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But now that he’s come back and told me he feels this way about me , only to now be asking me to postpone plans and put off seeing me to cool off from everything is in line with what you’re saying he needs to do , work this out emotionally before he comes badk. Let’s talk about this a little more. It’s a little suspect with what he is saying about NOT having feelings for his ex anymore, because he has those feelings for you. To me, he has replaced his feelings for her, with feelings for you. What I wonder, is if you were not in the picture, would he still have feelings for his ex? That’s obviously something you are him will NEVER know because that’s just not how the situation has turned, but I can tell you it would be a common thing and wouldn’t be that far off the mark. So be careful with him and BE CAUTIOUS!!! He said sooooo many things to you before and wanted a commitment with you before, but then wasn’t honest about what he was going through. No doubt he was scared and confused – as any person would be. My issue is that he didn’t communicate anything to you until YOU brought it up.
My other concern is that he says he doesn’t have feelings for you and that he wants to be with YOU, yet he is still asking for space to cool off from everything. That just means he is still in a confused place and not really sure what he wants to do. He absolutely needs some time and I’m glad he is asking for that right now. He gets points for that one!
My fear still lies in the fact that he said he knows I want a long term relationship that he needs to make sure he’s ready for , and I didn’t realize expressing that could push him away as I could see how both sides of this situation could be stressful for a man and cause him to run. I understand your fear. It’s valid AND the best way to master ANY fear, is to step into it. You DO NOT want to let fear run your life or make decisions for you. If you did NOT have any fear and you fully and completely trusted that however things turn out, you are going to be okay, then would you be spending any time trying to figure out how to influence his choice and come back to you? Nope. You would just trust in HIS process and trust that you are going to fall in love again, whether it’s with him or someone else, and all is going to work out in the way it’s meant to work out. Your desire to get techniques, to learn how to encourage him to come back to you, is being driven by your fear. When fear gets activated, our need to control the outcomes will elevate. I would like to encourage you to face your fear. Work with it, embrace it, get to know it and get control over your fear instead of letting fear control you and finding ways to have the outcome you want. Just something to think about.
I’m wondering if there’s anything I can to do invite less fear into what stepping back into a connection with me would be . So that it doesn’t feel like this massive decision that needs to be made upfront Well in a way, you have set it up that way. You want a commitment. You want a guy who is 100% available and able to offer that to you. And that’s absolutely okay to want that. And you should not accept anything less than that. But you are saying you just want him to explore with you again, which means you guys would be taking a step backwards from where you ended. That’s not really possible. You guys instantly connected and you guys really invested in each other right from the beginning. What I would suggest is to set some boundaries for how you guys connect. You could BOTH agree to set some ground rules, so as to take the pressure off of him. So maybe you guys only see each other once per week. No texting or talking in between. That’s what date night is for. No intimacy. Your goal is to just build a friendship and really take things slow. You could maybe text and invite him to a cup of coffee or to happy hour or something and then present him with this. “I understand you are in a place right now where you need some space to figure things out. I get it and I appreciate that you are asking for some time. Yes, I want to be in a long term relationship, but I also understand that you may not be ready for that right now. So I want to make a proposal. How about we completely focus on our friendship. How about we just meet up once a week and have dinner somewhere together. We can just talk about all things life and then head home. No intimacy, no texting or talking in between, other than setting up our next dinner plans. Let’s stay connected, but let’s keep it light. That way, you can still have your space and we can get to know each other again, but in a different way while also taking things a lot slower this time. Let’s commit to 8 dinner dates and then we can talk about how we BOTH are feeling at that point. What do you think?”
How does this approach feel for you? This way, you are NOT compromising on what you need and want from him. You are still getting to know him AND he still gets to have some time to process how he is feeling about everything without the pressure.
Heidi
Here are the books I recommended: They also have a TON of information, so read through their blogs and videos etc. This is an INCREDIBLE resource for you to really start to understand what a healthy relationship looks like, far beyond the feeling of love.
This book can really help you make a much stronger connection to yourself and build self-love. She offers a lot of techniques and methods to help you work through disappointments, traumas, and she also offers a lot of relationship advice on her blog. She also is a good person to learn from and is spot on! https://www.michaelaboehm.com/the-book/
There are A LOT more experts I can recommend, so if these don’t resonate for you, let me know!
Heidi
Oh my goodness! DO NOT be embarrassed at all that it hurts so much!!! It’s the beauty of your heart. For people who deeply invest, it also means that they deeply hurt as well. The hurt just shows your strength to open up and connect. The hurt just shows the value of him and what he meant to you. You loved him and you built your entire future around him, so the hurt is FAR beyond just the loss of him, it’s also about the loss of your future. You thought you were done and had finally “figured it out and done it right this time.” And that didn’t turn out to be the case and it crushes the heart. So again, be kind and gentle and compassionate with yourself. Just like if your kid came home crying and really hurt from an event at school, you wouldn’t shame them and tell them they should feel embarrassed for crying!! You would hug them. You would comfort them. You would encourage them. You would be gentle with them. YOU DESERVE THE SAME LEVEL OF LOVE!!! This is how self-love and self-esteem is built. It’s moments like these where you learn how to fill yourself up with YOUR love instead of doing what you are used to doing and outsourcing that love from a man. Does this make sense??
I can see a man being scared that jumping into a relationship could bring similar emotional pain or challenges and pressure and stress. Yes, you are 100% correct in this. Being that he is still dealing with some unresolved feelings, it means he is NOT 100% emotionally available for you in the way that you want. By stepping into a relationship with a guy that has not let go of his last love, means you are choosing to be with a guy whose heart is NOT 100% yours. You will be sharing him with her. Is that what you want?
I just want an opportunity to show how it would be with me , I need a chance. Yes, it would be different with you, but he will have problems with you as well. Just because you are a different experience doesn’t mean that you are a better experience for him. You guys have only known each other for a handful of months and it’s NOT enough time to actually know how well you guys move through life together. That takes a lot more time than 5 months.
Because I agree with everyone you’ve said and I’ve told it to myself but isn’t the best things worth fighting for and is there a way to get what I want. Let’s look at this a little more. You are agreeing with everything I am saying as you have said the same thing to yourself, but then it gets completely disregarded with the 2nd half of your statement by saying “aren’t the best things worth fighting for? They cannot BOTH exist. You cannot say that this guy needs to figure himself out and know that he is not 100% emotionally available for you and then call him the BEST experience that is worth fighting for. You guys were great for a period of time, until you weren’t. He was getting all cozied up with you, spending a TON of time with you, all while still having feelings for another woman. What does that tell you about him? You believe that is the BEST thing worth fighting for? Who knows how real it was for him. He easily could have met you, really liked you and decided to throw himself full on into a relationship with you, not because he was available for you, but because he was running from his feelings for her. It would be a way of “forcing” himself to get over his ex by being with you. It could have been a passive aggressive way of him showing her that he has moved on, knowing it might hurt her. I’m not saying any of this IS what happened. I’m just saying that the one thing you DO know, is that he had feelings for her still, all the while building a relationship with you. He KNEW he wasn’t 100% invested in you. He KNEW that his heart was not 100% yours, but didn’t say anything about it until you brought up the conversation. Who knows why he chose to do that to you, all you know is that he did and it’s exposing his lack of integrity, no matter how wonderful he is and no matter how wonderful the connection felt for you. So again, would you say that it’s the BEST thing worth fighting for when looking at it from this perspective?
