[Linsey P]

Hi Heidi,

Thank you for your honest answer! If I think about it like that, and if I’m being completely honest towards myself, then indeed I would want him to change for me so it would finally be “perfect”. It is indeed not fair of me to want (or expect) him to change, as I also would want to be accepted and loved for who I am. It is also very much true what you are saying.. if he was the type of person who wanted to look deeper inside, then he would be doing this by himself already.
I guess it basically comes down to accepting him for who he is and learning how to deal with the situation OR breaking up with him and finding someone more emotionally available, which is a hard decision to make for now.

A bit of self-reflection: As I said before, often I find myself looking for flaws in my partner (or a potential partner) and am always trying to make it “perfect”. I guess that is my pattern. So the best to do for now is probably looking more towards myself and my own relationship behavior instead of towards my partner and his patterns. Once my head is clear I might be able to see more clearly what I really want and need in a relationship and what was coming from a place of insecurity. For now I am still in doubt on how “bad” the situation really is, on whether my head is making it seem worse than it is.

Thanks for your answers and if you have any further suggestions, I’d be happy to hear from you!

Best,
Linsey

[Linsey P]

Hi Heidi,

Thanks for checking in with me! I have been reading up on the attachment styles as you suggested and I definitely recognize myself in the anxious attachment style. It indeed helps in understanding when and why I react the way that I do in relationships sometimes. So thanks for pointing it out! I’m still trying to figure out where to continue from here regarding this information on attachment.

The piece about his “pattern” is something I unfortunately recognize. It has happened more often that I noticed him avoiding questions or coming up with an answer that clearly wasn’t the “real” answer. I always felt he knew that the real answer would make me angry or hurt me and he simply tried to avoid conflict, but what you said could also very much be true. Silly question perhaps: With “OR until you decide to no longer participate in this chasing game” you simply mean that I should decide whether or not to break up with him over this? And I guess what you said about his ex gf makes sense as well.
Is there any way I can make him aware about these two things? I get the feeling he doesn’t realize these things are an issue and that everything is perfectly fine with him. He for example sees himself as a private person instead of someone who hides their deeper feelings. I know I cannot fix him or play his therapist, but there’s a difference between trying to make someone aware of what is going/how it affects me and actually trying to get his issues fixed. I also wouldn’t want to offend him of course, so I am a bit lost in how to approach this without making him angry and defensive. I do want to approach him on this, so any ideas?

Kind regards,
Linsey

[Linsey P]

Hi Heidi,

Thank you for the swift reply!

The theme of feeling unimportant is indeed a like a thread through our relationship. At first our relationship started really well: from time to time he invited me to events with his work friends (which I sometimes couldn’t join because I didn’t have the time and sometimes got canceled), told me how badly he wanted to take me to his home country, meet his brother (who lives relatively close by to me)..etc. This all made me feel important and secure. After a couple of months into the relationship we had a big fight, because he didn’t bother to reply to my NYE message for 48hrs straight. That triggered a lot of anxiety in me and I saw him becoming extremely distant. From then on it has been slowly getting better, but with drawbacks in between.

To answer your question: It is definitely a pattern, I see that now that I thought of it more. Often I have felt extremely hurt if friends or family didn’t include me into an activity. The relationship with my parents is currently getting better. I don’t have a very deep connection with my brother for example. We get along fine, but very superficial. I think same applied to my parents. I feel more deeper connected to them, but it hasn’t always been like that. Both my parents struggled with their mental health when I was younger, so it wasn’t always great.
Since I have been to therapy, I have felt more relaxed in all my relationships. Something that popped up with my therapist is that I seem to have a bit of fear of abandonment. Now, just every once in a while I get anxious again, mostly when someone important in my life makes me feel excluded or unimportant. Whenever I get into anxiety mode, I also tend to focus more on the negatives and forget the positives.

I tried to leave out as much as possible from my previous post, as it was already extremely long, so here some more info on his pattern: He usually keeps things vague when I ask him a difficult question. When I consistently keep asking him the question he finally gives me more information as to why he behaves like this.
He told me for example that he doesn’t want me to meet his parents yet, because his parents keep pestering him with his previous relationship and make him feel like he failed. He is afraid that once he introduces me, they will start pressuring him to settle down even more than they already do and will involve themselves too much into our relationship. Additionally he doesn’t want them to bully him even more if we would ever to break up. He says they are controlling, which is something he cannot handle well.
When we talked he says that he does really want me to meet his friends and invite me into his social circle, but the situation with his parents make it too complex. After asking him repetitively why it then wasn’t possible for me to just visit his friends, he admitted that perhaps he felt like it was too soon.

For me the hardest thing to understand is that he could have a “full on” relationship with his previous gf, but not with me, especially since I believe our relationship is better than his previous one (based on some stuff he said).

