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Wow! What an adventure with your phone! Sheesh! I’m glad you finally were able to grab it. What a serious pain in the *ss!!!!
I hope that your friend is able to find out what is happening with your car. It’s so strange that he just isn’t responding. I’m sorry your experience is that you find people unreliable. Still…everything ends up okay, right? You are still here and have worked through all the let downs.
It sounds like you need to really forgive Wells Fargo for their regulations. You feel abandoned and let down. You invested in them and they are not investing in you back. It always hurts when it’s not a 2 way street, so spend some time releasing it and forgiving them for not choosing to meet your needs.
Sounds like despite not liking your environment, you are still meeting some good people and getting out. Good job!
Heidi
I’ll just share one of my greatest gifts and how I end up using it as a distortion because of the wounds I carry. I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching and I am very good at it. I have an incredibly amount of information about human behavior and I have changed thousands of lives over the years. However, I found my value in this world by constantly teaching. I would feel “If I don’t have something to share with someone to improve their life, then how am I valuable to them?” So in all of my more serious relationships, I chose guys that needed fixing. I chose guys that had a level of curiosity and would be enthralled and magnetized to how I could help them know themselves on a deeper level. The 1 thing all my guys have said about me is that they have never been so well known or seen by anyone to the level that I offered them. Man…hearing that was like getting a fix of drugs. It would just reinforce my value and would feel like I had purpose and value. That’s why I kept choosing guys who needed my information. I always became the teacher and they always used me as their main resource and regardless of how great things were otherwise, this pattern guaranteed me an ending. Why? Because I was their resource and they didn’t know how to resource themselves. That puts me as being stronger and more educated than them and then me carrying the relationship. Eventually I would always break because I would feel so alone, exhausted and frustrated that all my efforts never really created that much change. The relationship was dysfunctional not because I wasn’t doing enough, it was dysfunctional because I approached life differently than them…enough so, that it caused problems. They wouldn’t go read their own books, or go do their own work…they would just leave it all up to me and I participated in that design at the expense of feeling alone. I got to feel valuable (from a dysfunctional kind of way, but it still worked), but I also got to feel alone.
It took me a lot of years to undo this pattern so that I respect my gift much more. It’s always a work in progress of course, but how I live my life now….man, it’s so much easier and so much more peaceful. I am actually 1000% okay with a person’s pain, even if I caused it. Why? because pain is a gift. Pain offers a window to the soul. Pain exposes our fault lines…the cracks in our systems that are full of lies. Pain is an opportunity for healing. So even when I am messy and cause hurt, I also know it’s a moment in time for both me and the other person to clear some old baggage that is ready to be released. Trying to fix someone else’s pain is robbing them from that opportunity. If you think about it, without pain and growth, none of us would ever grow. We grow because we are trying to get out of pain, so it’s also one of the most powerful motivators. Do you really want to rob someone of their growth by trying to rescue them? That pain and hurt they feel is one of the greatest teachers. I know not many people really view it that way, but that’s their choice. They can stay victim to their pain and their stories or they can empower themselves with it. Either way, that’s THEIR journey and not for me to try and change and fix.
I want to make sure that you understand I truly get what you are doing and why. You and I are very similar in some ways. I know I am being a bit tough with you, but I also feel like you can handle it. You do have a strength in you. You do have an incredible, beautiful, powerful heart that I have no doubt, changes every single life that interacts with you. When you are ready, you will start to care for your gift more and be more cautious and loving towards yourself before you share it with those that do not know how to care for it with you.
Heidi
The first thing I would suggest is for you to stop telling him he needs to grow up. You are picking on him. He gets to be however he wants to be. That is exactly something a mother would say by the way. Stop giving him suggestions on what to do. Every time you do, he will receive it as if there is something wrong with him. If he asks for help, then of course share your ideas, but other than that, keep your ideas to yourself. Sometimes what can work is if you start sharing something you learned about yourself. When you share about yourself and something you learned, you will be indirectly teaching him and giving him some things to think about. He will receive it much better that way because you will be talking about yourself instead of him. Does that make sense? So again….NO telling him to grow up, no offering ideas UNLESS he asks for them and just let him be. Instead, remind him of his strengths. If he is having a problem and doesn’t ask for your ideas, the best thing you can do is say something to the effect of “You are resilient. You have been through a lot in your life and you are still here, taking 1 day at a time. I trust your process. You have everything you need within you to get through this. If you want any ideas, I’m here to help, just ask. Otherwise, I believe in you.”
