I chose my dates based on my physical attraction to them, so we were never compatible in other areas) and I had an enjoyable single life that I focused on my career and jet-setting around the world. I remember during a trip to Vancouver, I was dining at C Restaurant and seated next to a married couple. I overhead their conversation, and I thought, sheesh, long-term couples are boring. God save me from that. My greatest fear in life is boredom. Inevitably, of course, my ex and I have shared many a boring conversation, and my mind wanders away when we hit those slowdowns in our conversation (so that’s me being emotionally juvenile). Also, throughout my life, my closest friends have been guys. So there is no mystery to guys for me, nothing that makes me want to draw nearer to them to try to figure them out — unless they’re tormented. Ah, then they’re interesting!

Early in my relationship with my ex (whom I met by chance), when he was still grieving his marriage, there was obviously a high chance that our relationship would end. I stayed, however, partly to continue getting great sex, but also to learn more about myself; to learn how much pain I could withstand and to test my resilience. I’d never experienced heartbreak up to that point, and I figured that’s an experience every well-lived person should have. With the continued time spent with my ex, however, he eventually put his divorce behind him and I grew to love him, and so here we are today. That I continue to choose him could partly be due to inertia, or because I place great importance on sexual attraction (again, my age cohort is past its physical prime), or because a romantic relationship has never been a priority for me, or perhaps because I’m actually avoidant. (I did take the attachment styles test, and the results showed me to be secure with a little bit of anxious. Of course, I took the test in my second year with my ex.)

The fact that I would choose a man who is not as emotionally high-functioning as I am is certainly about me. But maybe all of this is about me in the larger sense of the phrase. What do you think?

W

[Wendy]

Heidi, this last post of yours really resonated with me. Everything you wrote about my guy is consistent with my experience of him. I do wish I didn’t feel generally that he is stuck in a child mentality, but perhaps it’s because I’m conditioned to it that it’s more of a very low thrum in the background than anything that actively bothers me — except when it actively bothers me! Which are the times when I’m triggered. Also, most of the time he’s being wonderful and performing acts of service for me or speaking my love language, so his issues are nowhere in sight. (Oh, and I do want to correct a misunderstanding: The last time he broke up with me was 4 or 5 years ago. He has made improvements regulating his emotions.)

Do you believe that some people are born with a negative, glass-half-empty disposition? If not, does it get imprinted on a person in childhood? He warned me in the beginning that he is a negative person and that he believes he got that trait from his mother. His story about his mother is that she was crazy and controlling, but she was also crazy about him. After I wrote my last email I had a Eureka moment about why I am drawn to my ex and his self-loathing (my own take is that his judgment/blaming/victim mentality ultimately spring from self-loathing). Because I have romanticized his plight! He is like the brooding male hero in the bodice rippers that I read as a teenager — a tormented but good-hearted man who is redeemed and brought out of his darkness and into the light by the heroine! As I have already said, my Florence Nightingale days are behind me. And while I know I can’t redeem my guy (I’ve ready too many relationship/psych blogs to believe otherwise) — and I don’t want to because I have a demanding career and don’t have the time, selflessness or nurturing energy to do so — he is my Heathcliff. (At least I think he is, as I’ve never read “Wuthering Heights.”) After he broke up with me the third time, I recall expressing to my cousin my appreciation of him, because he was a very good man with, alas, a tragic Shakespearean flaw. While my guy can’t hold a candle to Hamlet, he has just enough torment in him to be fascinating rather than repellent to me. But also triggering, alas.

My statement about me being hypergamous is indicative of an additional requirement that goes into my selection of men, which is why finding someone higher functioning than my ex will not be easy for me. I am only attracted to men who are my equal or better because I’m looking for a man I can admire for his accomplishments. I suppose status is part of it (although I create my own status), but it’s really more about education level and interesting life experiences. To be attracted, I need to be mentally stimulated and interested in the man’s life story. That said, I once read that my astrological sign enjoys upscale travel and surroundings, and I do, and I appreciate a fellow traveler who does as well. Because I have been providing those finer things for myself most of my adult life, I need the man to be able to provide those things for himself and not count on me to do so. Therefore, financially, I think he would have to at least be at my level. I’ve spent nearly an hour writing this last paragraph (!), trying to figure out why I’m wired this way, but that’s about all the insight I have into my hypergamy.

I will take on board everything you’ve written about my ex and really consider how (and if) I might stop being triggered now that you’ve put a more precise diagnosis to his issues.

Thank you, Heidi.

W

[Wendy]

Heidi, first off, thank you for continuing this conversation with me. I feel privileged to have access to a relationship coach of your caliber.

