Confused, lost and hurt

Why is she calling you here husband? Are you married?

What do you want here? (From this relationship)

Hi there, she called me husband and I called her wife in my native dialect (we are interracial) as a form of showing more affection and being closer considering we were completely unstable 2 months ago. No we are not married but the wedding dress has already been bought, hence why it caused me so much pain. 


I just want to work things out with her because I am AP working towards secure. I have my past trauma too causing me to have a deep fear of abandonment and would lash out with protest behaviours, which made my FA ex deactivate.  

I sent her an email yesterday and she said she will read it. I'm not sure if its all too late:

"I wanted to let you know this time apart has given my clarity on what you were trying to express to me. I am still learning everyday about your attachment style and how to be a more centered and safe partner to you. It is a learning journey but I am making headways. I am not perfect, far from it. Please know that I do not need a lot of attention, not more than you can give. I just need to re-establish my friends network that I've lost ever since my divorce. I also do not want a family sooner rather than later. We talked and agreed on that.

I understand how you feel when I lashes out, it makes you feel you're not enough for me and triggers your core wounds. I do not mean to hurt you. It is my subconscious and I need to keep it in check before I wreck myself. Please, if you can, forgive me for the hurt I've caused you ever since the day you left me on 13th June 2020. Please find it in your beautiful soul to forgive me while I work on myself.

You are enough. ALWAYS - Since the day I started the chat with you on Tinder with a lame knock knock joke. I respect you deeply and understand how important space is to you so you can self soothe and feel like you are safe and in control of your environment. I am ready to take accountability for my actions and how my activation and protest behaviours made you feel. I want you to know care for you deeply and am always in your corner. I am ready to talk but I would ask you reach out sooner than later. I understand you are still upset and navigating your feelings which is so important but I am hurting as well, and I know you love me and don't want that.

Moving forward I would love to get clear about our expectation and needs from one another if there is a chance for resolution. In the meantime, I will respect your space, until you have clarity on the direction our relationship is going."

And P.S. an FA will still smell this as you throwing yourself at her from 10 miles away.

Thank you for your reply, Seeking. 

The email was actually recommended to me by another FA on Reddit. Thing is I need attention yes. However I also realised that the amount I need isn't healthy for anybody on planet earth. I need to self soothe, which I am working hard to achieve. 

Thing is, my ex asked for space because she is confused herself in whether she is in love with me or simply being with me because she's afraid that I'll be alone. The latter, I tend to believe it's hogwash because she blocked me many times and even got romantically involved with someone else though it did not proceed  any further other than text messages. Does anyone think she cares whether I'm alone during those times? Its contradicting isn't it? 

I know you're looking to salvage this and not particularly looking for advice aside from that. But there's a few things going on here in your posts that you don't seem aware of.

I agree with the comments about not saying you understand how she feels. I don't think you do because she hasn't been able to fully communicate it, on the basis of her being FA and the difficulty they have communicating period without doing a lot of self work first on their own end.

You're learning about FA to try to read her and find the magic formula to work it out. You feel empowered because you managed to turn things around before, and now you're blaming yourself for too much protest behavior which pushed her away. While your protest behavior undoubtedly didn't help, where you two have ended up was inevitably always where you'd end up because it's simply the way of the FA-AP dynamic unless (or until) both parties have the self-motivation and have actually put in the work and effort to start becoming more secure. If you're doing your half of the work on your side, great! That will make your life better for sure as you make progress, but this relationship will repeat this on and off cycle over and over and over if she's not fully committed to doing the same for herself (I'll repeat that -- for herself, not for you).

I've been in a similar situation, where we didn't have quite the age difference but were still a few years off from each other in terms of life stages (I was looking for a more serious and stable potential starting a family situation than he turned out to want, in spite of him not actually saying that). We went from him deactivating and dumping me and saying we'd never get back together to dating again and eventually reconciling, but with little to eventually no sex (again, he also sexually withheld the first time around). That actually reflected his true mindset... he cared about me but was still struggling with his FA internally and not feeling triggered anxiously AP with me which he confused for attraction. And he only wanted overwhelming sexual attraction, though he didn't say this as we reconciled, he only said he wanted to take things slow and put me in a position that I of course respected his boundaries and would have waited as long as he needed. Yet, then I'd have been waiting forever, because he simply wasn't being fully honest about what he wanted.

It looks like you're desperate to cling to her because you don't know how to make yourself happy. It's great you're working on that! I'd even say it's necessary if you want a stable romantic relationship with anyone at all. But it's an awful lot of pressure to put on someone so much younger who has her own issues (FA) unrelated to you. Issues which seem strong to me, as her telling you she doesn't quite want to be with you but also worries about you being alone indicates to me that she's very conditioned to be co-dependent and has bad boundaries herself. She cares for you so is actually attempting in a way to overfunction and take on too much, which is codependent, and most likely related to however she grew up and how adults put their own problems and responsibilities onto her. Mix that with your own codependency and enmeshment issues, and without a lengthy break where you both make serious strides forward on your own in independent therapy, and you'll just keep running in this circle where you repel then return to each other yet nothing has actually changed.

You're much better off breaking this toxic cycle than restarting it, even if it is toxic in spite of the fact you both care for each other and not because either of you intends for the dynamic to be toxic.

Good luck.

In my experience, and anecdotally among IRL friends who have been in similar situations with avoidants withdrawing from sex, unfortunately yes. Something is deeply wrong in this situation, usually related to fear of intimacy but it may also be subconscious incompatibility. It doesn't mean she doesn't care or it's impossible to address and move forward with, but it probably will take a lot of focused and mutually committed work to get through it. The couple times I've been in the situation (it's happened with multiple FA exes...), they eventually said outright they were not committed to doing that work (but effectively were looking for perfect and effortless connections without considering their own role in their relationship history). I haven't had any sexual issues like this with partners without insecure attachment styles.