You say that you feel incredibly bad about hurting anyone and “that’s just how you are.” I get that you have an incredibly beautiful heart and your capacity to love and support is MASSIVE. It’s a gift actually. Not many people are made that way. With that being said, like everything….our greatest gifts are ALSO our greatest weaknesses. Your capacity to love and care is going to everyone else except towards yourself. This is NOT the healthy side of your gift. Like any gift, for it to be used with the highest of consciousness and power, it needs to be used cautiously and used with respect. You are not respecting nor honoring your amazing capacity by constantly trying to fix other people. And so what if you hurt someone? We all do it and it’s just part of life. You are not offering yourself the same kindness, love and compassion for messing up in the first place. Don’t you think you are allowed to mess up and then be loved in your messiness? Don’t you think that when you hurt someone and you don’t forgive yourself for that and then empty your love onto someone else and not giving yourself the same kindness, you are hurting yourself??? You want to fix everyone else’s pain so you can feel value, so you can feel better about yourself, so you can fix your own pain. So no, this is NOT who you are. The way you function is a distortion of your gift and distortion happens when we have unprocessed and unresolved wounds that we carry.
What are you doing to do if he doesn’t want to shift or change or work on anything? Maybe he wants to still stay connected, still stay together, but he won’t commit, he won’t work on himself and he just wants to keep ignoring things. Is that something you are willing to do?
Heidi
I’m glad the cake analogy made you laugh and I’m glad it resonated for you.
You don’t know how to proceed? There is nothing to do. No matter what you do, you are always going to end up right back here in this same spot. So why do anything? Can you just let it go?
Here is another analogy. You are living in a snake pit, getting bit all over the place and you are asking how to stop getting bit. That means you are asking how to stop the snakes, that are just doing what is instinctive and normal for them, to stop being themselves because it’s hurting you all the time. You want the snakes to stop biting you, yet there is a ladder in that pit for you to climb out anytime you want. If you want to stop getting hurt, then climb out of the pit and let the snakes continue just being themselves. You are wanting your guy to care about how he is affecting you to a level that he is just not capable of. Like the snakes, you are wanting him to be different so you don’t have to hurt anymore. You want THEM to change without you having to change by making a different decision. Either way Melissa, you are going to just keep hurting. You will continue to get bitten/hurt as long as you stay and that will never change. You will hurt if you leave because it’s a big loss BUT at least there is an end to that kind of pain. If you finally get out of that snake pit, you can actually heal and never step into one of those ever again. Either way you look at it, you have pain in your future. Which one are you willing to deal with?
If you want to stay, then just go with the flow. What is there really to talk about anyways? If he wants to pretend nothing happened, then why not just go with it? Would you be willing to just let this go and forget about it? Would you be willing to just accept this is who he is? Why fight against that?
Heidi
First, what is really important is for you to really connect to your need to mother him. You are the one doing all the work here and you are saying he just doesn’t know what to do, so you are going to do all of it and help show him how to help himself. Like I said before, if someone doesn’t know what to do, if they want to figure it out, nothing is stopping them from doing a simple google search. Stop making excuses for him as if he doesn’t have the ability or know how in order to resource himself. That is true of a child, but not an adult. Part of the problem here is you are not requiring him to be nor act like an adult who needs to figure out how to problem solve. Your need to mother him is very strong and your need to be mothering and fixing what is broken FOR HIM (and not yourself) is one of the main ways you are trying to make yourself feel valuable. As long as you yourself stays in this pattern, your relationship will never grow or evolve. Your approach is part of what is crippling the growth here. You are wanting to help fix his fears, his insecurities, his lack of communication, his walls….but everything is about saving him. He is a great distraction to avoid dealing with your own limitations. You are interested in fixing his challenges, yet I’ve brought up several things that YOU need to really about yourself and how you are contributing to this very challenging relationship. Focus on yourself. If you don’t shift and start to understand yourself and your patterns, nothing will change. You cannot make him change. You are powerless with that. 100% of your power lies in looking and growing within yourself. When you shift, change and grow, it has soooooo much more of an impact. I have seen men also shift when their woman starts to shift and work on themselves. Is this something you are willing to do?