I mean the course literally advertised itself as helping you to get someone back , why would the advice now be to continue this logic of he’s not chasing me so bye … Yes, I know this is how the course is advertised. What we do here in the forum though, is to help bring deeper truths to a situation and try to help a person best navigate whatever is happening…even if that means saying goodbye and NOT getting what they want. When it comes to love Laura, what you want may not actually be the best thing for you. If you were a parent and your kid was screaming at you saying “I want more cookies” would you give it to them, knowing that more cookies meant an upset stomach and a little kid bounding off the walls because of the excess sugar running in their system? I’m here making an attempt at helping you stay connected to a deeper truth of your situation.
The truth is, even if you did get him back, it DOESN’T change that he has unresolved feelings for his ex. It DOESN’T change that he mislead you. If he did that now, it means he will do it again. He wasn’t honest and authentic with you and wasn’t living in his integrity…and he will do it again and again and again until he really looks at himself and the baggage he is carrying around, that is causing him to hide himself. It’s a deeper issue going on inside of HIM, that is far beyond him having feelings for his ex. Whatever that deeper issue is that’s caused him to break his integrity, it’s an issue that you will be inviting into your life. We all have issues and baggage, of course. It’s less about the issue itself and more about what a person does with it. What makes any issue workable in a relationship, is the person owning it, learning about it, and taking ACTION to heal the hurt that is causing the issue in the first place. So while he was not honest with you and mislead you, yes he needs to figure out how he feels before entering back into your life, but MORESO – he needs to really own his lack of integrity and understand what was happening inside of him that he chose to show up that way in the first place. And then work on it so he doesn’t do that again. THAT is what it means to truly build trust in a relationship.
So all I am trying to do here, is help you connect to more than just helping you “get what you want.” As an expert, I’m seeing the huge potential for a train wreck down the road. I’m trying to warn you about what you are stepping into instead of giving you what you THINK you want. I know that what you want is to feel how it was BEFORE that conversation. It’s sooooo so powerful and beautiful and I sure don’t blame you for wanting that back. You thought you were building a future with a guy who was 100% available to you, but that just was not the case and still is not the case. He is NOT who you built him up in your mind to be. But again, if that’s what you want to fight for, I get it. I’ve done it MANY times, however when I chose to fight for a guy, I did it in an honest way with myself. I KNEW and completely owned the fact that I was fighting for a guy that not available for me in the way I wanted and I KNEW I was going to get hurt again…and I always did. But I owned my choices and made sure I was not operating under any kind of fantasy that the guy was different than who he really was.
Thoughts on all of this?
Since you are here and you want what you want, I would still recommend giving him space for a few more weeks. What he NEEDS to feel most, is the absence of you. Absence can make the heart grow fonder, right? If he is really going to know and feel the value you offer in his life, he needs to know what it means to have you completely disconnect from him, so he has complete clarity of what you mean to him. Then in a few weeks, I would recommend re-inviting him back into connection with you, by asking for his help with something. This is the 12 word text thing. You will re-connect with him by asking him for advice or asking for his help with something he knows how to do. Whatever you ask for help with, it needs to be something he is good at. If he LOVES fixing things, ask for his help to fix something broken at your place. If he is a foodie, ask for his advice about the best restaurant to take a friend to. If he is masterful at technology, ask for his help with your computer or how to use something technology related. The point is, you are activating his “hero” where he gets to come help make your life easier and then you appreciate him for it and really help him feel like he did a SUPER wonderful thing for you. This typically will open up a guy and make him want to connect more. However, I will tell you that there are plenty of guys out there that don’t respond to this, because they don’t WANT to be the girl’s hero and they don’t WANT to interact. I’m guessing this won’t be your guy, but it’s still a potential outcome and I really like to make that clear so there are no expectations that this method works every single time.
How does this approach feel to you?
Heidi
That’s strange. I’m not sure what website I sent you that has that book on it. Either way, I’m glad it’s working for you! That’s all that matters!
I don’t know what to do. Of course you know what to do. It’s very clear. You just don’t want to do it and that’s where the “confusion” comes in. Your feelings are sooooo strong and you are used to letting your feelings guide you through life. It’s what most people do actually, hence the 52% divorce rate. Like I said, what you are feeling are NOT the facts. Like I said, the love you experienced with him had a very short shelf life and you call that love, but it’s not love. It’s connection, but it’s not REAL love. That’s why time will always expose the truth about the level of “love” a person is actually offering. And ESPECIALLY because it’s your first experience of being connected to in that way, it makes it even that more powerful for you. But again, it’s a dysfunctional design, even with this powerful connection you guys had in the beginning. Like YOU said…you knew it was too fast. You threw yourself into it and lost who you were. He led you into a connection and future that he had no capability of following through on. It’s not a sustainable design, no matter how good it felt.
