[Miss S]

Heidi, thank you for taking the time to write this to me.

… honestly I can see how far I’ve come and celebrate my own strength; a huge thanks to you too for acknowledging this as I do feel I’ve grown from all I’ve gone through and if I put the work in will hopefully continue to do so! That doesn’t mean there aren’t days when I bawl into my pillow because he isn’t there for me and holding me anymore, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t days when I feel like giving up, but giving up on myself definitely isn’t in my nature, no matter what he thinks of me!!

I hear what you say loud and clear. I am also having one on one relationship coaching… admittedly I begun it with a view to winning him (I’ll call him Mr A!) back, but actually I think it will give me helpful tools just to navigate future relationships and manage my feelings… just like this forum and other resources! I am actually enjoying educating myself.

… there’s definitely some days (I’d say at least 50 percent of the time) when I feel like I’m in the flow of things, just like James recommends, I believe I will succeed with winning A back and I’m loving the challenge of getting to know him again, and creating a beautiful relationship. There’s other days where I want to just go and shake him 😂. Or days when I imagine him wrapped around someone else and my heart feels like a stone. I honestly don’t think that’s likely. He’s extremely shy, it took me a lot of patience and effort had to be pretty forward to get together with him in the first place, he has a very anxious avoidant personality type, he’d never had a girlfriend before me, he’s an only child (yep from hence arises many of my problems!) he doesn’t honestly have that many friends and the main reason I was drawn to him was because for a man, he was so sensitive and in touch with his emotions. I honestly can’t see him either having the confidence to just put it on someone else, or to keep sending me messages full of love and reassurance when his heart is elsewhere. BUT I don’t know that for certain and in my weaker moments I can be a basket case, barely stopping myself from reaching for my phone, dialling me until he answers and begging him to reassure me that there is no other woman in his life 😆

A admitted to me that he knows he needs therapy. He has also confided to me that he is desperate to leave home and find a rewarding career but he feels trapped and paralysed and doesn’t know how to take the first steps. I guess I feel a lot of empathy for him because for a long time, that was honestly me too. I’ve never known a 25 year old man who allows his parents to influence his actions so much. They seem to have almost brainwashed him into believing he can’t survive in the real world without them (he still lives with them). He had a very privileged upbringing and has also told me on numerous occasions that he wants this for his own children; I don’t know whether he sees me as an under achiever and that’s why he doesn’t want to be with me?!?! Ironic really as I earn more than he does. I massively regret discouraging him from his aspirations to fly aircraft. In hindsight I think this could be the making of him, if he left home and travelled. Again his parents have kind of convinced him there’s no future in aviation because one day it’s all going to be drones, or that because of his learning disability (dyslexia) he can never succeed with it 🙄 as an outside observer… I can’t pretend to be impartial because clearly I am not. I was deeply hurt by their disapproval of me and also objectively struggled to understand it. I mean what exactly are they hoping for for him in a life partner?!?! But his relationship with them seems so toxic. I hate the feeling of powerlessness but I am trying to take control of the things I can and forget about those I can’t. I refuse to believe it’s all doom and gloom. It might be easy on the basis of everything I’ve already said to question why I am so committed to a future with A. Well, when my mother died, he stayed up all night with me talking to me and holding me. At her funeral, coming from an incredibly sheltered and unsocialised background he held my arm and spoke to probably over a hundred strangers. When by Mam’s grave I left him to comfort my dad, I turned around and saw him holding my sobbing brother. And I knew in that moment that this was the man I wanted to love and love. I wanted to wander through the world and do what we could with out time there, with his arm held fast in mine. And considering the upbringing he has had, it’s truly remarkable how much he is his own person. I see so much courage there. He is a skipper or a captain on a steam boat currently. It is not a well paid job but he does it with such focus and pride and that was what won me to him in the first place. He did this because he wanted to and not because his parents did. And he is a much kinder, more compassionate person than either of them. He has imagination and soul. They have none at all. It can’t have been easy, being him. And these are the reasons why he is my hero.

Sometimes I have wondered if my assuming the reason he will not commit to me is his parents, is wishful thinking. Maybe I am not meeting his needs and he doesn’t love me. Maybe he feels so lost he no longer even knows what his needs are?! After the no contact break we tried, he came to my house and spent three hours sat beside me on my sofa, stroking my hair, kissing my forehead, holding my hand. At one point he took my cheeks in both of his hands and asked me what I was thinking. I told him I was thinking that I never stopped loving him even for a second. He told me he had never stopped loving me either. But two days later… he told me I should be with someone better. He told me he didn’t agree his parents would disapprove of anyone he chose. The subject of his parents is just a massive taboo between us. There were signs when we were together that his mum’s influence in particular was toxic. When he took two weeks off work to be with me after my mum died, she was constantly messaging him asking when he was coming home. There were a couple of occasions when she thought of reasons why he couldn’t come and stay with me, like her husband was away on a business trip and she didn’t want to be on her own, or A’s car was broken and she didn’t want him keeping hers overnight (even though she didn’t need to go anywhere!). When we were on holiday, A’s dad helped me rub in some sun cream unsolicited and I overheard her say to A “now she’s trying to steal him too”! And after I broke up with him, while he was still at my house, he spent an hour shut up in my bedroom on the phone to her and he left the room in floods of tears. What can I do? I know how important mums are and how they make us our world. I know we only have mums for a finite amount of time. She’s protective over him because he is her only child and he grew up with a lot of health problems. But how can I stop her seeing me as a threat? I would *never* want to ruin his relationship with her. I would never try to control how much he sees her. But I love her son too. I love him so much I would share everything I have with him and lay down my life for him without even questioning.

How is he being at the moment? Well, whenever we meet in person he can’t stop himself touching me, putting his arm around me if I’m cold, kissing my hand, wrapping his coat around me. After he makes a big admission or we get physically close he will pull right away and not contact me for days and it’s like I have to slowly win him round again. At first my response to this was to panic and to leave him lots of messages and phone calls but I’ve stopped doing that. I just wait for him to come back to me, or send him a simple message asking for his help with my students who have learning disabilities (he has got really on board with this as he has learning disabilities himself, and can genuinely provide me with some incredibly useful insights); or even something like arranging or moving the furniture in my flat. He usually responds very positively to this type of request. I also ask about how his search for a flying apprenticeship is going, or about how things are with his nightmare boss. I try to gently encourage him and reassure him how proud I am to know him. For Christmas I bought him a book called “the aviation Bible”.

… he cares about my problems. He sends me very loving messages when I tell him about the challenges I face with my new job. I’ve tried to encourage him and compassionately mirror all he could be and achieve. I’ve listened when he said he feels lost and under pressure.

Can you please advise me on what I can do to encourage him to see me as the person he should turn to?

I want us to star in our own beautiful story and I truly want us to be running around dodging bullets hand in hand. How can I encourage him to see me in that way, too?

… there were signs he was rebelling against his parents’ influence. When we were on holiday in the Caribbean with them he told me he could see they were spiteful at times. After he broke up with me and had that horrible phone call with them, he confided to me that he didn’t want to go home and was dreading it. They truly aren’t bad people. They would do anything to protect him and they’ve given him everything he could possibly want materially. I would never want to come between them but it hurts me that sometimes I think they love who they want their son to be, rather than who he actually is. And mostly I think that until they intervened, who he actually is, is someone who adored me.

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