You keep talking as if having a healing talk will help things. All you want is for him to be ready for that. The thing is, then what? This is a pattern and will always be a pattern as long as he doesn’t view himself as needing help beyond just taking “space.” You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. This is what you keep doing and are still doing. You keep leading him to the possibilities, you think if you keep learning there might be a way to shift how he treats you. There is NOTHING you can do to shift his core, fundamental fracture. You might be able to get him to talk again so you guys can have that healing talk, but this will keep happening over and over and over again.
I know I am repeating myself and I know what I am saying doesn’t really matter because all that matters to you is talking to him again so you can stop hurting.
Like I said before, all you need to do is just keep waiting. Be positive and connective when he does reach out. Be available and supportive and just keep your feelings to yourself….even in your healing talk. Whatever it is that he is dealing with, it’s big enough to need to take this much space, so all you need to do is just address his feelings. DO NOT bring up your insecurities about the picture in his phone. Just apologize for your reaction, let him know that it took you by surprise and it triggered your insecurities and you are working on those. Tell him it’s not the kind of person you want to be and although it might happen again, you are working with your fears. Then spend the rest of the talk just validating him about how he feels….right or wrong doesn’t matter. Keep the focus on him and just keep validating his experience. Don’t argue his feelings, don’t disagree, don’t defend against anything he is saying – just be a supportive, validating, listening partner and apologize for your side of things.
In the meantime, you can maybe try walking down memory lane a bit. You can say something like “I was out the other day and passed by the restaurant where I remember having the best time with you. Do you remember when we went there? We laughed sooooo much that night.” Essentially you are reminding him of a positive memory and then add a compliment with it. So you might finish by saying, I love when we get to talk and laugh like that. When all our fears and messiness are put aside, even for an hour, I get to feel my very best self with you – even though I have a lot of insecurities, you also have helped me feel the strongest parts of myself that I didn’t know were there. I am forever grateful for that.
Does this make sense? I would say just use this technique once. Send him funny videos that will make him laugh. Ask him for help to fix something or ask him for advice. The goal here is, he needs to feel good about himself when he interacts with you. Does that make sense?
Heidi
I love that you are willing to keep talking about this and continue sharing your thoughts and experiences. I really appreciate that about you!
I don’t want to be the one pushing on that and make him feel worse, but I want to be there for him and be helpful, but he is closed with his feelings, he doesn’t let anyone in. I get it. You are afraid to push because you know how fragile he is. So in accepting this about him, then staying silent with your thoughts and feelings is best. The less he has to deal with, the better. Like you said, he ALWAYS has something inside he is dealing with and stressing about, so any of your feelings where you share your disappointment, hurt, negativity etc. are best kept under wraps. Share the least amount possible with him unless it’s happy stuff.
but I think everyone has fights and ups and down, it’s nothing out of this world, but he doesn’t understand that. Also, sometimes I feel he doesn’t care for me because he doesn’t show it, at the same time I think there is a special connection between us and he cares for me because otherwise he wouldn’t be here dealing with us at this time if it affects him that much, what do you think about it? Yes, there are ups and downs with couples, but you keep rationalizing all the challenges you guys are facing. Your relationship is broken at it’s core foundation, so no…what you guys are doing is staying together on a sinking boat that has some serious cracks in the structure. And you want to keep using a bucket to try and keep the water out. This is NOT typical for relationships that are successful and healthy and nourishing. Those relationships have a very solid foundation with 2 people who are committed to growth and higher functioning with each other.
Of course you wonder if he cares about you. You said he doesn’t let people in. This is who he is and is just something that is part of the package. Embrace it. Know that he has HUGE walls and you are just going to have to accept this about him. Asking him to share more and be more will only push him away further.
