New - hope someone could offer words of wisdom

Thank you. It’s really hard when you’ve lost sight of yourself and don’t really feel you were doing anything wildly out of the ordinary - particularly when the person you were involved with was actively encouraging you to trust them and lean on them.
I didn’t freak out massively, just literally said I didn’t think I ought to be feeling the way I was, and it was as a result of him being hot and cold and not communicating as he would typically have done (despite the fact I’d said being in contact was the way to help me feel reassured, when he asked what he could do to give me confidence)....

Ah, I'm so sorry to hear you went through that Henrietta Sounds like the guy was playing the field or something, and likely love bombs as a seduction technique. Love bombing is seen as a red flag across many mental health forums, and disarms a lot of lonely people. So don't beat yourself up for taking it on face value and being vulnerable. 

Like Anne mentioned, the best way to weed out guys like this is to go slow and keep your attachment in check until you know a person well. The dating world encourages fast paced intimacy for people who want sex. Its not ideal for forming authentic relationships that last, unless you can control the pace and treat people you meet more as the acquaintences that they are (until they earn the right to be more). 

Again, I'm sorry you met an insincere guy who hurt you. It really sucks  

Hi Henrietta, sorry to hear that this is happening. I was triggered AP crazy in my last relationship and was brought to the boards here, and since then earned secure, so I hope my thoughts can offer you some insight. There's a lot to unpack in your post, but I will focus on you since you are on the boards. 

in short, what I can see is the rookie mistake of offering your vulnerabilities to someone else (which is fine) but assuming that they will take responsibility for protecting your vulnerabilities. when they do not, you blame yourself for not being worthy enough to be protected. that's a big rookie AP mistake! I've done the same myself, thinking that if i opened up and shared my vulnerabilities, i've done my part to facilitate the rship. Here, what is essentially happening is the AP logic is somewhat that he will demonstrate being a good person by taking responsibility to act in ways that will honor your vulnerabilities/emotions/well-being. And if he does do the "right thing", it really validates your value to him because you are worthy of his consideration. This implicit belief needs re-examination; you can read the many many threads here, so I won't touch on it. I also won't talk about this person and his intentions/issues/attachment style, because that's pretty pointless. 

I'll touch on one missing piece of your approach to being vulnerable. The problem here is mainly two-fold: 1. not taking responsibility to protect yourself against them potentially breaking your trust and 2. not treating this as a process to assess trustworthiness but treating it as giving your heart over. 

1. Not taking responsibility to protect yourself. 
It is NOT anybody else's job to honor your vulnerabilities. I know from an AP perspective, you're trying to do the right thing by being open and vulnerable. However, when you do it from an insecure place and with an insecurely attached person, you are missing a key piece of self-accountability and responsibility when you do not have a self-protection strategy* in place. This outsources the responsibility of being well to someone else. From a DA perspective, this is a huge huge red flag - they don't want to be responsible for someone else, and they for sure don't want to be MADE responsible to do that. and in fairness, this is not just a DA thing - nobody, even secures, want to feel like they are made to be responsible for another person's well-being. For example, telling him "you do not like the way you are feeling" does not have a clear action plan - so what if you don't like your feels? what do you want to do about it? what do you want him to do about it? and what are you going to do if this happens again? Telling people how you feel is being vulnerable and open, but without a clear plan in your own head what it is you want and assessing if this person is giving you the feels you want, this means very little in practical terms. 

*A protection strategy is basically how you protect yourself while being vulnerable and open. The key thing about AP is learning how to share vulnerabilities in a centered and grounded way with a clear plan of action on what you are asking for and what you would do if you get/do not get what you asked for. The clear plan of action is what protects you; if you only do the former i.e., share your vulnerabilities, it is farming out your emotions for others to manage because now they have to be the one to think of concrete plans to deal with your emotions. It's literally giving them a problem and asking them to create solutions and enact it, while you just sit back and let people come up with plans to deal with your emotional vulnerabilities. I am not faulting or blaming you, it's just something I've come to realize over time that APs, myself included, did not really understand because nobody really states this explicitly. APs think it's natural to take responsibility to alter their own actions to manage people's emotional wellbeing, but it really is not. It is one thing to be considerate to other people's needs but it is another to give yourself over to please someone else; this is a distinction that APs struggle with. Other people just get this uncomfortable sense of emotional neediness that they can't quite put into words, and they back off real fast, which further triggers the APs. This is also why this forum promotes looking into yourself and having yourself fulfil your own needs, especially for APs. 

