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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
Hi Cindi,
Good for you for taking some time to yourself. I know a lot of single parents who wake up 1-2 hours earlier just so they can have some alone time before the kids get up. It would be very natural to wrap your alone time around him, so this is good that you have some space now to actually reconnect with yourself. Now that you know how much it’s needed, moving forward, make sure you set some weekly/daily times for YOURSELF so you don’t lose yourself again.
It sounds like no matter what, you want to move forward with him, regardless of his stonewalling tendencies. Here is a great article to help you understand his coping mechanism and how you can move through it differently next – hopefully there is a next time! Although this article is about stonewalling in particular, you should look up the other 3 patterns of the 4 horseman (basically 4 patterns that lead to divorce), so you can even have a deeper understanding of yourself – you tend towards the critical pattern.
The gotten institute is phenomenal. I would also recommend their book “A man’s guide to women.” Although it was written for men, I found it incredibly valuable to even help me understand myself and my needs on a much greater level. They have a TON of blogs and videos and lectures online and they offer a lot of classes, even for single people and parenting. Start learning from them!
Keep breathing Cindi. Allow yourself to miss him and have that be okay. Sit with the feeling instead of trying to run from it or pine after him so you can get out of this pain. Let the pain just be there and soothe and comfort yourself.
I want to return to my questions you didn’t answer. What are you going to do to help yourself through this? How are you going to work with your insecurities in a better way? You’ve been to a therapist and you have mindfulness training. What did they teach you and what can you begin implementing on a daily basis?
You also might want to check out this book. She is phenomenal and at the end of her book, she shares ways to help you move through stress in a healthy way. https://www.michaelaboehm.com/the-book/
Also, keep coming here and writing about your feelings, what you are struggling with, write about any confusion you have or anger you still feel. Give your feelings movement and room to breathe. If all you do is hold it in, like he does, you are NOT going to have a healthy, level-headed response to him when you guys do talk again. Set yourself up for success by working every day on your feelings of betrayal, abandonment, anger, and your insecurities.
Heidi
I know you are devastated. Letting go of love is an incredibly painful process, especially when there is so much good. I’ve had to say goodbye to those type of connections as well and I would never wish that on anyone. It’s so much easier when there is anger and betrayal and nastiness…but you guys don’t have that. I’m so sorry Cindi. I know you both brought out the best in each other in many ways.
Him with medication and therapy, and myself with therapy and mindfulness. Just because he is doing therapy, doesn’t mean he is getting to the deep stuff. Honestly, I have been to sooooo many different therapists over the years and only discovered how many of them had no clue how to do the deeper work. They love to talk and offer guidance, but it’s a rare kind of therapist who has the skill, the techniques, and the method to take someone to the ROOT cause of their pain and dysfunction. So..with that being said, he may have improved some areas in his life, but he hasn’t gone deep enough to work on his coping mechanism to run and pull away when things get tough and sticky. I know my coach would be all up in my business if I let something so nourishing and beautiful go….which is what he is doing.
Yes, your mom is right. He DOES need some time, but so do you. Again, YOU need to really consider what kind of man you are inviting into your heart and into your family’s life. He is not the type to stick things through. He is the type to let fear lead him into decisions. Even him saying he will never get married again is a MASSIVE RED FLAG, because it’s a decision solely based on fear. It’s a HUGE wall between him and any woman and it prevents intimacy. It’s not about marriage itself, it’s about him having a hard line and not being open and flexible to allow life to take him on a journey. He is NOT forgiving his past, he is not letting go of the past, he is not facing his fears, and despite how it felt when things started out, he is showing you that he cannot sustain his openness and that he is emotionally unavailable when things get tough. So…is this really what you want to go through AGAIN? ANOTHER relationship where it’s like pulling teeth to get them to talk or commit? It’s something for you to really consider. I know he is the best experience you have ever had and that is something you don’t want to let go of. I know you really love him AND the love is limited. Even after your heartfelt messages and wanting to fight for him and trying to explain things, he is STILL radio silent, when all you want him to do is have a conversation. That’s how he handles things. He goes into his cave and wants to be left alone. That’s not unusual for men, BUT a man can’t expect a woman to be okay when he just disappears. He needs to TELL HER he is going to process a bit and then SHOW HER that he is coming back. Yes, he needs space, but what about you? Is it really that hard to send a simple text and say, “I know I said I was going to read your messages tonight, but I just need a little more time. I really am tapped out, but I want you to know that I’m not ignoring you. I am doing my best and I promise I will respond when I can give you my undivided attention.” He still gets his space AND he is giving you what you need to by communicating with you instead of breaking his word. He said one thing and he is not following through and is not caring about how it affects you. All he is caring about are HIS needs…and that’s what happens when people are tapped out. He is so drained and exhausted, that trying to have any capacity to work through something difficult like this, is just something he doesn’t have in him. How can he possible fill up your cup of coffee from his cup, if his cup is empty? IMPOSSIBLE.
