Post by sardo77 on Jan 28, 2019 19:15:47 GMT
Has anyone ever experienced this before?
My ex(FA) and I(AP) started off the relationship as opposites. Her being somewhat Anxious-Preoccupied and me coming out of a divorce being Fearful Avoidant. We spent our first year without a true title on the relationship as i didn't want to get too close too soon having just come out of my marriage. She was constantly in touch and always making an effort to be there whenever our schedules would allow us to see each other. You could tell that she had fallen in love with me before i fell in love with her(or at least before i admitted to myself that i was in love with her). We knew there was a connection(spiritual, emotional, sexual) there that neither of us had ever had with a partner before, but for the first year i was still hesitant to officially call us committed to each other.
It was at about that point(1 year in) that after being away for a long weekend with friends that she slept with someone else(i found out about this approx 5months later, she shut down when i found out about it and kept saying "why are you doing this" when i brought it up to her). She came home from that weekend and went NC for 2 weeks while she "thought over" the relationship. It, of course, was at that point that i realized what i had lost and everything changed for me. I began to become wildly anxious(internally) and wrote her a long letter expressing my true feelings for her in the hopes of getting her to come back. Eventually she did and we worked on things but never really spoke about the reasons she walked away other than she didnt think i was giving her what she needed. There was no other emotional conversation about that weekend and she seemed to completely shut down whenever talks about the weekend came up. Obviously this should have been a red flag that i saw, but i was just so happy to have her back that i didn't even see it. After this incident, i made sure to be better at communicating and telling/showing her how much i cared for her. I was constantly going out of my way to try and please her because i loved her but in retrospect i did so probably because i thought that that would be a way to not lose her again.
However, by losing her that first time it made my anxious attachment kick into overdrive. I gave her her space but i also always wanted her to check in with me after going out with friends, or spending a weekend away with them. I needed that sense of security that she was still there and that i was a priority in her mind. We were in a good place for the next year but i still needed more confirmation that she wasn't leaving and also expressed a desire for more communication and effort from her. I chalked up her inability to her not wanting to come to my place, and me always going to hers, as her being selfish. I chalked up her lack to calling/texting me early on a Saturday or Sunday to the fact that this was her first long term relationship and she didn't know some of the "unwritten rules". I chalked up her constant traveling to different places as being young and filled with Wanderlust. What i didn't realize until 2 weeks ago was that she and i both had specific attachment styles. Styles that i wish i had know of 11months ago when she broke things off with me(or more like 13 months ago when i started to sense the distance and disconnect).
After the breakup there was a lot of ghosting on her part and a lot of me trying to win her back. I realize now that those efforts and my anxiety probably came off as wildly needy and smothering to her which of course pushed her away even further. I just learned of attachment styles after googling "emotionally unavailable ex" after a night when we saw each other for the first time in 5 months. She told me that night that she'd love to clarify things about the past 5 months of not seeing/contacting each other, and then proceeded to tell me that i was her "everything" and her "person". This was also after she consumed approx 7 glasses of wine and was flirting very heavily with multiple men at the party that we were at. 5 minutes after calling me her "person" and her "everything" she proceeded to leave the bar and walk down the street with one of those guys hand in hand. I texted her the next day telling her how painful that was to watch especially after hearing her words and she didn't bother to reply. I sent 1 more text and called her twice over the next 8hrs... she then blocked my number without giving any response. I eventually got in touch with her using another app and she said that due to my actions, calls and texts that she didnt want me to contact her again. No accountability, no "im sorry" for breadcrumbing you, no words of "i know that must have hurt you to see that".... nothing.
How a person can emotionally shut down so quickly and be so cold and avoidant is so beyond me. I too have been an avoidant in past relationships but when ive ever hurt someone, i've always taken accountability and at the very least apologized and tried to make things right.
Since this happened i've read "Attached" & "Wired for Love" and as many online articles as i could. I now realize that so much of the Anxious-Avoidant trap describes our relationship to a T. In the 11 months since our breakup she's given me the bare minimum in terms of an explanation and so for me being able to finally know that Avoidants exist and behave in a very specific way it helped me to finally understand the way in which she's behaved. Its finally brought some clarity to an otherwise very ambiguous split. I don't think she knows that she is an avoidant(i didn't realize that i was Anxious until 2 weeks ago) as she's always struggled to make sense of her feelings and while i'd love to share this knowledge(and literature) with her, i'm sure it would only push her away further if thats possible.
I'm not sure how the tables turn in this way with us both starting out with different attachment styles, but has anyone else ever experienced something like this in their relationship?
