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HI Laura,
Thank you for sharing that conversation. It brought in some good information.
I understand and see your efforts to try and make him feel better. I understand that you feel bad that he is feeling that way. I also understand his need for space. First, what he is feeling is about him. You make efforts to promise you will never do that again, but that simply is not true. He HAS to understand that you will activate feelings of betrayal, hurt, abandonment and many more things along the path. He will do the same to you. It is just a part of love and relationship. What makes a relationship successful are 2 people who are strong enough to handle those kinds of events in life and having a skill set and mindset to work through them. It doesn’t matter how strongly connected you are. That is not what keeps a relationship successful or healthy. Despite the connection you feel, it doesn’t mean the relationship you have needs to be fought for, worked out nor continued.
Your reaction about the picture in his phone was quite an over-reaction. You have some deep insecurities that have nothing to do with him and those just don’t disappear. These insecurities will always leak out in various ways until you face them and work with them. Your insecurities are triggering his own fears and insecurities…and the cycle continues. Thinking positive is not a solution. Developing a skill set of how to communicate, how to work through difficult feelings, how to work with your own fears and insecurities….THAT is what is going to help change the dynamics of how you interact. What about that picture made you feel insecure? Where is that insecurity coming from? How did it develop?
You said in your conversation that he is perfect how he is and you don’t want him to change. That’s not what you are saying here. You said you have needs that aren’t being met. You said he is a horrible communicator. You NEED him to change if you are going to feel happy about this relationship. You are not sharing your REAL feelings with him because you don’t want to hurt his feelings. You sense how fragile he is and you are so afraid of pushing him away further and losing this connection, so you stay silent. You want the connection more than you want to be truly be honest and be yourself. You talk about earning his trust back, yet you don’t trust him to handle you being completely honest. Neither of you feels deeply safe with each other.
Basically, there is quite a lot of fear and insecurity that is wrapped up in this relationship and that means there is a lot of personal work to do. You may read books and be here trying to get advice, but what is he doing? Nothing. He is taking space and trying to THINK around what he is feeling, but he has no clue what to do and nor is he trying to do anything about what he doesn’t know or understand.
You want him back, but the reality is, you guys will end up right back here. You guys will continue to have all kinds of ups and downs and it will get exhausting and it will eventually come to an end.
How you view this relationship and trying to spend all of your energy making him feel better and keeping your feelings inside….you are not living your most authentic self with him. Whenever you have feelings that he triggers, like feeling jealous and insecure, you end up requiring HIM to fix your feelings instead of understanding that your feelings…ALL your feelings…are yours to embrace and deal with…not him. You want to point the finger at him for having this picture in his phone instead of looking at that story you instantly created in your mind about why he had this picture in his phone. You made up a story in your mind in a split second about what that might mean, had a reaction and then wanted HIM to make you feel better about the story your mind made up. We all do this. That’s why we have reactions….all the stories our mind creates about a situation/person that comes from past experiences. He has a story about you and how you reacted. The thing is, healthy couples acknowledge and own their own stories and work through those stories individually and together.
I know you want him back, so I can suggest saying something like this: “I know I have triggered you. Seeing that picture in your phone triggered some stuff from my past and I blamed you. My reaction was about my insecurities and I am really learning about myself right now. I know my reaction really triggered you into feeling something quite intense and I know that you need to figure that out on your own. I am going to let go and trust that you will figure this out on your own instead of trying to fix this for you. We both carry a lot of fears and insecurities that neither of us is at fault for creating. I’m going to go silent and just let you be. I will tell you though, I have a time limit with how long I am going to wait. We have some things to work through and I need a teammate/partner to do this with. I know you have confusion and you are not sure what to do, but there comes a point when you just have to step into that and take some action in order to create movement in one direction or another. I need a date and time for us to meet and talk. I will wait until “Friday” and if I do not hear from you by then, then know that I will start closing the door to my heart and plan on moving forward without you. I hope to hear from you.”
I imagine this might be a scary thing for you to send because he might not respond and you might lose him. If he doesn’t respond, you didn’t really have him to begin with and you will learn that despite the amazing connection you guys have, he is not willing to fight for it. It’s time for you to stop mothering him and trying to soothe him and taking responsibility for how he feels and respect him as an adult. You are treating him like a child. So stepping away and requiring him to actually show up for you like an adult and actually have an adult conversation, – it will bring the best out in him. Saying something like this also puts you and your needs into the equation instead of you trying to accommodate him and spend ALL our energy trying to coax him into facing what he feels. Setting this kind of boundary is you being an adult and fighting for your own needs.