Sometimes I think if I am not with him id have a hard time finding other people to date because men are assholes most of the time. I get it. Dating is difficult AND your reasoning is NO excuse for staying in a relationship where you are emotionally starving. There are plenty of guys that are NOT assholes too. I know a ton of guys who are respectful, caring, love to connect and talk and treat women with honor and value. It doesn’t mean a guy like that will light up your fire, but at the very least, you will get to feel what it’s like to be honored and respected by a guy. There are ways to weed out the assholes too. Dating is great practice for setting boundaries, developing your intuition, learning better ways to communicate, learning to be yourself…dating is about sooooooo much more than trying to find someone you connect with.
I didn’t want to put all that pressure on him if it’s really true that he’s feeling that bad like he said. You keep worrying about the pressure you might put on him. I get it. He is fragile and can’t really take very much, so like I said before, deal with your feelings in another way and do not share them with him. He can’t handle any of that right now. Your insecurities, your jealousy, your feelings of rejection…you can work on all of this stuff on your own. It’s not HIS job to fix the things that have been there for years and years. Why not get a therapist for yourself??
but I would like to have a little more of commitment with him, that he actually calls this a relationship because it’s not that we are not in one, its that he doesn’t give the title and I don’t know how to make that happen, that causes my insecurities too, The lack of title has nothing to do with why you feel insecure. It’s the story you have about what it means to have a title that is causing your insecurity. If you had no insecurity at all and not a worry in the world that he is looking at other women, would it matter to you if you had that title of “girlfriend?” Again…this is who he is. He sounds pretty solid about how he wants to view your relationship, so like I previously said, you are choosing a relationship where your feelings, emotions, needs do not matter…only his do. So you will just have to keep staying quiet in order to keep him connected.
As far as the 1 thing you guys could focus on, I would suggest something simple and easy. You can set yourself up for success better that way. So asking for a title, or better communication, or that he shows you more care – those are all GIANT things and would be overwhelming for him. What is something simple and easy that you could ask for from him?
Heidi
Isn’t it so sad that we feel this connection to a business only to discover they really do not care about us other than we fit into their rules and guidelines? I’m sorry you are having to deal with this. I also really hope nothing happened to your car. I would think the same exact thing!!!!
How was the meetup? Did you meet anyone that you enjoyed connecting with? Did you learn anything new?
Heidi
Hi Laura,
Would you be willing to stop being his teacher/mother? No, there is nothing I can tell you that would help him get over what he is feeling. What you triggered in him has lingered there for many, many years – way before he even met you. In order for him to shift how he feels and really understand what is happening, he needs to step into it. There are no words, there are no techniques, there are is nothing YOU can do for him. This is all on HIM as these are his issues. You may have triggered the network of programs/stories/fears, but those fears were not planted by you. Yes, you have added to that network of fear he carries, but you are not the source. He has any resource available for him to help him through this. I guarantee that if he didn’t know how to do something at work, he would research it and figure it out. There are a GAZILLLION free resources on YouTube, books and programs out there, that if he were to put just the slightest effort in, he would start to learn and help himself. YOU being his teacher and guide is you mothering him and treating him as if he is incapable of figuring this out on his own. That is a very damaging pattern. You need to accept the reality that he WANTS to be a victim and as long as he stays in that energy and doesn’t help himself nor fight for himself, he will never fight to be a better partner for you. This is who he is! Let him be that and own/embrace your choice to be with a guy who lives and approaches life that way. You will always have to deal with and accept that he is not the kind of person who is going to truly help himself in any sort of meaningful way and will therefore always be unavailable for you and will always choose himself over you.
I know you are terrified of losing him. Is that how you want to spend your life….constantly sourcing someone else’s comfort at the expense of your own? You are more afraid of losing him that losing yourself. You are making him more important than you. His feelings and comfort matter more to you than your own feelings and comfort. This is a co-dependent pattern: Meeting the needs of others at the expense of your own. When you approach relationship this way, you lose yourself AND your partner really has no clue who you really are, because you are constantly hiding yourself from him. You get to be this way of course. We all have our patterns/habits/fears etc. that we bring to the table. You are so focused on just getting him back so you don’t have to feel uncomfortable. I know this is all that matters to you.