You, as a parent, understand what it means to protect your kids from themselves, right? Let’s use sugar as an example. You make a batch of cookies and you allow your kids to have 2 and that’s it. They finish their 2 cookies and ask for more. You say no. Why? Because you want to protect them from a belly ache and you don’t want to overload their system with sugar, right? But if it were up to the kid, they would eat as many as they possibly could, because they taste soooooo good! They WANT what they WANT and they don’t care or really connect to the consequences of how 10 cookies will make them feel. But you, as the parent, deal with their tantrums and hold firm, because you are protecting them from themselves. You understand this, right? You are not different right now. You have a little girl inside of you wanting that love back soooooo badly. It felt amazing and you don’t want it to stop. I’m here telling you, there are consequences you are going to face, by stepping back in. It’s going to hurt. No matter how much I educate you about why and what’s happening, it doesn’t matter to your little girl, because all she knows is that it hurts not to have it and she wants what she wants NOW. You are NOT parenting her Cindi. You, as the adult, are letting her run the show. It would be the same as if you let your kids have as many cookies as they wanted, without limits. You are letting the little girl part of you, throw a tantrum and as the adult you are saying, “Okay okay. I get it. I want you to have everything you want and I will let you decide what’s best” all while KNOWING as the parent, that what she wants is actually going to harm her. Like I have said many times, you are wanting HIM to fix you, instead of doing it yourself. You are not willing to do the work. So in essence, you are no different than him, right? You are so hurt and angry about his choices to disconnect from you. He is NOT willing to do the work to face his fears and because of that, it hurts you. Well…you should understand his choice, because you are not willing to face the fire either. You want to keep holding onto your fantasy about who you think he is and the love that he offered you. You are not willing to face your fears, or deal with your insecurities. You are not willing to make a different choice. You have a history of always choosing unavailable men and here you are, making that same exact choice – this time KNOWING that you are doing it. You want to be mad at HIM, but you are doing the same exact thing as he is. So if anything, you should completely understand why he is choosing to run. His fear and his feelings are sooooo big and he has not control over them….just like you, except your fears and feelings are different. So watching yourself struggle the way you are, should help you understand his struggle as well, right? Why get mad at him? You get how powerful fears are. You get how powerful feelings are, even if what you feel is not accurate. He is an exact mirror to you. He is running and so are you. He is running from himself and running from you, and you are running from yourself and running to him. Either way, it’s the same exact thing and the same exact result…a dysfunctional, harmful, sabotaging pattern. You want this powerful, intimate, deep, amazing love – but to have something like that means you have to love and treat yourself like that FIRST, before you can receive it from someone else. So right now, you are choosing to love the connection and this idea of “love” that you guys HAD, more than loving and caring and protecting yourself. I sure don’t blame you for wanting that Cindi. It’s very common and what most people would choose. It takes and INCREDIBLE amount of strength to make a new kind of choice that you have never done before. You have a lot of baggage and that makes letting go of this wonderful connection you guys had, near impossible. It can be done, but by no means is it easy. So I wouldn’t fault you for holding on for dear life. Hopefully, you will keep learning and maybe someday, you will be ready to go about it in a different way.
I’m always putting too much faith in people. It’s a blessing and a curse. Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses…ALWAYS. You have a gift Cindi. Seeing the best in someone and knowing the beautiful light that lives within them, is special. And as you already know, it definitely gets you into trouble as well. It will cause you to hold onto to someone way past the expiration date. It’s you staying connected to their “potential” vs. who they actually are in reality. All of us need to really be careful with our gifts. For me, I’m a gifted teacher and communicator and I have a super high emotional intelligence. I have the ability to see and understand people in a second. AND…the shadow side to that, is I teach waaaaaaay too much sometimes, I will over teach, meaning I will bombard someone with information far beyond what they are ready for, I will see things about someone that they are not ready to have seen, and it absolutely has ruined relationships. I can be way too much for some people. So over the years, and even working in the forum, I’ve had to develop the skillset of meeting someone where they are at, instead of showing them 100 steps down the road. So…knowing you attach easily and always see the best in people, start working on seeing the worst in them too and make THAT matter just as much as seeing the good. It’s important. It allows you to see ALL of the person, BOTH the light and the dark, and so when you decide to interact with someone or invite them into your life, you are doing so by seeing the fullness that they offer, not just the good in them.
Thoughts?
Heidi
I understand you are struggling to let go. I’ve been there a million times. You absolutely get to hold on for dear life. You get to send those texts and you get to keep trying. I can’t tell you how many times I did that same exact thing. I KNEW that what I was fighting for, was limited and was going to hurt me again and again and again as long as I kept engaging.
Here is what is important to understand about your choice Cindi. It means you have a high pain tolerance. It means, that you are willing to negotiate away standards as to how you require someone to treat you. It means that you are actually MORE in relationship with pain and chasing an emotionally unavailable man, than you are fighting for peace, respect, clarity, and love towards yourself. People who have a high pain tolerance means that are willing to suffer and go through pain, at the expense of themselves. Remember when you said this? I want to make sure I never let this happen to me again. I don’t like the way this feels, at all. Well, fighting for him and not letting go IS you letting this happen to you again. You may get him back and the romance may return, but I guarantee you…you will end up right back where you are now…begging him to open up and talk to you, begging him to stay connected and work through things with you. So if you want to go through a couple more rounds of this, you absolutely get to do that. The core truth here is, you are not in enough pain to make a different decision.
Here is an analogy I like to use. Imagine I gave you a recipe for an award winning cake. I gave the EXACT instructions, the highest quality ingredients AND….I gave you one cup of shit that you HAD to put into the recipe. The recipe itself is incredible, but adding in 1 cup of shit changes everything. No matter what you do, no matter how beautiful that cake will look, it won’t change that there is 1 cup of shit in it and it ruins the recipe. So here you are, wanting to make this beautiful cake. You want it to taste amazing and look beautiful and it was all of that to start. But then challenge showed up and now 1 cup of shit is is being added to your recipe and there is no way around that. So…you can stay in the kitchen and keep researching, keep trying to add different ingredients and what not and do everything you can to make your cake taste amazing. When in reality, the healthy thing to do and the loving thing to do for yourself, is to get yourself out of the kitchen and stop trying to make your cake.
I do understand though, that you are not ready for that. And that’s okay. I have done it a million times and 100% always ended up right back where I started….in pain and dealing with a breakup. It was never a surprise to me though. I knew full well what I was stepping into. Every single time, I eventually got to the point where the level of pain was great enough for me to face truly disconnecting. And maybe that’s what you need to go through. Maybe you need to go through more rejection. Maybe you need to go another round with him to finally be convinced that he is not available.
On the other hand, if you are interested in becoming more healthy, it means LOWERING your pain tolerance. Now, I have soooooo much peace and ease in my life, that the moment someone dishes out their limitations and they are blaming me or are not willing to work through it, I immediately cut ties. I have such a lot tolerance now for having any kind of relationship that is not high functioning, respectful, and honoring of me and themselves. BUT…it took a lot for me to get here. It took MANY, MANY times of me fighting for a guy I knew was not healthy or available for me, to finally get me to a place where I didn’t want to hurt anymore. I took a lot of work to really deal with my wounds and the pain I was carrying around, that was leading me into the those unhealthy connections.
So I understand why you want to keep fighting. You are the only one who truly knows when you are done. I can tell you that you are heading for train wreck again, but it may be a year from now, or it may be a few months away. Who knows, but YOU are the one that has to go through it and learn from it, for it to be a valuable lesson. I imagine that once his life calms down more and he has more capacity, he will most likely reach out to you again and you will get to have your chance again.
Until then, I STILL suggest that you keep facing your fears. Keep learning, keep asking me questions, and stay open to other possibilities.
I actually don’t know that book you mentioned. Do you like it? Is it helpful?
Heidi
And Cindi, if a month goes by and he still hasn’t done it, then let go of the key and earrings and just change your locks. There is no need to continue asking him for those things. If he doesn’t return those items to you sooner than later, then it’s just ANOTHER confirmation of the lack of care he is capable of. It’s ONE MORE REASON to validate why he is NOT a good match for you.
You are going to get through this! The pain will begin to subside and you will find your new normal again. Remember to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. Remember to fill the holes that he left with YOUR love, by getting back to all your practices that filled you up. Get out in nature, get into your body, fill your mind with powerful truths, keep working on your feelings of rejection. You can do this! He is NOT your end all be all Cindi. Nobody holds that spot EVER except for you.