Thoughts?
Heidi
Hi Laura,
Thank you for sharing more. There definitely is a lot going on here and honestly, it sounds like you are not very satisfied with him.
You have been dating 2 years now and he wants to call it dating and “not commit,” he ghosts you a lot and is not really interested in communicating authentically with you, it doesn’t sound like he has much capacity for the challenges of life (you said he always wants things perfect and happy – that’s a fragile person who tries to make life that way) and he is very bad at communicating in general AND there are a lot of needs that aren’t being met for you.
Hmmmm…it doesn’t sound like a very easy relationship. It sounds more challenging than peaceful. It sounds difficult. It sounds hard more often than not. So what is making you want to keep trying to make it work? He is who he is. He is a bad communicator, he is emotionally fragile, he handles stress by disconnecting and not talking to you, he is afraid of commitment even after 2 years….he gets to be like this. He has the right to be his very messy self. You also have the right to say yes or no to who he is. Can you accept and embrace all of these things about him? I know there are some great things about him as well, or you wouldn’t be with him. That’s not the issue. The issue here is that you guys have a very poor foundation for success. Communication is non-negotiable. You cannot have a successful, loving, nourishing relationship without BOTH people being open, honest and connected through their communication with each other. He is not like this and you are trying to make him something he is not. He wants the freedom to ghost you whenever he wants. He wants to the freedom to just take his time feeling what he wants to feel away from you, while making you sit everyday wondering what the heck is going on. THIS IS WHO HE IS!!! Can you accept a lifetime of this? Can you accept that this is how he wants to handle stress? If not, then you have a choice to make.
we women are the ones who have to work on understanding them and make them happy and do what makes them feel happy, but what about us? Yes, what about you??? You want him to fight for you, but you are not fighting for yourself. You have been with him for 2 years. You have CHOSEN a very difficult partner for 2 years. What about YOU????? You cannot expect him to care for you and fight for you when you are not even doing that for yourself. You are choosing a very hard relationship and ignoring how unhappy it is making you. You want to keep fixing things so you can try and be happy. You want HIM to change and HIM to meet your needs when fundamentally, you are not even doing that for yourself. Choosing to stay in this rejecting design is YOU rejecting yourself, not him rejecting you. You are rejecting yourself by continually letting it happen over and over and over again, thinking that maybe at some point he will change. He is NOT going to change. If he went to therapy or something or started to do some deep dive work on himself, reading books, going to seminars and really studying himself, THEN there is potential for change because HE wants it for himself. But that is not who he is today so today is all you can rely on. TODAY…is he someone you want to spend the rest of your life with? TODAY….is he the kind of partner you can feel emotionally safe to navigate the challenges of life with???
Heidi
Hi Melissa,
What’s the elephant in the room? Did you cheat on him?
I was disappointed he wasn’t the least curious of what I meant when I said it’s not about you housesitting…I wanted to say it’s about your body language….. I understand you want him to be more inquisitive. The thing is, text is NOT a place to discuss anything like this. It wouldn’t have been appropriate. I’m just curious…is he an inquisitive kind of guy? Does he ask you a lot of questions about what you are feeling/doing/experiencing in your life because he is curious about you?
It sounds like there are A LOT of unprocessed feelings for both of you – which creates A LOT of miscommunication, no communication and a lot of guessing about how the other feels. Something needs to shift Melissa. It’s affecting your self-esteem and causing you to not be yourself and of course he is doing the same thing. How long do you want to live this way?
Like I have to put up with his fluctuating feelings and behaviors and attention because the things I did in the past have caused him to feel/act this way….. You don’t have to put up with anything. It doesn’t matter what you have done in the past. If he wants to hold onto things and keep a barrier up, that is on HIM and not because of you. Yes, you may have caused him hurt and pain, but so have many people in his life. HOW he responds to that hurt is not because of you…it’s because of him. So you putting up with his fluctuating behaviors and attention is YOUR choice. YOU are the one choosing to participate in his design about how he wants to handle and approach his life. This is who he is and he gets to be that way. If you put up with and accept it…you get to do that too. If you don’t want to do that anymore, then you get to shift how you interact with his patterns OR in the acceptance of who he is, you realize it’s not a design you want to align with anymore and you leave. Either way, you “putting up with” him is on YOU, not him.
Thoughts?
Heidi
That song you posted by that girl was so incredibly beautiful and amazing! wow! Thank you for sharing that by the way. I have no doubt that experience changed her life! Keep listening!!!
