How to manage disproportionate anxiety?

The best advice my adult daughter gave me when I first started this on line dating malarkey was to meet up with the person asap and to avoid building a fake cyber relationship.
I was very naive after being with my husband for over 25yrs and she had some experience on tinder dating.
It really was great advice as I found the ones I had chatted to on line for X amount of time and appeared great, when I actually met up with them in the flesh I wish the floor to open up and swollow me so I could escape asap.
Not sure if this helps but meeting person to person like the good olde pre online days is sound advice.

When I started online dating last year, I had one guy that texted me several times a day in the two week run up before our actual date. He was sending me jokes, selfies, photos of the beer he was sipping and what cap he was going to wear, weather reports, morning and evening salutations.  I was amused and liked the attention but thought it was a bit weird. The day of our "date," he texted that he thought the age difference was too much and didn't think we should meet (He was 7 years older, but acted like a tween who just got an iPhone with his texting habits.) 

I concluded this takeaway. You know noting about a person based on their texting. The"texting guy" who texted me could have been married, or thought that it was fun to have a woman to text while he was traveling on business, or I was one of a dozen gals getting photos of his beer. Who knows? It is no reflection on you. If all you have done is text, you don't know anything about him except that he thinks it is fun to text.

Is it possible for you to take a technology break so you are not monitoring his e-comings and goings?  If he is serious about meeting you, he will get in touch and make a plan. 

That said, online dating is crazy-making, even for the hardiest souls....

I think that sort of anxiety may initially seem like it's about him, but it isn't about him per se-- it's about the dynamic, your relationship history, etc. In other words, it's not about this one particular man and his actions, it's more like he's symbolic of the dynamic you're struggling with (ex: someone seeming quite interested and engaged and then their abruptly turning it off and disengaging).

I think your feeling quite anxious for a day and then recognizing the situation for what it is and stepping out of the anxiety into better perspective sounds like a fairly healthy reaction from someone with your relationship history. You didn't spiral off into some state of anxiety for days, weeks, months, etc. It was just one day! It sounds like actually have pretty decent coping mechanisms to me given what you're working on.

Sounds like you are doing well! As for you reflecting on your DA ex in this--I think one of the reason these DA relationships are so compelling is that they give us when we have never experienced them before an instant PhD in the human experience. There is so much to reflect on and feel and we are always learning about ourselves through them.

That is GREAT you asked online guy if he wanted to meet in person this week. Good direct request!!! I am a fan of those. Being a polite texter is refreshing and good on his part. I hope he steps up and you meet him in person. If he has more excuses, that is valuable data for you.

Just to circle back on this, we did finally meet. It was kind of hard to get a read on him, but my feeling throughout was that he wasn't really that attracted to me. Which made me feel less attracted to him. So --chicken or egg-- it didn't seem to set things up for any further engagement, though if he wants to meet again, I will so that I can be sure. But I observe myself and see how, though full on AP with my beloved and engulfed and inconsistent DA (who is very much along the lines of FHL's guy and SissyK's guy), the lack of positive leaning in from my date (neutral feeling from him--I am very, very attuned to emotional cues) really brought out my avoidant side. And I feel I don't care one way or the other. Which is precisely why I'll meet him again if he wants to, because I feel I need to work on this, too.

The unexpected consequence of my evening was that when I got home, I got really upset. Not at this new guy or at the lack of clear interest per se, but really upset about my DA. Such a feeling of missing him and just wishing he was back with me. I haven't felt like that in awhile...even though I still think about him a lot, it hasn't had emotional intensity much for awhile. But that came roaring back last night.

And this morning, I woke up really angry at him.

I struggle with "being fair" (he's damn wounded, and in his context, did the best he could--I do honestly think this these days when not activated) and being deeply angry that he couldn't rise above it, if he cared about me, to directly, honestly, and kindly tell me he wanted to end things with me (as he always promised he would do--as he committed to me to do), rather than just rejecting me with apparent indifference repeatedly--though not consistently--over many months. Seemingly hopeful I would get the hint and just take myself away, sparing him any discomfort.

My counselor says I keep making excuses for him. That he was fully aware that the worst thing for me was the cold shoulder. That he knew that when he talked to me honestly, I reacted well. And he chose not to do that, even though that was how we had broken up "well" in the past.

I reflect that the worst thing for him was me making him feel "responsible for my feelings" and kind of feel he just couldn't do it any other way at this point in time. So, I never quite know where to end up on this train of thought.

Thanks, Alexandra. I have spent the past few hours thinking about what you wrote. It's funny, you know, I got really angry--and expressed it--to my core attachment figure for years, then gave up finally expressing it as it never made a difference. It also became less necessary as I moved far, far away.

With my DA, though, I never showed anger because I knew that would totally end things. Just calm but clear "talks" about actions that were problematic for me were enough to make him disappear. They made him feel he was the bad guy because I presented as "you do this-fix it" rather than seeking to understand it and finding a mutual solution. This was something I came to understand belatedly (thanks to coming to this forum) and too late to change my manner of communicating before things were really on the rocks. I would still need to address those things, but I would handle very differently given a do over. I've learned a lot from how I presented those issues and he reacted in the context of attachment and communication in general, actually, but sadly, too late for this one.

But I am angry, yes. He told me in early spring he did not want to be responsible for my feelings. And proceeded to prove he would do nothing to consider them by distancing without explanation --knowing that is what I cannot tolerate --and throwing in repeated sexual rejection (including a hookup with a younger woman, which he did not try to hide by meeting her at her place instead of his, but doesn't know for sure that I know about) for good measure to make me just go away.

Not that that worked. Hah--he really should read up on attachment. APs never abandon. But this AP, at least, would have let him go if he had called on my compassion. Which he damn well knew from our previous breakup. We even talked about how we ended well that time. I am so angry he took this path.

I think in his mind disengagement was a way "not to hurt me", but really it was about not wanting to see me feeling hurt and having to deal with how that made him feel. In any case, I didn't allow him to just slip away in the end and buttonholed him after 5 months of this. He felt super pressured and was super brutal consequently--so he didn't get what he wanted, either. So stupid. Both of us hurt more than was ever necessary.

Funny thing is why I can't express this anger to him now, when he is no longer in a relationship with me. And I realize it's because of the fear of the consequences. Even now, emotionally I am afraid of that--that it will irrevocably end any connection we might have ever again. Which I truly believe it would. So really, what it comes down to is abandonment even though I have already been abandoned. And my inability to definitively cut off the source of what I need. So guess what, I guess I am still attached, even though I don't feel it the way I used to. Anger has, with occasional moments of exception (like the other night), largely replaced nostalgia and longing. Well, anger is attachment, too, I guess.

I just don't know what is on the other side of it. I have only three responses to anger in my toolkit: being actively angry (which I am now), hardening/indifference (my avoidant side), and forgiveness/acceptance. Understanding is the only path I know to that last one, which is where the excuses come in. Is there another way? Help me.

I struggle with balancing the choice he made to take the path he did with recognizing that he is completely unaware of his own attachment style/wounds, as I was (mine and his) until this spring when we were already on the disengagement path. It's like I can't be angry at the weather: it is what it is -- and my DA is what he is. That's where I feel I need to be fair. But I don't know how to do that without excusing...I don't know how to process and move past my anger without finding a way to excuse/understand/accept him.

Which, incidentally, is further than I ever got with my feelings about my core attachment figure. No understanding or acceptance is in my consciousness at all--I landed on indifference there.