Heidi
Nope! You are attacking him and being passive aggressive and nor is it a true statement. You say on one hand that you want to end things with all smiles, but then you make a statement like that which creates the exact opposite energy. So what do you want? Do you want to leave a bad taste in his mouth about you, or do you want him to feel like things are ending peacefully?
Here is all you need to say: “Hey there. I thought about it and I think it’s just best if you put my stuff in an envelope and either mail it me or leave it on my doorstep. Thanks so much! Take care.”
Hi Laura! Welcome!
I’m so sorry you are having to go through this. It’s incredibly frustrating to feel like you are on the same page and heading in the same direction, only to discover this was not entirely true.
First, I REALLY want to commend you for setting those boundaries. It 100% shows me how much you respect and care for yourself. You are teaching him how you EXPECT to be treated and engaged with, by having standards. The majority of women tend to negotiate away their standards, just so they can stay connected and that is a recipe for disaster and heartbreak down the road. So VERY GOOD JOB for having those boundaries! It’s forcing him to figure things out before stepping back into your life. Your heart is SACRED and deserves to be treated the utmost respect and care.
Maybe this analogy can help you out a little bit. Imagine your heart is your company and you are the CEO. You are looking to hire and upper level employee to help take care of your heart. So you start interviewing candidates (which is what dating is). BUT…your 100% focus is about making sure that your heart is taken care of with utmost precision, gentleness, care, and respect. That is ALL that matters to you. If you take your feelings out of the picture with this guy and take a step back and look at him strictly as YOU being the boss and he is your employee, does he have the skillset to help you care for your company? Does he have the mindset that makes you feel safe to hand over the keys to entire company? Does he have the integrity that makes you feel safe to put him in the highest level position that gives him the power to both hurt your company and build your company?
The problem with most dating situations, is feelings really muck things up. That’s why “love is blind.” The chemistry, the connection, the feelings are sooooo strong that red flags get ignored and standards are negotiated away.
While you held to standards, which is FANTASTIC, you are here asking what you can do to basically convince him to re-engage with you. As the CEO of your company, if an employee walked away because he thought he had a better offer, but then comes back to you saying he “might” have made a mistake and could he “possibly” have his job back at your company, what would your response be?
If you TRULY connected on the deepest levels, how amazing, sacred, and special your heart is, how valuable your company is, would you really invite an employee back in that “needs some time?”
I feel he needs to come back on his own accord but I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do or say to improve my chances of that happening , or when he does to move the needle in my favor of this working out. Absolutely he needs to come back on his own accord, END OF STORY. If he doesn’t come back on his own, full power and ready to work towards full time, salaried employee, then anything less than that is you hiring a subpar employee to care for your business. Why in the world would you think that you should do anything to try and help along the process? You want to stay as far away from him as possible and let him come to this decision COMPLETELY on his own. That way you KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is ready, WITHOUT any of your help, WITHOUT any of your encouragement, WITHOUT any outside influences. You want a guy who has NOTHING stopping him from wanting to be with you, PERIOD! You DO NOT want a guy who you have to encourage in some sort of way, to want to work at your company! That is you negotiating away your value, because you want to keep feeling like how it used to be with him. Of course you get to do this, but just know that it will put your company at risk.
So your choice here is….lower your standards by finding ways to convince this guy to come back sooner than later or give him space and let him come to you, or not come to you, 100% by his own accord, without ANY of your input. Wouldn’t you feel much more trusting of his choice if he came to you on his own?
Just something to think about. Thoughts?
Heidi
Let this go Cindi. I suggest to just ask him to put your earrings and spare key in an envelope and drop it at your doorstep. No need to talk further. I know you desperately want to see him and try to make things feel good between you guys, but the guy is running for the hills. He is NOT going to be open for that. Besides, do you REALLY want to be with a guy that you have to “convince” to be with you??? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!! You want a guy who has NOTHING stopping him from fighting for you and the relationship. You want a guy who can’t stand to NOT connect with you every day. You want a guy who feels his life sucks without you in it. That is NOT this guy. So let this go. No more talking. No more trying to make things right. No need to end things with a “smile.” He KNOWS you are just going to try and re-connect with him if you meet in person and it’s VERY CLEAR in his short response that he is not interested in that. Yuk! He is gone Cindi. His heart is closed.
So again, ask him to put your stuff in an envelope and leave it at your door or on your car window or something. It’s time to smother out that glimmer of hope you have. He is NOT what you thought he was and he definitely is NOT a guy who can go the distance with any woman!
Heidi
Hi Cindi,
It’s time to really ground you in reality again.
The ways I pushed him away by being afraid when he wanted to do something else after wanting every second of my time. The ways I got triggered and deeply sad when we would argue. The ways I felt deeply disappointed so easily.. Yes, you did all of these things because you have baggage from your past that got activated. WE ALL HAVE THAT!!!! Even the healthiest person on the face of the planet is going to get triggered. It’s just part of life and it’s part of relationship. IT”S NOT YOUR FAULT!!! There is no blame here. You BOTH have issues and you BOTH need to learn new ways to work through them that are not sabotaging and damaging to the connection. Like I previously said, even IF you had done everything “right” he didn’t. There is still HIS side of the equation, HIS triggers, HIS lack of communication and coldness, HIS gaslighting, HIS ghosting…all of HIS coping mechanisms are harmful to the relationship too. It wouldn’t have lasted, because HE is not set up to have a deep, intimate relationship and sustain it over time. The thing is Cindi, it’s not that we all have baggage, it’s what we do with it. YOU wanted to fight. YOU wanted to work through things. YOU were willing to keep talking and YOU came here to get some help from experts so you could learn. What did he do? He ran. He didn’t ask for help. Most likely the friend he talked to just validated his feelings and that’s about it. He just quit and not only did he quit, he blamed YOU for his feelings. That’s the part that NEVER works for a relationship. I think you did some amazing things by having your reactions AND you started to learn from them and you started to try to communicate differently and you owned your side of stuff and apologized and you said you were working on your stuff. THAT is what makes a relationship workable. You have to have BOTH people willing to own their crap AND do something about it. He is doing NOTHING about his side of the equation. He just points the finger at you and called it quits. THIS IS WHAT IS REAL Cindi. It doesn’t matter how much he “loved” you, his behavior is NOT loving. His behavior is running and not engaging and facing the fire with someone. He is MORE IN RELATIONSHIP with his fear and than with his love and THAT is what breaks a relationship. You guys absolutely could have worked through this, EVEN WITH YOUR MESSINESS and with HIS MESSINESS because YOU were will. HE was not. And that’s why this is not your fault. You guys did NOT break up because of your triggers and reactions. You guys broke up because HE quit. Yes, he has created the story in his head that YOU are at fault here, but that’s simply not true. That is a coward way of looking at all of this. He is not willing to look at his own stuff, so it’s much more easy for him to point the finger and call it a day. Again, HE IS NOT EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE in ALL the ways that are needed to build a strong, sustainable connection. He was emotionally available when things were good and easy, but NOT available when this challenge showed up. THAT is what caused this breakup, not your reactions.