I can see why you have lost a lot of respect for him. Does he not have a turnover manager??
Would like to be able to do things with friends. Is there something wrong with me because I want friendship and company? I didn’t mean to insinuate there was anything wrong. Our needs and desires always expose our relationship with ourselves. There are many different types of aloneness. I know you have spent a ton of time alone and you things alone all the time, yet here you are…feeling alone – and it’s adding to your depression. It’s a different level of aloneness that you normally don’t feel, because normally you have people to meet, nature to interact with, things to do. You don’t have that here, so now what??? Are you going to just accept that you are going to be depressed because your outside world isn’t meeting your needs? This is an opportunity to recognize how much you use nature and people and the mountains to keep you company and then when all of that is stripped away, you are miserable. So that means you have set yourself up to only be happy when you have nature to interact with frequently and people to go meet and things to do. All of that is normal of course. We all have ways that keep us balanced! However, you are massively out of balance because you cannot source yourself the way you normally know how to do. So now…your choice is to just stay out of balance and continue being depressed or fight to find your balance from within. When your outside world is falling apart, what makes you strong and resilient and able to sustain a level of joy and happiness is your inside world. Your needs are not being met and there is not much you can do about that right now. So this is a golden opportunity to strengthen yourself from within. Meet your own needs the way that nature does typically. Meet your own needs the way that all your meetup groups would do. I know it’s not the same when you do acts of self-love compared to receiving from the outside world and that’s okay. It’s still a money deposit into your soul bank. Depression takes you into disempowerment. I am guiding you into a place of empowerment which will give you an opportunity to learn how to source yourself, your joy, your happiness even if you were in the middle of the dessert, with no one around, no animals, no nothing except sand for miles and miles. When you can find happiness like that and when you become your dominant source of joy (you and your relationship with God), then you will be unstoppable in this life.
Heidi
I’m glad you are able to find some peace about how you relate to your parents. Your sister is the one who is more designed to care for them than you. Her belief system aligns with them and that’s great! There is no mistake in that. She needs to be the one caring for them, not you. It truly is the best design. Everyone gets to feel how they feel without a ton of chaos and drama and judgement and hurt…which is all that would happen if you were to step in and try and help. You honor each of them by accepting their choices and beliefs even though they are different than yours. By staying away, you are more accepting and honoring of their choices without needing to interact with their choices and beliefs. It truly is the best and highest design for everyone.
I know it’s hard to work for your boss. You get to practice honoring and loving yourself in the face of someone who is not very caring and honoring of your talents and contributions. This is a great oppportunity to strengthen your self love. That is what is going to keep you out of your depression. It’s not the isolation that is the problem. Isolation will come and go. You have dealt with depression for a long time and you can always say there is a “reason” that it gets activated. The reason lives within you and it will follow you everywhere you go until you truly listen to it, work with it and start to clear the baggage. Self love is one of the antidotes.
Hang in there! It sounds like you have some amazing trips planned. What a perfect time to truly get to know yourself as you travel around and see things on your own. There are a lot of gifts waiting for you!
Heidi
I am so so sorry for what you are having to go through right now. Most guys don’t quite get what it feels like for a woman to be ignored and disconnected from. In general, they experience relationship and connection much differently than we do. With that being said, I understand your fears and your hurt. It’s truly awful to be ignored by someone you love. The heart hurts and it’s all consuming. Ever second is filled with this heaviness and uncertainty.
Let’s see if we can figure this out. You said it’s his pattern to disconnect a lot and need some space. It sounds like he is doing what he normally does, but this time, it’s longer than normal. He sounds like he is avoidant and he is activating your anxious attachment style. First and foremost, it’s important for you to separate out his avoidant style and his care for you. I know you feel like “if he cared about me, then he wouldn’t ignore me like he is, especially when he knows how it makes me feel.” There is a little bit of truth about this, but it’s far from the whole truth. Him not connecting is just a coping mechanism and a completely separate thing than his care for you. When most people are in their coping mechanisms, their feelings kind of get pushed away and the emotions of whatever they are dealing with take over…so they don’t really have access to feelings of love and care for their partner until they are able to process whatever is consuming them.
Would you be willing to share what the argument was about? I know you said you guys have ups and downs “like most couples do.” Do you guys tend to have arguments about the same type of thing? What about communication do you guys struggle with? What are you getting jealous about and insecure about? What do you think he would say he is struggling with when it comes to you? It sounds like your struggle in general is about him disconnecting and not communicating very well. Is there anything else?