But again, this brings us back to the place that he doesn’t have the skillset, understanding, support, or knowledge about how to help himself, and that’s maybe where his therapist is not that effective. Who knows. All you know is that this is who he is right now. So take this time apart and really begin to work on your insecurities that contributed to this breakup. Even now, as he is radio silent, your insecurities are high, you are in a lot of pain, and you are miserable. You are very raw right now. It’s the PERFECT time to clear out some of the stories and baggage that is being activated. Work on yourself. For me, I always worked on figuring out the path back to my center. When someone else knocks me off, how can I get back to my center, feeling empowered, and connected to truth and NOT the painful stories in my head? How can I do that WITHOUT the other person? That is your journey now. If you just sit around in pain, waiting for his response, then you are doing the exact thing that he is pulling away from you for….you are waiting for HIM to do or say something so you can feel better. You are waiting for HIM to fight for you. Fight for yourself. You want him to face his fears and work WITH you through this…well you cannot ask for someone else to do something that you are not doing yourself. So what are you going to do to help yourself through this? How are you going to face your own fears? How are you going to deal with all the insecurities that have been activated?
Heidi
First, I want to say that I am soooooo so proud of you. Your messages, even in your emotional upset were brilliant! You didn’t point the finger, you didn’t play into his story about him feeling responsible, you just commented that he needed to communicate that! You are SPOT ON!!! He thinks he isn’t running away, but he actually is. He hid himself from you. He had this storm of feelings inside of him called overwhelm and you ended up being the target. You are NOT the reason for his overwhelm. HE IS!!!! Sure he is busy and yes, you added to that feeling of overwhelm, but he could have easily helped himself by TALKING with you. You are workable, you are willing to learn and grow, and you are a great teammate. Instead, he held it in which just increases that feeling of overwhelm…and exactly what is happening is what ALWAYS happens with someone who holds everything in…they burst. They ALWAYS reach a point where they can’t hold it all anymore, so they have this incredibly high need to make a decision and FAST, in order to relieve the pressure. And while it may bring them some relief in the moment, they actually misunderstand that relief. They think they made the best decision by unloading their “burden” when in reality, they did not handle anything in a healthy, conscious way. They operate from a place of thinking that it’s all the outside (their job, their partners, their family etc.) that are causing their overwhelm and they don’t look inside, to understand how they are creating the storm themselves.
This is what happened with him. This statement says it all.
I’m not giving up when things get tough. I’m walking away from a situation that I’ve realized I don’t have the emotional capacity for at the moment due to both of our busy schedules and the difficulties we have finding time. I’m stretched thin. Super thin. It isn’t fair to either of us.
He is blaming the outside world for being stretched so thin. You, both your busy schedules, and whatever else he wants to throw in the pot. So he is viewing his decision as “right” because it’s not fair to you, him, or all the kids that he is stretched so thin and not available to the level he believes you need. Do you see the story he has running in his system? Do you see the dangers of letting your feelings run the show and make the decisions for you? This is exactly why FEELINGS ARE NOT FACTS!!! You are now on the receiving end of a story that isn’t true and a guy who is breaking up because of it. First, he doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to see beneath the surface and look at what is REALLY happening. Second, he doesn’t have the capacity right now to even care. He is in survival mode and that means that all he is doing, is going from one moment to the next, being completely drained of life force. So in his attempts to help himself, he breaks up instead of asking for your help.
Does all of this make sense? What is important for you to TRULY see, is that he is a runner. This is a HUGE red flag. This pattern and how he is handling this stress is to NOT involve you. He keeps his feelings inside, allows a story about his feelings to cultivate and grow, and then that story takes over his system, all the while you have no clue what is really happening for him…only that things are changing and you don’t know what. THIS IS HIS COPING MECHANISM! And it will be that way for the rest of his life. Our coping mechanisms and our reactions to stress are with us FOREVER. I have the same exact coping mechanism as he does. The only difference is, I’ve gotten a lot of help. I have learned other ways to respond. I have cleared enough baggage to want to connective MORE THAN the silly story running in my mind. Those stories are POWERFUL as you know. It fills up your entire being! I learned to work with them, so now, even though my coping mechanism is exactly the same, I have a skillset, I have a support system, I have action plans I put into place to help me when I get triggered and want to pull away. He most likely will never do any of that, so the reality is, if you guys become a long term couple, you will be dealing with this pattern over and over and over again….unless he decides to get help somehow. This coping mechanism is a toxic pattern and breaks trust and safety. The thing is, he is not even at the beginning stages of understanding himself. He doesn’t even have the understanding he needs to WANT to make changes. He believes he is not running away. So as long as that is his story, he has no motivation to change. Him breaking up with you, will probably hit him really hard, once he out of overwhelm and out of busy season…that’s when he will be able to feel again.