The thing is that I feel sometimes that I tend to react and think from my anxiety, not from a clear mindset (if that was what you meant). I do know that the way he behaves sometimes is not normal, but sometimes I think my mind blows it out of proportion. I talk to some friends who are very understanding and help me seeing things more clearly. They help me in emphasizing with my boyfriend, but have also noted that it seems that he has some struggles in relationship behavior. That is seems as if he really wants to be with me, but for some reason cannot fully be with me. I noticed that whenever he really wants something he can plan this way in advance and will simply do it, but most of the time he is very hesitant, comes up with excuses and won’t plan more than 2 months in advance. This is not just towards me, but also towards his family and friends.

I have noticed a shift in his behavior recently and feel as if I am now more important to him. Last conversation about meeting the parents he told me that although he is not excited for me to meet them (for reasons mentioned before), he would introduce me since he noticed how much it means to me. However, I could also tell he was unhappy, which is of course not what I would want, and therefore we compromised into postponing it still. It felt good to know that he was willing to put his happiness aside for my own happiness. He is also more keen on planning the Summer trip to his home country. Last month I told him that I wasn’t sure whether I could visit him in his work city, he told me full confidence “then I will visit you”, which he also did. I noticed him doing things for me that weren’t necessarily the most convenient for him, which is also a huge change compared to last year. I also noticed that he started inviting me to social events with his work friends again, but these events got canceled due to restrictions. One of his friends wanted to come and visit us as well, but this hasn’t been possible yet due to restrictions here.
So taking a lot of these things into consideration, I’m also not sure anymore whether my needs come from a place of insecurity.

How can I tell the clear difference whether my needs are coming from an insecure place or whether they come from clarity? How can I deal with my own feelings in a way that they won’t sabotage any relationships that I have? Sometimes I feel like my relationships are never good enough for me. I always find something in any relationship that “needs fixing”.

I’m not stuck on one man, but him and I are in a relatively happy relationship. We can talk about deeper feelings (for him it is hard, but he sometimes does share these things with me), we barely fight (basically only when I feel unimportant and I start picking a fight with him, which is once every few months), he shows interest to be a part of my family and often takes initiative to hang out with them (this is important for me as well). He tells me all the time how happy he is with me and how awesome and beautiful he thinks I am and that I’m his favorite person in the world. So I am in a place of doubt on whether I would throw my own happiness away just because I am looking for something that doesn’t exist (aka a perfect relationship).

Again a long read, but thank you so much for your help already!

Best Linsey

[Linsey P]

Hi and thanks for the advice!

I’ve had another issue with him which is hard for me to deal with and which makes me very anxious: his ex.
He had a 3,5 year relationship with a girl and I estimate they broke up a year before we met. He barely wants to share anything about their break up, besides the fact that they had big plans which didn’t happen eventually. I assume they wanted to move in together and she broke up with him before this happened (based on some small things he sometimes mentions). Although he’s been great to me (as I describe in posts above), he has a tendency to hide or even lie about their shared history. These are the moments I remember him being shady:
– He moved abroad a couple of years back for an internship. I asked him why he went there instead of another country. He got super uncomfortable (I could tell he was hiding something) and told me he went there because of a friend. When I kept asking about it, he kept insisting on all kinds of things but the truth. After a few minutes, I asked him if he went there with his ex and he said yes.
– We went for a day trip to the city where he did this internship. He took a photo of a building and said he wanted that pic because his brother took a cool photo of that. Now I recently saw that this photo was actually taken by his ex! I didn’t mention this to him yet since we haven’t seen each other face to face and I don’t know if I should..
– He often mentions vacations from the past, but always leaves her out of the story. I again know for sure she was there.
– I asked him about the break up, but he got mad. The few times I brought it up he had a negative emotional reaction. However, he refuses to let me know what happened between them. He says that I don’t need to know about all the bad things that happened to him and mistakes he made in the past.

He seems to want to hide her from me. I don’t know how to deal with this. The hiding and sometimes even lying makes it seem as if he still has feelings for her. How should I deal with this? Am I overreacting? Am I interpreting this right? How can he say and do all these nice things to me and still behave this way about her? I don’t want to ruin something beautiful by acting like a crazy, insecure woman. But I do not know how to deal with his hiding/lying behavior here..

I hope someone can talk some sense into me! Would love to know your opinion on this.

Thanks in advace,
Linsey

[Linsey P]

Hi Kanya,

Thanks for your response! That is correct: I get stuck in my head about the relationship, overthinking everything. It’s a real curse. My friends and the internet don’t help me with that. I read tons of articles that say he is not that into you if he doesn’t introduce you to his friends and family after a couple of months… Or if he doesn’t call you his girlfriend after a while… Because it would all mean that he just sees you as the temporary girl instead of long-term material.

About taking the next step: I would love it if we could close the gap between us within one year from now. This doesn’t mean living together, but at least being able to visit each other on weekly base. Thanks for the advice on how to bring up this topic! I’ll give it a try next time we meet 🙂

It is nice to read an outsiders’ perspective on this. I am definitely working on the anxiety and will try my best to continue to let him lead more.

Thanks again!

Best,
Linsey

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