How about you sending him a text and say something like “I understand your need to have some time and space to deal with and figure out what you are feeling about me and us right now. I am willing to give you that space, but please honor that it’s incredibly difficult to feel this distance from you. Would you be willing to meet up for dinner on Friday night? I won’t contact you until then. I think it’s time for us to talk and get onto the same page…whatever that may be. Can you figure out what you want to say by then? If not, then when?”
Saying something like this can give him a little more space, but also require that he stop running from whatever it is he is not willing to face. Give him a few more days, but at least get a commitment from him about when he is willing to meet. And in the meantime, we can go over how to handle the conversation and the things you can do to help yourself through this.
Thoughts?
Heidi
Thanks for the update Melissa. There really is a lot going on.
I wondering how YOU feel. That is not so clear. You say that you guys are not really kissing and being intimate. How come? What is stopping you from initiating? It seems you have A LOT of feelings that you are just holding in and it seems it’s out of respect for him and what you are GUESSING he needs. It seems there is an “elephant in the room” that neither of you are discussing. What do you think will happen if you actually identify that? My guess is, you might be afraid of breaking up and you are avoiding that? Maybe you know that is what needs to happen? I don’t know, but what I do know is the lack of communication and authenticity is not going to fix things. Giving him more time and space and you taking more time and space only delays the inevitable of what needs to happen….an open and honest conversation and a commitment to either stay together and shift your patterns (and create an action plan on how you both are going to do that) or you guys decide it’s best to part ways.
Thoughts?
Heidi
Hi Roxanne,
I just wanted to check in. How are you doing? Any thoughts about what I shared? Any new developments?
Heidi
Hi Melissa,
I just wanted to check in. I hoping to keep talking about this. There are a lot of layers you have to deal with. Any new developments? Any new thoughts? Any progress in one direction or another?
Heidi
Hi Kathy,
I just wanted to check in and see how you are doing. Any new developments? Any thoughts? Have you still decided to stay away or have you stepped back in for another experience with him?
Heidi
Hi Nicole,
Just checking in. How are you doing? Any new developments? Any thoughts about what I shared?
Heidi
That is a different perspective of honoring my parents. That is the thing about the bible, right? I remember being in college taking my religious studies course. It was a Christian school but non-denominational. My professor really exposed how the bible has been interpreted in MANY different ways by the top scholars etc. and how there is a massive amount of disagreement about what the words mean. If Christianity has over 30,000 different versions/practices, then the bible can be viewed a ton of different ways as well. So I would like to invite you to NOT operate out of fear, self-judgment, shame or obligation of what YOU think it means to be a “good” daughter and what YOU think it means to be “honoring” to your parents. Operate from your heart and guidance and what opens you up to be the best version of yourself.
I am soooo so sorry about what you have to deal with on a daily basis with your boss. He sounds awful. He is the kind of guy you just have to do exactly what you are doing…stay quiet and just do what he says. This is such a disappointment how this job has turned out. I’m so sorry Rhonda. I hope something wonderful is coming your way!
Wow! What an incredibly beautiful name you got to give him. Wow!!! It’s quite a powerful thing you got to do in naming him. I hope he likes it and really becomes all of those qualities. He is so lucky to have you!!!
Oh!!! and I’m glad you finally discovered what was causing your stomach upset. Yikes! Nuts eh? It’s hard when there are so few things you can eat and enjoy.
Heidi
You being honest and vulnerable is about YOU finally choosing to connect differently. You could end up completely being rejected or you could inspire him to want to risk with you again. There is no guarantee of the outcome, so there is a choice here. This is all part of you learning that it’s okay for you to be vulnerable and that you will be okay, no matter the response you get. It’s a risk, but so is love. You claim that you have changed and shifted, but it only sounds like you are willing to be vulnerable and honest about your feelings as long as you know he will respond the way you want him to. That’s just not how it works and it never will. Being vulnerable is about YOU be authentic. Sometimes you will be embraced and sometimes you will be rejected. You have to decide that being authentic is more important for you than hiding and letting fear control your choices.
Besides, wouldn’t you say that stepping into this fear is the biggest proof that you have shifted? Since he experienced you not being very romantic or passionate and not initiating, what better way to prove that you are working on that part of yourself, than to SHOW him you are doing something very uncomfortable and different.
You can even start the conversation by saying “I have something to share with you and I’m terrified of being rejected. I decided though, I want to be more authentic as a person, even if that means I do get rejected. You helped me really look at myself and I’d like to become more of who I am, instead of hiding away my feelings all the time. So here it goes….”
Thoughts?
Heidi