The one thing I will say about telling my story is that, because I am letting it all out within a short period of time — and yet only in drips and drabs — and I am purposefully talking about problems, my ex sounds worse on paper than he actually is. He definitely has a victim mentality, I agree — and in a way he would also agree, although he calls it “sour grapes.” I have pointed out to him more than once that he is way past the age of being able to blame his parents or his working-class roots for his dissatisfaction with the arc of his life, and he acknowledges that I may be right but that he will not give up his “sour grapes.” For him, it’s his sour grapes that drive him to continue to try to achieve in life and to prove his naysayers (including his deceased parents) wrong. People find their motivation in different ways and different places, so I can’t say that he’s flat-out wrong for where/how he is seeking his. I have cautioned him that his sour grapes may lead to bitterness, but he claims that he is not bitter and I really can’t detect any bitterness in him either. (Resentful and judgmental, yes, but not bitter. Maybe I’m just parsing words.) Fortunately, he is not insulted when I say these things to him but instead thinks I’m wise and well-adjusted. His sour grapes might actively turn off another person, but I am attracted to his strong sense of purpose and desire to remain relevant, and I accept that his sour grapes (his are the sourest, he says, although always with a laugh) are the catalyst for his drive.

I used to be the Florence Nightingale type, as so many young women are. However, that was over 25 years ago, when I was more selfless than I am now, although I concede I may still have some tiny vestige of that left. I am aware of the dynamic of which you write — choosing a guy who is insecure so that I can feel better about myself — so from the first time he divulged his lack of confidence and that he carries a chip on his shoulder (on the third date, wow!), I have actively observed our relational dynamic to see how his insecurity would manifest and whether it would prove too much for me to tolerate. In the beginning when he exhibited insecurity, I became turned off and pulled away emotionally (and, yes, he noticed, although he did not attribute my pulling away to the correct reason). Now I build him up because it seems what a caring partner should do, and I do love him so I want to let him know that I accept his frailties (even though they can turn me off). Does that make sense? Is that uncommon? One thing I will say about myself is that I take almost nothing personally (so that could be why I don’t really feel that I’m choosing my insecure ex to feel needed, etc.). I marvel that people, including my ex, think that so much of another person’s actions is about them or that others would waste their bandwidth giving any thought to what they (my ex) do. It speaks to some real self-absorption, and, yes, my ex is self-absorbed. But that’s the other side of the coin of his purpose-driven life, no? Also, because my LL is physical touch, could it simply be that being needed doesn’t do it for me?

I am sometimes surprised by my ex’s emotional fragility given that he has had a therapist for so many decades. But of course, therapy only gives one the tools to better manage one’s issues, not to cure them. His therapist is the leading expert on Rollo May, and I assume their sessions have all been to resolve my ex’s existential issues, which I imagine would just cause him to focus on his authenticity and therefore only relate to his problems in terms of how they prevent him from living an authentic life. I’m just guessing obviously, but I know that my ex has read the works of several philosophers-lite (Bertrand Russell, Alain de Botton) whose works I also have read to try to understand my ex’s perspective. All of this is to say that I believe my ex is trying to grow and that he’s been on his growth path since long before he met me (he considers himself to be on the self-actualization rung of Maslow’s pyramid), but I think he’d be better off reading the works of James Bauer or Esther Perel to grow his EQ.

As for me choosing someone who is more my equal emotionally and is as high-functioning as myself: Well, first, that person has to be attractive enough for me to want to jump his bones on at least second sight (in my age cohort it won’t be first sight). I can tell you that I can count on one hand the men I’ve met in my extensive travels around the globe whom I’ve found attractive enough to be curious about having sex with them. I guess most people would label me as avoidant for being attracted to an infinitesimally tiny number of men, but attraction is a core need of mine and I simply have high/different standards for what I find attractive (although I’ve loosened them in the last 10 years due to the realities of aging). The irony is that my ex is not my physical type, but I still was curious about having sex with him. Also, he’s childless, as am I, which is a huge plus in my book.

Next, I just haven’t run across that many (or any, really) emotionally high-functioning men out there in the world. I know they’re on YouTube, interviewing Esther Perel, or hiring themselves out as relationship coaches to women, but they’re not in my world. And my world is one filled with people who have great academic and professional accomplishments under their belt — and still I’ve noticed emotional issues in them that I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Oh, and finally, I’m hypergamous.

Another long stream of consciousness, but I think what I’ve taken from it is that my ex is still my best bet for a man to whom I am attracted, with whom I can have engaging conversations, and who I know is trying, if not always succeeding, to be a better man for himself and, by osmosis, for me. So now I have to find a way to clear my triggers and better navigate his triggers (better-quality sleep would certainly go a long way toward muting his triggers, but that’s actually easier said than done). I hope reading this wasn’t too frustrating for you; I think you may have had your fingers crossed that I would go in a different direction.

