DA and AP/Secure on-off for 11 years. Ty for any help.

Yeah. The reason why I don’t blame myself as much is because I started going to therapy - and kept inviting my ex to come - and have become genuinely more secure. Ive matured a LOT. The way I see it is the more secure I got in therapy, the more the part of me that genuinely loved this man kept looking back at him, and I’d be seeing how his refusal to grow up (his avoidance of emotions prevented him from growing) not only affected our relationship, but his other relationships, and his performance in medical school. He even got a poor grade on a practical exam for empathy.

Of course his nervous system was affected by me and vice versa, but that’s precisely why I was inviting him to couples therapy, or to do something… With intervention, with help the whole idea is to create safety between the two of us.

My anxiety has not been too much to prevent me from having healthy, secure relationships with other men. Those relationships ended, not because of my anxiety or because of their avoidance, but life stuff.

I indeed got triggered by DA ex..... for example when we decided to give it another go, and hed be cold with me without reason, suddenly after a night of me staying over. He never learned to lovingly say to me, hey I had a great time, but I think this is too much, do you think you could go home. He would just become cold and mean. Or when I’d be visiting for a few days (literally 2/3 days) and he’d go and eat dinner without me. Or when he came to the city where I live to see friends and we had plans and he didn’t call, as if I was a 20something ditsy nobody to him whose feelings he shouldn’t respect. I’m a grown ass woman, we had plans and he should’ve called and respected my time. I’m also the woman that helped him when he broke his leg, the woman that accompanied him to his grandfather‘s funeral, to many of our friends weddings. I was the person that lived with this man abroad for two years while he was in the army.

What the relationship became was absolutely disgusting and horrible and rife with emotional abuse towards me, and I didn’t want to be in that relationship, but I still loved him and was hoping for a better future. What’s interesting is that when I look back at the past couple years, our conversations stopped being interesting or fun, because I felt like I wasn’t really connecting with him. He was not available for connection with me, he kept guarding himself.

You know it’s funny, a pattern with him was he would hurt my feelings and then once he understood that he had, he said well I’m sorry but also I’m still not sorry because at the time I was upset. My therapist remarked that this was the emotional reasoning of someone that was pre-pubescent. Adults apologize for the havoc or the damage or the harm that they caused regardless of what their intentions were. This man that I loved since I was a teenager refused to become a grown, self aware man and it broke my heart.

You can go ahead and say I was trying to control him, was typical AP, and you’re not wrong. The truth is is that I saw that things were seriously lacking and because I loved him I tried to teach him how to be in a healthy relationship with me, and it did not work and it destroyed me for years. Not to mention because he was like this a little bit at the beginning, I kind of trained myself to brush things off as they were happening. While he would collect negative evidence, I would collect positive evidence to use against his negativity during an argument.

]I guess what I just really have trouble coming to terms with is the huge discrepancy between this man’s immense potential, which still exists, compared to the garbage person that he has become. You can’t imagine… He’s 35 and still does Molly(MDMA) on the weekends, recently bragged to our mutual friends about a sexcapade he had with a stripper and his other friend. The mutual friend in question said that whereas 10 years ago it would’ve been really funny, now it was kind of silent (crickets, he said), that our friends are sort of noticing that he’s not acting like a 35-year-old doctor. It just breaks my heart…This was a man that I really thought was going to be my husband and I guess I’m just coming to terms with the fact that it was all hope and not reality.

No wonder you feel triggered lately That's really awful, I wouldn't even want to associate with male friends who do that. It just demonstrates a whole value system and attitude towards women that undermines who you are, which is educated, hard working, and whose life is truly meaningful. Getting into med school, then actually getting through it, must have been one of the hardest things you ever did. To see an ex bragging about being with women without a single accomplishment except what genes and plastic surgery gave them must really hurt.

I think good people in professions like yours are extremely valuable. The work you do, the lives you save. Please take good care of you, hon. Choose the right supportive people to be in your life, you really deserve that. <3








 

Your focus on how he feels or felt is understandable, but not helpful. Chances are he felt something. He had one foot out the door, but the silver lining there for your time together, is he had one foot in the door. That was for a reason. He was getting something in exchange. You toss the word love around. I guess I don’t know what that is. Is that the butterflies? Or is that the conscious choice to solve problems together as they arise? Maybe in conjunction with the feels? If it’s the butterflies, enjoy spending time together... it sounds like he had that with you. But once the feels go away, they have to figure out how to solve problems constructively. This is not the forte of the avoidant. Hell, they don’t even understand their emotions. Other than they are probably getting screwed somewhere, somehow. Good luck negotiating with that. But love doesn’t play a part in that. If you have anything they could even possibly distrust, kiss your ass goodbye. Now the avoidant is dealing with a dishonest broker, most likely.

I could go on, but you can see that none of this has anything to do with you, right?

As for having a new bf, while you’re still this hung up on someone, knowing there’s not much of a future, but checking it out because who knows?... sigh. That’s pretty avoidant behavior of your own(my favorite mantra- “I don’t have time to deal with other people’s baggage”. Welcome to relationships. We all have baggage). My guess based on this thread is that you’re both fearful avoidants, him being more avoidant, you being more anxious.

Also, check this video out for fertility myth-busting: youtu.be/g9ryP0UyO5U

faithopelove, it doesn't have to be true for everyone but would have been for me. We have babies in my family and they are being surrounded by a lot of AP behavior, and I'd have acted the same exact way (for the same reasons as my family has shared with me for why they're feeling that way) without recognizing it a few years ago.

Your primary attachment style does often get reflected in parenting though, because it's how you handle stress. That doesn't have to be your romantic attachment style. I was general AP and AP romantically, though secure with family and friends.

Quick update. My ex is a doctor. I have COVID-19. It's been rough.
He hasn't called me once, and he knows I'm sick bc I keep in touch with his sister. Even his parents called me and are worried. He apparently told his sister that unless I get intubated, he doesn't want to know anything about how I'm doing.

Please help me make sense of this. Is he even human?