Thanks all for taking the time to read all of the above.
My ex(FA) and I(AP) started off the relationship as opposites. Her being somewhat Anxious-Preoccupied and me coming out of a divorce being Fearful Avoidant. We spent our first year without a true title on the relationship as i didn't want to get too close too soon having just come out of my marriage. She was constantly in touch and always making an effort to be there whenever our schedules would allow us to see each other. You could tell that she had fallen in love with me before i fell in love with her(or at least before i admitted to myself that i was in love with her). We knew there was a connection(spiritual, emotional, sexual) there that neither of us had ever had with a partner before, but for the first year i was still hesitant to officially call us committed to each other.
It was at about that point(1 year in) that after being away for a long weekend with friends that she slept with someone else(i found out about this approx 5months later, she shut down when i found out about it and kept saying "why are you doing this" when i brought it up to her). She came home from that weekend and went NC for 2 weeks while she "thought over" the relationship. It, of course, was at that point that i realized what i had lost and everything changed for me. I began to become wildly anxious(internally) and wrote her a long letter expressing my true feelings for her in the hopes of getting her to come back. Eventually she did and we worked on things but never really spoke about the reasons she walked away other than she didnt think i was giving her what she needed. There was no other emotional conversation about that weekend and she seemed to completely shut down whenever talks about the weekend came up. Obviously this should have been a red flag that i saw, but i was just so happy to have her back that i didn't even see it. After this incident, i made sure to be better at communicating and telling/showing her how much i cared for her. I was constantly going out of my way to try and please her because i loved her but in retrospect i did so probably because i thought that that would be a way to not lose her again.
However, by losing her that first time it made my anxious attachment kick into overdrive. I gave her her space but i also always wanted her to check in with me after going out with friends, or spending a weekend away with them. I needed that sense of security that she was still there and that i was a priority in her mind. We were in a good place for the next year but i still needed more confirmation that she wasn't leaving and also expressed a desire for more communication and effort from her. I chalked up her inability to her not wanting to come to my place, and me always going to hers, as her being selfish. I chalked up her lack to calling/texting me early on a Saturday or Sunday to the fact that this was her first long term relationship and she didn't know some of the "unwritten rules". I chalked up her constant traveling to different places as being young and filled with Wanderlust. What i didn't realize until 2 weeks ago was that she and i both had specific attachment styles. Styles that i wish i had know of 11months ago when she broke things off with me(or more like 13 months ago when i started to sense the distance and disconnect).
After the breakup there was a lot of ghosting on her part and a lot of me trying to win her back. I realize now that those efforts and my anxiety probably came off as wildly needy and smothering to her which of course pushed her away even further. I just learned of attachment styles after googling "emotionally unavailable ex" after a night when we saw each other for the first time in 5 months. She told me that night that she'd love to clarify things about the past 5 months of not seeing/contacting each other, and then proceeded to tell me that i was her "everything" and her "person". This was also after she consumed approx 7 glasses of wine and was flirting very heavily with multiple men at the party that we were at. 5 minutes after calling me her "person" and her "everything" she proceeded to leave the bar and walk down the street with one of those guys hand in hand. I texted her the next day telling her how painful that was to watch especially after hearing her words and she didn't bother to reply. I sent 1 more text and called her twice over the next 8hrs... she then blocked my number without giving any response. I eventually got in touch with her using another app and she said that due to my actions, calls and texts that she didnt want me to contact her again. No accountability, no "im sorry" for breadcrumbing you, no words of "i know that must have hurt you to see that".... nothing.
How a person can emotionally shut down so quickly and be so cold and avoidant is so beyond me. I too have been an avoidant in past relationships but when ive ever hurt someone, i've always taken accountability and at the very least apologized and tried to make things right.
Since this happened i've read "Attached" & "Wired for Love" and as many online articles as i could. I now realize that so much of the Anxious-Avoidant trap describes our relationship to a T. In the 11 months since our breakup she's given me the bare minimum in terms of an explanation and so for me being able to finally know that Avoidants exist and behave in a very specific way it helped me to finally understand the way in which she's behaved. Its finally brought some clarity to an otherwise very ambiguous split. I don't think she knows that she is an avoidant(i didn't realize that i was Anxious until 2 weeks ago) as she's always struggled to make sense of her feelings and while i'd love to share this knowledge(and literature) with her, i'm sure it would only push her away further if thats possible.
I'm not sure how the tables turn in this way with us both starting out with different attachment styles, but has anyone else ever experienced something like this in their relationship?
Thanks all for taking the time to read all of the above.