And when I think about how much he expressed his love for me and everything that I am. This is NOT love Cindi and that’s part of the reason you are suffering. You keep going back to how great things were and calling that love. Love doesn’t just exist in the goodness, it exists in the darkness too. His version of love was full of fear and was very conditional. It was love with a TON of strings wrapped around it, keeping it tight and constricted and not able to breathe or move or grow or expand. He did NOT express his love for you and everything you are. He rejected your humanness. He ran from your desire to be intimate and build a REAL future together. He blamed you for using him to fill up too much of your time. So no, that statement is not true. What is true, is he liked certain aspects of you, but not others. That’s going to happen in every relationship. The ones that make it are where the couple accepts the annoying, irritating, limiting, shadow side of the person and they love that as well. He DID NOT offer that you, but because the story in your head is telling you that, you are in suffering because you believe you messed up something amazing. THIS IS NOT THE TRUTH!!!!
He doesn’t have the ability to love you in that way, because he can’t even do that for himself. Remember how I said that you learn a lot about someone by how they allow themselves to be treated? Well, you wanted to love him deeply. You wanted to build a life with him. Yes, there were moments of your messiness, but it was only about you wanting to stay connected somehow during his busy season. Do you see how he wasn’t able to accept that from you??? That shows exactly how he treats himself. He has soooo much low self-esteem in the area of love. He gets super crazy close…AND FAST…and then pulls away just as fast. That is someone who wants to love, but the fear kicks in fast and will sabotage faster than it started. This is NOT love. It’s trauma coupling.
Come back and read this over and over and over and over again until you keep things straight in your head. That suffering is coming from all the lies you are believing and not being grounded in the reality and the truth of the situation.
Here is a great video about that: https://youtu.be/k0GQSJrpVhM?si=LP1EPltJtrERYpmB
One thing that will you help you A LOT is keep putting outside voices into your stories, to help keep you grounded. Whenever I have gone through serious heartbreak, I listen A LOT to people who are speaking truths, to voices that keep me grounded and help me feel empowered, and I made sure to do it DAILY. Remember, the stories your mind makes up, that contributes to the suffering you are feeling, ARE NOT TRUE!!!! It’s normal that this happens AND you have to counteract those very strong stories with voices that empower you. Keep coming here and letting me know where you get stuck and I am happy to keep reminding you of the higher level truths.
Which book are you halfway through right now? Is it helpful for you?
Heidi
And when we broke up and he said things like we were in “different stages” and “different places,” it occurred to me that he’d always thought that and never had any intention of sticking around for the longterm. So he went from love bombing you to gaslighting you. Maybe he never thought you were on the same page and maybe he did. What I DO know is that love bombing CAN feel very real to the person doing it. It’s impulsive energy – which is childlike energy. Do children know what they want the next day? No. Do they know what they want a few months from now? Nope. Children want what they want NOW and that’s the end of their story. So that is what he did. I’m sure there was some authenticity to it, IN THE MOMENT, but when you mentioned moving in together at some point, it go real for him. The thing is…we just don’t know. You will never know. And it doesn’t matter. He did what he did, you responded, as any woman would coming out divorce. You didn’t see this coming and THAT’S OKAY!!! You believed in something so beautiful, but you didn’t know there wasn’t much of a foundation to support the words he was telling you.
You are waking up and that, for anyone, is an incredibly painful process.
but yknow you hear all these stories of people who meet and get married a few months later, and how do you know the difference? Because he wanted to be with me every second and text me all day every day? How many of those couples that married after a few months, are actually happy? Very few I’m sure. I know PLENTY of marriages that have lasted 50 years and the couple is stale, boring, and they don’t have much life in their connection. NO THANK YOU! Regardless of other people’s stories, you need to make your own story, based on what is right for you and your family.
You ask a good question of “how do you know the difference?” There are sooooooo many things to easily pay attention to for you to know the difference. First, it’s educating yourself. Second, it’s setting standards and NEVER negotiating them away in order to have connection. Third, it’s doing your own personal, deep work to heal the wounds that lead you into relationships like this. I would have been able to pick up on this love bombing in a hot second, but BECAUSE I have done soooo much work on myself and because I have become so educated and my emotional intelligence is very high at this point..I would have tagged it as “love bombing” instead of falling for it. You didn’t pick up on it, because you were starving for attention and affection and labeled that as “love.” So that’s why doing your own work on your wounds, is so crucial. It helps you become so much more clear and will equip you to be able to see these unhealthy patterns in others, because you have gotten to know your own unhealthy patterns.
I will tell you this…educating yourself is just the beginning and where you can start. But you can educate yourself all you want, but that will NOT change your behavior. Just like you KNEW things were going to fast, it didn’t change that went along for the ride. It’s because the wounded child part of you was sooooo starving and this guy felt soooo good, that your desire to connect in this way far outweighed whatever you knew about him moving too fast. And that’s where our wounding ends up leading us into trouble. I can’t tell you how many times, I consciously walked into situations with guys that I absolutely knew I was going to get hurt at some point. I KNEW all their limitations, I KNEW they were emotionally unavailable, I KNEW it wouldn’t go anywhere, but because I was so starved for male connection, I didn’t care. I wanted that “hit” by engaging in unhealthy, low functioning connection. It was totally like a drug to me, so all I could do was be aware of my choices and all the while, keep doing my deeper work until that starving little girl started to become less powerful. It’s a journey, but one worth taking.
To start, you are reading those books I recommended. It’s really important for you to get a clear understanding about what a healthy connection actually looks like and functions like. That way, when you come across a connection with a guy again, you can use what you have learned as a guiding light, so to speak.
Second, create your non-negotiable list. These are qualities about the 3rd entity (the relationship itself) that you REQUIRE in order to participate. They are NOT wants. They are needs. What can’t you live without? What would make your heart shrivel up and die a slow death if these qualities were missing? here are a few examples of mine. 1. Romance – I CANNOT live without romance. I have to have a guy who LOVES being creatively romantic with me and able to receive the same from me. 2. High emotional intelligence – because of my level of understanding of myself and others, I NEED to be with a guy who has a high level of understanding as well. I have played the “teacher” in all my relationships and it’s a design that creates a lot of imbalance. I NEED a guy who is passionate, driven, and motivated to want to know himself and he takes that initiative on his own and doesn’t rely on me. Also, his high emotional intelligence will also challenge me and help me feel known and seen by him. 3. Active – the dominant way I play in my life is through activity. Hiking, long walks, playing sports etc. I NEED a guy who enjoys being active in the same ways. These are NOT wants for me. They might we wants for others, because they live their life differently than me. But for me, without these qualities, I KNOW I will get bored and will not stay engaged with a guy. Does this make sense?