If you are not willing to say what I suggested, then I just suggest to keep letting him take the lead. Wait for him to text you and just continue to be responsive. Don’t push for any answers or feelings from him. Let him be. Whenever he is ready to talk about things, he will. You need to just keep pushing your feelings aside about how hard this is for you and just keep giving him what he wants/needs. Just keep being patient and supportive and let him take the lead on how you guys interact. He obviously still wants to connect on some level, so stay connected and available whenever he reaches out. When it’s time to talk, I’m sure he will let you know, but WAIT for him to bring it up. Let it all go. I definitely DO NOT suggest talking about all the things that are wrong with him and you and then trying to fix those things. That is a conversation that can easily cause a lot of damage. I suggest to just pick 1 thing to improve on and practice within your relationship. JUST ONE!!! Whenever he is ready, you guys can maybe come up with some kind of action plan about how to improve 1 aspect of your relationship and you need to let the rest of it go. He is waaaaaaay too fragile to handle anything more than that.
Does this help?
I know you want some secret way to fix all of this and to fix how he feels. You are dealing with YEARS of buried emotions that will never be fixed by you. Something like that has to come from within. So again, you need to accept him JUST AS HE IS and let him be. He is not the type to dive deep into his feelings nor does he want to learn how..at least not at this point. So that means you are picking a guy who is emotionally fragile and with that comes a lot of challenge. So embrace that and move yourself into a space of acceptance instead of trying to change everything.
Thoughts?
Heidi
Wow Melissa,
What a rollercoaster ride!
I don’t know what else to tell you. You guys are quite messy and play off of each other quite a bit. You are aware of the dysfunction and how this relationship is quite painful and challenging. It just doesn’t sound like you are ready to let go though. Your partner knows how to play the victim quite well. He got his money from you and you obviously feel used by him. The reality is, and this is how it works for most of us – you are just not in enough pain to make a different choice. I get it. I’ve done it a million times. I have stayed in relationships well past their expiration date, trying to repair the connection or make things work better or try and change my perspective. You know what that’s REALLY doing???
It’s like trying to make a yummy, beautiful cake with the most amazing, top quality ingredients BUT adding 1 cup of shit to the recipe. No matter what you do and no matter how beautiful that cake is and no matter how much there are some GOOD ingredients, it doesn’t change there is 1 cup of shit in it – it ruins the beauty and taste of the entire thing and there is no way to fix that. I’ve tried a million times – and so have a gazillion other people. It just is what it is – and no one can tell you when you should stop trying to make the cake taste good. That is a very personal choice. Ultimately, when you are tired enough of hurting, you will choose to walk away.
And NO! It is NOT your fault that he doesn’t trust you. You made a mistake. How long is he going to make you pay for that mistake??? The thing is, he is NOT moving on from it and holding it over your head. He is not doing the work he needs to be doing in order to move forward. That’s on HIM, not you. If he is not able to let go, then you are with a guy who doesn’t know how nor want to learn how to release and let the past be the past. What kind of partnership is that? That is NOT loving or kind or connective. He has put a wall up between you guys called “you hurt me, so I’m not going to trust you” and it’s not going away anytime soon. This is not about you earning back his trust, this is about HIM forgiving and letting go.
Heidi
Wow Melissa,
What a rollercoaster ride!
I don’t know what else to tell you. You guys are quite messy and play off of each other quite a bit. You are aware of the dysfunction and how this relationship is quite painful and challenging. It just doesn’t sound like you are ready to let go though. Your partner knows how to play the victim quite well. He got his money from you and you obviously feel used by him. The reality is, and this is how it works for most of us – you are just not in enough pain to make a different choice. I get it. I’ve done it a million times. I have stayed in relationships well past their expiration date, trying to repair the connection or make things work better or try and change my perspective. You know what that’s REALLY doing???
It’s like trying to make a yummy, beautiful cake with the most amazing, top quality ingredients BUT adding 1 cup of shit to the recipe. No matter what you do and no matter how beautiful that cake is and no matter how much there are some GOOD ingredients, it doesn’t change there is 1 cup of shit in it – it ruins the beauty and taste of the entire thing and there is no way to fix that. I’ve tried a million times – and so have a gazillion other people. It just is what it is – and no one can tell you when you should stop trying to make the cake taste good. That is a very personal choice. Ultimately, when you are tired enough of hurting, you will choose to walk away.
Heidi
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
