No idea if I'm dealing with an FA , DA or Philophobic

azul

Hi, welcome to the board. Sorry that you are in a situation that makes you feel anxious.

From what you wrote, about her being hot and cold but admitting to an anxiety attack that made her pursue a friendship with you after the breakup, she's probably FA. However more important than that is these words you wrote:

"she said she liked me because I had girlfriends, later she would tell me she didn't want a relationship"

"she would tell me she can't fall in love , that she has a problem"

"she asked me to love her less"

"she told me maybe she would find someone that doesn't love her and she doesn't need to love"

She told you what she wanted and what she's capable of, and that's not any sort of healthy, functional, committed relationship. She has essentially told you she is emotionally unavailable. What it sounds like you heard was, she was sad she has commitment issues and it was a bid for help, so you started sending her information. But she didn't say she wanted help, she was simply telling you what she wanted from a relationship to both "warn" you and make sure you were on the same page. You wanted to help, though, because you were hoping it would transform her into the type of loving partner you'd prefer.

This won't happen because she simply doesn't want it to. The reasons she's not looking for love have nothing to do with you. They happened long before you met and are her problems and hers alone, which means you did not cause them and so you cannot fix them. She is who she is and at this time isn't interested in putting in her own work to change that.

I've seen a lot of attachment style test results, and I've noticed that being in the 50-60% range for secure actually isn't secure. It's very close to crossing over into an earned secure attachment style, if you're willing to do a bit of self-work, but it's still actually the majority insecure style (in your case, anxious preoccupied AP).

What you can consider doing next is therefore this:

Believe it or not, focusing on her and letting her lack of emotional availability make you anxious can push you further AP and make you less secure. She will trigger you and trigger a fear of abandonment, and your overwhelmed nervous system will make you feel anxious and panicked, wanting to reconnect with her romantically to ease your anxiety. But your desires and how you show and receive love are incompatible, so pursuing a relationship at this time will not feel good for you. Instead, the way to beat the fear of abandonment, get more secure, and gain control over your feelings is to create better and healthier boundaries for yourself.

Tell her you cannot be friends right now, and then stick with that. You care for her, but you want to get over the romantic feelings before you can consider being friends. And then, really do that.

In doing this, you have reconnected with yourself, and honestly communicated those feelings to her so she knows exactly what you want. Then you honored yourself by keeping a healthy boundary. This is a step to healing and improved self-esteem, so that you've got your own back. That quiets the anxiety and abandonment fear.

Once the anxiety dies down, then you can focus on some of the attachment issue healing which will get you all the way to secure. You can look into your past and figure out why you are so attracted to a situation that has you chasing unavailable love. Does it feel familiar? Are you trying to correct a situation from your childhood? Was there inconsistency growing up, and you learned to seek approval from others -- and the harder to earn the approval, the more satisfying you imagine it might feel to receive?

AP trusts others more than self. So part of this is also practicing self-acceptance, being enough for yourself, improving self-esteem without needing someone else to regulate your feelings for you.

Doing all this is not easy. In fact, it's very likely if you tell her you don't want to be friends, you will at first feel even more anxious about breaking the connection with her and want it back. You will have to fight this and give yourself time to feel very bad, and then after some time not talking to her it will feel better. It also may trigger her anxious if she's FA, as now you're the one leaving her, and she may suddenly start chasing you. You'll have to be considerate to her but ignore this too. This is part of the anxious-avoidant dance pattern. It doesn't mean she'll change. It means you'll get stuck in the on off on off pattern because she has old attachment wounds being "left" triggers as well.

But the most important thing is to learn more about your own attachment style and focus on how to heal that and become even more secure. Then your boundaries will continue to grow to be healthy, and when you're ready again, you'll likely choose a more secure partner next time.

Good luck!

azul, it's very common for insecurely attached people of all styles to have difficulty with rejection. Fundamentally, there's difficulty with self-acceptance, with making "mistakes" and beating yourself up about them. APs specifically take it hard because, due to inconsistency earlier in life, they develop to look for magic formulas -- that there must be some "solution," if I change and find the perfect way to behave, then I will have found the way to change and influence the other person to respond in the way I'd hoped. At some point, this may have worked earlier in life to get your needs met sometimes, and you were managing someone else's emotions and actions because they were not an emotionally healthy adult. But the child in you learned that you could find ways to control people to get your needs met, instead of learning that this interaction is dysfunctional and does not apply to every situation.

You aren't the exception for this woman, but as I said already, that has nothing to do with you. As she has her own problems, no one is the exception for her unless she one day decides on her own to change for herself. That sort of change usually comes from being in too much pain to want to continue that way, and we all have different capacities for pain and denial.

You do not need to decide to never speak to her again. I was suggesting you take a long break and then, once you truly feel better and have done some work on yourself to boost your own security, you can decide if you still want her in your life as a friend and ask if she's still interested in that. The sooner you take that break, the sooner you come out the other side. But I understand that things are difficult right now with the pandemic and some people are trying to hold on to any social connections. It is up to you to decide when you're ready for a real change, and to accept yourself wherever you're at (even if you're not ready quite yet, that's okay, as long as you're being honest with yourself about it).

Thanks Alexandra , I think with the lockdown I would suffer more without her , even though there was no communication yesterday and hopefully I will not mail today. Though perhaps this is the ideal moment because I think in my subconscious I am waiting for the lockdown to end and magically she will ask to meet me. I know pathetic.
I think you are spot on AP comes to head in times of stress , usually when involved in potential romantic partners.

Maybe I will write and tell her how I feel and need a break but also help she starts to look into her problem ... or is it best not to discuss her problem ?