The purpose of the non-negotiable list is it’s the mindset that you date from. You stepped into this relationship letting your feelings guide you. Instead, you step in letting your non-negotiables guide you and keep you grounded. Chemistry is crazy powerful, so you are going to need a level of objectivity. Like I have taught you from the beginning, the place that connection breaks, are in the challenges that show up…as you have just learned. So…right from the very beginning, I am asking indirect and direct questions to learn about their stress response. For example, “What’s the biggest heart break you’ve ever been through? What did you do?” “What is the worst thing you have ever done to another person?” “What is the biggest hurt you have had to deal with in your life? What did you do?” “What are you like when you are angry?” “What do you fight like?” “What would you say your worst qualities are in relationship?” I’m asking questions about the challenging side of their life and how they handle it. I’m paying attention to their tone of voice, the energy they are projecting, how open or closed they are to the subject, how they tell their story. I’m watching to see if they have any left over unresolved feelings or if they sound and project that they feel very resolved about the situation. I’m paying attention to the adjectives they choose to explain their story. One time, I was falling for a guy and I really wanted to stress him to learn more about who he was. So I made him wait 30 minutes on my couch because I was late getting ready. Then we left to go to the restaurant and I said we HAD to go back because I forgot to unplug the curling iron. Then we had to change restaurants because we lost our reservation. Then when we finally picked a place and got seated, I accidentally spilled water all over him. At that point, we were going dutch, so I claimed to have forgotten my credit card. Then to top it all off, I accidentally hit him in the head. I did all of these things ON PURPOSE, but making it seem like an accident so I could bombard him with an evening where NOTHING went right. I wanted to see what he would do and how he would treat me. I learned that his stress response was to get VERY quiet and pull away and gradually over the evening, he became less and less talkative. By the end of the night, I could tell he was happy to drop me home. EPIC FAIL on his part. These were such small and insignificant stressors and if he couldn’t have the ability to just let go of control and go with the flow and still maintain connection with me, then I KNEW when some REAL challenges showed up, he would be that guy that would NOT be a good teammate with me.
Here is an analogy I teach when it comes to dating. Imagine your heart is the MOST SACRED and MOST PRECIOUS thing you own and it is the center of your entire business. You are the CEO of your business. Dating is no different than a company looking to hire an employee. When you are dating, you are interviewing a potential candidate to be in direct contact with the entity (your heart) of your entire company. So what do you REQUIRE? What kind of qualities are NON-NEGOTIABLE for an employee who is going to be interacting with and helping to take care of your most sacred and precious business item?
And in the end Cindi, we are the ones who teach others how to treat us. The more loving I became towards myself, the more I EXPECTED to be treated with love. The more respectful I treated myself, the more I REQUIRED to be treated respectfully. So how we allow others to treat us, is a DIRECT reflection of how we treat ourselves.
For example, I recently partnered up with a woman I have known for almost 8 years, to do a “yoga/self-love” type of retreat. We started having meetings and creating our curriculum together. I quickly learned that she was not very flexible. She was incredibly pushy and believed that her way was the BEST way. I picked up on her very high need to be right, very quickly, so I was doing a dance trying to make this work. We met 3 more times, all of which she texted last minute that need another 30 minutes or another hour because she wasn’t finished with whatever she was doing. Then finally, she texted me saying the date we chose for the retreat was not going to work for her, because her astrologer said it was a bad time. This was AFTER I had created the webpage, the flyer, got all of our social media together blah blah blah. So I ended it. I was NOT going to participate in a partnership where she had so little consideration for me, my ideas, and my time. After knowing her for so long, I was surprised about this side of her. So I learned her limitations and did not accept them or engage in them BECAUSE I respect myself.
I gave you A LOT of information here and there is sooooo much more. I’m hoping that I am not overwhelming you. Let me know if you need me to slow down.
Do you have friends or family that are supporting you through this?
Heidi
Heidi
I just need to fill myself up and realize that I never should’ve let someone in that close that fast, and that in the future I need to keep my kids out of the loop for much much longer (they’re devastated, and angry with me, and I understand). Let’s talk about this a bit. First, it’s NOT about how close or how fast you let him in. It’s about HOW you let him in that was out of balance. It was you losing yourself in him and giving him every spare moment of your time. It was the pattern you have of over-functioning. Close, healthy, balanced, high functioning relationships DO NOT look like that. So it’s less about the speed of which you guys connected and more about the design of the connection where you BOTH created a dynamic that is NOT designed to last. I think what will help you, is to start to study and understand what a healthy connection actually looks like and how it functions. Then you compare your tendencies to that and discover the areas you are spectacular at and the areas where you need some work. You BOTH let your emotions and feelings act as your guide and truth and you both did the very best you could with what you know. Now it’s time to further educate yourself so that you can see how you are functioning that is NOT in alignment with what a healthy connection looks like.
As far as your kids, this is a BRILLIANT opportunity to teach them about their own resilience. Yes, they are mad AND you teach them that people are always going to come and go and it’s going to hurt. And it’s okay to feel hurt AND that hurt will always heal. Life is just not always going to be the way we want, so it’s important to accept what is happening and go with the flow and KNOW that you can each time and the hurt will go away. Keep creating a space for them to talk about it, keep guiding them through their hurt. Make an activity of it. Go get some canvases and paint and brushes and go outside and all of you paint your pain and hurt and anger. Say things out loud. Show them healthy ways to express their feelings. Take a tennis racket and beat on a pillow while yelling what you are angry about. Put on a crazy song and all of you dance like anger and hurt. Join them in their anger and LEAD them through it in healthy ways. It will teach them ways to handle the disappointments of life and it will help bring you all closer to together.
It hurts to let go of everything we planned. This is the hardest part. It’s sooooo incredibly difficult to let go of the fantasy life that was built WITH someone. Saying goodbye to all those wonderful plans that were talked about is hard. You are not just saying goodbye to him, but you are saying goodbye to the life you thought you were going to live. That’s one of the main reasons to take things slow. It’s soooooo easy to build a wonderful life together and your brain and heart want to build all of that sooooo fast, but the problem is, fantasies have no legs to it. You have to spend actual time with someone to even know that you both have what it takes to sustain a healthy connection. You have to have arguments and fight and see if you can even work through stuff. Until you have some of those experiences, the story you create about your future is completely insignificant and will just stay a fantasy. The fantasy is just a story that ends up having so much power. I’ve done it a million times! It’s absolutely painful to say goodbye to it! You can do it though. You WILL heal. You WILL find your center again. You WILL take many gifts from this experience if you choose to learn from it vs. choosing to stay in suffering. You have to fight for more for yourself and you have a lot of tools at your fingertips that you can begin implementing on a daily basis.