I was angry, that if known this was how he handled stress that I never would’ve introduced him to my daughters in the first place, because it isn’t fair to any of us. This is your story. Do you see how you are putting your anger on him? Do you see how wanted him to somehow predict the future and this happening? He WAS being authentic about how he felt about you. Then stress entered the picture and he changed. There is no way he could have know this was how he was going to feel. That’s why going slow is very important. You are viewing this as if it should be fair…and that’s just not realistic. You are blaming him for YOUR choice. The truth is, you are angry at yourself, but projecting it onto him. I get it. Of course you are angry. You are being hurt and so are your daughters. It’s so incredibly hard. AND…it’s okay! You are learning a lot from this. You are learning better ways to communicate your feelings. You are learning more about your stories and the baggage you are carrying around. You are learning what doesn’t work for you. You learned that it’s possible to be treated well and what that actually feels like. You learned that you could love again. And you will learn that even after this breakup, you WILL recover and love again…and next time, you will take things slower. Next time, you won’t be so swept up just because a guy treats you well. You will KNOW now, that you need to watch how a man handles stress FIRST, before handing him your heart. I know it’s painful right now AND there are many gifts you got from this. Be kind to yourself. You did and are doing the best you possibly can. Be compassionate and gentle with yourself and what you chose to step into. You are still learning and so is he. So instead of being angry at yourself, be understanding. You got to be loved in a way that you have never been before. That’s powerful! If one of your daughters came home crying to you about how mad she is at herself for doing something she thought was good, but turned out bad, what would you and do for her? You would hug her, you would tell her it’s going to be okay. You would listen and validate how she felt, you would be gentle and compassionate with her. TREAT YOURSELF THE SAME EXACT WAY!!!!!
Thoughts?
Heidi
Hi Eve!
Let’s keep talking! I would love to know your thoughts about what I said and learn more about your situation. We are here to help you navigate sticky spots, so let’s keep working on it together!
Heidi
Hi Celia,
I’m so sorry. We don’t have a DM platform. This forum is the only way to talk about your questions and your situation. You can stay completely anonymous though. We have no idea who you are. People make up names all the time on here. And 99% of the time, other people are not engaging with other people’s threads. It’s just you and me here.
Heidi
Hi Cindi,
Did you send him the text that YOU wrote above? Or did you send the text that I suggested?
I sent him the text and he hasn’t responded. Now I feel like he’s punishing me for asking for space to deal with my emotions in a healthy way. You don’t know this. He may just be staying silent, because he doesn’t know what to say or how to respond. The thing you have to really get into your mind is YOUR FEELINGS ARE NOT FACTS!!!! I can’t tell you how important this is for you to grasp. Your mind made up this story that he is punishing, when there is ZERO evidence of that. There could be A LOT of reasons he is not responding. It’s normal for our minds to take over and make ups these stories based purely on guesses, so when I do that, I stop that story and connect myself to the facts. The facts are…YOU DO NOT KNOW why he isn’t responding…end of story.
And I was married to a man who made me feel responsible for his feelings 24/7 for 10 years. This is making more sense now. You engaged in this pattern of feeling responsible for your ex husband’s feelings for 10 years! And now the guy you are dating is saying the same exact thing to you. You are on the other side of this pattern now…which is a REALLY good thing! It is helping you become more aware of this particular pattern and what it feels like. You KNOW EXACTLY how your guy now is feeling, because you did it for 10 years. And now, you know exactly what your ex husband was doing, because you are doing the same thing he did. I’ve done that MANY times over the years with my unhealthy patterns…I lived on BOTH the giving and receiving side and it brought me soooooo much understanding!
That’s the best way I know how to describe how it made me feel. It made me feel silenced and out of the loop. Were these wrong feelings to have? Your feelings are NEVER wrong. What you need to understand is that feelings are never right or wrong. The purpose of your feelings is to teach you about your SELF. You have used some KEY words in all of your feelings you have described here that have a theme: Betrayal, silenced, I don’t matter etc. These feelings are all the same flavor. And what that tells you is that are some pretty big wounds you are carrying around that have this flavor to them…and it began WAAAAAAYYYYY before you ever experienced your ex husband and those non-committal guys. It’s this baggage that you are carrying around that caused you to pick those experiences in the first place. It’s this baggage that is causing you to get upset to the level you are, with this current guy. So your feelings are letting you know what lives within YOU and what is sourcing your insecurities. Look back to your childhood. Who taught you that you didn’t matter? Who taught you that your voice was not important? Who betrayed your trust and made you feel unsafe?