2. Trust is to be earned. 
This is somewhat extended from Point 1. APs tend to give the benefit of doubt and blindly trust others to do the good/right/considerate thing without self protection, and then blame the world and themselves when things do not go ideally. This is like investing your life savings into a scheme and choosing not to read the fine print or consult a lawyer before signing the contract. This is a red flag because there is a lack of boundaries (and all the more so from a DA's pov because they're wildly independent) as you tend to give it all emotionally without proof of worthiness. APs trust blindly and to others, that is an act of naivete and/or desperation. the former just invites others to take advantage of it, the latter just turns people off. Again, this is not blaming you as APs have their own reasons to do so, but I'm just putting this in the perspective of relational dynamics where others are not privy (nor do they need to be) to your psyche. This person has already demonstrated in their actions how inconsistent and inconsiderate they are to you and your stated needs, so it is very clear that this person does not meet your needs nor care to do so - #1 becomes all the more important. Saying it without doing it is already a form of inconsistency - it's important to first define what consistency is to you and how it is demonstrated, then when start noting down all these demonstrations of consistency/inconsistency. This entire process should be emotionally uninvested, like a job interview. This person said he knows how to code? Give him a task and assess if he knows how to and how well does he know how to. Dating is like a job interview process - you are only assessing if this person deserves consideration for the post. 

Taking responsibility to protect yourself is not antithetical to you feeling like you are worthless. you can still feel like you are worthless, but still take action to protect yourself as that is simply being responsible to yourself. a huge turning point for me was the belief that even if I did not deserve good things in life, I don't deserve bad things in life. I might not be worthy of being loved and adored and desired, but am I really that terrible a person to warrant such inconsideration and abusive treatment? I don't think so! and that is something you should consider too. are you really that terrible a person that you need to be punished like this? did you kill babies and bathed in their blood? having low self worth is not the same as deserving poor interpersonal treatment. make sure you ponder that deeply, and ponder just how much self-worth you are willing to let other people determine for you and how much you want to determine it for yourself. NOTE that I am not saying you're worthless; I'm trying to point out here that you can separate out how you feel about yourself and how other people treat you - they are NOT the same. 

I think the key here is to examine your patterns of behavior and find your own inconsistencies. If you know you are triggered by inconsistencies, then have you set up a system to detect and manage them? if you have not, this is also an inconsistency within yourself to resolve - and doing this for yourself is very very important because otherwise, you are just constantly triggering yourself. This inconsistency thing is something I spent alot of time working out because my ex was the same (we were together 2 years), and it drove me crazy so it's something I can empathize with. This is a really good opportunity for you to look at yourself as you already have some level of self-awareness, and it is up to you where you want to go next in your journey. 

Lastly, he sounds more like FA, not DA. It is plausible that the DA part stands out to you because it's so different and salient, but this hot/cold thing is usually a FA situation. 

He may or may not have been speaking to another woman, but what does it matter if he is dishonest and pretends and lovebombs. He is afraid to show his real self to you and there is a good reason for that. Stay away from lovebombers as they all have deep seeded issues that will eventually come out and with some of them it will all be turned against you. If you’re not careful, you can bind with a narcissist and a relationship like that can destroy you.


You’re lucky this man swirled out of your life as fast as he did.
But rest assured in six months you will get an Instagram like and a couple songs sent to you. Then a text a couple weeks later if he could have done better, then after a five hour conversation, a time you took out of your work day to talk to this man, he will flip out on you after the initial second lovebomb since at this stage you just don’t believe him and have reason to trust him yet and he will the demonstratively block you (not the first time either). (This happened to me, 😂)

henrietta777
At least your gut is working.
You can write down your bodily responses, that were telling you, that something was off, so that you can regonise them in the future.
  
Do you know about oxytocin - the bonding/lovehormone ?
A good thing is also to know about the impact that oxytocin has on women, when they are having sex:

Remember the impact of oxytocin - expecialy if you are a woman. Oxytocin makes women bond, when they are making love and they are touched on the breats and on the nipples.
On the other hand:
Mens testosteron can block the intake of oxytocin. It is better to cuddle, kiss ect and not just jump into bed with a man right away.

As a Woman make sure that You are exclusive before you are having sex. Make sure that both of you put your datingprofiles on pause ect. Otherwice wait.....

Wait with sex until you know the guy better. Otherwise you will risk getting bonded without really liking the guy.
For some it is recommended to wait uptil 3 months with having sex depending on your patteren and how important sex in a relationship is to you

If you are ap or a fa you can have a tendency to rush into a relationship. Slow dating is often recommended.

I guess one of the massive head spins is that I feel like I’ve lost something that potentially could have been amazing... despite the fact I don’t think I put many feet wrong. That’s part of what has left me so confused. He was the one pursuing/chasing (at least that was the impression I got), and doing the big compliments, and yet he was the ones who blind sided me (in his own words), and walked off without a second thought of ‘hmmm, is this definitely the right choice?’
That doesn’t seem to add up to me, or be a normal reaction, based on his previous words.