I know how he initiated soooooo many of those plans and how much he pushed for all of those wonderful things to happen. For me, that’s a HUGE RED FLAG! Here is a basic concept for you to really get….the faster someone moves, the faster it will bring an ending. It’s like weight. A gazillion studies have shown that the faster someone loses weight, the faster they will gain it back. What he did was light a HUGE fire and gave it a lot of wood and then one day, he took a ton of water and put the whole thing out, and decided it was YOUR fault. I guarantee you, this is a pattern of his in his life. I guarantee you, he has done this with women in the past. He is impulsive and THAT is a HUGE identifier of a lot of wounded, childlike energy. You didn’t know that though. You got swept up in efforts, because you had never been treated like that before…and you interpreted his efforts and planning for the future as a guy who was completely into you and you felt safe. You didn’t know that what he was actually doing was operating from roundedness. Of course he had all of those feelings for you and wanted to plan a future with you, but he is not set up emotionally to sustain any of it. Basically what he did, was love bomb you, and you didn’t know. It’s how we learn. I know everything that I do, because of over 20 years of dating and walking through every type of situation imaginable many times over. Dating was my “lab” so to speak. So again, be kind to yourself. There was no ill intent on his part, just wounds full of fear and pain that are running his life that he has no idea about. Same as you. But you are waking up to more of yourself now! and that is the greatest gift you could ever give yourself and your kids.
I never should’ve let everything go for him. Or let him take up all of my time. I regret so much of how I handled it. Careful here. Regret is hugely toxic. Be kind to yourself. You didn’t know. You are doing the very best you can with what you DO know and that is what matters most. You are learning. You will remember this pain, so in the future, you will move through dating differently. You will have more discernment, you will take things slow and REQUIRE that someone’s actions and words are in alignment, you will pay more attention to how they handle stress, you will stay better connected to yourself and make yourself and your needs more a priority. Let go of regret. It’s just full of judgement and criticism and steals the beauty out of all the valuable lessons you really needed to learn. Stay focused on what you DO have and let go of what you could have done differently. The truth is, no matter how you handled all of this, it doesn’t change HIS limitations. You could have done everything PERFECTLY and he still would have found a reason to end things at some point. Even if you never mentioned moving in together at some point and even if you didn’t give him all of your time and you took things slower, all it would have done was prolong the connection, so you guys might have ended in a year or 2 years instead of 6 months. HE IS NOT SET UP emotionally, to give you what you want. So if anything, be thankful this ended sooner than later. It would have been even more devastating for things to end much later down the road. You would have become even more invested, but eventually you would have hit his wall. That wall is there not because of you, but because of him. He will NEVER let a woman in.
Heidi
I wanted to add one more thing. How you BOTH are handling all of this, is actually quite common. That’s why our divorce rate is soooooo high. It’s hangs out around 52%. It’s NOT because people don’t love each other. It’s NOT because there isn’t good in the connection. It’s because there is dysfunction on BOTH sides when the challenges show up. The majority of people have no clue how to handle their stressors, their triggers, their fears….who teaches us that kind of stuff? No one. We don’t learn it in school, our parents sure don’t teach us and most of all, our role models are incredibly dysfunctional as well. The only way I got out of my patterns is by being relentlessly committed to letting go of my baggage. I go sooooo sick of how my baggage was running my life and always stopping me from getting what my heart truly wanted. I got soooo sick of always having relationships end. All I could do was work on my side of things and learn how to pick better. Today, I have the most amazing inner circle relationships that are powerful, honest, authentic and every single relationship that is close to my heart, contains all the qualities needed for it to grown and expand in healthy ways. It took me a long time to get here, but I finally made. And now, I hold to my standards instead of thinking I had some, but always negotiated them away. All the work I have done has paid off.
It’s a rare path Cindi. Not many take the path of uncovering their triggers and wounds, because it’s not fun. I guarantee you this though….everything your beautiful heart and your powerful love wants to engage with, is absolutely possible for you….but healing needs to happen….and you will find those places that need to be healed IN the pain you carry. Pain is just a messenger. Pain is just letting you know you have some broken spots inside. Pain is there to tell you where there is emotional injury and you need to care for it. Whenever pain enters my life I have this instant mindset now “I know you are here to teach me. Thank you for being here to help me connect to a part of myself that needs some love and attention. I am grateful for your presence, even though it doesn’t feel good. I know you are here to serve me.” With this mindset, I STAY empowered and I work WITH my pain instead of trying to get rid of it as fast as possible. It took me a while to get here, but the journey is well worth it. That’s how I got to build my resilience.
I just want to encourage you that this is possible for you as well. You have such a powerful spirit, that has some gunk on it. That gunk ends up picking guys that are emotionally unavailable and DO NOT have the ability to sustain with you. Your love is powerful Cindi and it is sacred and changes lives. Now, it’s about you learning to value this beautiful gift you offer in a way that honors it instead of giving it away so easily, thinking it will help a man love you.
I know how hard all of this is. I sooooo deeply understand the pain you are in and how much you just want to find a guy who will accept your messiness and still fight WITH you to make things better. It’s heart breaking to have a man who claims to love you, decide he doesn’t want to fight anymore. It triggers all the low self-esteem in existence. “What’s wrong with me!” “I shouldn’t have done___________. We wouldn’t be here if I didn’t mess up.” “I guess I’m not worth fighting for.” All these stories that get activated because someone doesn’t value us enough to walk through the tough spots. I get it. It’s these very rejecting moments that give you the most beautiful opportunity for YOU to fight for you. This is the beginning of starting to fill up those holes inside with YOUR love and not the love of a man. You know how to do it. You naturally do it with your kids. You say to yourself, “I know he isn’t fighting for you and I know how much that hurts. I want you to know that I LOVE YOU. I CHOOSE YOU. I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU. I am here for you always and forever and we will get through this TOGETHER.”
A good method for helping to move the energy of pain is EFT or Tapping. You can just look it up on YouTube. There are a gazillion videos about it. This is a SUPER easy way to begin the healing journey AND to help you when the pain is sooooo big. I still use this technique after 20 years because it always works! It’s one of many tools you can begin to put into your toolbox to help you.
https://eftuniverse.com/Heidi
Great question! Can you help me understand the difference between pining and missing him so that I can understand and correct myself when I’m going about this the wrong way? Pining is missing him but there is this added layer of suffering to it. Meaning…it’s kind of painful in a way when you pine after something….like you are missing a piece of yourself and you want that piece to come back to you, so you can feel complete and whole again. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. Missing is more clear and healthy. You feel grounded and that you are good and okay without them there, there is an awareness of that person not being around and you miss what they add to your life, but you don’t feel lost or incomplete without it. It’s not painful. So while they are both the same kind of thing, the energy that sources it is different. Missing is clear, normal, healthy while pining is painful, is being sourced by wounded energy, and typically is associated with someone who enmeshes and loses themselves in the other person and they don’t know who they are without that person. Does this help?
