Broken heart

It sounds like you have a lot of feelings for him but that for whatever reason he can't reciprocate. I agree with others above that this isn't a personal thing-- this is just all he has to give.

BTW, I think this guy is real schmuck for letting his 4 year old kid get close to you if he wasn't serious about you. He's also damaging his kid that way, perpetuating the cycle of insecure attachment. A secure person who was attentive to a child's emotional needs would protect their kid from the pain of those breakups and wouldn't have their kid get close to you unless they were at least seriously thinking of a permanent commitment. Huge red flag that he would act the way he was acting (telling you he would not want kids with you, etc.) and yet let his kid bond with you. Grrrrr on that kid's behalf.

Thank you all for your responding and your kind Words. It feels good to know i’m not alone. He caught me off guard by alsnog me whether I wanted to have children on our 2nd date. I was honest and said yes and decided to ask him how he felt about more kids since he already has a son. He told me he always wanted more kids. I was surprises about our talk because it isn’t something that i would discuss in the beginning. I let myself believe that he could be the one. I feel so stupid now. Months later he told me it was his biggelt nightmare.
About his son, he introduced me to him after we had been seeing each other for 6 months because he wanted to take things slow.
Now that i’ve made it clear that i don’t want to see him anymore, he keeps finding an excuse to call me. Does he want me back? I don’t get it.

So many red flags! He doesn't sound healthy, especially the love bombing in the beginning (asking you about having a child?!) and then the nastier side comes out. I think it's better to have walked away.

elisa, @elisa1, are you familiar with the traits of narcissism? Insecure attachment doesn't make people nasty, though it inhibits closeness and intimacy. This guy sounds very controlling and borderline emotionally abusive. Yes, divorce can sometimes severely impact people and cause them to be very emotionally unavailable, maybe fearful or hurt or distrustful. However, a decent and self-aware person only interested in a rebound/fling would be upfront about it if and when they realized it, not try to string someone along storing ammunition for when they wanted to pick fights on their own terms and timelines.

I can't diagnose someone I don't know, but I want to explain why your story doesn't sit well with me and why I thought about narcissism.

Feeling like "we were meant to be, I thought there was no one else that understood me better, I thought that we were alike" any time that's very early in the relationship when you don't really know someone yet (you said it was like this by date 8, so I'm assuming that's at most 2 months in) is unfortunately often a huge red flag that you're getting lovebombed. I'm not sure if you were counting those feelings when you said you knew there were many but ignored them. Frequently, you are told what you want to hear to "groom" you while the narcissist is paying such close attention to you because s/he will use what you say to learn exactly how to press your buttons once the switch is flipped.

Going through intense emotional withdrawal, which you are if you know rationally that he can't meet your needs (he said he doesn't want more children though you want them, so that should be a logical dealbreaker) and yet go back to him anyway to stop the separation anxiety you are feeling without anything changing or the dealbreakers being resolved, is another sign. "Why do I still hope that he will come back? Why do I still want him?" "at this point I don't see how things will ever get better" -- Again, it sounds like your brain/logic is not aligned with your feelings... you know this isn't good for you but you feel an overwhelming pull to relieve your anxiety. This type of confusion is a common response to narcissists. This can also be a normal breakup stress response for you if you are Anxious Preoccupied, but does this feel the same as other breakups or does this seem to honestly and actually be worse? When I was AP and dated people who had more serious problems than insecure attachment, I found it was a whole lot more confusing than the normal intense grief that came with a breakup and like I had unfamiliar feelings that didn't even seem like they were coming from me (like an intense need to please the guy even after I decided I didn't actually like him as a person very much, so it wasn't like my norm).

"He called me to say that I should pick up my stuff and I asked him to put it in a box and send it to me (which he refused). I went there today to pick everything up and to see him and his kid for the last time (I haven't seen them in 4 weeks). He hugged me and wouldn't let go (which he didn't do before) and his kid (4 yr old son) begged me to stay which broke my heart." -- This sounds incredibly manipulative and controlling.

I don't have enough details to say this for sure, but you should look into it and consider it. I'd suggest starting with asking yourself if he seemed like he lacked empathy and if you felt unseen, like more of an extension of him then as if he saw you as a separate independent person. If it does turn out to be the case that he's highly narcissistic or even has NPD, the best thing to do is be nice to yourself and go complete no contact. You will start to feel more like yourself in several weeks, or maybe a few months, and then can start to do some self-work to build back up your eroded esteem.

I feel for you, because it's confusing and incredibly painful. Again, if it is the case, it may not seem like it at this time, but learning about it, how to recognize it, how to protect yourself, and where your own issues are in all of this ends up being the most empowering type of self-growth. Don't drown in the pain because he isn't worth it. You are worth it.

You don't have to be smitten with someone to treat them with respect. He's triangulating you with a concept (the right woman) to belittle you. People like this also aren't self-aware enough to be able to be honest with you about past relationships, or it simply isn't in their best interest to tell you the truth. I'd take anything he said about never doing this before and blaming his ex wife with many grains of salt.

I hope you are able to cut this toxic guy loose and start to heal. It will only happen if you're far away from him. I've dated plenty of DAs, and done the AP/DA dance, and what you're describing sounds like more than that.

A person can also have a personality disorder and an insecure attachment style.

When I was AP, I was terrible at getting over relationships. I'd ruminate and blame myself while recognizing it was over and I had to move on. That often came with seeing the person less, unless we were staying friends, and eventually enough time would pass that I'd be emotionally open enough to meet someone else. Not recommended as good tactics for moving on, took way too long and kept me in cycles and patterns.

The couple people I dated short term who had some sort of mental instability and were gaslighting me hit my self esteem pretty hard and made me hurt and confused. I went no contact with both and started reading about emotional abuse and gave myself a talktrack without any self blame, and felt those deeply right at the beginning but also quickly moved on with some distance. Again, those were like 4-6 weeks, so my attachment wasn't so strong.

If you are AP, I'd recommend you start with yourself and your self esteem and try not to make it about any romantic partners, past or present, at this point in time. If you have been on the receiving end of emotional abuse from a partner, that's not your fault and you didn't deserve that. But now you have to take responsibility for yourself and heal.

In another thread, I wrote about what I did over a long period of time to move from AP to earned secure, which makes dealing with breakups a lot easier because you are just dealing with the breakup and not layers and layers of attachment injury on top of it. jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1262/attachment-style-self-help-suggestions

Theoretically, people can be and move between any attachment style depending on experiences and how much they let negative experiences affect them as adults. Some research indicates you'll likely stick with your primary one from childhood that's been conditioned into your nervous system, but it can be changed with self work. My personal opinion is, if you're insecure and you're shifting due to more bad experiences without healing, you'll be more likely to add more maladaptions over your primary style. So if you think of AP as high anxiety/low avoidance and low view of self/high trust in others, then bad experiences that make you more avoidant and distrustful of others isn't going to also improve your own self esteem and anxiety. So I'd think it's more likely you'd slide from AP to FA and not DA. However, if you start healing as AP and improve your self esteem and decrease your anxiety, you'll start moving towards secure. I've found that when I started consistently testing secure, it came with a true change in how I think. While I still have AP thoughts and gut reactions, I recognize them as such and they don't make sense to me to act on, so I also think once you get to secure through true healing and not just superficial level habit changes, like once your core perspectives really change, you're going to stay there.

It's doable!!