Thank you for making me drill down, Heidi.

W

[Wendy]

Hi Heidi,

I agree with everything you say, and I do actually TRY to conduct myself in my relationship the way you advised. I was trying to keep my previous post a reasonable length and it was late when I wrote it, so I did not go into any details about what triggered/triggers me in my relationship.

The times when I got angry or turned off by my ex are when he was saying mean, judgmental things about my dad (holds a Ph.D in EE), my sister (with two degrees from a Top 5 school, she owns and is running a successful e-commerce business) and my friend (Harvard Business School grad who last year became the COO of a global footwear company). (I know I am deflecting, but do you see his pattern and his triggers?) So in the sense that the triggers are about me wanting him to change and be more like me (confident, self-validating, happy, positive, well-adjusted, with high self-esteem) — and he has expressed that he wishes he were more like me — I agree with that. However, I recognize that, with his self-confessed shame and anger about his working-class roots and being born to “knuckle-head” parents (his words, not mine) that he feels deprived him of the chance to have accomplished more in life than he has, he will always be insecure and resentful when it comes to his place in the world and I will always have to build him up if I want to stay with him. So my indulging myself during my 24-hour self-soothing period by thinking about all the things I’d like to say to him are because, in the immediate aftermath, I am no longer attracted to him. At least in these triggering episodes, I am not thinking that he does not care about me or he is not emotionally available to me (nor do I project that his comments reflect upon me (e.g., the company I keep)); it’s the opposite. I am not emotionally available to him, and obviously he senses this. But, 24 hours later, I am attracted to and emotionally available to him again after I’ve rid myself of my resentful feelings and am able to access my compassion and appreciation for him. I have called him out on the negative, judgmental things he has said about those close to me, and he actively tries not to do that anymore. (He still makes negative judgments about others, however, which is a turn-off but not triggering.)

Now, the one triggering subject that is about me is his ex-wife. And that was the reason for the 6th breakup. Over these past 7 years they have remained in close contact, and she has stayed with him when she is in town and he always has dinner with her when he is visiting her state for golf lessons. That’s fine with me, and I really am ok with her staying with him while in town. I suspect that they may even sleep in the same bed (she prefers a softer mattress as well, and the mattress in the guest bedroom is really really firm), but I trust him and know that he would not jeopardize our relationship. However, what I am not so ok with is that he tells me to stay away from his house while she is in town and that he will never let me meet this woman that he says is like family to him (and claims that she doesn’t care to meet me). This makes me think, “Is he hiding me or is he hiding her?” I do think it’s the latter, as he has proudly introduced me to his family and all the other people in his circle.

When I first met my ex and did some internet sleuthing about him, I learned that his ex-wife is 19 years his junior (and 11 years my junior). When he broke up with me the second time, I went into major sleuthing mode and learned about her very dysfunctional background (the things once can learn from public records!). However, she is in a profession that has a large social media presence, so I also got an eyeful of her hotness. (My ex also tells a story of Tiger Woods offering her a ride in his golf cart when he saw her and the captain of the Ryder Cup team ogling her. I know he told me these incidents not to make me jealous, but because they made him feel good that he had a wife that other men coveted. Given his low self-esteem, I couldn’t fault him for reliving memories that built him up.) As I wrote above, I have high self-esteem and I know I am very attractive and that my ex thinks so as well. Still, I will acknowledge that every now and then I get tinges of insecurity about his ex-wife’s relative youth and hotness because I’m menopausal and therefore I can now “pinch an inch,” which sucks.

However, my greater reason for feeling some insecurity about his ex-wife is that she continues to depend on him in many ways. Like almost all men, my ex feels really good when he’s needed, and I am a successful professional who can obviously fend for myself (my house is worth more than his house). Early in our relationship I found a dead skunk on my property. I buried it myself and felt really good that I was able to carry out such a grisly task. When I mentioned it to him, he asked me why I didn’t call him over to take care of the skunk. I can only make him feel so needed by allowing him to do all the driving, help me clear snow from my driveway (which he does not enjoy), and cook for me. All of which I make sure to appreciate (except for the driving; I think I’ve started to take that for granted).

Back to the 6th breakup: When he told me his ex-wife would be in town to help him clear out some things from storage (for which he would pay her some much needed money), and that therefore we would not be seeing one another that weekend, and he refused my request to meet her, I responded that we have a tenuous relationship. It was obviously not the right thing to say — particularly when he was bringing over something he had cooked — but it was what came out of my mouth in the moment. I had only intended to convey that I was hurt that he would not let me meet family, but I guess he took it to mean that I was about to break up with him. So he broke up with me one hour later. If both of us had not had pressing things we needed to attend to at the time, I would have had more time to think through my response. But the heart of my being triggered, and the story I am telling myself, is that (1) he will not share an aspect oh his past life with me because (2) he does not trust me enough to be non-judgmental about his past choice of spouse, (3) but if he does not trust me then we do not have the relationship I am trying to create, which means (4) our backgrounds are too different for me to bridge and he actually is better suited to someone like his ex-wife, dysfunction and all.