How will I trust him again? How can I trust myself? There are 2 levels of trust. First, there is primary self trust…fundamental to ALL relationships. If someone doesn’t trust themselves, what a person will do, is try to build that secondary level of trust that is between 2 people. And this is a HUGE mistake, because trying to build secondary trust, is impossible without that primary trust – trust in yourself. Because….secondary trust is GUARANTEED to be broken. It’s just the nature of relationship. Hurt happens, limitations show up, and secondary trust is broken…so if there is not enough primary trust on either side to support the connection, the relationship will fall apart. So…the first thing to do, is build trust within yourself. That’s quite the process, but basically, what primary trust looks like is this: “I trust myself that no matter what happens and no matter what his choices are that hurt me, I WILL BE OKAY.” And you know that you will be okay because you KNOW you are resilient. Resilient means that you are resourced. This means you have people to support you, you have the skills needed to process the hurt and pain, you have the emotional intelligence to understand the dynamics happening, and you have a commitment to yourself that you will ALWAYS forgive any hurt, so you keep your system from continuing to add to the baggage. When you have this level of resilience and self-trust, WHEN the other person lets you down and breaks safety and trust, you don’t get lost in the pain of it all. Of course it still hurts, but it doesn’t break you. You have a knowing deep inside, even in the middle of the most intense pain, that you will heal.
How do I not allow him to take up all of my time again? And why is it so hard and scary for me not to let him?
How do we step back into this safely and in a smart and healthy way?
And lastly – how do I know I’m not stepping back into something that is simply on his terms and not mine? These are great questions. The question to help answer these questions, is WHY are you losing yourself in the first place? Dive into the fear that you are feeling. What is it saying to you? What beliefs are sourcing those fears? What do you think will happen if you DON’T let him take up all of your time? If you are constantly operating on HIS terms, then that is the same thing as giving up all of your time for him. You are over functioning in the relationship. And you are over functioning, because you are afraid that if you don’t, he won’t “love” you. This is called the “winning formula.” We all have one. It’s the way we tend to operate in a relationship to “sell” our value, so to speak. It’s what we do to keep someone engaged with us. For me, my winning formula was always teach. The more I could show the guy how much I knew about him, how much I knew about relationships, they would think I was amazing and different. And it worked! I heard that ALL THE TIME! Guys would say “Wow! This is so interesting. I never knew that. You are so smart. I love learning from you…blah blah blah.” I always heard something to the effect of…”I’ve never been known so well by anyone.” And of course, even after breakups, they would always circle around at some point seeking that feeling of being “seen.” That was how I felt valuable. Of course, just like over functioning in the way you do…I didn’t allow MY needs to exist. I picked guys who had NO CLUE how to see me in return. Which…I tried to fix by teaching them how to know me too, so I could feel part of the equation, but it never worked. So I felt like I was mostly existing for THEM. We do this because we there are big “holes” in our system where trauma lives. And we try to fill it through the “other” vs. learning how to fill it ourselves. I use the analogy of Swiss cheese. We have solid parts of us and we have holes. How we fill those holes determines the quality of relationships. Asking someone else to fill those holes sets us up for failure every single time. So…a much longer story short, you don’t let him fill you up anymore. The leading question would be…”What do I want HIM to do for me, that I am not willing to do for myself?”After I couldn’t keep my mouth shut: What did you say or ask?
He said my life hinged on nothing but him and my kids (also not true, I just didn’t have time to adjust after he wanted to spend every second with me). Well, from what you are saying to me, this is actually quite true. He is hitting the bullseye here. You shouldn’t NEED any time to adjust. The fact that you let him fill you up soooooo much in the first place, meant that you had to adjust when he pulled away. You were STARVING for someone to love you, pay attention to you, fill up those holes, and be treated like a queen. And he was that guy for short time, but that design is NEVER sustainable. The fact that he participated in it as well, is HIS imbalance. You BOTH created this dynamic and then he pulled himself out of it by using work as an excuse vs. creating a more balanced interaction right from the beginning. All he is doing is noticing how much you were using him and your kids to fill those holes you carry inside. AND he used you as well, to fill HIS holes. You both were doing the same exact thing. Then his work schedule shifted which changed the dynamic. He became less available, which highlighted the holes inside of you that he was filling and you had a reaction. He responded by stonewalling you and pulling away even more. And this is a VERY normal type of reaction when there is “trauma bonding.” Here is a great video that explains this type of connection.
Here are some other great videos: https://youtu.be/dC50dYcMPF4?si=0Xwehlv9kQ2QesZB. https://youtu.be/gh5VhaicC6g?si=IZH-OinzK6l5YesL
This is NOT your fault by the way. Unfortunately, this is how we learn sometimes. I have had to learn soooooo many times through loss. I will tell you this…after learning from my experiences, after clearing out more of the baggage, after healing from the losses, 100% of the time, there is not a single guy I would ever want to go back to. Even though at the time, I thought they were the best thing I had ever found, the more clear I became, the more I saw them for who they really were and how much we actually were not a great match and in the end, not a single one of them would have ever been able to offer me that deep, connected, healthy, nourishing, vibrant, high functioning relationship I was seeking.
I know you are hurting. I know you believe that he is the best thing that has ever happened to you…and that is TRUE! What is also true, is your standards are pretty low, because you have been taught to be that way. This guy helped raise the bar a bit. Yes, he treated you like a queen, but he doesn’t have the capacity to carry that through ALL phases of his life. He dipped in, opened you up, and then pulled away because of “work.” That’s his own excuse and his own sabotaging pattern, so as great as he is and as wonderful as he treated you, he is NOT built to sustain it. Even in his responses to you, he is pointing the finger at you, as if YOU are the dysfunctional one here. You BOTH have some dysfunctional patterns on a pretty EQUAL level. I’m not seeing him take ownership about how he showed up for you in the beginning and how he completely pulled away and became unavailable and how hard that would be for ANYONE. I’m not seeing him take responsibility for his lack of communication, for letting fear run the show in his life, for having all kinds of thoughts and feelings and stories about you and never sharing them with you, for not handling any of this in an open, authentic way to ensure trust and safety are being built, not destroyed. So yes, he is GREAT! He has some amazing qualities about him…AND…his limiting qualities will always sabotage connection. And as you are seeing, he is not seeing his own limitations, but he is happy to point out yours. He is NOT the kind of guy that could ever offer a deep, connective, expansive, nourishing love. This breakup would have happened sooner or later.
So while you are feeling devastated and hurting, make sure you are not beating yourself up over this. Make sure you also stay grounded in HIS limitations that contributed to everything and make sure you connect to the truth of it all…we are ALL wounded and messy. The RIGHT partner is the one who will work WITH us, not against us. He is NOT the long term partner you thought he was.
Heidi
