How anxious are you really?!

Your post brought me back to 3 weeks ago. I was in your EXACT shoes. So I ended it. Off and on for a year and a half. Finally she gave me the title and commitment but it never felt like it. I can handle slow texts from a busy partner. It was the other stuff.

Not calling for 3 days after a date. Getting denied sex. The compartmentalizations of me and her opposite sex friends. Making me a low priority. Not putting in effort. Going along with things. Never asking how I was or getting to truly know who I am. The feeling like her putting her arm on me at night was never genuine and only to "make me feel" like she cared. The random strange things she would say to distance me. The making me feel like she never thought of me long term by saying "if you ever have kids..." The not wanting a label with me and calling me a friend but clearly acting like we were in a relationship after 1 year. Never introducing me or telling others she had a boyfriend after we had "the talk" where we agreed to it. Shall I go on? Never in any of my other relationships had I ever experienced ANY of these.

It's sad when you get used to it and used to waking up with a weight in your stomach. But it goes away when they throw you a bone and send you a text. "My partner actually does like me! Maybe this WILL work!" And then you get to see them and have amazing intimate sex that is the most powerful you've ever had. Then they leave in the morning. And the cycle repeats. You don't matter anymore. Do these sound familiar?

I had to take the short term pain for long term happiness. I love and still am in love with my ex of three weeks. I would have chopped off my pinky to be with her. But it was just a hologram of who she could have been. She was never truly with me. And when I ended it with her she was completely 100% unfazed and fine with it. That was the hardest part. Loving someone that is incapable of loving you back.

If you're with an avoidant partner I think that eventually you become sensitised to neglect and naturally so - everyone has needs in relationships and when you're constantly wrong footed or with someone who flip flops around between caring and not you become hyperaware of any kind of signals of care =or the lack of. I am generally somewhere between avoidant and secure but with a severely DA partner became somewhere on the AP scale.

In terms of not showing emotion when you leave - I think part of this is a front or a fear of actually showing feelings on the side of the da - most of the time these people are acting a part, pretending to be normal, avoiding anything that triggers feelings at all cost. My exdA seemed to have a kind of delayed reaction to these things and then darkly ruminated at home alone despite appearing externally to be just fine. It is very often all yet more of an act - or used as evidence of the fact that relationships never work, a self fulfilling prophecy.