Oh, my head hurts writing all of this down. It has come out almost as a stream of consciousness, for which I apologize. After our 2.5-hour phone call two days ago, I felt really really good about the friendship my ex and I enjoy. The conversation was so comfortable. Because for me there was no expectation of anything else on either side. (He said in his post-breakup email that he felt I was starting to take his generosity and kindness for granted. His LL is Acts of Service while mine is Physical Touch, and this was three days into his ex-wife being in town to help him clean out his things from storage.) I’m not clear yet on what I’m going to do, and in the meantime he sent me an email that contains something suggestive about one of our sexual props.

W

[Wendy]

Thank you for your quick reply, Heidi! And at 3:26 a.m.! That’s really going above and beyond, so thank you.

Just a quick update: As I predicted, my ex found a reason to reach out to me today, which was to inquire about the welfare of my parents. We saw my parents three weeks ago on a trip out west, and they’re in a worrisome state of decline. That said, I think my ex does have a genuine concern for them, as he has sort of a caretaking personality and is concerned about the welfare of everyone who has passed through his life in some meaningful way. We had an easy, genial phone conversation for about 2.5 hours, catching one another up on the things we’ve been doing since the fateful day he broke up with me. Something to note: During our call he continued to address me by the endearment he uses for me (which is simply an infantalized version of my name (it’s not as bad as that sounds, really!)). Also, he told me that he bought a new living room rug, kitchen rug and foyer sofa. The significance of this is that he uses shopping therapy to deal with his upset. (When his wife separated from him he bought a house (although he later backed out of the deal) and nearly bought a new car; when he met up with her for the first time post-divorce, he bought a new TV even though he’d insisted for months that his four-year-old TV was fine and that he had no plan to replace it.)

As for how I respond/handle him when I’m triggered: I go quiet and pull away from him emotionally. If I’m hurt, it’s because I’m experiencing that anvil sitting on my chest that Allison Armstrong so accurately describes and I’m simply struggling to breathe. If I’m angry or I’m turned off, it’s because I start detaching from him emotionally and so I look at everything else in the room except him. Although I do not communicate to him what is happening for me (it’s too hard to do in the moment), he recognizes that when I go quiet that things are not right between us (sometimes he knows the reason why and sometimes not), and we’ll part company for the evening. Early on when I became moderately triggered I let him know that I needed 24 hours to work through my upset and that I would be fine afterwards. That’s our SOP, and he once attempted to lighten my upset by calling to say that he recognized that 24 hours hadn’t passed yet but he was checking in with me to see how I was.

(An aside: My self-soothing when he’s angered me or turned me off starts by me mentally going through everything that’s wrong with him and all the hurtful things I’d like to say to him. Once I’ve performed my internal monologue to get my anger out of my system, then I ruminate on his good qualities and I think up strategies for trying to make sure I am not angered or turned off in the same way again (which is usually that I simply won’t put myself in those situations or have those kinds of conversations again). Is it a bad thing that I indulge myself by thinking about the unkind things I’d like to say to him when I’m internally venting?)

My ex is highly teachable, I must say. During one not-so harmonious meal during a trip abroad this year, I grew exasperated by his negative comments about the resort I’d booked for us and I retorted that it seemed he looked for things in life to complain about. He now catches himself when he is about to complain about something. He is better every time we get back together and he takes on board what I tell him. Just as I take on board when he has something to say about my behavior; it’s just that three out of the four times he has expressed dissatisfaction with my behavior it was after he had already broken up with me. (That fourth time was a stroke of luck, I think. He called me after our date but reached my answering machine and did not leave a message. Had I not heard the phone ring and checked the Caller ID and called him back, I think he would have stewed all night and I would have been the recipient of a breakup email the following morning.) Now that I think about it, once when I asked him why he didn’t let me know that he wanted to see me more often during the week — he only disclosed this when I asked him point-blank what I could do to make the relationship better for him — he said that’s not the kind of thing a man says.

Thanks for calling me out on claiming that I accept my ex’s emotional baggage when clearly I don’t accept all of it. I do realize that no one is baggage free, which is why I’ve tried to focus on how well he treats me.

I think I am focusing on the 6 breakups in 7 years. It makes me feel like the punchline to a bad joke. I’ve already written a novella here, so I’ll think about the points you raised in your last paragraph and see if I can come up with a satisfactory answer.

Thank you again, Heidi. You always respond to posters with such care, which is a wonderful talent.

W

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