Now…it doesn’t mean that your feelings are completely invalid here due to HIS response as well. He is PARTLY contributing to the feeling of unsafely here. But there are A LOT of dynamics happening and unless I was able to talk with BOTH of you, I can’t tell you all that is happening. All I can do, is try to help you take a step back and look at all the possibilities. The first question I ask about someone else’s response to me is “How much am I causing them to feel this way because of how I presented my feelings vs. how much of how they feel is coming from their own roundedness?” So…he probably did put you in a box in the corner and is telling you to stay…but why? I can tell you that it’s quite normal for a guy to have that type of response with a woman who he feels is asking too much from him. So when a person feels cornered or pressured, it’s VERY normal for them to put up stronger boundaries….and that may be why you feel him putting you in the corner. Imagine a dog that has been beaten over and over and over again with a stick. His owner traps him in the corner and beats him with it and tries to fight off the owner by trying to bite him or fight back somehow. Then animal rescue gets called and the dog gets taken away and put with a new owner. This new owner takes the dog out to play in the backyard, picks up a stick with the intent to play with him and see if the dog likes to play fetch, but the dogs INSTANTLY becomes terrified and aggressive. This is what it’s like for people too…we get programmed where our feelings, our thoughts, our bodies don’t matter to adults who are caring for us. Our boundaries get crossed over and over and over again as children and dysfunction gets created. Then as adults, we have a romantic partner INNOCENTLY wanting to connect with us, but the signals they are sending off, completely get misinterpreted and we become that fearful dog, even though there is nothing to be afraid of…but our system DOES NOT know that. So again, his response of putting you in the corner, JUST BECAUSE you want to be close (which is a good thing, right), but something in his system reacts to that intimacy with fear…and he is doing what that dog would do…reacting in a way to protect him…even though there actually is no threat. That’s why feelings are not right or wrong and they definitely are NOT the facts. Feelings are just SYMPTOMS of what programs, beliefs, low self-esteem and stories you are carrying in your subconscious.
What the new dog owner needs to do, is NOT take it personally that their new dog is afraid of the stick. The new owner needs to understand what the fear is about and take some time to help re-program their dog and create a new story around the stick. The stick represent play now, NOT a beating. It’s going to take some time, so patience is needed. Compassion is needed. Understanding is needed. And that’s how we need to treat each other. Whatever fear he has living in him, it’s valid. Someone taught him to be afraid. He hasn’t processed out those fears and wounds from his past and he doesn’t know how. The same is true for you too. Most people have no clue to how to help themselves or what is happening beneath the surface of their feelings, so they just do the best they can, until they learn a new way to go about it. You and this guy are EXACTLY the same. You BOTH have baggage that is being activated by each other’s feelings and words and you BOTH are trying to figure out how to move through this. You at least are here to get some help and hear another a perspective. WELL DONE!!! Most people don’t do that. He has no clue how to handle what he is feeling, so what else can he do except to try and protect himself by putting up walls and becoming less connective.
So the way to help someone through that, is to get them out of their fear/protect response. You do that by backing off. Give them space to breathe. Give them space to feel what they need to. Be soft, supportive, and encouraging. Validate how they feel. Have compassion about how they feel. Learn and be curious about how they feel. And if they still just don’t come around and decide to stay open for navigating the speed bumps differently, then that is something you need to know about them. If he is going to let this fear run his life, then there is nothing you can do about that. He will be a guy who will ALWAYS keep a woman at arm’s length, despite wanting to fall in love. The love he has to offer will ALWAYS be limited, as long as that fear stays within him. So…you then have a choice to make. Do you want to engage and continue connecting with a man who is not willing to face his fears? Do you want to keep fighting for a guy who won’t fight for himself? Do you want to hand your heart over to someone who is emotionally available only up to a certain point? Eventually, your heart will start to feel lonely and starving for connection. But maybe you need to go through that again, to finally decide to not engage in this pattern anymore. So far, every guy you have been in relationship with, is the same exact pattern. They all are emotionally limited. They all are NOT able to offer you unconditional, expansive, nourishing love and connection – even in the worst moments. This guy may be the same…he may or may not come around. What YOU need to pay attention to, is yourself. How long are you going to engage in HIS design? How long are you going to wait for him to come around? How long are you going to fight for a guy who tends to run when his fears come up?
Heidi
